Silhouette

Silence.

Sweet, marvelous silence.

Perfect.

Wonderful.

Silent.

"-and then I said, 'Pay you? What's next, paying toasters?' Ah!"

Noisy.

Annoying.

Who dared disturb the sanctity of silence?

"Those robots are really getting on my nerves. You're a machine, just do your job!"

A lone human male. A young one, old enough to be considered an adult but not by much. Those always were the noisiest.

"Yeah yeah, I know. But why does she even care so much?"

He walked while talking loudly to his hand with one of those weird lighting sticks in the other, uncaring to the beauty of the park at night, the serenity of the light wind flowing silently and caressing the body in such a relaxing manner, the glory of how the stars lit up the darkness above without the obnoxious humming that all of these stupid light trees the humans had put near the paths emitted.

"Really? God, I knew she was weird but to go out with one? Still worth it, though."

Yes, totally oblivious to the beauty of a silent night in the park. But why was he here? Why did he go out of his way to ruin its perfect night? It had taken care to choose a spot in the middle of nowhere, a place that no one visited during the daytime, a small cluster of old dark twisted trees on the fringes of the park, far away from all the paths.

"Nah, don't worry, I'm not driving. My stupid car broke down and I'm taking a shortcut through Gaia's Palm, the old haunted woods part. What, you're afraid of ghosts? There's nothing there."

Ah, one of those. It did not know how they worked but it knew humans used them to move outside of the park and that they were noisy. Finding a spot far from the humans in the park yet still spared from the constant roaring and roaring of the roads had been hard, but it had managed. Well, maybe not so well considering its obnoxious guest. At least the human would be gone soon and it would enjoy its peace and quiet once more-

"Nothing, I swear! Here, I'll prove it. YO! ANYONE OUT THERE?!"

He would leave very soon. He would leave very soon. He would-

"See? I yelled a bunch and nothing. No spooky monster to snatch me up."

Yes. Yesss. His stupid bravery ritual was over and he would leave and it would finally be able to enjoy the pleasures of silence and tranquility and-

"Ya know what? I think we should throw a party there. No, I'm serious, no one to call the cops, great spooky woods for horror-themed stuff..."

A party? Ok, that was it, no drunk teens would spread their stupidly loud music in its park!

The owl jumped out of the hole in the tree it had made its home and spread its wings, quickly flying up in the midnight sky and getting ready to dive onto the little brat that had dared disturb the peace of its home to give him a scare and chase him off.

Then something snatched it up mid-air.

"I hate you, Adam."

"Oh, I love you too Francis. Not as much as Annie, though."

His friend's grunt on the other end of the phone brought a smile to Adam's face. Sure, he was still bummed out that his brand new sports car had already broken down but hey, guess that's what happens when you buy stuff from shady Draskian dealers and at least it was cheap, but this little detour in one of the park's less-visited areas was rather nice. It reminded him of his emo phase, not that he'd ever admit that he went through one. That was a secret he would take to the grave.

And despite scaredy-cat Francis' complaints, Adam genuinely thought the place would make an awesome staging ground for a giant party with all of their friends, maybe a few hundreds of strangers too. He liked his parties populated, to say the least.

Yes, he could already see it, there they would put the speakers, here the DJ's stuff, a few spotlights between the old trees' branches, maybe a few plastic pumpkins and bats... Yes, he could already see it, the buzz on his social media, how all the students would talk about his awesome autumn party for years after he graduated, how everyone would get stupidly drunk... And again, no cops or nosy neighbors to tell them to shut everything down. God, you make one super party for your birthday and suddenly you had a cop car permanently parked in front of your house every year.

"So, still want to go after Annie?"

"Sure. It's weird, but a robot-lover isn't the worse thing."

Besides it would be a one-time fling, he wasn't in for her great personality after all. Everyone had a crush on Annie, as much as she disliked it. Who could not? Her short ginger hair, her petite stature, the way her green eyes shined in the light, and the small dark freckles on her pale skin... She was undeniably an eight out of ten, at least. Too bad she was so obsessed with that whole "robot rights" thing. But hey, he had dated with worse.

"Your funeral, dude. By the way, you heard about Firmin?"

"No, what happened?"

"That's the thing, no one knows. He went star watching and just up and vanished last night."

"Really? He doesn't seem like the type."

"I know, and that's why everyone's worried. Kris thinks it could be one of the Empress' spider things."

"Nah, the Heroes wouldn't let one of the really dangerous ones into the city."

"I'm not sure. There always are a couple of victims before they notice and stop a bad guy."

"Meh, I'm not worried. He probably saw a meteorite or something and went to look for it."

"Considering some of the alien stuff the Union deals with, that's not much better."

Adam was about to reply when he felt like something was off. He looked around, making a few swipes with his flashlight, but didn't notice anything. No one behind him, no one ahead, nothing hidden behind the trees, no mysterious second set of footprints...

Wait.

Was that... Were those...

Were those feathers falling from the sky?

Adam looked up but again, there was nothing weird going on. No bird that could have dropped those feathers, nothing that could have had a hold of them...

This... Was getting weird.

"Adam? Something's wrong?"

"No, it's... I just saw a bunch of feathers fall out of nowhere."

"Don't scare me like that, bro. It's probably just an owl snatching up another bird."

"Yeah, you're right. I just got surprised is all."

"Who's afraid of ghosts now?"

"Oh shut up Francis."

Then he heard it. Some kind of suffocated screeching quickly ended by a quiet crunch, nearly silent and yet still far too loud in this silent night.

Adam looked up again and this time, this time he saw exactly what had made that noise.

He wished he didn't.

It was big, bigger than a car, and yet it looked so thin. It was incredibly wide, its pale turquoise body mostly made up of a pair of... Wings? Fins? Flippers? Membranous masses? It reminded him of a ray, a bat, and a jellyfish mixed into one in a twisted yet beautiful way, floating so easily in the sky without a care...

Its wings seemed incredibly flexible and prehensile, considering the fact they were currently enveloping its own body like they were some kind of blanket, letting Adam see how weird its skin was. It wasn't hide, there was no fur or scales, it just had a small luster, like a baby's smooth wet skin. He didn't see any kind of head, instead, they were small purple gems encrusted along its spine, its long wing-things so long they appeared to be attached to the tail - unless it had no tail and instead a singular wing that took most of its body mass? Adam didn't pay attention during classes but he had never heard of anything like that.

And there, in gaps between the wings and the body in the creature's self-blanketing, he saw the reason why he had failed to notice it. The underside of its body was the night. Looking at it was like looking through a window like the creature wasn't even there. When its body moved, the stars didn't. It was mesmerizing.

And then there was the blood. It didn't last long, it was like it was being absorbed by the blue skin and the vastness of space attached underneath, but he had seen it, along with the occasional feather falling down from the point the creature was covering.

"Adam? What's happening?"

The noise broked Adam out of his stupor - and the creature out of its meal.

A pile of flesh, feathers, and bones fell down from the beast's wings as it unfurled them, showing itself in its full glory, its uncovered underside making it much harder to distinguish from the rest of the night sky.

Then it dived down.

"AAAAAAAAAAHHHHH-"

In the cold morning air of autumn, Inspector Vanille drank a large sip of her coffee, the warmth of the beverage helping the reptilian to keep her awake. Cursed be her literal cold blood.

"So, what do you think?"

The Inspector looked down at her second in command, her right-hand man, Cooper. The man was in his thirties, always positive, and probably ate too many donuts for his own good, though his slight overweight never stopped him from running after criminals and catching them. Never underestimate the kind pudgy black officer.

"Cooper, I'm a lizard out in the autumn morning with temperatures that would make winter blush. My brain isn't awake enough to think on its own right now, give me a few seconds."

He simply smiled and gave her a thumbs up. By the nine, that man was godsent. Him and his wonderful coffee-making capacities. How she pitied every inspector that had yet to find their own Cooper.

Still, she had a job to do. She drank all of the coffee she had left in one go, her toughened insides protecting her throat from burning while still letting her savor the heat. Some girls got curves during puberty, she got muscles, green scales, and a head taller than everyone else.

"Ok, I'm ready to go, bring it on."

"A kid called us earlier tonight, he said he was on the phone with his friend when he suddenly became silent before screaming and then poof, nothing anymore. We sent a pair of guys to check up but they found nothing and treated the whole thing as a prank call."

"Idiots."

"You're too harsh. Anyway, this morning an amateur ornithologist came by, apparently, some folks had seen a rare species of owls near the weird trees over there and he wanted to check it out. On the way there he found this."

Cooper pointed behind him and Inspector Vanille looked over his shoulder. She blamed her lack of understanding on the fact it was early morning and her poor reptilian brain still had some issues with the cold but the thing she saw on the ground just looked like a lump. A brown, red with some white sprinkled in lump.

"Which is..."

"That's the owl."

That caught her off-guard and immediately helped her focus. Now that Cooper mentioned it she could see it, how the brown were feathers, the red was flesh and organs and the white was a perfectly conserved skeleton. A dead owl by itself wasn't an issue per se, no matter how rare, the problem was...

"No tears, it wasn't eaten or clawed. There isn't supposed to be anything that can melt down an owl like that nearby."

"Right, no wild acidic creature in the city. Besides, the boys from the lab say it isn't acid."

A man in a white hazmat suit a bit further away yelled out.

"I confirm!"

Inspector Vanille rolled her eyes. Elves.

"So, no acid? What about basic?"

"It isn't that either. It's more like the parts that are missing just... Disappeared."

"Which means it could have made the entire corpse vanish, if it didn't then it's either because it was full or something interrupted it."

"Or someone. We found a phone and a flashlight a few meters away."

"Let me guess, the missing kid's phone?"

"We can't be sure, we don't have the password so we can't check what's inside, but..."

"A kid says he was on the phone with his friend when he disappeared and we found a lost phone near a suspicious corpse? Yeah, that's his phone."

She sighed. By the nine she hated what this meant.

"We have to check for every unsolved disappearance in the last few days. Do we know anything more?"

"No, but the kid says at their school..."

"Firmin Locksoul, disappeared yesterday night. I know. Focus on disappearances that occurred at night. If there isn't a body then our new friend may be responsible. Warn the population and contact the Union, that smells like Super stuff and I know when I'm outclassed."

"You sure? For all we know it may-"

"Cooper, you're a great cop, but you ain't a Cored. This mess reeks of a Cored animal or a monster. In fact, let's have some guys check the database for anything similar."

"It's just... It doesn't feel right, giving up right away."

"We're not giving up. Fighting whatever did this is the Union's job, meanwhile, we will need to identify all of its victims to give their families some closure. That's just as important."

"I know, just..."

"I know, Super stuff is annoying, but let's face it we aren't equipped well enough to deal with it."

And so began the official hunt for what all of Zalcien would soon come to know as the Nightsnatcher.