England, West Coast
Devonshire, Dartmoor
Dyowl's Hollow - Woods of Dartmoor
5 November 1898, 10:28 pm

Ben's next thought was solely to regain a more advantageous position for the fight and above all: to gain distance! He wanted to get away from the creature at all costs!

With harsh force, he tried to yank on his arm in a panic and take a step back, but the grip of the scrawny fingers did not loosen. Then the dark demon suddenly bent away again. It arched its back unnaturally far backwards in a peal of laughter, so Ben just waited for the sickening crack. But it did not happen. As if this creature had no spine at all that could break. Instead, however, the grip loosened all at once, the figure shredded right before his eyes and a blink later, black mist billowed again many metres away. The wisps of mist settled over the brown-yellow leaves on the ground, making it look as if death was breathing a breath of pestilence and disease over them. This rolled off the dark man's cloak like dewdrops. The man in black stood there, in a simple matter-of-factness, as if he had never left, as he sank down into a crouch beside the girl.

To face such horrors made even the legs of the seasoned soldier weaken. It was one thing to cling tremblingly to a gun and fear that he was about to be swept to his death by a bullet. But he had never expected anything like this! Ben felt overwhelmed and disbelieving. Something in him still hoped he could just wake up and realise it had been nothing but a horrible nightmare. But as so often, his prayers went unheard.

With stiff fingers, he clutched what little hope he had left in the form of the revolver and stared at the figure of terror near the sleeping girl. From this distance, it looked as if the fingers possessed not two, but four or more joints in their deviant length. It reminded Ben of hideous scary dreams and pictures from books where artists captured the dark facets of their minds in woodcuts of demonic creatures.

And the girl lay there in the damp leaves as if on a bed. Her small chest rose and fell again and again. Her eyelashes cast little shadows on her flushed cheeks and her lips were parted a tiny bit. Calmly, the black man with the red feather plucked a leaf from the wild curls of brown-red hair and flicked it away.

"Look how blissfully asleep she is." purred the voice, sharp edges hidden beneath its black velvet. 

"No child just makes a pact." the doctor now gritted out, the nasty certainty of what he was dealing with slowly but surely solidifying in his mind. All that talk of depravity in the hearts. Innocence and guilt.

The dark man laughed softly and darkly, brushed a small strand of hair from the child's forehead and straightened back to his full height and scrawny figure. The black smoke around his silhouette wrinkled devoutly and billowed across the leaf-covered ground. "Of course, the little angel didn't know what she was doing when she made that little deal with me." Something eager but highly delighted lit up in his eyes and he licked his lips again, as if after a delicious feast. Then he waved it off and laughed, as if he had explained an amusing joke to the little human, "Fortunately for me, that's not necessary for a pact either."

Pact. That word struck Benjamin's mind like a hammer on an anvil, sending sparks into the dry straw. This man... no, this creature was so incredibly dangerous that every instinct in him wanted to recoil.

"What exactly did she do?" he clenched between his teeth, his eyes already firing the next thousand bullets imaginarily in the bastard's direction.

"Oh doctor," the bogeyman warbled enthusiastically, clapping his hands together a few times in mock enthusiasm, "you really do ask extraordinarily interesting questions." he remarked with a spiteful grin, "I'm beginning to understand why the little wizard is so fond of you. After all, a genius needs a fool in whom he can mirror himself..."

"Answer my question!" the doctor hissed, and this time he saw a different reaction in the creature's features.

"Don't you dare interrupt me again!" The features, which until a moment had seemed rudimentarily humanoid, collapsed. Thick fissures stretched through the leather-like skin, black brew shone in it like tar, and the lips pulled back enough to reveal rows of bare teeth hissing. There was no soft tone left in the sound of his words. Rather, each word echoed as if two or even three voices were speaking in chorus, tearing at the rock with their claws. The long nose curled into ugly wrinkles, resembling a beast, and for a moment Benjamin thought he saw pieces of the form break and release from face, neck and shoulders in red sparks. A broken form, as if purgatory incarnate was reaching for this shell and yearning for a new, more hideous form. But as quickly as the eruption had come, it was over again.

The flat chest with the protruding bones under the black clothes, breathed deeply in and out, he even closed his eyes and half turned his back to Benjamin for a moment.

"You are quite impatient," he observed. Like a stern father whose coat-tails the lad had pulled too exuberantly to finally get his present and was facing punishment for it.

Grumbling, Benjamin had to understand that this thing saw no danger in him at all. It played with him and mocked him. Although he had half turned away, Ben could see that he had not fully dropped his guard, however. That there was a dangerous predator that would only grant its prey a small ridge of grace to feast on itself. It was a superiority that melted on this creep's tongue like sweet honey, while Benjamin's sour bile hung in his throat.

"You know doctor, for a long time no one dared enter my caves who did not long to die. Brave men came and breathed their insignificant last on this unholy piece of land. I enriched myself with e one of them. Traders, warriors, and pilgrims. But almost exactly 1366 years, 3 months, 14 days and now 6 hours ago, one of these arrogant Grail knights actually dared to cross his goddamn blade with me."

The man in black clicked his tongue and turned his gaze from the glowing red irises back to the Seeker. What he saw there pleased him, for Ben's features had slipped away.

The Seeker could not believe what this thing was telling him. 1366 years. For a moment Ben thought he might have misheard. But in his mind, his mind echoed those words so clearly and so firmly that he left no doubt about it. Grail knight, he repeated in his mind. It must have been at that time when knights went out to fulfil all kinds of quests. But then they had come across this creature.

"Of course, this insignificant worm lost its life in the process. Its rotten bones still adorn the floor of my cave. Even his sword is still stuck in the godforsaken floor." Chattered the figure on. His lips twisted into a smile, but this time he could not fool Ben. It was icy. At the same time, his gaze burned with abysmal hatred, so that the coals in the black pits of those inhuman features flared and glowed in the darkness of the night.

"Yet this son of a mangy whore, in his last breaths, managed to imprison me with his consecrated blade in my own cave," he spoke, as casually as if it were of no consequence, and in a terse movement pointed behind him, into the caverns that opened there like black gullets. "Back there, in that little hollow the locals so appropriately call Dyowl's Hollow," he recounted at length as if they were just sitting together over a cup of tea, chatting about the weather.

"And then, just over a month ago, little Annabeth finally found me. You have to imagine, doctor," he said in a dramatic tone of voice with the corners of his mouth turned down, "... that day the poor thing was pelted with stones, spat at and driven through the village. By those innocent villagers, as you put it." There was sheer mockery in his voice. It was not as if this thing possessed compassion for Anna. "She had to flee into the forest. Here, to this place where not even the bravest hunters dare to go." he recounted, his gaze falling on the sleeping child. 

Then the spectacle broke open, revealing such a diabolical, spiteful smile that Ben wanted to lunge at him and knock it off his face.