—Orion—

  I did try.

  I really, really did the best I could.

  An arrow to its chest didn’t achieve anything—couldn’t even make it flinch, let alone stop it from slamming Sally against the ground.

  I shouted and started running towards the unconscious dragonling as the Wolf wendigo lifted Sally up to his mouth. It was the futile actions of someone utterly out of ideas.

  I froze when it threw Sally’s limp body into the back of its mouth. A moment later its teeth slammed down with the certainty and sadism of a prison gate.

  Too late.

  Too stupid.

  Too slow to save Sally.

  I could faintly feel my body begin to spiral out of control as I watched it swallow, a lump moving down its throat and into its chest with a slow heft.

  I could barely process what the sight meant. But I did. Sally was gone.

  Eaten—swallowed.

  Dead—gone forever.

  I failed—it’s my fault.

  I took a shaky step backwards, my remaining threads of sanity straining as the wendigo looked at me.

  It could look at me. From inside its mouth, an eye stared at me. The orb’s pale yellow iris shone with an internal iridescence, and the edges of the disfigured pupil within the sickly coloured ring rippled with every movement. The iris of the new mutation squirmed constantly, undulating like a bubble of inky, iridescent oil floating on a contaminated lake.

  I stared into the unnatural orb, its pupil constantly shrinking, expanding, stretching as it held my stare. It was reminiscent of a piece of dough being worked by a baker, kneaded into a flattened ellipse, then a fattened, untidy circle, and gathered back into a rough oval before starting the cycle again.

  “Should we play tag or hide-and-seek?” The wendigo asked me as it began to casually move towards me, trotting at a brisk but playful pace. Its casualness made me feel all the more like its prey.

  [Using [Appraisal – Lvl 2] on: [Wendigo Walker – Level 43]]

  [Health: 124/140]

  [Mana: 36/62]

  [Conditions: [Starvation (Stage 2)], [Nature's Purification (14%)]]

  “Your friend was too small… I’m still sta-a-arving.” It moaned into the cold air, and the snowy weather that it’d summoned grew stronger. The temperature suddenly dropped into frostbite territory, and a burst of heavier snowfall settled on my shoulder. My mind had just enough rationality left to look upwards, and saw the sky above roiling with a tide of sickly grey clouds. The bad weather quickly deteriorated into a snowstorm.

  Where there had once only been the occasional tainted snowflake, now there was a tide—a mist-like veil of white dust fell from the sky. The curtain of pale-grey snow descended onto the town silently, and the lack of wind let the snowflakes blanket everything without resistance.

  It reduced my radius of visibility to the building on each side of the street beside me and a dozen metres down the road. Trying to look any further only allowed me to glimpse the blurred shadows of shapes hidden inside the snow. My body began to jitter as the form of the wendigo became little more than a faint black blur against the ubiquitous dirty-white backdrop.

  “It’s no fun if you don’t run… Hmm… How about a head-start!” It suddenly declared, and I flinched from fear—trepidation mixed with a dash of confusion. Why was it playing these games? I wanted it to!—

  Why? Why did it have to give me the time to think. I didn’t want the room, the chance to consider anything.

  “Ooooooone…” It drawled loudly, dragging the number for much longer than a single second. As it began counting, it slinked backwards, and the shadow of its bulk vanished into the snowstorm. Its effortless disappearance pushed me closer to the edge of complete panic. I was experienced with hunting in similar weather, but this wasn’t just a heavy amount of snowfall. I had trekked through mountains laden with metres of packed snow.

  It was silent. All sounds were stifled. Something unnatural was happening.

  I should be able to hear it. The sounds of footsteps crunching snow. The echos of the heavy breaths of a wounded animal. But it was so… quiet.

  The noises I could hear from the wendigo moments before weren’t being drowned out. The falling snow was silent as it settled around me. There wasn’t any wind either.

  I couldn’t hear it—which should be impossible.

  The village was so quiet that it made the sound of my heartbeat deafening. The rushing of blood in my eardrums was the only thing I could hear if I strained myself.

  Tik... Tok... Tik... Tok... Tik... Tok...

  That, and the ticking of the watch strapped to my wrist.

  I wanted—I needed to stand and fight the monster. I needed to be a warrior, take revenge-

  “Twoooooo…” It continued to count. When I heard the wendigo’s voice echo from the white abyss around me, my brittle bravery finally shattered.

  I ran, my bow unintentionally slipping out of my fingers as I did so. I sprinted down the main street, my trail of footsteps quickly swallowed by blankets of fresh snow.

  My thoughts were fragmented and fragile, caught between half-formed ideas that were discarded the moment I spotted a shadow inside the snow-veil. Plans abandoned and completely forgotten whenever my brain saw the movement of something in the corner of my vision. My paranoia twisted the glimpses of the mundane shapes of the village into monsters ready to pounce.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “Threeeeee…” The wendigo’s voice boomed, and I struggled to pinpoint the exact location it was coming from—the sound of its croak emanated from every direction.

  My five senses were the strongest tools I had, so why couldn’t I tell where it was coming from? My eyes were enhanced twofold—by my own skill and the [Soul-Bond]—could not pierce the snow-veil. Even my nose—sensitive to the smallest traces of a scent—was utterly suffocated by the musty snow, and even the overwhelming smell of gore and rot had disappeared. And my ears had picked up on far finer movements in noisier environments, even before I had gotten the Path. What was happening?

  “Four-Five-Skip-A-Few-Ten!” I heard the Wolf wendigo shout quickly, the sound coming from above. I froze, running felt futile and pointless. I dashed under the roof of a nearby home, using the alcove and the cover it provided to hide.

  I held the weak hope that it could protect me from the wendigo if it tried to attack from above. I assumed that it was on the roofs again, maybe that’s where its voice had come from.

  For a few seconds, I had enough time to consider the deterioration of the scenario—the mistakes I couldn’t afford to acknowledge. My control—over myself and my awareness of my surroundings—dissipated even more.

  Sally had said that he had a plan, but what had gone wrong? How did the monster live through a fully charged [Power Shot] from me, and the enchantment that Sally had wrought on the arrowhead?

  I had not seen the magic he wove, but I had felt it. The flow of concentrated energy along my veins, and the pulses of uncomfortable warmth were undeniably Sally’s power. The weight and power the tide moved with were much more than I could ever conjure myself.

  Did something go wrong? Yes. Sally’s dead.

  “You lost because you let yourself become prey.” I shivered as I heard the whispers of a memory from years ago. I still remembered the lesson. His words that described the trap, the pitfall that ensnared prey when we hunted. What happens when weak things break, when they run instead of fight. The line between prey and predator.

  [[Hunter's Senses] automatic activation!]

  I swung my head around wildly as a jolt of adrenaline spurred me out of stillness. The animalistic instincts buried at the back of my spine did the thinking for me, and I jumped away from my hiding spot. The fear that was arcing up and down my spine was enough to get me running again, and a glance behind me showed me the source of the terror [Hunter’s Senses] had used to warn me.

  The shadow of Wolf wendigo against the wall of snow. I tore my eyes away from the rapidly darkening outline and kept sprinting.

  Tik-Tok-Tik-Tok-Tik-Tok-Tik-Tok-Tik-Tok-Tik-Tok-

  The monster only needed a single bounding step to cross the distance between the edges of my vision to where I had been hiding. I heard it crash into the building a moment later. As if I’d taken off a pair of earmuffs, the sound of its teeth clacking as they bit on empty air was suddenly audible. Its bated breaths and the clicking of its claws scratching the stones beneath the snow, all painfully loud and impossible to ignore.

  I carelessly peeked behind me as I kept running, and I saw the bloody maw staring right back. I’d moved far enough that it’s body was partially engulfed by the snowstorm, but it was impossible to miss that gleaming eye—the only source of light inside this dim, grey, hell-scape of muted colours.

  I looked away when I saw it begin to bite what little remained of its lips, each roll of its jaw ripping off chunks of the crusty, frost-bitten flesh.

  When I spotted a broken building across the street, I used what remaining shreds of rational thought I’d managed to scavenge to change tactics. I jumped the remaining portion of its wall and ran between its remaining pillars. I kept on fleeing, slipping deeper and deeper into the half-destroyed maze of houses.

  “In every hunt, you. Must. Be. The. Hunter. Or there is only one fate waiting for you—and anyone stupid enough to join a fool like you in the wild.” I continued to hear my Father’s whispers.

  I remembered that lesson very well. But today, I had failed.

  Eventually my body forced me to stop moving. My breathing had devolved again, the hyperventilating, gulps of air turned into panicked hiccups. I threw a hand over my mouth in a weak attempt to stifle the noise I was making. I was so afraid of being found that all I could do was try to muffle the noises, even if there was a dozen more practical things to be doing right now.

  Tik… Tok… Tik… Tok…

  My back hit a wall. I was leaning against it when I began to feel the lines of warm tears run down my face. I could vaguely feel the straws of a piece of collapsed roofing scratch my head.

  But I can’t fight it. I’m too weak. That’s been proven a dozen times.

  But if I run, I’ll be making myself prey. It can just hunt me down… again.

  Tik… Tok… Tik… Tok… Tik… Tok...

  My legs jittered, almost moving by themselves to make me flee, but I threw my free hand down, clamping onto my thigh to keep it still.

  I won’t—I won’t fail S-s—fail my Father. Fail his training.

  But what could I do? I’ve already failed.

  I can’t fight it—I’ll die.

  Eaten up—like Sally.

  Tik, Tok, Tik, Tok, Tik, Tok,

  My fingernails began scratching my flesh, the hand that was uselessly trying to hold back the whining keen coming out of my mouth dug bloody furrows across my face. The pain from it ever so slightly dulled the keen edge of my emotions—it did not make them bearable, but just better enough to make it worth the lines of red they made.

  The physical relief did not make the thoughts of death any more bearable.

  Of being torn limb from limb and devoured piece by piece.

  So, I reverted to relying on old crutches.

  Tik, Tok, Tik, Tok, Tik, Tok,

  What makes a warrior?

  Warriors don't bend, don't break.

  Warriors d-don't bend, don't b-brea-k.

  Warr-riors d-do-o-n't be-e-nd-d—

  Tik Tok Tik Tok Tik Tok-Tik-Tok-

  Warr-rior-rs d-do-o be-e—

  War-r-rior-rs d-d-o-o—

  Wa—War-r-r—War-r-rior

  -Tik-Tok-Tik-Tok-Tik-Tok-Tik-Tok-TikTokTikTok

  My eyes snapped open as the incessant ringing of the watch right beside my ear sent my heart into a palpitating frenzy—the beat spurred by a flurry of fearful realisations. The time on it quickly rose, moving well past nine o’clock. My breathing caught in my throat, and the quiet, muffled sounds of a terrified child instantly went silent.

  I focused on my hearing, and just barely heard the creaking and moans of wood bending underneath a heavy weight. I fervently searched with my eyes for the source of the sounds of straw crackling underfoot, and saw its fingers wrapping around the edge of the roof a few metres from me. My addled brain finally realised that it had its front legs resting on the remains of the building on the other side of the wall I was hiding under.

  I managed to recover enough control of myself to take a quiet breath, and I crept away from the monster. On instinct alone I slipped through the ruins of the buildings and moved far enough away for the watch’s heartbeat to slow, my own calming down as well.

  I stared at the device on my wrist, desperate enough for a single advantage that I chose to learn more about the watch now. The hope that it might hold some secret advantage was almost more valuable to my morale than actually seeing if it had an ability that could help.

  [Using [Appraisal – Level 1] on: [Moon God’s Memento]

  [Moon God’s Memento – Level ??? Artefact]

  [A relic from before their duties, made into a key.]

  [Error #002 - Access Denied]

  I dismissed the uninformative message, not allowing the hidden possibilities the artefact held to pollute my newfound concentration.

  Tok… Tik… Tok... Tik, Tok, Tik, Tok Tik

  As the beat of the watch began to increase once again, I jerked back into action. Moving wherever I could that would make the watch go quiet again.

  But it only took a minute for my barely-controlled fleeing to come to A halt—I was out of town to hide in. My feet were stopped at the edge of the village, and I couldn’t keep going without the protection of the rubble and intact walls. If I kept running towards the forest, then I’d be exposed. Without obstacles to slow the wendigo down, did I even have a chance of making it to the tree-line?

  Tik, Tok, Tik, Tok Tik Tok Tik-Tok-

  And I couldn’t go back either. I snatched a rock from a nearby piece of rubble—what I was considering was… Am I really going to do this? Trick the wendigo, abandon whatever’s left of Sally-

  Tik-Tok-Tik-Tok-TikTokTikTokTikTok

  My arm burst into motion, the fist-sized rock sailing into the mist as I chucked the object without much conscious thought. It landed seconds later with a loud thud, the stone audibly colliding with a tree on the other side of the clearing. It occurred to me that this plan shouldn’t’ve worked, that the snow should’ve muffled the noise like it had with the Wendigo.

  “Leaving!? That’s Cheating!” The wendigo let out a guttural scream from what sounded like metres away, and I dived behind a half-standing wall.

  I plastered my back flat against the rubble, hiding from the sounds of thumping footsteps racing past my hiding spot. The relief I felt for getting the wolf-headed wendigo off of my tracks made me feel as much comfort as the amount of guilt curdling in my stomach—I had given up.

  Father was right? I was acting exactly like he said I would.

  I was running. I was prey.

  I-I thought-

  *Crack*

  I tensed at the sudden roar of a tree being cracked in half broke through the silence of the clearing. I was tempted to try to see what it was doing, but the snowstorm had shrouded the treeline.

  “Come out! I can smell you…” I heard the wendigo growl, the noise coming from somewhere across the clearing.

  At first, the sound was faint, the churning dirt and cracking roots a distant echo, the deep rumble piercing through the fog with a vibration of the very earth beneath me. I was only able to recognise the sound of roots torn out of soil because I’d watched machinery dig up stumps before. After the first shiver of the ground beneath me, it started to grow louder.

  It sharply became more intense, and the noises crescendoed to its peak in a less than a second. It sounded like a landslide, like shifting tonnes of dirt rolling down a hill during a mountain’s collapse.

  I heard the wendigo scream, a horrid bellow that quickly morphed into an ear-piercing shriek. A horrid, wet, ‘shunk’ noise followed soon after.

  I was so overwhelmed by the noises that I almost missed the whoosh of an object soaring overhead. It whistled through the air before crashing into a nearby building, and the familiar sounds of a body crashing through multiple houses disappeared into the snowfall.

  I waited. Silent and still. Until even jittery instincts were convinced that either the wendigo had left, or…

  I carefully turned and peeked over the wall.

  A new trail of destruction had been carved into the town, the dust still settling from whatever had been thrown into the stone buildings. Across from it, a line of roots had appeared in the clearing.

  From the edge of the snowstorm, a trail of roots—twisted and raised above a layer of freshly upturned dirt—ran directly towards the village. The woven braid of vegetation was perfectly straight, right up until it burst into a conflagration of sharp spikes. The wall of wooden spines had stopped at an arbitrary line, and as far as my eyes could tell, the metres of the material had spread along this invisible barrier but never stepped over it. The mess of thorns was a strange juxtaposition to the neat line it formed against the invisible wall.

  I carefully moved towards the ruined buildings, hoping to confirm that it was the monster lying in its ruins.

  At the end of the rubble trail, the wendigo was there, each one of its breaths laboured and strained. Its black-blood was leaking out of a dozen new wounds, staining the snow it was lying on. Throughout every limb, wooden stakes had pierced it in a dozen places. Splinters the length of my forearm were shoved into its arms and leg, but the core of its body was mostly untouched. Its head and chest free from new injuries or impalement.

  The worst damage it’d suffered was in its lower half, one leg had been mangled and broken in a half-dozen places, while the other was almost ripped in half at the knee. A few thin strips of sinew and skin held the shin to its thigh, the joint cracked open with snowflakes landing on the exposed ball and socket. Wherever the wood contacted its flesh, there was rot. The mummified flesh had decayed and blackened with the smell of putrefaction—weeks of decomposition manifested in a moment.

  But the wendigo was very much alive. Its wet, choked, screeches of pain were enough to know that for certain.

  [Using [Appraisal – Lvl 2] on: [Wendigo Walker – Level 43]]

  [Health: 43/140]

  [Mana: 31/62]

  [Conditions: [Starvation (Stage 3)], [Nature's Purification (79%)]]