My prey was in view. In the forest clearing in front of me, the noble male elk grazed at the low-growing flowering shrubs, blissfully unaware of his impending death. The golden sunlight of early evening dappled the scene.

I crouched in the high grass at the edge of the glade, silent as a shadow. With every ounce of stealth I had ever learned, I reached smoothly over my shoulder and drew a fletched arrow from my quiver. My breathing was silent and tightly controlled. After hours of moving silently through the wild forest in pursuit of my prey, I was not going to let this opportunity slip.

This was a special hunt. The silver-antlered stag was no ordinary prey, and if I brought one home, I would be set apart as no ordinary hunter. My clan had often hunted the female elk with their brown antlers, but never had any of us come back from a hunt with the body of one of their male, silver-antlered counterparts.

If I made this shot, I would become a legend among my people.

As I fitted my arrow silently to the string of my bow, my mind flicked through images of what success in this hunt would bring. I would be granted the privilege of drinking the most potent potions known to our shamans. These were the potions which could imbue the user with the most powerful ancestral magics, granting almost unlimited power.

Getting control of my fantasies, I brought my attention back to the moment. I willed my pulse to slow, concentrating on my breath and feeling the native magic of my people move slowly through my meridians as I inhaled one long, steady breath through my nostrils and lined up the shot.

I was ready. My hands did not tremble as I closed one eye and looked down the length of the arrow shaft. The stag was still eating from a summerberry bush, and was still completely unaware of my presence.

With a final exhale, I loosed the arrow.

My perfect shot sliced the air, but the stag was unbelievably fast. As soon as my hand loosed the arrow, the stag launched itself in a mighty leap through the air. Before my arrow could strike the stag, the beast bounded away into the undergrowth. My arrow thudded into the thick trunk of a tree.

My prey was gone.

“Damn it!” I cursed, standing up suddenly, no longer caring about making noise in the forest. My prey was gone, and there was no way I would catch it now. The speed of the silver-antlered stag was as legendary as the hunters who brought them down.

Muttering a string of curses, I marched across the glade toward the tree and tore my arrow from its trunk. Just like the arrowhead, my chances of drinking from my clan’s legendary potions were ruined.

I’d been hunting since daybreak, and the sun would be setting in less than an hour. I would have to hurry if I wanted to reach the treetop village before curfew. These woods were vast and uncharted, and full of threats. A hunter could leave with confidence during the daylight hours, but he should get home before night fell. After the curfew, the gates were locked even to clan members like me.

The stag was so light-footed it had left almost no trace of its passage into the undergrowth. I crouched to gather a handful of summerberries from the bush where the stag had been browsing, then stood, munching the tart berries as I slung my bow across my back and headed for the treetop village that my clan called home.

I was walking eastward, in the direction of the treetop village. Behind me, all I could see was the trees, but I knew that beyond the forest canopy the sun would be sinking fast toward the distant western mountains. Tracking the stag had brought me further from the treetop village than I had intended, and I would have to hurry to be back in time for curfew. If I didn’t manage that, I’d have to climb a tree and spend a cold and uncomfortable night waiting for the dawn. That had happened once before, and I was not in a hurry to repeat the experience.

Half an hour had passed when I heard the howl. I was in a clearing, a bare quarter-mile of stony ground where the bedrock was exposed, and the ground too hard and the soil too thin for trees. I was halfway across this when I realized my mistake. I should have stuck to the treeline, but I’d been too preoccupied with my thoughts of the hunt. At least if I had stuck to the edge of the treeline I’d have been able to scale a tree to hide from predators. Out here, I was completely exposed.

Long had my people repeated the wisdom that one mistake is all that’s needed to end even the most experienced hunter’s life. Well, I was not all that experienced at less than 25 summers old, but I was determined that I was not going to fall victim to this truth.

The howl was repeated, closer now.

I glanced up. The sun would still be kissing the tops of the mountains far to the east - not quite sunset yet - but down here in this stony woodland clearing it was already night. Through a gap in the trees off to my right I caught a glimpse of the bright, perfect half moon in the pale sky, and the evening star.

For my people, the half moon was a symbol of the place between death and life. A symbol of the transition from this life to the afterlife. Appropriate, I thought, as either me or this wolf was about to meet our end.

Two golden eyes appeared in the distance, away off in front of me. The last of the evening light filtering through the canopy illuminated a ragged coat of silver fur.

A green haze enveloped the wolf-like form, like a glittering cloud of insects, but I knew these were no insects. The silvery cloud was a magical aura. I’d seen similar auras around monsters before, but never this close.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

The power in the creature seemed to ring through the air like the clang of a bell. It raised up its head and howled again, then left the treeline and began to move slowly toward me, its eyes fixed on me and its teeth bared.

This was a mutated wolf, empowered and mutated by the residual magics left behind by Royal Mages, Monsters like this weren’t often seen in the depths of the wild forest. Usually, they would have to cross the great western river and journey across the cold mountains. But now this one had made it all that distance, which likely meant it hadn’t eaten a good meal in weeks. It looked lean and ravenous.

As the mutated wolf prowled toward me, I considered whether I could flee to the edge of the treeline and climb a tree. If I ran, this monster would pursue me easily. I glanced to the side; I was too far away from the treeline. If I ran, the wolf would overtake me in seconds. Despite the overwhelmingly low odds of surviving in combat against the mutated wolf, I couldn’t do otherwise.

There were no choices left.

With one smooth movement I drew and loosed an arrow. At the same moment, the wolf lunged forward and broke into a gallop, and my arrow sailed through the place it had been.

As swiftly as I could I drew another one and fired, and this one was luckier. It struck the wolf in the shoulder and stuck there. The monster howled, reeling back from the impact and the pain.

I had bought myself a moment. The wolf had stopped.

There was a row of ceramic vials on my belt - two of poison and two of healing, and one to help a hunter see clearly in the dark. In the tiny window of time I’d gained, I grabbed one of the poisons, pulled the stopped, and tipped the contents over the head of my next arrow.

As I was doing this, the wolf had stopped. It was concentrating on something. The green haze that surrounded the creature focused on the area that my arrow had hit. When the haze swirled and dispersed, I was horrified to see that the arrow I’d landed in the creature’s side shivered and then disintegrated into dust.

The wolf brought its focus back to me and seemed to grin malevolently, then it started bounding toward me again. This was it.

I fitted my poisoned arrow to my bow and raised it. I couldn’t risk missing, and I needed to make the shot count, so I would wait until the monster was almost on top of me before I loosed the arrow. I’d only get one shot.

The wolf was now so close that I could see its glistening rows of sharp teeth extending from ear to ear of its gaping mouth. I inhaled once and held it, not thinking about what might happen if I missed, then released my poisoned arrow.

As my arrow flew, the wolf leaped for me, jaws gaping wide. My poisoned arrow struck the wolf right in the center of its wide-open maw. The monster yelped in surprise and pain, and as I stepped nimbly out of the way of its grasping claws, the creature crashed to the forest floor.

The green haze that was the wolf’s magical healing aura started to envelop the wolf’s head, and the arrow, but this arrow had been infused with a hunter’s potion, crafted with the magic of my ancestors.

As the magical aura focused on the wolf’s mouth, a deep purple color appeared in the green sparkling haze, and then started to snake out like tendrils of a purple river through the green landscape of the wolf’s aura. The poison was running through the wolf’s blood, and as the infection spread through the monster’s body the purple spread through the green of the creature’s aura.

The wolf struggled up and tried to stand, then flopped to the ground again, a piteous groan escaping from its mouth. It turned its glowing eyes on me, and I could see the life in them already dimming.

Rather than stand and watch the monster die, I unsheathed my knife from my belt and walked toward it across the rapidly darkening clearing. I hoped that while it was warring with the poison, I could make an easy kill. It would be kinder, too. We were hunters, killing for our survival, but we did not cause unnecessary suffering. I would kill this wolf and put it out of its pain.

As I got closer, however, the wolf lurched up onto its feet again, growling fiercely and baring its teeth. It was dying, but it still had enough awareness to snap at me with its jaws or slash at me with its claws if I got too close.

Without another option, I considered leaving the wolf behind and allowing the poison to do its work. However, I would have to spend the night in the forest now anyway - I had well and truly missed the curfew now - so I may as well spend the night nearby. The thought of returning to the treetop village in the morning with a mutated wolf’s pelt was almost as exciting as returning with a silver stag’s antlers.

“I can make this easier for you,” I said to the wolf. “You’re going to die. But if you let me kill you, it’ll be easier. It’s up to you.”

I approached with my hands raised, but the wolf growled at me and snapped its jaws, so I walked backward until it stopped growling.

“All right,” I said. “You can have it your way. It will be slower, but if you won’t accept the mercy of the knife…”

I hated seeing the creature suffering like this. It went against everything I’d been taught as a hunter. But I couldn’t exactly kill the monster if it wouldn’t let me get near it. It was an incredibly strong creature, so I could be waiting here for a good few hours. Well, I would head for the treeline and climb up into the canopy. By morning, the wolf would be dead and I could collect my prize. Sighing, I began to walk away from the dying monster.

That was when I heard a chorus of howls.

They were all around me. This wolf wasn’t the only one. More had made it across the mountains and the river. How many were there? There sounded like at least ten, maybe more.

One wolf was noteworthy enough, but an entire pack? It beggared belief.

Almost as soon as I’d heard the howls, a whole host of golden eyes appeared in the trees all around me. They didn’t wait this time, instead they plunged out of the trees and began to stalk across the clearing toward me.

There had to be at least twenty mutated wolves quickly closing in on me. Green mist poured out from their magical auras, floating along the ground like creeping shadows. The vile haze swirled around my boots and ate at the leather.

I sheathed my knife, grabbed my bow, and drew an arrow. I only had twenty arrows left and no more of the potion I’d used to take down the first wolf.

I only managed to shoot five arrows before the first monster crashed into me and brought me to the ground. As soon as my back struck the forest floor, I knew it was over.

My bow was knocked from my hands by the blow of a powerful paw. I fought to the last, but there was nothing I could do. I caught a glimpse of the beautiful half-moon and a blanket of shining stars in the inky night sky. Then everything disappeared, blotted out by a storm of silver fur, pointed teeth, and razor-sharp claws.

Darkness took me.