Chapter 7 (Part III): The Creature

"Its flesh - it's been altered... beyond recognition! What horror have you created magister?!"

-        The magister's apprentice, Ceyla, just before the reveal of the titular antagonist in bard Cehrian’s cult horror classic “The Kerwyn Creature”. 

Kaira wasn't blind walking back out into the night. The manor house had been lit by numerous lamps, but the the sage green hillside was bathed in the silver light of the moon and stars, shining unobstructed in a cloudless sky. She could see well enough, and in the still summer air she could hear well too. In the house behind her, the guard she'd spared was desperately trying to console the panicked child he'd nearly shot. In the town, conflict of some sort had clearly broken out - evidently, at least one of their planned distractions had played out well. She walked toward the mine entrance, bow in hand, and could see one of the guards she'd incapacitated earlier was staggering back to his feet. Kaira couldn't risk the armed man getting to the weakened women in the mineshaft, and took aim with her bow.
Halfway through drawing the bow, there was a rush of air, a flapping sound, and then something knocked her to the ground, slashing her back with something sharp before taking off into the air again. She was certain she heard a cackle carried on the unearthly wind. Kaira rolled onto her feet and raised her bow. Back lit by the dim light of the moon and stars, Kaira could see a large bat like shape, but no real details. 
Whatever her assailant was, it swooped down at her again. This time Kaira dodged and rolled away from the strike, but it was still close. She fired multiple arrows after the shape, but only one even seemed to clip it. Kaira could reliably shoot birds out of the air, and this thing was quite a lot bigger than any bird she’d encountered, but it was swooping in close, striking so fast that Kaira couldn’t steady herself and lead the target.
She rolled again, drew, and held the drawn bow as she tracked her flying enemy. The creature swooped down, weaving, making itself a hard target, then looped at the last moment to come down on Kaira from directly above. Kaira dropped to both knees, twisted, and fired straight up. Kaira couldn't tell where she'd struck the creature, but she was certain it had been a solid hit, as it swerved away and rushed back into the sky screaming. Kaira turned back to the mine shaft to find two of the guards back on their feet and running for the treeline. As she watched, the creature came back down and grabbed one of them from behind, lifting him high into the air. The man's screams of horror and pain quickly gave way to long, anguished wail as his blood rained down from the sky, the creature feasting on him in mid air, before dropping his corpse like a bomb on Kaira. 
Kaira dodged, but realized she couldn't win a fight with an airborne opponent out in the open. She was considering a withdrawal back to the the manor house when she heard Regina’s voice shouting from down the hill, “Kaira! Down here!”

Kaira ran back down to Regina and dived through the door as the creature's claws slashed her back again. Regina was still weak, but energized by fear she all but dragged Kaira down the mine shaft.

“Heard her coming,” the weakened woman was short of breath, “Have a plan.”

“What?”

“Fight her - down there,” Regina pointed to a shaft that was cordoned off, “be ready to jump.”

Regina staggered to cover as the hair-raising cackling of their predator came down the shaft. Kaira fired a couple of arrows up into the darkness, and heard a perturbed growl in response. She hoped that meant she’d at least managed a glancing shot, but she dropped the bow and drew her knives.

The creature - Lionel Kerwyn's lover, Gabriella - stepped into the light of the antechamber, pulling one of Kaira's arrows from her arm as if it were a thorn. She was pretty in her own way. She was taller than Azraea, fuller bodied, fair skinned, and blonde; to Kaira she looked far more like a fairy tale princess than a vicious monster. But her blue eyes seethed with contempt that went beyond human malice. She darted forward much faster than Kaira imagined a human could – it was like seeing a snake attack; slow, deliberate motion and then sudden, explosive acceleration.

The woman was unarmed, but the claws that had slashed at Kaira above appeared again now, the flesh of her finger tips peeling back to reveal ebony talons. However, rather than simply trying to give Kaira another nasty scratch across the back, the creature was trying to reach her entrails, striking at Kaira's abdomen. Kaira dodged and backed away, focusing more on luring the woman back down the shaft than on attacking, though she got a few hits in on the woman as she retreated. As dangerous as she was, without armor or a shield, Kaira's arrows had already demonstrated that the creature wasn't invulnerable. Now, the elf’s knives cut deep into the creature’s arms, diverting her blows and drawing considerable blood. Despite that, though, the creature attacked relentlessly, apparently unconcerned by her injuries.

Kaira reached the entrance to the condemned shaft, and with one final gambit, knocked both of the creature’s clawed hands to the outsides, circled her blades under, and plunged them through her belly up into her ribcage. The creature screamed – apparently that did hurt. She tried to slash at Kaira’s throat, but Kaira stretched her inhumanly long arms out straight, putting herself out of the shorter woman’s range. Kaira heard a metal pop and a creaking sound behind the woman. With a deft side step and turn, Kaira darted off the track as a 500lb mine cart, loosed by Regina and the other prisoners, slammed into the woman. There was the brief sound of crunching bone and popping viscera - like a sack of rotten fruit dropped from a high window - soon drowned out by long wail descending into the shaft, and terminated by the rolling thunder of a crash deep in the hillside.