The Last Satyr: The Company is Formed Part 1
Visitors in the Dark

Breathless, the boy peered along with her, their heads close together, his hand still on her to take a gander, trying to see what was ahead.

“What am I supposed to see?” he asked in a hushed tone.

“Shush! Listen!”

He listened, curious, mingling with a heightened sense of danger. A cemetery was a creepy place to be.

“There! Now! Do you hear it?” Leradien's voice barely pierced the silence.

Voices! From off in the darkness, he heard voices approaching, drifting in the night breeze like the whispers of the dead carried on the wings of bats.

“Someone’s coming,” the boy said. “What’ll we do? Run?”

“Of course, someone’s coming! That’s why I brought you here so that you could see it. But you’ve got to stay hid and be quiet. There’s a drow amongst them.”

“A drow?” gasped the boy. “Oh, Leradien, they can see in the dark, same as you! Now you’ve got me scared. The drow want me dead!”

“Oh, don’t be afraid! I am a drider, remember? They won’t bother you with me here. If we keep perfectly still, maybe they won’t notice us at all.”

“What do you mean–‘Maybe’?”

“Listen!”

The two kept their heads bent together and scarcely breathed. Being a drow, he imagined Leradien could hear the beating of his heart against her. Nearby, the muffled sound of voices floated up from the far end of the graveyard. And there were mysterious moving lights showing there near the ground and drawing ever nearer in the spooky night.

“Look!” the boy whispered. “What is that?”

“It’s called dancing lights. Any drow can make it, including me.”

Some vague figures approached through the gloom, one holding out his hand and apparently directing the innumerable little bright spangles of light that lit the ground ahead. Presently the boy whispered with the obvious conflict:

“What’s a drow need with light? Can’t they see?”

“The light’s for the others. Now be quiet. If I can hear a drow, he can hear me.”

Sure enough, there were others–three of them.

“Who are they, Leradien?”

“Will you shut up? The drow is my father. The others are a human, a half-elf, and an ogress. Be careful! My father can see twice as far as me in the dark.”

The boy recognized the human’s voice. It was Beowin, the deer hunter, a human of low repute. He recognized the ogress’ voice too as Olga. She was carrying something. The third wasn’t talking. He must be the half-elf. He wasn’t as tall as the others.

They seemed to know which crypt they wanted.

“Here it is,” said the owner of the dancing lights. He didn’t hold the lights up high enough to reveal his dark face, just enough to show his white drow’s hair and creepy red eyes. Was that really Leradien’s father?

After Olga set down what she was carrying, the ogress and Beowin began to next open the grave. Ogresses may have just super big, fat bellies, but they’re just incredibly strong and the two of them began to move the stone cover. They pried off the lid, got out the dead body, and dumped it unceremoniously on the ground. The dancing lights exposed the pallid, lifeless face. The boy recognized it as Erawin, an elf recently interred that morning. Beowin robbed the body and then let the ogress swallow the fresh corpse. It was something awful to watch her do. Yet that is what an ogress does. She stuffed him down her wide open gullet and thick throat until finally shoving Erawin’s body all the way into her great big belly. Finally, it was all gone and she gave a delicious, wicked smile and a grateful burp that turned the satyr’s blood cold.

Grave robbers, the boy realized!

“Eat this one too before morning,” the drow instructed the ogress, “or he’ll wake up. Midnight is best.”

Now the boy looked to see what he was talking about and saw by the drow’s dancing lights what the ogress had earlier set down. It was an elf boy with red hair.

Ronthiel!

It was most definitely him, but he wasn’t moving. The powerful ogress had carried him up here like he was a mere sack of potatoes. He looked dead.

But then the boy remembered what the drow had said or he’ll wake up.

“That elf’s still alive,” he whispered to Leradien.

The drow’s head snapped around and looked right at him. He’d heard the boy.

“We’re not alone!” he told the others in a shrill warning.

The boy cringed in fear. They’d been spotted! He jumped up, ready to run.

The surprise was that when he jumped up; it was them that ran. The drow and the “half-elf” took to flight, saying something to the other two. With the grave robbers in full reverse, the boy rushed forward to where Ronthiel lay.

Only two of the robbers hadn’t run very far. Olga, with her monstrously huge belly, couldn’t run very fast or very far, anyway, so both she and her lover Beowin had stopped to look back. Even without the dancing lights, under the light of the full moon, they could see who he was.

“Wait! Isn’t that the satyr?” Beowin asked.

“I don’t know,” Olga replied, rubbing her vast belly hungrily with a dark smile, “but I’ve always got room for one more!”

The boy stopped just short of Ronthiel as Olga, a giantess of a woman, now came forward for him, her ponderous belly swaying back and forth with her every step. He did not know what to do. Should he run and leave Ronthiel, or stay and fight Olga with his knife?

Fortunately, he did not have to make the decision. The huge bellied ogress stopped dead in her tracks then, looking past him, her mouth wide open in surprise, and her eyes popping out in fear. Beowin was doing the same.

Leradien had risen up behind him. They took one look at the red-eyed drider and they took to their heels again, this time for good.

The boy took advantage of that to reach Ronthiel. He wanted to wake him up and get him out of here, but the elf boy didn’t move. Ronthiel lay still as death.

“Help me, Leradien!”

“I’m not helping you with him,” she flatly refused. “He’s an elf!”

“But he’s a friend of mine!”

“I don’t care who he is. I’m not helping an elf!”

“But you’ve got to help him!”

“Why would I help an elf? You think he’d help me?”

“I can’t carry him by myself. It’s too far.”

“That’s not reason enough for me to do so,” she said. “If you want me to help him, you need to give me a reason to.”

“What reason do you need?”

“You know what I want.”

He knew she meant she wanted to capture him, though she didn’t say it. She didn’t have to.

Since she wasn’t offering to explain, he guessed that’s what she meant. Only now her eerie, hauntingly beautiful red eyes weren’t looking at him at all. Leradien was looking past him and in the direction the other four had left as if seeing something.

“Run!” she suddenly said.

What? Run? Run where? And from what?

The boy looked in the direction she was looking in. Something was indeed coming at them in dark; coming hard, fast, silent and deadly. Was it a wolf?

As fast as lightning, Leradien scooped him up with one arm and Ronthiel off the ground with the other. She was moving back the other way–and fast–and she was even stronger than he thought, holding them each by just one hand. And it was all done by her in one movement; full speed. In the next instant, they were racing through the trees like the wind.

The boy fearfully looked back to see what terrible thing was chasing after them that could possibly make a drider run. It was still there, right behind them, and–no-it wasn’t a wolf.

“Ride on my back!” Leradien told him, swinging him up and back behind herself. “I have to free up a hand!”

The boy obeyed and mounted her backside to hang onto her and looked behind her again. And then he saw it for what it really was.

By El!

His eyes started open wide, and his heart leaped up in his throat. He wished that what he saw was a wolf, because what it really was, was far worse than that.