Meanwhile, some distance to the south-west of Neustadt, a group of five in dark hooded cloaks walked down a road. Suddenly, one of the five stopped. The other four stopped and reached for their weapons, but their leader signaled them to stand down. This man pulled his hood down, revealing an abnormally pale face topped with a head of short white hair. The man possessed an eerie beauty, his snow-white face and handsome features gave him the appearance of a marble statue carved by some master artist from antiquity. With his blood-red eyes he peered into the dark sky above before pointing to a gray owl flying up in the air. The owl proceeded to swoop down and land behind a tree near the group. The hoot of an owl could be heard, followed by the grunt of a man. Then, a short, slimy-built man with flaxen hair fashioned in a bowl cut emerged from behind the tree. He was completely naked. The man appeared disoriented and kept one hand on the trunk of the tree.

“Glasses,” He said as he looked in the general direction of the group. One dark-haired member of the group, who was slightly taller than the naked man and whose figure had the slightest hint of femininity, approached the man and produced a pair of glasses. The glasses had a brass frame and thick lenses. The naked, flaxen-haired man reached out and grabbed the glasses with some difficulty, as though he was feeling his way through a dark room. Once he got a hold of the glasses he put them on and let go of the tree before letting out a deep sigh. The glasses were rather large on the man’s face and their thick lenses made his eyes appear to be much larger than they actually were.

“You have something to report, Sova1?” The white-haired man asked. The bespectacled man nodded his head.

“Yes, brother. They met with the count. I can give you the details later, but it more or less went exactly as father predicted,” He answered.

“So he didn’t kill them?” Griped the largest member of the group before letting out a yawn. He was an extraordinarily large man; he stood at a height of roughly two imperial paces2 and was built like a fortress of fat and muscle. It went without saying that he was the biggest member of the group.

“I’m afraid not, Niedźwiedź3,” Sova, the naked and bespectacled man said to the large man.

“Oh. I was hoping that we would get to go home now. I want to go home,” Niedźwiedź, the large man, complained. As Niedźwiedź complained a fifth member of the group broke out into laughter.

“Where is the fun in that, you big oaf? What’s the point of coming here if all we’re going to do is just go back? I want to… have some fun. Besides, if that were to happen father wouldn’t be happy. Is that what you want, imbecile?” The laughing woman said as she licked her lips. Niedźwiedź, the large man recoiled away from the laughing woman and his eyes began to water up. He genuinely looked as though he was about to cry.

“Hienă4, what did we say about calling your brother that?” The white-haired leader of the group asked. He spoke with a tone and a facial expression that would suggest a flat affect, a lack of emotion, but, to the rest of the group, the atmosphere completely changed in that moment. Sova, the bespectacled man, pressed his bare back up against the tree behind him as his eyes, already enlarged by the lenses of his glasses, widened in horror. The sixth man, a man of average height with long and messy brown hair who had not spoken up till this point, stepped up to Niedźwiedź and put himself between him and Hienă (the laughing woman) before nudging him away from the group’s leader and the laughing woman. One of his arms was outstretched across the large man’s chest while the other one hung by his side with the hand at the end of it made into a fist. As this was going on the body language of the group’s leader remained completely unchanged. His heart rate remained at under sixty beats per minute as he stared into the eyes of the laughing woman. Hienă continued to laugh as she spoke up.

“Oh, not this shit again, Nashorn5.” she said. The leader of the group, Nashorn, began to walk towards Hienă.

“Nas, I don’t…” The dark-haired female member of the group began to speak, but she found herself unable to complete her sentence. At that point it was too late. Hienă and Nashorn were within an arm’s length of each other. Sova and the three other members could only watch what was about to unfold before them. Without any warning Hienă threw a punch at Nashorn’s face. Nashorn’s legs buckled as his body bent backwards. Hienă’s fist flew harmlessly through the air above his forehead. Before Hienă could react, the underside of her arm burst open as blood splattered over Nashorn’s face. Hienă howled in pain as Nashorn hit her in the side of the head with a round-house kick and sent her flying face-first into a tree.

Hienă collapsed onto the ground in the prone position. Nashorn walked over to her and grabbed her by her greasy black hair before slamming her face into the cold, hard ground with enough force to kill an ordinary human. He then raised Hienă’s face up so that the length of her nose was parallel to the ground.

“What did we say about calling Niedźwiedź an imbecile?” Nashorn growled.

“Fuck you, Nashorn!” Hienă shouted, her bloodied face still bearing a crooked grin. For a brief moment it appeared as though her canine teeth had become unnaturally enlarged. Nashorn then slammed Hienă’s into the ground three more times. This time, when Nashorn lifted Hienă’s face up, the look it bore was one of defeat and exhaustion.

“What did we say about calling Niedźwiedź an imbecile?” The leader repeated.

“That it’s not nice… That we shouldn’t do it...” Hienă leaked out.

“Good. Now apologize to your brother,” Nashorn ordered.

“I’m sorry I called you an imbecile, Niedź...” Hienă whimpered. Niedźwiedź, the large man just looked at Hienă with a red and teary face.

“Good,” The group’s leader said before letting go of Hienă and stepping away from her. Hienă had regained her bearings and quickly scrambled away from Nashorn. She had done all of this while hyper-ventalating. Once she had regained control of her breathing she wiped a bit of blood off of her face with her index finger, before sticking the finger into her mouth and sucking on it. After a few moments she removed her (now clean) finger from her mouth and a smile formed on her bloody face. She then let out a quiet laugh. There was a brief silence as everyone processed what just happened. Then Nashorn began to speak.

“Everybody...I don’t like what I just did, but I swear I’ll do it again if I hear any more of this petty bullshit. We’re not here to ‘have fun’ or bicker with each other like normal. We’re here to do a job. We need to do this job and come home safe, but we can only do that if we don’t get distracted. From here on out there’s going to be no name-calling, no complaining about wanting to go home, no pissing on fence posts for the fun of it, no stealing chickens, and absolutely none whatever degenerate shit you do in your free time,” Nashorn declared, turning to Hienă for the last part. Hienă smiled a wide smile upon hearing that. Nashorn then returned to his speech.

“And one more thing: What father will do to us if we screw this job up is much worse than anything I could ever do to Hienă,” Nashorn said. There was another long silence. Eventually Nashorn broke it with a deep sigh.

“Sova, how far away are we from Neustadt?” He asked.

“About an hour on foot,” Sova answered.

“Good. We’re going to need a good night’s sleep in a proper bed… or at the very least a stable,” Nashorn responded.

“I agree,” Sova responded.

“Alright. Sova, either put some clothes on and join us or turn back into a bird and wait for us in Neustadt. We’re all tired of looking at your pecker.”

“...Yes, brother…” Sova replied. He then removed glasses and handed them to Nashorn. A few moments later a brown owl was once again flying through the night sky, north-east to Neustadt.

“Alright, let’s get moving. We have a lot of work to do,” Nashorn ordered. The rest of the group nodded their heads in agreement and five of them began to walk through the dark night to Neustadt.