Iphilleus stared intently at the pages that lay before them. The words “The Harvester” was scrawled in chicken scratch. This thing was nothing more than a pumpkin with legs and arms reminiscent of that of the soulless suits of armors. The image made Iphilleus’ skin crawl. There was just something that was a perfect amount of off that made Iphilleus want to turn tail and run. But they couldn’t resist reading more about them.

The book began to describe details of how on the harvest moon, the Harvester comes down to help guide the lost souls of the dungeon. Iphilleus reread those paragraphs several times. “I hadn’t thought of the lost souls,” they murmured to themself. “It is fascinating that there exists an entity to help guide and take care of them. I wonder if the Harvester existed before the dungeon or if they were something that the dungeon had brought about.” Iphilleus continued rereading in hopes of finding the answer, but nothing seemed to tell them either way. Iphilleus gave up on trying to find any hidden meaning and closed the book.

As they looked up at the sky, they realized it was a full moon, but not any full moon – it was the Harvest Moon. They felt the hairs stand up along their spine in realization of what that meant: the Harvester was out on the prowl. While the book may have painted them simply as a guide for the souls, Iphilleus could not get that haunting image out of their mind nor get rid of the sinking feeling that there was something more that meets the eye.

A crunching of leaves, made Iphilleus stand straight up. As they stared in the direction of noise, they failed to see anything there, but they swore that they had seen red circles. They could not stop the pounding in their chest and the feeling of being watched.

They did not want to meet whatever was out there, especially if it was the Harvester.

With a quick glance at the direction they heard the leaf crunching – still with nothing there – and took off running. It was hard to tell whether someone was following their footsteps as the sound of leaves crumbling under their leaves was so loud. They swore that as they were running that bright red beams were following them, but they could not admit that it wasn’t their overactive imagination making them feel that way.

Eventually, they found a rundown looking shed which they quickly sneaked into. It was completely empty and as they looked out, it seemed that there was no one nearby.

Iphilleus breathed a sigh of relief and hunkered down for the night, hoping to avoid the red eyes of the Harvester.