In the Pale Moonlight

"Motherfucking shithead assholes."

Tilda sulks down the street, away from her home, holding her bleeding hand.

Another day, another argument with her parents. She's nineteen now, and they still treat her like a child. Just because her brother is nearly a decade older, that doesn’t mean she wouldn’t grow up, too.

After their latest fight, she had stormed out the front door, slamming it in an unusually aggressive display. Most of the time, she just goes quiet and lets them bitch and lecture until she's excused, but this time she couldn't stand to listen. She had to get out, get some air and some privacy, just be anywhere but there. Once she had gotten some distance, she'd punched a brick wall in frustration. It hadn't made her feel any better, and she'd only ended up hurting herself.

She wanders down the streets of Red Grave City, without any particular destination in mind. The night air cools her heated face and the isolation allows her nerves to calm.

She doesn't stay settled for long. It isn't unusual for this part of the city to be empty at night, but it's still a bit eerie, especially when she gets the uncomfortable sensation of feeling eyes on her.

But she's alone -- and she'd like to stay that way a little longer before admitting defeat and going home.

Hugging her arms, she ducks down a side alley. Not her brightest move, in hindsight.

A drop of blood pools between her fingers and falls to the stone below. She freezes when she hears a hissing noise behind her. Some instinct tells her it isn't human, isn't animal, but something else entirely.

Whirling around, she sees a trio of scythe-wielding skeletal creatures approaching from the darkness of the alley she had just come through. Panic sets in immediately and she turns back, but her exit is cut off by another one of the sepulchral figures.

"What the hell -- " Backed against the wall, she has nowhere to run.

Blinking fearful tears from her eyes, she slumps down to the ground and shrinks into herself. With an arm thrown over her face, she braces herself for the blades to come down on her.

But they don't. Instead, she hears the crunching of bone and looks up.

A man in a long blue coat stands between her and the creatures. His elbow is embedded in the nearest creature's face as he pulls on the arm holding its scythe. With a grunt of effort, he rips it free, a thick black ichor spraying from the creature's torn shoulder. Its grip loosens and falls away from the scythe. The man whirls the weapon in his hands, taking hold of it like he was born to wield it.

The creatures don't stand a chance. The man cuts through them easily, his movements like a lethal dance that she watches in rapt fascination. Each strike sends more of the viscous blood splattering on the street around them.

She had made no noise when the man arrived, but when his final blow lands, a stray gush of blood nearly hits her leg. She yelps and pulls back before it can stain her skin.

The man stiffens at the sound. Her eyes meet his as he turns to look at her over his shoulder.

For a moment, she thinks he might come for her next, but he doesn't move, just regards her with narrowed eyes. Her heart had been pounding with fear, but now, as she realizes this man just put himself between her and those monsters and saved her life, it beats rapidly for an entirely different reason.

In the brief seconds he looks at her, she takes in his features. His hair is an unusual shade of silver despite his apparent young age, slicked back but a bit unkempt. His clothes must have been quite fine at one point, but now they're dirtied, the length of his coat beginning to fray at the edges.

What's most striking are his eyes: a cold, icy blue that seems to glow in the moonlight. His expression is just as chilling; he seems unconcerned with her well-being, or even her existence.

Tossing the scythe aside, his attention returns to the fallen bodies. He kneels, takes something from one of them -- it's too small and too dark for her to see what -- and looks it over. Standing, he tucks it in the breast pocket of his coat and turns away.

Despite the ease he had dispatched the creatures with, he seems worn and tired as he departs, disappearing around the corner.

Her senses dulled by terror, she can't speak, can't move, can't even take her eyes off him as he leaves. Once he's gone, she manages to take a few quick breaths and scramble to her feet.

"Hold on... Wait!"

It seemed like he hadn't even noticed her until those creatures were dead, but whatever his reasons for stepping in, he still saved her life. She has to thank him, at least.

She throws herself around the corner of the alleyway, hoping to catch him before she loses him entirely -- but though he had been in no hurry, he's nowhere to be seen.

When she returns home, the house is quiet. No one had bothered to wait up for her.

She's glad. She goes straight to her room and pulls out a sketchbook, putting her memory of those creatures down before it begins to fade. When it's done, she looks it over, tapping her pencil on the page.

In the comfortable embrace of safety, she can think straight, and she realizes she knows what these monsters are.

Flipping through her old copies of The Occult Times, she finds a particular issue.

She's read the Times for years, since she was little, but she's never put much stock in what they reported on. It's the sort of thing that catches eyes at the grocery store checkout: mutant bat babies, people who claimed to be angels, Bigfoot living in someone's garage, that sort of thing.

But this one... it's faded with age, nearly fifteen years old, but it's one of the issues she's reread multiple times.

She flips the pages until she finds the article.

Tower of Terror! Hell on Earth?

According to a few people interviewed by the Times, their city had been thrown into chaos when a massive tower had risen violently from underground. Someone had sent in a grainy photo of one of the creatures that crawled out of the wreckage: a hunched, skeletal figure wielding a scythe.

The official story is that a massive earthquake had nearly leveled the city. That kind of thing isn't entirely unheard of in that area, and with no evidence of any kind of demonic beasts or a hellish tower, she and many others had accepted it as the truth.

Now, she knows.

These creatures, these demons, are real -- and she intends to find out what else is lurking beneath the surface of her sheltered world.

Before she goes to bed for the night, she flips to a fresh page and sketches out the face of the man who saved her. She can't imagine she'll ever see him again, but if she does, she won't have forgotten him.