The Story

Heedless of the warnings that spoke of Deadman's Pass' treachery for solo visitors, he strode right past the iron gates that barred access and when the gates clanged shut behind him, he simply continued walking.

Skirting past hissing Laceback Bootsnakes and then ducking around and under flying Clutches, he first crossed over to the cemetery and then after that, picked his way up the ledge until he was standing at the top where the broken stair-like path ended.

"So now that I'm here... Where is it?" he murmured to himself as he looked around.

After knocking back a flying Clutch that had managed to follow him up the stairs and was now readying to take a bite from him, he pulled out a small notebook from one of his pockets and opened it to the section where he kept his maps. Tracing the pathway he had marked along Deadman's Pass and comparing it to the path he had just finished taking, he concluded that he had indeed gone in the right direction and was now supposed to be going against a very powerful creature (so Ian said) called an -

His eyebrows furrowed as he realized that he hadn't paid enough attention during his conversation with Ian to remember the name of the monster - whoops. Oh well.

"... Nevermind names. Regardless of whatever it's called, it's supposed to be here waiting for me. So where -?"



The unexpected answer made him look up from his map and when he did, he found himself staring at a small-ish monster.

Black with lighter colored fins and with a tail that was spiked and with a head adorned with a skull-like patch on each side where its ears might be, the creature reminded him vaguely of a marine mammal he had seen before -



But, no, that was impossible and as the creature lashed out violently with its pointed tail and uttered another cry of challenge, he suddenly remembered the monster's name while at the same time realizing just what he was looking at and he couldn't help but exclaim: