System of the Beast Slayer [litrpg Adventure]
Copyright© 2025 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 42
In the yard of the House of Cardell, moonlight picked out four incomplete skeletons. The bones were slight, their surfaces stained a pale, sickly yellow.
Cardell stood with a clean white bandage wrapped around her midsection. Her eyes flicked over the bones again and again. Blood loss had paled her face, and a puzzled line creased her brow.
“We killed the thing,” she said, voice thin, “so why can I not remember? Aside from Tom, what were those four children called?”
“Though the notes do not mention them,” Roy said, pressing his lips together, “I think this forgetting is irreversible, even with the Child-Hunter dead. Only someone who survives, like Tom, can have their trace in the real world repaired.” He felt, oddly, that the half-star on the left sleeve of his coat had returned to its original shape.
Cardell shook her head. She did not like that answer.
“At least we saved little Tom,” Roy said. “And from now on the children at the school will no longer be threatened.”
Strangely, about an hour after they hauled the bones out of the hollow, the gash at the staghorn tree’s root sealed itself. Roy tried to sprinkle salt into the joint, to reopen it, and could not. The tree seemed to have lost whatever power had held the hollow open.
He had the uneasy notion that the Child-Hunter’s lair was not truly inside the tree at all, but in another space layered against it. When the monster died, the magic that sustained that pocket dissolved, and the hole vanished with it. He had wanted to cut the charred corpse’s tongue for sale; Orin had told him flaming things, the tongue could be worth a pretty coin. Now it was too late.
“Any news?” Ffion came over from the house, fatigue carved into her face. The person she had chased for two years was now a handful of bones. Even the memory of him could not be recovered.
Her effort felt wasted.
“Can we identify the children?” she asked.
“Not likely,” Roy answered, noticing the hurt in her expression and trying to soften it. “Ffion, he has been freed from that pit and maybe gone on to Lebioda’s realm. We avenged him, and we recovered his—well, his remains. At least now he can have a grave. Don’t be too hard on yourself.”
Ffion covered her face and breathed in. She wiped tears from her eyes. “When I first read the notes I suspected he was gone. I just could not accept it. But you are right. His spirit is probably with the Prophet now. I will find a good place for the bones.”
After a short silence Ffion managed a small, tired smile.
“Say something cheerful then ... how is Tom doing?”
“I just gave him a hot bath and some salve. He’s asleep,” Roy said. Mention of a survivor lit something like hope in Ffion’s eyes. “He’s lucky. Only a few scrapes and some bite marks on his neck. He remembers nothing of being taken; he thinks he just fell asleep and woke up with us and the monster around him.”
“He’ll have nightmares for a few days,” Roy added, “but other than that he’ll be fine.”
“Good.” Ffion relaxed a little. Roy glanced up at the sky. “We’ll deal with the rest tomorrow. I should get back to the mill.”
“Wait,” Cardell said suddenly. “Where did that bomb you used on the Child-Hunter come from?”
Roy saw the question in her eyes, the way she lingered on the word bomb. He guessed the headmistress, loyal to certain causes, was thinking of the vial they had used, the Dancing Star.
“That was a Witcher-made bomb,” he lied. “Only someone accepted by Witchers can activate it. It was a gift for protection, one use only. When it’s gone it’s gone.”
Cardell’s disappointment was plain to read.
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