MicroHorror

Wispy clouds flowed over a full moon, reflecting brightly on the pale walls of the ancient granite castle in the forest. A burly man dressed in tough woodsman’s clothing waited in the courtyard, smoking an old tobacco pipe. A second man, thin and pale, dressed in black finery and a cape, appeared from the shadows of the forest and approached the smoking man.

“I have won our wager,” declared the man in black. “I have killed the greatest slayer!” He held up a necklace strung with four human canine teeth, the traditional trophy taken from an enemy of his kind. “You will relinquish the disputed village. It shall be our hunting ground now.”

The mountain man calmly puffed at his pipe. “You bring me the teeth of some doddering old sod and claim victory? Anyone who can figger out you sleep all day and sharpen a stick to do you in is the ‘greatest slayer’ now?” He held up a femur, saved from being gnawed away by respect for its former owner. “This is from a real man. Tracked each other for three days in dense cover, and he took a claw to the throat and still had the strength to pull a silver knife,” he said, pulling back his collar to show the burnt-black scar of silver cut on his shoulder.

“You call some bumpkin the greatest? I clearly came out the best in this wager; now give up the territory you agreed to,” the pale man shrieked.

“If the best you can beat is an old priest, I think I could just take the territory anyway,” the bigger man growled.

The pale man shot forward with inhuman speed and landed half a dozen quick punches before his opponent finished speaking. The woodsman shrugged off the blows and threw the lighter man several yards with an uppercut from his suddenly furry arm. He leapt upon his fallen enemy, but lupine teeth sank into only air as the pale man shrank and slipped out of his grasp.

The beast looked up to see bat wings billow out into a cape as the pale man dropped from the sky. A loud crunch echoed in the courtyard as a powerful kick snapped the werewolf’s shoulder blade. The vampire landed and slid fluidly into a fighting stance. The wolfman turned slowly toward him, audible grinding and popping coming from his shoulder as the bones regenerated and set. They stared each other down and prepared for another round.

“Do you have any idea what time it is? Get out of my courtyard!” a voice bellowed from the castle’s entrance. Fire exploded between the combatants. The wolf yipped and nimbly leapt the wall and disappeared into the forest. The vampire’s cape formed into wings even as he shielded his eyes with it, and he fell over before he remembered which form he was in and flitted off toward the rising moon. The two beasts of the night were gone without a trace before the light of the fire had begun to fade.

The master of the castle stopped in the hall on the way back to his lair. He ran a scaled talon over an ancient suit of armor, displayed prominently in the foyer. It was charred black in places and the helmet was fused to the breastplate from excessive heat. “They just don’t make slayers like they did in the old days,” he said wistfully to no one in particular.