I walk down the muddy streets splashing and getting dirt on my clothes, although it doesn't matter the dirt only adds to what was aleady caked on; I can't remember when the last time I washed was.

I havn't eaten in the last 2 days, the days are cold the early days of winter, I watch as 2 men fight over a killed rat. Nowadays you could sell such things for a fortune, well of someone doesn't slit your throaght to get it.

One of those men was pushed to the ground, the other jumped on him smashing his fist against the face of the man on his back. The man reached for a nearby rock, a pretty sizeable one at that, and bashed the other man on top of him in the temple. He was nocked out but that realization doesn't stop the consciouse man from beating the other to death.

This was a common occurance now, guards are non existant, this counrty is in anarchy most of the naighboring kingdoms has fallen into similur states, the recent drought reduced food production, then came the wars. High taxes to support the wars led to unrest and eventual revolt.

These kingdoms first turned on each other in times of great need, then they consumed themselves. The noble class as all but been butchured for hoarding food, the only noble families who survived had no food themselves.

With all the dead bodies now disease is rampant and while some fell to the sins of canablism they were rewarded with fatal diseases or turned into wendigoes if they didn't die fast enough.

We had just killed a wendigo recently. Although 12 of us died in that fight we were thankful, the less mouths there are the more food for us.

The man was now taking the rat somewhere else. Probably to somewhere secluded where he can cook it in peace.

I look to the sky, a perfect mirror to the state of things, dark grey clouds cover the sky looking like it could snow, if only. Like taunting us the clouds hold their precious water above us and not giving any.

There is one thing more fought over than food, water. Due to the recent drought there is hardly any clean drinking water and some nutjob threw bodies in the well so drinking that is suicide.

I follow the man, he is exausted after his fight, now is a good time.

"No, this is wrong" I hear somewhere in my heart. That voice has been getting quieter and quieter.

Mom's dead, died of disease 3 days ago. Dad's dead, killed by the wendigo. Who would be ashamed of me if I end someone elses miserable life? Besides he's a murderer he killed someone that he didn't have to why shouldn't I just kill him!

In the end I stopped walking, if I do that I'll just be as bad as him. I go out into the nearby forest, perhaps I can find a rabbit or something.

I come out of the forest a few hours later with no luck. My stomack growled. My through is so dry I don't think I'll be able to talk. As I entered into the village there was a group of people gathered. They seem to be hoisting a clay jar over a makeshift arch 12 feet above the ground.

'What going on?' I thought.

"Get those pitch forks! Put a table on it's edge over there! If anyone's got oil gathere it up!"

"W-What's going on?" I ask, barely able to make sound.

"Another wendigo" the man said in a raspy voice. He was a Y'alin man, golden eyes, golden hair. Look at how far the "golden" people has fallen. "We found a body with the unmistakeabe marks of a wendigo attack" the man clarified. He was a hunter, Dan. He used to give us some meat if a hunt went well, but that's 3 years in the past.

"Where was the attack?" I asked

"Over the the village edge, he was cooking a rat"

That was close, if I had gone through with my desicion earlier I could have ended up being attacked by that wendigo.

"Damnit, why did all of the heros have to die in the war, these monsters aren't for the likes of us peasents to fight!"

"Arent we working on a rule to prevent people from breaking taboo?"

"The hard part is enforcing it. People die and are killed every day and most of us turn a blind eye to it. If we start enforcing rules then the next obvious step is to bring back the laws against theft and murder"

In other words no half assing this, either we do it or not and while none of us wants to be killed the less mouths there are the more food there are for the rest of us.

"Good here comes the oil, Get me bodies! I don't care if they'er diseased we need bait!"

"Fuck you Dan! I'm not getting anywhere near those bodies, I already lost my family to illness and I'm not going to suffer like them!"

Dan just sighed. Then turned to me. "You should get going this isn't a place for a girl, this is going to be a battleground soon"

"How are you going to trap the wendigo?"

"By takeing out 2 birds with one stone. When the wendigo come to eat the oil soaked corpses we will shoot a flaming arrow into it, hopefully we burn the wendigo and the bodies. But just before the arrow is shot we will drop that jar of oil on the wendigo; it was how we killed the last one"

I walked away. It'll be best to hide indoors for now, once the wendigo is killed it'll be safe to come out again. I was the daughter of the village scribe, taught to carry on his profession I learn how to read and write. From early on caligraphy was drilled into me, now that does me no good, I didn't know how to hunt, how to forage, even to make a fire.

I go to my room and pry open a floor board, there were 10 jars of good well water, from before it was sabatoged. 3 of the jars are empty and one that is mostly empty. I took off the lid and finished off that jar, basking in the cool fresh sensation of the water flowing down my throat. I've been rationing these jars since the sabatoge but it won't last forever. Not i just need food.

Fighting of the urge to down a whole jar I fix the floor and crawl into bed. To get some rest.

I'm awoken by shouting and hooting, joyous celebration. I look outside and see a miracle it was snowing! I almost couln't beleive it! Snow! It had only just started but once there was enough to gather it can be melted!

People are aready setting out bowls tables and anything else to collect snow. I start rushing arund the house and setting things out as well then I go the the floorboard pry it open and chug down 2 jars of water. Now i wouldn't need to ration my supply.

As I lay there basking in the sweet sensation of having my thirst fully quenched something felt off. There was no more shouting, celebrating or anything else, not to mention if felt unusually cold did it always feel that cold before?

Curiotisy getting the better of me I crept to my door trying to shake off this feeling of forboding. I slowly open the door and i see the glow of a pile of bodies burning in the fog. When did it get so foggy?

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"Where is the wendigo?" I whisper to myself then I see a sihloette of a large bipedal monster with the head of an elk, the wendigo. Then I see it, the corpse of the militia and something worse caused my heart to freeze. Hunched oversomething was another sihloette, something with antlers it's head bobbing but it was weird the way it's head bobbed seemed as if there were 3 of them. The first made it way to another group of hunched wendigoes and joined them in their feast.

I took a step back in shock, how could there be so many wendigos? When did this happen? Just then something ran hrough the door charging at me, I was too shocked to even scream. A hand quickly overed my mouth it was dan. His cold golden eyes stared into my own.

"Shhh!" Dan closed the door. "We're leaving, get whatever you can in 5 minutes, we will crawl out the window"

"W-W-What's going on?" I asked, my voice unusually high pitched

"I'll explain later, I only came here because I saw you open your door I was on my way out of this god forsaken village"

I went to get the remaining jars of water and down another one.

"So you had water? Well can't blame you thanks to yiu hiding these it will help us survive" Dan said as he drank a jar. "We don't have much left and we'll be moving in the snow you better get blnkets and clothes" I do as he instructed. After getting supplies and stuffing them in a makeshift bag by using a blanket and tying the 4 corners togeather, both of us carring a bag we escaped through the window. We ran from the village into the forest. Snow was still falling and the leafless branches in the fog played into my imagination as nightmares. We ran until I tired., panting with exhaustion.

"Ok we should be far enough away from the village"

"What happened? How many are there?"

"One took the bait, however the trap failed, the archer saw the other wendigos and panicked and lit the corpses too soon. As to how many there are, we counted 10"

"10?!"

"It was a slaughter, I was the only one who made it"

"What now, were do we go from here?"

"To Pyne Village they are the closest we need to warn them. Once the wendigos eat all the corpses in our village they will probably go there" Dan looked at the dark grey sky. "It's getting dark soon, but we can't make camp, Damnit! Why did they have to attack now?"

"Is it more dangerous?"

"Yeah, not only do we need to watch for wild animals but we also need to watch for monsters that come out during the night as well especially during these hard times. Undead, Lycanthropes, you name it"

Dan had a bow strung across his back but only has 9 arrows. We continued walking for what seemed like hours as the fog thickened. As we walked the cunching of dried leaves turned into the crunching of snow; it was still snowing and this fog doesn't seem natural.

"This fog is weired"

"Seems like it"

"Do you think it could be one of those?" I ask, thinking back about a fearsome monster dad told me about. It was folklore and there has not been any sighting of one but rumures do spread. Travelers would come to the village claiming that they had seen one, but they are told to kill any who see's them.

"They are just stories they don't actually exist" dan said almost as if to convince himself.

As we walked we heard the long howl of a wolf.

"I'm hoping that's no warewolf, damnit, if only Boln was were, he's knowledgeable about monsters" Dan said swearing under his breath.

As we walked dan held out his arm to stop me.

"What's-"

"Shhh" dan knelt and knocked an arrow keeping his eye's peeled. That was when I hered a rustling sound, whatever it may be we want to kill it. Monster or animal, survival or food. My stomack growled at the thought of food. I heared the rustling again, closer and to my left. I heared a rustling to my right now and I looked over trying to catch a glimps of whatever it was.

Just then a mountain lion jumped out and dan let loose an arrow. The arrow whistled through the air and came so close to to the cat i thought dan hit it but the arrow whistled into the fog. The mountain lion charged at dan and knocked him to the ground trying to bite at his neck.

"Gaa!" dan thrashed about trying to throw off the mountain lion and reached for his boot pulling out a knife. In shock I just watched. Dan stabbed the cat causing it to yowl and flail around knocking the knife out of Dan's hand as he went for a second stab. The dagger landing in the snow and I came to my senses. I picked up the knife as I did, I felt a tingling sensation run up through my arm almost causing me to drop the knife. My heart beat a mile a minute as I planged the knife with a yell into the back of the neck of the mountain lion. The large cat went limp growling.

Dan pushed the mountain lion off himself. "Paralyzed from the neck down huh,you did a good job" dan said getting up. Then he finished off the mountain lion. "We make camp here, go get some tinder and any firewood you can find" dan took the knife and started gutting the cat.

When I came back with arms full of sticks and a few logs I dumped them into a pile. Dan then showed me how to start a fire. My stomack growled again as Dan cut some meat and speared it in a sharpened stick and proped the stick up to keep it a constant distance from the fire. The smell of cooking meat made my mouth water. Is it me or is the fog thicker now?

As cat steak as just about ready a crashing sound followed by a rumble of the ground met our ears. Then another crash and rumble, then another; getting closer each time. Fear filled me. Dan looked pale, he looked at the food, then at the sound and back to the food; the fog is definently thicker now. I am so hungry must we abandon the food? I reach for the stick holding the steak but dan stopped me.

"No, we run. it will follow us but smell if we take it"

"but-"

"No! Run now! Run as fast as you can!"

We ran, I look back as my stomack growled in protest; then by the glow of the fire I see something huge, 6 massive trunk like legs as tall as trees, a long tail swinging smashed against a tree breaking it in half. 6 Writhing tentacles around it's head. Grunvold, the hulk of the misty woods, a monster of legends and folklore, that which brings the fog and nightmares.

My lunged burned the fog has gotten thinner now but unfortunently with all this fog i have no idea where we are.

"Wh-Where are we?" I asked. Laying on the snow as a huge flake landed on my cheek. Looking at the nightmareish branches of the woods; they loomed over me like twisting and jutting monsters, like jaws opening up to swallow me.

"I-I don't know" Dan panted.

"When will this nightmare end?"

"It's not a nightmare"

"These past 3 years have been a nightmare" It must be, ever since this drought everything has gone wrong. I am going to close my eyes and when next I open them everything is going to be fixed. I will wake up, help dad with his work then go see the man who had just started courting me. Something normal for a girl of my age.

"These past 3 years have been reality"

"I don't want it to be"

"There is no point in denying it, Aeva" Dan scolded me. "This is real! All this suffereing we have endured is real!" I close my eyes, trying to ignore my hunger and let my exhaustion drift me off to sleep.

*Dans POV*

"Already asleep, huh, well it's been a long night." I reach for our bags to get a banlket for her, she'll freeze at this rate. Then I remembered that we left our stuff back at the camp. "Damnit!" what the hell was that thing back there? Why is all of this happening? Maybe Aeva was right maybe we are in a nightmare.

The snow continued to fall and it's not a light snow, Aeva runs a real risk of being buryed in snow if she continues to sleep here. Well I'll keep watch on her. I looked at her, Aev'a mouth as slightly parted, her gaunt face is evident of when she last had food and how little it was. Her golden hair was thinning and has lost it lushness. No would know she wasn't pure Y'alin apart from her eye's and ears, she has a little Saiva blood in her. Aeva's mother was half elf, the Saiva Elves had green hair and eyes, the people of nature.

All Y'alin people are humans, but not all humans are Y'alin. The golden people are pure human, green comes from the elves, blue from merfolk, brown from dwarves, and so on. Humans with blue hair or eyes is evident that their ancestry is tainted with the blood of merfolk. Only true Y'alin are Ooran's children.

My thought are interupped by distant crashing sounds. The fog had gotten thicker! The sounds grow louder, the fog thickening.

"Aeva!" I say shaking her. "Aeva! Wake up. AVEVA!" She drowsily opened her eyes.

"Wha?" she sat up the snow falling off her. Then alertness grabbed her as the crashing and rumble of the monster grew closer. Her eye's widened.

"RUN!" I say, pulling her up by the arm and started running. We jump across a dried river bed but Aeva triped over an unseen log. I puller her up and we continued running we ran from the monster for as long as we could. And slowed to a walk.

"Damnit!" I swore. I don't know were we are with all this fog and snow everything just seems unfamiliure. Hunger made my stomack clench. I feel weak and exauhsted.

A screeching roar met our ears sending a shiver down our backs, it was otherworldly, unatural.

A realization came over me. It wont leave us alone. It will keep chasing us until we die from exhaustion or give up. I stop. Which one of us get's to live? Which one of us meets death? My son died, my wife died, my daughter died, I had to abandon my home, my profession, everything i know is gone. Aeva on the other hand is young, beautiful, has a long life ahead of her. There should be no debate in who should be bait and lure the monster away.

"Run Aeva, and don't look back."

"Dan?"

"I'll draw it away"

"You can't Dan! You'll die" She is almost in tears.

"Everyone I know and love is gone, Aeva, instead of running from death I should meet him proudfully and with dignanty"

"Dan..."

"Run and don't look back"