Page 3 of Bound By the Beast Man
The sun climbs higher, now a warm weight on my shoulders. The morning’s peace is full and settled, a deep, comforting hum. The laughter of the children, the distant clang of the blacksmith’s hammer, Ingrid’s soft humming beside me—it all blends into a perfect, gentle song. I close my eyes for just a second, soaking it in, etching the feeling of this flawless moment into my memory. This is what happiness is.
A scream shatters the world.
It’s not a child’s cry of scraped knees or a woman’s shriek at a dropped pot. It is a sound ripped from the deepest parts of the soul, a jagged edge of pure, undiluted terror that slices through the peaceful morning air like a blade. Every sound in the village stops. The blacksmith’s hammer stills mid-swing. The children’s laughter dies in their throats. Even the birds go silent. In the sudden, ringing quiet, my heart hammers against my ribs, a frantic, trapped thing. I look at Ingrid. The color has drained from her face, a horror that mirrors my own.
The song is over.
3
CORVAK
We have been at sea for three days. The Minotaur ship cuts through the slate-grey water, its immense sail catching a wind that feels colder and heavier than any Osirian breeze. I stand at the railing, watching the endless expanse of the ocean. There is an unnatural stillness to it, a placid surface that seems to mask a deep and ancient hunger. It puts me on edge. The Minotaur crew are capable sailors, their movements efficient and sure as they tend to the rigging, their voices booming in their rough, guttural tongue. They treat us with a wary respect, their honor-bound culture preventing any open hostility, but their contempt for anything that isn't a Minotaur is a palpable thing. Caspian has managed to charm a few of them into sharing a round of their acrid-smelling ale, his laughter a rare sound in the tense quiet that usually surrounds us.
My brothers handle the unease in their own ways. Tarek spends hours in silent meditation near the ship's mast, a mountain of calm resolve. Ronan is a restless storm of energy, endlessly sharpening his twin blades until the sound of steel on stone grates on my nerves.
“Must you do that?” Lucaris asked him on the second day.
“A dull blade is a warrior’s shame,” Ronan had replied without looking up.
Lucaris, driven by a need to prove himself, has taken to climbing the rigging, his agility earning grudging nods from the Minotaur crew. Silas is perhaps the most unsettled. He spends his time poring over the crude maps the captain provided, his brow furrowed in concentration, trying to account for every variable in a world where the variables are infinite.
“These charts are more guesswork than science,” he muttered to me earlier.
“They are all we have,” I said.
I watch them, my brothers, and the gravity of my vow settles upon me again. To return with the crystals, and with all six of us alive. It felt like a simple declaration of fact in the safety of our home, but out here, on this alien sea, it feels like a prayer sent into a void. I scan the horizon, my hand resting on the hilt of my sword. The sky is a vast, empty canvas of pale grey. There is no sign of land, no sign of life. Only the endless, waiting water.
The change comes without warning. The wind that has steadily pushed us north simply dies, leaving the great sail to slacken with a dispirited flap. The unnatural stillness on the water deepens, the surface becoming as smooth and reflective as polished glass. A strange, greenish light begins to bleed into the grey sky from the west. The Minotaurs stop their work, their horned heads turning as one toward the horizon, sniffing the air like wary beasts. A low murmur runs through them, their words sharp and anxious.
Then I see it. A line of darkness on the horizon, not the gentle curve of distant land, but a hard, bruised wall of cloud that seems to rise from the sea itself. It moves toward us with impossible speed.
“What is that?” Lucaris whispered, his voice tight with alarm.
“No natural storm,” I said.
The captain bellows orders with a thunderous roar that finally breaks the crew from their trance. They scramble to furl the sails, to batten the hatches, their movements frantic. The sky darkens with every passing second, the sun disappearing behind the monstrous storm front. Rain begins to fall, not as a drizzle but as a sudden, violent downpour, the drops like pellets of ice.
The ship lurches as the first wave hits us, a fist of water that crashes over the bow and sweeps across the deck. I dig my claws into the wood of the railing to keep my footing, the roar of the wind and sea deafening. Lightning spiders across the sky, coiling in a way that feels horribly wrong, its flashes illuminating a sea that has been churned into a liquid vortex of chaos. This is no natural storm. I have sailed the seas around Osiris my entire life; I know the moods of the ocean. This is something else.
“This is an attack!” I yelled over the wind.
My gaze is fixed on the tempest, on the churning black clouds overhead. In the strobing flashes of lightning, I see it—a shape. It is vast and vaguely human, a colossal shadow moving within the storm. Two points of malevolent light gleam where its eyes should be, and I feel a horrifying certainty that they are fixed on our ship, on me. A giant wave rises from the sea beside us, its crest blotting out the sky. The shadow in the clouds seems to loom larger, watching with a cold, ancient intelligence as the wall of water hangs over us.
There is a moment of impossible silence, the wind and rain seeming to hold their breath. Then the wave crashes down. The sound is of a mountain breaking in two. Timber screams and splinters, the ship’s mast snapping like a twig. Men, both manticore and Minotaur, are thrown across the deck like dolls. I see Ronan disappear over the side, a curse lost in the roar. The deck beneath my feet heaves and breaks apart. The inhuman presence in the storm watches it all, a silent, terrible witness to our destruction. Then the sea rises up and swallows me whole,dragging me down into a churning, black abyss. My lungs burn, and as my vision fades, the last thing I see are those two gleaming eyes, watching me sink into the depths.
4
DIANA
For a heartbeat, the world is frozen. The scream hangs in the air, a single, terrible note that has silenced everything. Ingrid’s hand flies to her mouth.
“What was that?” she whispered.
“I don’t know,” I said, my own voice tight.
Then the world explodes into chaos. Doors are thrown open, people spilling out into the lane. Some run toward the sound, armed with farming tools and foolish courage. Others, wiser, try to bolt for the woods. It makes no difference.
From the shadows between the cottages, the figures emerge. They are all women, tall and graceful, moving with a liquid speed that isn’t human. They wear dark, flowing cloaks, but the hoods do little to hide their impossible beauty. Their faces are perfectly sculpted, their skin luminous, but it’s their eyes that make my blood run cold. They gleam with a predatory malice, a deep and ancient cruelty that has no place in our peaceful village. These are not ordinary raiders. They are something else entirely, something torn from the darkest corner of a nightmare.
