Nomad woke with a start, the world around him swimming into focus. The familiar sight of The Sanctuary’s arched stone walls greeted him, along with the faint hum of the magical wards that kept the place hidden from their enemies. He tried to sit up, only to be met with a sharp protest from his ribs and a thudding ache in his skull.

  “Take it slow,” came a deep, calm voice. Nomad turned his head, spotting Bigfoot— Shade, as he was often referred to, lounging on the floor near the fire pit, one of his massive arms resting on the edge of a stone table nearby. The cryptid gave him a toothy grin. “You might be able to flip trucks, kid, but you’re still human. That hit you took from the troll was no joke.”

  Nomad groaned, touching the bandage on his temple. “I’ve taken worse. Did we get the nest secured?” he questioned.

  “Thanks to your little stunt, yeah,” Owlman said, emerging from the shadows with a flick of his feathers. His form looked almost elegant, albeit wiry, though his glowing eyes really portrayed his otherworldly nature. “Not sure why you thought throwing yourself at a five-ton beast was the best move, but it worked. Barely.” he jeered, his voice thick with Cornish roots.

  “I improvised,” Nomad muttered, wincing as he sat upright. “Also, when did we start dealing with trolls? I thought that was Bureau jurisdiction?”

  “Well, it wasn’t quite a troll. Just matched the vibe. Could be another uhh— what’d you call me when you first met me?” Bigfoot asked.

  “Oh… Biological Aberration?” Nomad offered.

  “Nooo, that’s how you described me. You called him a Hairy Hominid.” chimed in The Jersey Devil, stretching his wings as he sat upright.

  A ripple of movement caught Nomad’s eye as Nessie, in her humanoid guise, stepped into the light. Her presence was commanding, with an ethereal beauty that seemed almost unearthly. She carried a steaming bowl, which she placed on the table beside him. “Drink this. Deborah insisted it would help.”

  Nomad accepted the bowl, nodding his thanks. “How’s the egg stash?”

  Nessie’s lips quirked in a faint smile, though there was no real warmth in it. “Intact, for what it’s worth. Though they’re hardly of importance to me right now.” He knew better than to pry further. Her eggs were a purely reproductive measure, part of the larger effort to preserve cryptids and her own lineage, even if they lacked personal meaning for her.

  The Jersey Devil let out a low chuckle, his clawed fingers idly scraping at the stone table. “You humans are reckless,” he said, his tone almost approving. “But effective. I almost don’t regret being the one who found you.”

  Deborah Leeds’s arrival silenced the room. Her crimson eyes glowed faintly as she stepped forward, her fiendish aura both comforting and unsettling. She carried an air of authority that none dared question, all eyes were naturally drawn to her.

  “Nomad,” she said, her voice firm but laced with concern. “You need to rest. That troll was just a vanguard. The Pact isn’t going to back down after this setback.”

  “I’ll rest when we find out what motivated this… Where were we fighting it?” Nomad quickly questioned.

  “Whitefield,” Nessie replied. “Roughly four kilometers southwest of Steve Feltham’s wee research van.”

  “I’ll rest when we find out what motivated The Whitefield Troll into attacking Nessie’s nest!” he replied sternly, setting the bowl down after a long sip of its bitter contents.

  Deborah’s expression grew cold and fierce, glaring at the young man for daring to defy her. “Nomad, this is not a suggestion. Your human physiology needs time to heal, especially from a hit like that. You are no cryptid, and you’re certainly no sorcerer.”

  “Okay, Deb. I’ll rest,” he relented, his eyes scanning the room, taking in his allies— the creatures he’d called family for six years. “But not for long. They won’t stop, and neither will we.”

  The faintest of smiles tugged at Deborah’s lips. “Good. We’ll need that fire in the days ahead.”

  After a few days of rest and recovery, Nomad's injuries from the fight with the so-called “Whitefield Troll” were entirely gone. Even after six years of working with Deborah Leeds, he still found it remarkable how her fiendish magic worked. It made him stronger, faster, and even sharpened his reflexes at times. Most importantly, it healed wounds that would take months for a regular human to recover from.

  Still, magic or not, he felt restless. During his recovery, he had retraced his steps through The Sanctuary’s winding tunnels, marveling at its intricate design. What had once been a forgotten cave in the Pine Barrens had become a thriving haven.

  Deborah had built The Sanctuary herself, transforming it into an underground labyrinth that pulsed with life. Roots from ancient trees twisted through vaulted ceilings, their tendrils glowing faintly with the residual magic she poured into them. Underground springs created shimmering pools for aquatic cryptids like Nessie, while bioluminescent fungi cast an eerie but soothing light across the stone walls. To Nomad, it felt like the land itself— like the Pine Barrens— was alive, sheltering its inhabitants just as it had sheltered the Jersey Devil for centuries.

  “Suppose I should get a jump on my duties.” Nomad muttered to himself, running a hand through his hair as he climbed the spiral stone staircase leading topside. The last thing he needed was another earful from Owlman— Harrow, as he would sometimes call him— for slacking.

  He started with The Sanctuary’s camouflage system. It was a combination of modern technology and Deborah’s ancient runic magic, a collaborative effort born of necessity. Runic symbols carved into the bark of trees worked in tandem with retro-reflective panels, appropriated from ‘The Obsidian Pact’, scattered across the perimeter. The system rendered The Sanctuary invisible to both mundane and magical detection. As Nomad walked the perimeter, he inspected each rune and panel for wear. Some runes required re-carving, and a few panels had to be replaced entirely.

  A sharp chirp in his earpiece interrupted his progress. “We’ve got company. Looks like Beacon has some damage to his forewing membranes,” Nessie’s calm voice crackled through. “He’s pitching to the right, but he’s correcting himself. Prep a cot for him.”

  Nomad scanned the treetops and caught sight of the familiar dark silhouette of the Mothman gliding through the air, his flight wobbling noticeably. “Copy that,” Nomad replied, already heading back toward the entrance. “I’ll handle it once I finish the perimeter check.”

  “Not so fast,” Owlman’s gravelly voice cut in. “Prep a second cot. Seems we’ve got a Fang in our midst.”

  Nomad groaned. “A Fang? You mean a Chupacabra? Where’d it come from?”

  “Don’t know. Found it unconscious near the western perimeter. Smoking. Damaged. Probably tangled with one of the electric traps or Punji spikes.”

  Nomad sighed. “Understood. I’ll set up the cots. Just don’t let Beacon and the Fang cross paths. Last thing we need is a mid-recovery hunting spree.”

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “Noted,” Owlman replied, his tone dry.

  By the time Nomad returned to the entrance, he found the Mothman— Beacon— trying and failing to figure out how to operate the concealed lift mechanism hidden in the massive tree stump that served as The Sanctuary’s main entrance.

  “Damnable machinery,” Beacon growled, his deep voice thick with irritation. “How does one open this detestable infraction against God?”

  Nomad chuckled and stepped forward. “It’s not that complicated. You just have to follow the seam,” he explained, demonstrating the action and splitting the trunk open.

  Beacon grunted in acknowledgment, his glowing red eyes narrowing slightly. “Technology is not my forte, Nomad. That is your domain, not mine.”

  “You just don’t like anything invented after the printing press,” Nomad teased as he helped the cryptid onto the lift.

  “Perhaps. Though I do not appreciate your flippancy, as you can clearly see I am in need of aid from CIPS once more,” Beacon retorted, his tone lofty as ever.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll talk to Deborah about getting a tincture to heal your wings,” Nomad said, steering the cryptid toward the guest caves once they reached the lower levels.

  “Your efforts are noted and appreciated,” Beacon replied, bowing his head slightly before disappearing into his designated room.

  Nomad sighed and turned back toward the main corridor, only to nearly collide with Owlman, who was holding the limp, charred body of the Chupacabra.

  “Here, a gift for you, I don't need this creature's blood getting into my feathers” Owlman said with a smirk, shoving the unconscious and wounded creature toward him. “Find a spot for it; and, like you said, keep it far from Beacon. Don’t need any midnight snacks.”

  Nomad scowled but took the creature without complaint. “Your generosity knows no bounds, Harrow… So much for your perimeter check being done.”

  Owlman’s grin widened. “Someone’s got to delegate.”

  Muttering under his breath, Nomad carried the Chupacabra to one of the empty rooms and laid it on a cot before hurrying to the briefing room. Nessie cut him off, her expression unusually grim.

  “Before you get too comfortable,” she began, her lilting Scottish accent tinged with unease, “there’s something else we need to talk about. At the site of the last fight, I saw something… odd.”

  Nomad straightened up, his attention fully on her. “Odd how?”

  “There was a message,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Etched into the stone near the edge of the nest. I didn’t mention it at the time because things were chaotic, but it felt deliberate.”

  “What did it say?” he mused.

  “It wasn’t in any language I recognized,” Nessie admitted, folding her arms tightly. “But the symbols... they felt wrong, unnatural, like they didn’t belong there. I can still picture them clearly, if we have time to recreate them.”

  Nomad’s gaze hardened. “We’ll need to look into this. If The Pact is leaving messages like this, it’s not just intimidation— it’s a signal. For now, let’s focus on the mission. I have to get briefed in the war room. Nessie, get with Deb to catalog what you saw later.”

  Nomad sighed, his stomach knotting. Whatever The Pact was up to, it was more than just random attacks. “One crisis at a time,” he muttered under his breath.

  “You’re late,” Deborah teased as he slid into his seat around the war-room table.

  “Blame Harrow,” Nomad replied, throwing his hands up. “He dumped the Fang on me to ‘delegate.’”

  Deborah’s lips quirked in a faint smile. “Harrow and his theatrics.” She leaned forward, her tone shifting to one of gravity. “Now that you’re fully recovered, I have a new mission for you. Livestock and people alike have been disappearing in Whispering Pines for about three months now. I suspect The Pact is involved. You’ll need to investigate.”

  Nomad leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. “Disappearing? That’s broad. Are we talking full-on abductions, or is something leaving bodies behind?”

  Deborah tapped her fingers on the table, her deeply crimson eyes narrowing as she considered her words. “A mix, which is what makes it concerning. Some cases report animals and people vanishing entirely without a trace. In others, they’ve found brutally mutilated livestock— puncture wounds, exsanguination. Very... deliberate.”

  “Fang behavior,” Nomad muttered. “But you’re thinking this is The Pact, not just a rogue Chupacabra?”

  Deborah nodded. “The Fang we found at the perimeter today might confirm it. The injuries it sustained suggest a fight with another cryptid, possibly one aligned with us.”

  “I carried that Fang to the cot and all I saw were electrical burns from our fence,” Nomad reported.

  “What you didn't see were the gashes on its underbelly, clear laceration from something larger than it,” Harrow mocked as he entered the war-room, earning a mean scowl from Nomad.

  “Could be territorial,” Bigfoot rumbled from across the room, apparently already having been present, his massive frame leaning forward to rest an elbow on the table. “Chupacabras don’t tend to play well with others, especially outside their regions.”

  “Normally, I’d agree,” Deborah said, “but the patterns don’t add up. Whispering Pines is well beyond the typical range for Fangs, since they prefer to stay in the south where it's warmer, yet the sightings are escalating. What concerns me more is the precision. The way the bodies are being drained... it suggests orchestration, not instinct.”

  Nomad frowned. “So, you’re thinking The Pact’s been taming Fangs? Weaponizing them?”

  “That’s my working theory,” Deborah admitted. “And if it’s true, Whispering Pines could be a testing ground for something larger.”

  The room fell silent, the weight of her words sinking in.

  “Great,” Nomad said, breaking the tension. “A nest of Fangs working for The Pact. Guess I’ll pack extra garlic.”

  Owlman, perched on a chair with his talons digging into the wood, gave a low chuckle. “It’ll take more than garlic, human. But your recklessness might come in handy for once.”

  “Glad to hear you have so much faith in me, Harrow,” Nomad quipped, earning a sharp glare from the Owlman.

  Deborah raised a hand, silencing the banter. “You won’t be going alone. Shade and Harrow will accompany you on this mission. Beacon will provide aerial support once his wing is healed. For now, he’ll remain here to monitor communications.”

  Nomad shot Bigfoot a grin. “Nice. I get the muscle and the grump. What more could I ask for?”

  “You could ask for better odds,” the Jersey Devil muttered from his perch by the wall, stretching his wings. “But they’d be slim. The Pact doesn’t leave loose ends.”

  Deborah pulled a map from beneath the table and spread it across its surface. “We’ve marked the key locations of the disappearances. The most recent was here,” she said, pointing to a dense cluster of forest on the edge of Whispering Pines. “Reports indicate strange lights and shrieking coming from this area before the livestock vanished.”

  “Sounds like bait,” Nomad said.

  “Probably,” Deborah replied. “But if The Pact’s behind this, we need to know how far their influence reaches. Your goal is to identify their methods and, if possible, disrupt their operation. Do not engage unless absolutely necessary.”

  Bigfoot let out a low growl. “And if it is necessary?”

  Deborah’s eyes gleamed. “Then ensure they regret it.”

  Nomad nodded, his expression hardening. “Understood. We’ll gear up and head out at dusk. Anything else we should know?”

  Deborah hesitated for a moment before adding, “Yes. Be on the lookout for anything that doesn’t fit the usual cryptid or Pact profile. There’s a chance something new is in play.”

  “Something new?” Nomad repeated, raising an eyebrow.

  “We don’t have details,” Deborah admitted. “But I have my suspicions. Just... stay sharp. Come back alive, Nomad.”

  The meeting concluded, and the group dispersed to prepare. As Nomad headed toward the armory, he couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that the mission in Whispering Pines would be more dangerous than any of them anticipated.