Felix opened his eyes and was greeted with a bleak and desolate tundra. A thin layer of patchy snow dusted the grey, rocky ground. There was no wind, only an icy stillness. Felix shivered and looked down at his body. He had both of his eyes again, and while his clothes were still torn, his body was unharmed.

He looked around and shivered. The tundra stretched in all directions, and he saw no end to the land. With nothing else to do, Felix simply decided to search the land and find a way back to his world or something of that nature. He wondered where he was. He really hoped this wasn't heaven, and doubted this place to be hell. Purgatory was likely, but Felix had never pictured Purgatory as cold or as solitary for that matter.

In a separate part of this plane, the monster woke up. It stood on its legs and stretched. It was glad that it was no longer stuck in that enclosed space, but was currently more concerned with where it was. It knew it had died, as even it couldn't survive without a heart. Not for long, anyway.

Speaking of which, the monster quickly noticed that it had a heartbeat again. The creature was glad. Not having a heartbeat was easily the most bizarre experience it could remember. Shaking off the unwanted recent memory, the monster began to hunt for food. It was cursed to be perpetually hungry, and having just been denied a meal meant that it was even more starved than normal.

The monster touched its fingertips to the ground. With a deep breath, it extended its senses around the area. This ability was unique to this monster. Any land the creature inhabited would be fully observed and nothing could hide from it. As long as they were on the ground, that is. The monster could easily be considered the ultimate hunter thanks to this power, and it made good use of it.

It's senses spread across the entire tundra, but only found one life form. A human life form. A familiar human life form. One that this creature had recently met. The monster threw its head back and screamed, shaking the whole tundra with its wrath. Felix felt the earth shake, and clapped his hands over his ears in a futile attempt to block out the sound.

The creature dashed off in Felix's direction, putting so much force into its steps that it left small and short-lived vortexes of air behind it as it ran. Felix took a deep breath. There was no way he was going to outrun this beast, and given his last few minutes of life, he wasn't keen on simply letting it kill him. His breathing became faster and heavier, and just as Felix started to take action, the monster was upon him.

Just as Felix had figured in their previous encounter, the monster's attack was invisible to Felix's eyes. Claws plunged into his chest, but something was …off. Felix didn't feel any pain. In fact, he wasn't bleeding.

"What the hell?" Felix muttered as he simply pulled himself off of the monster's claws. The creature was utterly confused. It had seen many things, and killed all of them. But it had never seen anything like this. Ever.

It was very clear to both man and monster that Felix hadn't done this. If he had, he should have at least had some memory of it. Leaving one option, and one that neither one was sure about.

"Did you do this?" Felix asked. He chose to believe the creature was involved somehow, even if he wasn't quite sure what it could have done.

"No. My powers are great, but I can't do anything like this." The monster grumbled in response. Felix prepared to respond and opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out as realization struck him. The creature had just spoken. And he'd understood it.

"Wait, you can talk?"

"Of course."

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

In any other situation, with any other supernatural creature, Felix would have been excited. He would have asked more questions. He would have wanted to know more. But right here and right now, this new information only induced one emotion. Pure and primal rage. The ability to speak meant rational thought on at least some level. The monster's response meant that it could have talked at any point. Finally, this only meant one more thing. This monster was fully aware of its actions. It had knowingly killed Myra, not out of mindless instinct. But because it chose to. It knew what it was doing when it attacked them.

"Why? Why did you attack us? Why did you kill her?!!" By the time Felix was done speaking, he was shouting. The wind picked up. His wrath was apparent to the creature, but much like back at the cabin, it seemed to enjoy this display of emotion.

"Why, you ask? Human, does prey ask why the hunter kills it? The answer is simple, and you are too stupid to realize it. I was hungry. YOU were food. SHE was food. I killed her because I was hungry, as I am now, and as I always will be." The monster spoke in a harsh voice. Much like the brutal cold of frostbite, this monster spoke like the frozen hearted entity it was. Once, in it's century spanning life time, would it have understood Felix's wrath and pain. Now, those emotions only made him smell better.

"Who the hell gave you the right to kill her, and who said you could kill Myra?! What the hell even are you?!" Felix's response was broken now. His rage was still apparent, but the monster's answer had broken him even further. He knew his question was in vain, and he knew the monster would give him a similar answer to before. He was grasping at straws, in a way. Being a simple meal for such a creature enraged him. Human life, especially one as noteworthy as Myra's couldn't just be disregarded like that …Right?

The monster cackled horridly. Felix recoiled and flinched at the sound. To the creature, this question was the funniest thing he'd heard since before his transformation.

"Who gave me the right? Who was there to contest my right? I could kill her, as there were no greater predators around. I am no mere bear or wolf. I have no reason to fear any other larger predator, as I am the most powerful. No bear could stand against me. I am not a minor beast, nor am I something a prey animal like yourself should have been able to handle. I am a Wendigo. Immortally greedy and hungry. Your Myra was nothing to me. No human is, and no human ever should be. Defeating me, even in my hungry and weakened state, is no more than a cheated fate."

It was at this moment that Felix realized just how insignificant he was. His anger slowly faded. There was no point to it. The wendigo attacked again, impaling Felix once more, and was met with the same result. Felix fell to his knees when the wendigo pulled its claws away.

"It would seem I cannot kill you. Not here, at least."

The wendigo sighed. Then, it noticed something. For one, he now knew the boy's name. It was Felix. He'd never asked for his name, and never intended to. Next, he noticed that when Felix's mood changed, the weather did as well. The wind had picked up, and after their exchange, it had slowly and subtly died down.

Felix moped about, slumping and practically falling face first onto the cold earth. When suddenly, an image flashed in his mind. It was only for a split second, but he'd seen enough. It was an image of a clearing in a forest. In the middle of that clearing, was a corpse lying in a puddle of blood. In the wendigo's mind, an image of Felix and Myra sitting together on a bench on a sunny day flashed by.

The wendigo and Felix immediately locked eyes. Those images had come from their memories. Neither of them were currently paying attention to the land under them, but had they been, they would have seen that it had begun to fade and was well on its way to being transparent. More memory images flashed between the two, the ground faded more.

"STOP LOOKING AT THOSE!" Felix and The Wendigo shouted, lunging at each other in sync. Claws met fingers, but rather than cutting through the flashy appendages, they seemed to melt together. Felix screamed as their bodies began to pull towards each other. The Wendigo was bewildered, and growled as it was pulled towards the human. More melding of flesh and bone, and Felix's face and the wendigo's were mere millimeters from each other. The bright eyes of the wendigo widened as the muzzle of his skull collided with Felix's forehead, thanks to the height difference. The normally hard bone crumpled inwards and was sucked in by the human's flesh. Felix had time to scream one more time before the two had fully enveloped each other. The tundra faded away completely, and the festering mass of flesh, bone and skin seemingly tumbled into an endless void of blackness.

********

After what seemed like an eternity, Felix Chilling opened his eyes again. He was back in the forest. It was still night time, but somehow, everything seemed different. The world seemed clearer, he could see farther, sounds were clearer, and the air stunk of smoke.

Felix flexed his fingers and ran them through the snow. However, something felt different. Almost like the snow wasn't… cold. Which was strange. Snow is frozen water, and thus cold. Despite knowing this, Felix just couldn't feel it. Or if he did, he didn't notice it.

"What the fuck is going on?" Felix thought as he began to ponder his options.

"Hunter and prey, sharing the same body?! What outrage is this?!" The wendigo's voice came from within Felix's head. Hearing this, Felix looked around. The wendigo's corpse should have been sitting up against a tree a few meters away from Felix's own corpse. But it wasn't. It was gone. Felix looked down at his hand. It was thinner than before.

Nothing would have, or really could have dragged away such a massive corpse that had so little meat on it. Meaning only one thing, that thing dawning on Felix as he looked at his body. He was much thinner and paler than before, and given how his pants currently hung off of him, each pant leg being roughly six inches shorter than before only further proved this idea.

Felix and the Wendigo were sharing a body.