I adjusted my bulletproof vest and slid my extra pistol magazines into my belt holster, sliding one into my pistol and racking back the slide, putting a bullet in the chamber, before holstering that as well.
“Let’s go,” Ms. Watanabe called back to me.;
“On the way,” I called back.
We started walking through the cold, dark, and dense forest. The forest floor was barely illuminated by the moonlight pouring in from above, disrupted by the tall barriers of trees. The sound of soft bird chirps and insects buzzing filled the air.
“So, what, are we just going to walk around until we just stumble on this thing?” I asked Watanabe.
“Well, usually for Wendigos we would have more advanced equipment, such as NVGs and Heat-trackers, as well as a larger team to canvas a larger area.” Ms. Watanabe said. “But for a young Wendigo, their territory is usually quite small and they make a lot of mistakes, so they are not that bad to find, we just go to the reported area and fan out from there.”
“Great,” I muttered.
The hours quickly passed as we walked through the trees and brush to the area where the Wendigo Fawn was reported. The entire time, we saw no signs of any entities in the area, until we arrived at the reported area.
We walked out of the treeline into a small open clearing. The trees had separated, leaving a sizable grass field in the center with a small wooden cabin resting in the back.
“A Cabin? The file reported that there was no civilization nearby.” Ms. Watanabe whispered quietly.
“Is that bad?” I whispered back.
“I don’t know yet. Stay close.” Ms. Watanabe said as she switched on the high-powered flashlight connected to the bottom rail of her pistol, swinging it around the field and illuminating the clearing floor.
What I saw as the flashlight moved side to side made my breath catch in my throat. There was carnage everywhere. What looked like the individual carcasses and body parts of buck, deer, rabbits, and other small animals were shredded to pieces and strewn throughout the clearing. The green grass was stained a violent shade of red and the smell was pungent enough for me to desperately hold back from vomiting instantly.
Ms. Watanabe wrinkled her nose and spat. “What the hell happened here?” She seemed to think out loud.
We slowly trudged our way through the carnage on foot, our pistols raised high with the safety off in anticipation of whatever may come our way.
Every step I took made me feel even more squeamish. The slight squelch of flesh and gristle under my feet as well as the small crunch of bone was unpleasant, to say the very least.
Slowly but surely, we arrived in front of the wooden steps of the front porch of the small cabin. Ms. Watanabe turned her head to me before holding one finger over her lips, gesturing for me to remain quiet. She started up the steps slowly, careful not to make a noise, as I followed her.
The door opened inward, so Ms. Watanabe and I decided to breach it in a doublestack formation. Ms.Watanabe was on the right side and I was on the left. Ms. Watanabe held up her fingers, counting down from three, before kicking open the door violently. We both ran into the open door, covering our corners and then training our eyes to the middle.
“Holy shit, is that?” I managed to ask before I keeled over and began to vomit, my breakfast from that morning decorating my shoes, which had already been covered in the intestines of random animals.
The smell was terrible, even worse than outside, and in the middle of the cabin sat a carcass, one that I had never seen before but instantly knew what it was in my gut. The figure had backwards knees and its skin was the ash-gray of death. It was emaciated and gaunt, its ribs poking out from under its skin, and had a head that looked almost like a large deer skull, with large menacing antlers protruding from it.
“That's our Fawn.” Ms. Watanabe confirmed, covering her nose with her hand as she walked closer to inspect.
“Looks like someone else decided to swoop on our target.” She continued. “Whoever or Whatever did this does not matter, we have to go, difficulty on this mission just changed dramatically.”
Ms. Watanabe would not be getting any arguments from me. We both turned and walked out the door, making our way down the steps, and back into the clearing before stopping in our tracks entirely.
It was quiet, way too quiet. Normally, while in the forest, you are accustomed to the sound of wind blowing through and shaking the trees and branches, the slight buzz of insects, the sound of animals moving through the brush. It was dead silent, no wind blew through the trees, and no sign of any life made itself apparent.
I stood completely still, some sort of carnal fear filling my body, as I looked forward into the clearing, and made eye contact with it.
There in front of us, approximately one hundred feet away, stood a creature who must have been at least ten feet tall. It was hunched over with backward knees, its arms were long and skinny, and each of its fingers extended into sickeningly large claws that looked like they could rip through steel.
Its skull-like face boasted sunken eye sockets and small yellow orbs seemed to glow from the empty space in between.
Watanabe and I stood still, not daring to move a single muscle, our guns trained on the figure, ready to shoot, like that would even help.
The Wendigo made the first move, darting forward so fast that my eyes could barely even catch up. Watanabe and I immediately opened fire, following the creature with our guns and letting loose a barrage of silver bullets, all of which were easily dodged by the creature.
The creature approached me first before slamming the back of its hand into my chest area, sending me flying into the air as I tumbled to the ground roughly twenty feet away.
I was winded, struggling to catch my breath I sat there on my hands and knees. As I struggled to catch my breath I instantly knew I had broken a rib or two, my head ached from the impact, and I felt the unmistakeable stream of warm blood begin to run down the side of my face.
I looked up just in time to see the creature dart forward at Watanabe as she continued to shoot at it. I watched as the creature used its powerful claws to effortlessly rip through her side, deep enough to cause great pain and severe bleeding but not enough to kill her instantly.
It was toying with us. It knew how to hunt, and how to kill, but this creature relished the idea of prolonging its prey's suffering and pain. I quickly got to my feet, struggling against the pain of my chest, as I ran forward towards the creature which now loomed, hunching over Watanabe as she groaned in pain.
I pulled the large combat knife off my belt and lunged at the Wendigo, sinking my blade into its back and yanking it downwards, hoping to cause as much damage as possible. It released a howl that pierced through my every thought and left my ears ringing, before it quickly turned around and sunk both of its claws into my side, stopping me in my tracks.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
I screamed out in pain, as the Wendigo brought its skeletal, sunken face closer to mine, its eyes glowing a bright yellow in its empty sockets. The creature's frosty breath smelled of pure death, as it opened its mouth in a sickening smile that I did not know was possible, sending shivers down my entire body and making my hair stand up.
Adrenaline was coursing through my veins as I thrashed to escape this thing's death grip on me, I still held my combat knife and desperately plunged it into its arms and the front of its chest as it slowly loomed closer, my attacks having no visible effect on it. Just when I thought I was about to die, when the creature was moving for the kill, I saw a shadow dart around in the corner of my eye.
Suddenly, the creature was propelled off of me, leaving me sprawling on the ground as the wounds on my side bled profusely. I looked to my right to see what was happening, only to see that the Wendigo was wrestling with some shadowy entity, one that I could not make out but I had a vague idea.
“A Shadow Stalker,” I whispered to myself in awe. Shadow Stalkers were rare creatures, hardly ever encountered by agents, and were the natural predators of Wendigos. Drawn to their malevolent presence, Shadow Stalkers sought to expel Wendigos from their territory, and we fairly harmless to humans.
As the Wendigo and the Shadow Stalker fought, I limped as fast as I could over to Watanabe who still lay on her back in front of me, her chest rising and falling rapidly.
I fell to my knees in front of her as I yanked my backpack from my back and pulled out my first aid kit as I began to patch her up as best as I could. I pulled out rolls of gauze, desperately holding them against the wounds on her side and applying pressure, hoping to slow down the bleeding.
God must have been smiling down on me that day or something because I somehow was able to get the bleeding to slow down enough to allow me to lift her up slightly and wrap heavy bandages around her wound. I had managed to bandage her up, but the wound was still severe and the risk for infection was high, I had to get Ms. Watanabe and myself out of there if I had any hope of any of us surviving.
I picked Ms. Watanabe up slowly in a fireman's carry, wincing under the pain of my own wounds which I had seemed to forget about in the moment. Ms. Watanabe groaned at the movement before opening her eyes and observing the spectacle in front of us.
“Is that?” she winced in pain, trying to make sense of the scene.
“I think it's a Shadow Stalker,” I said to her.
“I thought they were all extinct, this one must be ancient.” she sputtered out, as I began to high tail it out of the clearing from the direction we came.
As I was moving as fast as I could through the trees and brush, desperate to make it out of there alive, Ms. Watanabe looked down and caught sight of my injuries.
“Kid, you're injured!” she gasped.
“I'll be fine,” I replied, trying to reassure her. “We are both going to make it out of this.”
“Fuck, I knew it was a bad idea to take someone on a mission with such a low-luck stat.” she coughed out.
I chuckled slightly, remembering what Mr. Newmier had told me about having zero luck. From chasing down a Wendigo Fawn on a D Class Mission, to encountering a fully grown Wendigo which would be a B Class Mission, to even encountering a Shadow Stalker, which was so rare that even the Organization doesn't know much about them.
I continued through the forest, my legs and side aching from my injuries, pure adrenaline being likely the only thing keeping me moving until it wasn't. I tripped on a large root extending from the base of a tree and went tumbling forward, sending Watanabe and I sprawling on the floor.
“Fuck!” I winced as I looked over to Ms. Watanabe who had already passed out again from earlier.
“Damn it,” I muttered to myself as I pulled Watanabe closer to me and sat against a large tree trunk, hoping to stay hidden. I looked down at my injuries, they were deep but the bleeding for the most part had stopped. I thought to bandage myself up a bit but suddenly remembered that I had left my kit all the way back in the clearing when I was patching up Watanabe.
I sat there against the tree trunk, looking up towards the sky through the roof of branches. I caught another glimpse of a shadow darting through the treeline before it landed directly in front of me.
I quickly drew my pistol and aimed it straight at the figure, but I did not pull the figure. I could not make out any specific features of the creature in front of me, as it walked ever closer all it looked like was pure darkness. I tried my best to ready myself to fight, not wanting to die this easily, but eerily enough, I didn't feel like I was in danger at that given moment.
The creature kept approaching until it was directly in front of my face. I was able to make out its eyes, they glowed a luminescent blue as they scanned me, seeming to read everything about me. My breath caught in my throat as it scanned me up and down before it reached out a finger and placed it against my chest.
My eyes opened wide and I let out a scream of pain as memories of skills I had never seen or used before flooded my mind. Was this thing trying to help me?
Once the pain subsided, the creature was gone, but the familiar screen of The System had popped up.
New Skills Acquired!
Skill: Shadow Cloak (Active) [Max Level]
Description: Can blend seamlessly with shadows, making the user nearly invisible to the naked eye
Stat Boost: +4 AGI +3 EVA
Skill: Keen Senses (Passive) [Max Level]
Description: Grants the user heightened senses of smell and hearing, allowing it to track prey over large distances.
Stat Boost: None
Skill: Entity Aura (Passive) [Max Level]
Description: The user possesses the innate ability to sense and detect entities, drawn to their presence.
Stat Boost: +4 INT
Skill: Shadow Bind (Active) [Level 1 / 4]
Description: Can manipulate shadows to ensnare and immobilize its prey, weakening them for the kill.
Stat Boost: None
“Profile,” I said out loud, curious about my stat changes.
Name: Jared Wilson
Title: The Broke Paramedic
Level: 10
Class: Medic
Stats:
STR: 20
AGI: 19
INT: 25
CHA: 20
RES: 10
EVA: 17
LUK: 1
“I might just have a chance.” I smiled.