Sticking out of the ground, like a giant's arrow, was a spear. The head had punctured the fox's skull and protruded from the base of the jaw, impaling the corpse to the earth.

"Devon? Please tell me that's you," I shouted. I waited for a reply, but none came."Devon, I'm serious. I'm going to die from hypothermia, and I really want to get out of the water."

More silence.

Okay, this isn't funny.

I opened my mouth to shout again, but footsteps made me turn my head. Devon walked out of the woods and stepped into the pond's light. His hair looked ruffled, and there were a few scratches along his legs, but he seemed in good health.

In fact, he looked completely fine.

"What the hell?"

He quirked his eyebrow. "Something wrong?"

My eye twitched. "Yes! Do you see what I look like right now?"

I must have been a pitiful sight, soaking, shaking, and bleeding. I used the dais to stand up. With the creature gone and my mentor here, I tucked my axe back into its sheath.

He moved steadily to the fox and pulled out his spear. Ignoring my glare, he dipped it into the pond and swirled it around. His eyes roamed over the stag's still-bleeding corpse. "Looks like I was right."

I snapped. "What do you mean? You knew this would be here, right? That's why you sent me this way. Why did you send me alone if you knew where to find the trouble?"

His eyes met mine; they were human. "Because you needed to feel the call of the hunt. An untested pup always dies."

I punched him, but the blow was so weak I mostly hurt my own hand against his steel chest. "Ow! Ugh. Screw you." I dropped my arm. "You're insane."

"Maybe," he responded. He wrapped his arm around my back and slipped his hand under my shoulders. Like a parent carrying their child, he lifted me out of the pond and dragged me to the dirt, where he set me down. "Or maybe I want to ensure that Elias's legacy can survive what's to come. You chose this life after all; let's not waste it."

And so, having me nearly killed is the best way to go about that? I hope Astra lays into you.

"You said you were right." I stopped to ring out my hair before sighing and pointing to the stag. "What did you mean? I didn't think about it at first, but how is it bleeding? There can't be that much blood in its body. And it's not rotting."

"You tasted the blood. What do you think?"

Corrupted.

I gritted my teeth and glared again. "I don't know. It's magic? Nothing makes sense here. And that weird voice in my head keeps saying corrupted. Whatever that means."

He sighed. "Its Lore Matrix is corrupting the beasts it possesses. The creature has deviated against its lore and mutated into something different, twisting its powers.

"That means almost nothing to me." He glared, and I sighed. "It said something about kin slayer. This stag and the creature were related, right? That's why it wants revenge."

"Mhhm."

Instead of explaining further, he bent down and grabbed the stag's horns. He lowered his body and began shifting his head around.

"What are-"

Riiiip!

The head came free from its shoulders, dripping a torrent of blood onto the stone dais before spilling into the water below.

Damn.

Devon tossed the head over, and it landed in front of me with its milky eyes staring into mine. My jaw dropped, and Devon lifted the stag off the stone, chucking the massive beast onto his shoulders. His footsteps sent up pockets of blue dust, but he ignored them as he stopped beside me. "Pick up the head. We got one final task to accomplish."

"Huh?"

"The hunt isn't over, Cain. Get up."

I looked down and tested my muscles. They moved, but I felt the protest screaming in my head. "I can barely move."

"The water will speed your recovery. Let's go."

Numbly, I forced myself to stand and stared at the stag head. The dead eyes gave me the creeps, but Devon started walking away, leaving no room for arguments.

I gripped the top of the horns with hesitation, not wanting to let the thing touch my chest, not if I could help it. The thing continued to drip blood even after the massive spill.

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Yep, this is cursed. I need gloves; this is crazy.

Devon showed no signs of struggling with the beast on his back. With my face scrunched in a scowl, I jogged after him, catching up to match his steps.

I had several questions, but I kept them to myself. My body ached, and I felt drained. If I collapsed and slept for a few days straight, I wouldn't be surprised.

The stag's head dragged my arms down, but I carried on.

Thankfully, we came upon our target. In a small clearing sat a rickety wooden cabin. It was a small thing. Smaller than most of the houses in the village. There were no lights, but the moonlight bathed the area, letting me see the building in detail.

Past the overgrown moss and shabby wood, I could make out faded paint and a simple design over the doorframe.

It probably looked cozy when it first got constructed.

We got within twenty yards, and Devon dropped the stag corpse. It hit the ground with a thud, coating the grass in red. From inside came an animalistic scream.

"No! No! DEFILER!" came the creature's voice.

The door rattled, and Devon unhooked his spear. "Come out. There's nowhere to run."

A powerful bang smacked into the door, followed by another screech. I slowly lowered the stag's head to the ground and moved behind Devon.

He glanced towards me, and I shook my head. "This is all you. I'm all tapped out."

He didn't reply.

The door opened with a slam, the hinges creaking. Inside the house, it was pitch black, even with the moonlight.

"Hunters…"

A single foot emerged from the darkness, crossing the doorframe. It was slender, the pale appendage of a child. Next came a hand, but this one was far from childlike: large black nails, longer than my fingers, gouged the wood as it passed. Though the ring finger was missing, the hand and arm weren't deformed. They matched the childlike proportions of the legs.

Devon nudged the corpse with his foot, and the creature's limbs twitched. A guttural scream made me clamp my hands over my ears, and I watched in horror as the rest of the creature's body exited the cabin.

It's just a little girl.

Beyond the raggedy hair and puffy eyes, a little girl with messed-up nails stepped into the light, exposing her cloth sack of a dress.

She looked to be around nine years old.

"Devon… is that the creature?"

"Yes."

Oh.

My anger fled from my body. Up til now, I had been ready to watch gleefully even as Devon slayed the creature and saved the day. I wanted to get out of here and find a comfortable bed to nap in. But the sight of the creature's true form stole the resentment and scattered it to the wind.

The girl's red hair covered her eyes, but she brushed it out of the way. Her eyes were grey, bloodshot to the extreme. Tears streamed down her face, and she opened her mouth, revealing perfectly normal teeth.

That detail broke me even further. I had expected monster teeth sharpened like daggers. The Reds looked like little children but were monsters through and through. This? This creature barely fit that description.

“Leave… my brother… ALONE!"

The girl charged. Her hair swept behind her head as she raised her hands, aiming her sharpened nails at Devon's leg.

She didn't make it more than five feet.

Devon's hurtled towards her, taking her in the chest. Her body rocked back, and she clutched at the shaft.

To my horror, she didn't die the moment her heart turned to mush.

"Hu-rgh, Hunter! R-evenge! Must… sto…”

She scratched at the spear, but the shaft was longer than her arms. Her hands pounded against it, but her fury waned, leaving her arms dangling limply by her side. Her legs failed next, and she slid to the ground, her hair covering her face in a curtain of red.

I just stared. Unsure of how to feel.

Devon sighed and raised his head to the sky. After a long silence, he turned and waited for me to look away from the girl's body. "In the future, there will be many times you'll face enemies who look like this. Not all prey will be terrifying monsters of the night that you can behead and feel good about. Sometimes, the monsters are humans who stumbled onto the wrong path, or even little children who met a terrible fate."

"When she said kin, she meant herself. Her brother's the stag, how doe-" I shook my head. "Nevermind. Is it over? Did we finish the hunt?"

He nodded.

Good.

I peeked into the cabin; the pitch-black darkness had receded, and I could finally make out the contents of the building.

The place had no furniture save a straw bed in the corner with bits of straw and grass sticking out beneath the ripped cloth. In the corner, a small collection of shiny stones sat around a small threadbare doll.

Biting my lip, I turned around and stood beside the stag head. Devon retried his spear and gently picked up the girl's corpse.

I refused to look into her eyes.

He entered the building and placed the girl on the straw bed. He covered her body using the blanket before exiting and returning to the fallen stag. With the same ease as before, he lifted the corpse over his shoulder and moved to place the stag next to the girl.

I held the head, expecting him to take it, but he shook his head and closed the cabin's door.

He stepped back to join me and raised his arm. “Ek kalla heiðarloga.”

A fireball the size of my fist shot out of his hand. The wood cabin became an inferno, lighting the night in a blaze as tall as a tree. Smoke rose into the air, and the breeze carried it away.

There weren't words to say, and I didn't want to say any if there were. In a way, I felt good to have silenced the enraged monster. Hopefully, in death, the siblings would know peace.

We stayed until the crackling wood turned to ash, and the winds carried it away. For a moment, I thought I saw the fire shift to a ghostly blue, but the roof collapsed and buried it under the rubble.

Devon reached down and picked up the head, but not before pulling a grey blanket out of his pack. He wrapped the head tight, tying the package like a hobo sack onto his spear. With a firm squeeze on my shoulder, he nudged me forward, and we carried on. If he felt annoyed by my limping, he kept quiet.

We retraced our path, passing by the glowing pond. Devon checked the waters before nodding and moving on. As we continued down the stream, returning to where we split up, I saw signs of damage.

Several trees lay uprooted, while others bore deep scratch marks or had gaping chunks torn from their trunks. The further we continued, the worse the damage got till I saw drying blood coating the area. I glanced at Devon, but he said nothing, so we continued.

Once we neared where we split, I stopped and stared at the three dead bodies. Two of the corpses were bears, brown in fur, and had to have weighed more than five hundred pounds. One had its hide riddled with holes, its once beautiful pelt now a sticky mess of dried blood and dirt.

The other no longer had a head on its shoulders.

The third beast had large antlers bigger than the stag's. The creature looked like a hybrid between a deer and a moose; its body shape was an even split between the two. Its death was just as brutal as the others, with one of its broken antlers shoved into its eye penetrating through the base of its skull.

"Devon…" I started. I swallowed. "H-how strong are you?"

He kept walking, answering without turning his head. "Not strong enough."