Prologue — Hunt
“I’d say it was thirteen, maybe even fourteen hundred kilos,” said the old hunter, hunched over the massive paw print, “Assuming it still has the general shape of a wolf, it’d have to be somewhere around two meters at the shoulder, maybe bigger.”
Low whistles, an assortment of curses, and a few scoffs came in reply from the assembled militia.
“Certainly a big’un. Looks like Barra isn’t as crazy as I give him credit for. How old is the track anyway? And was it alone?”
“A few hours old at most. As for company, eh, just give me a few minutes,” the old hunter’s gaze broke from the imprinted puddle of mud as he began silently wading through the forest underbrush.
The rest of the militia men, grateful for the excuse, hurried off their feet. There were three dozen in total, standing in ill-fitting leather armor beneath the dense forest’s canopy, with only scraps of the noon-day’s light filtering through. The single fallen log in the vicinity was quickly requisitioned for seating, as were the few roots that were thick enough. In one case a particularly springy bush bereft of brambles was used as a makeshift couch, but most simply had to make due with the slightly damp ground. Heavy packs accumulated in a pile near the center of the group as the sounds of opened canteens and idle conversation resounded throughout. Spears and the occasional bow likewise made woodland weapon racks out of anything tall enough for them to be leaned against.
“Stay armed and ready, just in case. You never know when something might jump out,” ordered a man, still standing as stoically as he could manage.
“Oh come off it, Lorcán. With a group this big, there isn’t a single beasty or group of them that’s ballsy enough to have a go at us,” replied a man lounging as best he could on a gnarled root as wide as a man’s torso.
“Famous last words. And even if you’re right, my order still stands.” Lorcán shot back, “I don’t want to have to explain to the magistrate how one of you got killed because of some damn foolishness.”
“Yeah, Tadhg, what if Barra’s monster comes around? Something like that could gobble a man whole,” countered a man sitting in the dirt beside Tadhg’s root.
“Well Niall,” Tadhg addressed the man beside him, “a couple of things: firstly, you’re an idiot—”
“Fuck off,”
“—and should leave the thinking to people who don’t spend their days sniffing shoe glue.”
“Sounds to me like you’re looking for a markup on your next pair of boots.”
“That’s the problem with your work: it’s too good. My current boots will last me till the day I die. Now secondly, ain’t no way there’s something like that roaming these woods—not this close to Leighton and not without us noticing. The old man must be reading the tracks wrong or something. Hells, beasties can’t even get that big without aether.”
“And how would you—” Niall began.
“Mr. Hevard,” Lorcán interrupted, shouting into the underbrush, “any luck with those tracks?”
The old hunter emerged from foliage as silently as he’d entered it. “Damn, boy, no need to shout, I could have heard you from the other side of the territory. And no, it looks like whatever it is, it’s alone. And just so you know,” the hunter snapped, fixing a boney finger at Tadhg, “Even before I’d retired, I’d been plying my craft longer than you’ve been alive. So I won’t be gainsaid by some little puke who spends his days behind the counter of a general store and who thinks a few sheep stealing canines are the top of the food chain. The beast is as large as I said it was, end of story.”
Cowed, Tadhg faked a cough and averted his eyes.
Another man, listening in, piped up, “What about the aether?”
“Eh? Oh, well, I will grant that these highlands as a whole don’t have the aether density to support anything actually dangerous. Hells, these woods in particular have abnormally low density. Worst case scenario: it’s something from the lowlands that wandered into the area. It’ll have had to have lost its mind to travel this far into an aether desert, though—maybe from rabies or the like. Even then, it’ll be dying from aether starvation by this point, so it should be relatively easy pickings.”
“Alright everyone, change of plans: we’re going after the aberration; the wolf pack gets a stay of execution. We move out in an hour.” Lorcán ordered, seemingly inviting a deluge of retorts.
“Oh, ho, ho, two days out of Leighton and the shepherd has turned into a grand general.”
“Yeah we didn’t sign up for some monster hunt.”
“If that pack goes unchecked, it’ll be a vegetarian winter for everyone...”
“Mr. Hevard!”, Lorcán shouted, silencing the grumbling, “Have you ever heard of a beast like this encountering a town?”
“Of course.”
“And the result?”
“Well, for a lowland town, with their great big walls, it wouldn’t even be worth mentioning. But for Leighton... it’d be a bloodbath.” the old hunter said, his words hanging in the quiet air, leaving only the sound of the wind rustling the forest’s leaves.
“And there you have it, everyone. It might die of aether starvation in the next few days, but I’m not willing to risk it finding our homes before that. I dare one man say that he’d take the risk of letting this thing live.”
The silence, save for some muttered curses, was all the answer Lorcán needed.
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After the hour break, Samuel Hevard led the assembled farmers, shepherds, and carpenters—or whatever else they technically were. In the end, civilians were civilians, no matter how much they insisted on being called a militia. It was perhaps fitting, though, to have a joke of a militia on a mission in a joke of a forest; the trees the group were moving through barely reached forty meters tall and would hardly be considered sprigs anywhere else.
Samuel still kept on the lookout. His physical hearing had become useless more than a decade ago, but that had never been a concern for him. If anything, his long-since burst eardrums were a boon: the physical sensations no longer a distraction.
The tracks were trivial to follow with his eyes alone: a paw print here, a trampled bush there. Whatever it was, it wasn’t being subtle, and based on the meandering trail, it didn’t seem to have an idea of where it was going either. Regardless, he kept his ears open—‘damn foolishness’, as the boy had called it, was about the worst way to go.
The trudging of the dozens of men, Samuel could feel above all else. It was obnoxious, but with practiced ease he kept their noise filtered out. With that out of the way, Samuel let the sounds of the forest come to him. The usual indistinguishable cacophony was to Samuel an orchestra’s symphony, and like any good orchestra, it had a multitude of players. Six hundred meters to his right, a rabbit made harp strings out of the fern it leapt through. Four hundred and fifty meters ahead and to the left, fox pups playing in their den formed a lovely flute section. Eight hundred and seventy meters behind them—right at the extreme edge of his hearing—a doe and her calf made snare drums out of the twigs and leaves they trod upon. A multitude of other players joined them, and all throughout the great string section of the wind blowing through the canopy tied the orchestra together. All of these vibrations and reverberations through the world came to Samuel, bypassing his mortal coil and resonating directly with his soul. He could do little else in the anemic aether, but simply hearing should be enough.
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Or at least it would be normally, however the brass section was still missing. He could hear no ponderous steps, no bellowing breaths, nor thundering calls, even though the tracks were getting fresher. The ones Samuel was finding were perhaps a half hour old, and yet he still heard nothing of the beast.
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It was nearing the late afternoon and the last vestiges of the day’s heat filtered down on sunbeams through the canopy above. The volume of complaints was steadily rising from the civilians, not only due to the hours-long march, but also the terrain itself was becoming less cooperative. The tracks had led them through a small grove of sturdy, tightly packed trees, each just under a meter in diameter and no more than two or three meters from its neighbor. The moss covered roots, some thicker than a man’s torso, wove above and along the ground creating hazards to either be vaulted over or tripped upon in the dimming light.
“How far is it now, Mr. Hevard?” came Lorcán’s question, the normally stoic seeming man now sounding more like he was pleading.
“Still about an hour ahead. It seems to have picked up pace.”
“Damn this—” Lorcán muttered under his breath, as he scrambled over yet another root. Then continuing, he addressed the crowd, “We’ll set up camp once we’re out of these damn roots. I want four watches of two hours tonight, nine men per watch. In the morning-”
“Stop!” Samuel commanded as he too froze. He had been so fixated on picking out something new, or just perhaps out of place, that he almost missed the absences. The wind through the canopy continued, but all of the other sections had gone quiet, their players not dead, simply frozen in panic.
Then came the creaking of the trees. The noise was sudden, cacophonous and all around them. Every tree seemed to be responding to some unheard call. However great the noise, the motion was minute. Each tree branch flexed only centimeters, each twig only millimeters. But in moments the normally porous canopy above was a multilayered plane of opaque foliage, blotting out all light, and throwing the forest into pitch blackness.
The assembled men froze in panic for a second before calls for torches rang out, swiftly answered by sounds of frantic rummaging.
Samuel knew something was coming, just as well as any of the other men. He put all his focus on their immediate surroundings, but there was still nothing. Even the wind sounded distant, the canopy leaves silent now that they were acting as if they were the ceiling of a tomb. The trees had to be caused by an aetheric working, but Samuel had felt nothing, even when the trees were moving. All that met Samuel were the sounds of blind rummaging through thirty-six packs, the clatter of thirty-six weapons, the panicked breathing of thirty-six men, and thirty-six pounding heartbeats.
No...
Thirty-seven.
Samuel heard thirty-seven heartbeats, the final one was low and powerful, not accompanied by any breath, but so quiet even he could barely hear it. And it was close. So close.
“It’s—!”
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The old hunter’s final warning was cut off by the sound of erupting underbrush and the hunter’s body being shattered. What followed was pandemonium.
Six simply tried to run, panicked as they were, but their feet were immediately caught upon the roots, and they crashed to the ground. Two were lucky in a sense, having fallen temple first and being dead before the rest of their bodies hit the ground. The other four had their skulls trampled by their unseen attacker before they could get to their feet.
Twelve stabbed wildly with their spears into the darkness, wielding hope more than anything. None were successful, and one pierced the gut of a neighbor instead.
Five formed a phalanx, using the dense trees to their advantage, but in the darkness had not realized their defensive line was incomplete and moments later their bodies were mangled beyond recognition.
When the first torch was lit, the living numbered only twenty-four, all in a tight, and complete phalanx.
Then began the siege.
One by one, the twenty-four were whittled away. The archers among them were useless in the tight confines of the grove—their sightlines nonexistent—to say nothing of the dancing shadows cast through the forest by the flickering torchlight.
In that flickering light they caught glimpses of a wolf whose maw and forepaws were already drenched in the blood of their neighbors. He was over fourteen hundred kilos—now that his winter coat has fully grown in—all contained in a form that was two meters tall at the shoulder. And when seen at a distance, absent any visual cues, he could reasonably be mistaken for a mundane gray wolf, albeit one with streaks of vibrant green running through his coat.
Despite his size, he flitted among the shadows of the forest without making a sound, circling the men looking for weaknesses in their line. At times he feinted a charge at a particular man in the phalanx, who would falter, stumbling back reflexively and being sent to the ground by the roots, then being sent from the world of the living.
Other times he would attack head-on and weave his large body around the oncoming attacks. Spear thrusts meant for his head found empty air instead, while his own teeth would unerringly find his target’s skull.
The militia, to their credit, adapted even under the dire circumstances: they made their phalanx two rows deep, with the inner row covering the outer. This shrank their protected area and several packs of gear had to be left outside the protective circle. And these packs, despite the men’s best efforts, were torn asunder and their contents scattered.
Adapting in kind, he faked being struck and made lame from a spearman’s near miss. The ploy gave the nearest men false hope. With a rallying cry the phalanx opened in an attempt to surround him. Instead of meeting the attack, he disengaged and circled upon the men’s open flank before they could close the opening. Though the roots were an impediment for the militia, he navigated them as a blur.
Once, in a single great bound, he launched itself over the line of men. He only had time to kill a handful of men before breaking back out beyond the phalanx, and henceforth the men kept their inner line of spears pointed halfway to the sky.
An hour passed, and the living numbered only ten. The men seemed tired before the ambush and now they were clearly exhausted in both body and spirit. Their weapons drooped in their hands as they stood amongst the trees painted red in human blood. Their leaders had given them promises of ease and declarations of necessity, but both were already dead so recriminations could only fall on the ears of corpses.
Their lupine opponent meanwhile displayed no signs of starvation. It was unlikely any of them actually knew what aether starvation looked like, but he was clearly healthy and for as many of their number died between his teeth, not one was actually eaten. He showed no signs of madness, only his usual intelligence. And he showed no injuries, because the men had not managed to give him a single one.
Prayers had long since replaced curses—the militia seemingly accepting the inevitable outcome, though talk rose amongst them of at least bringing their attacker down with them. Their attacker, for his part, no longer played coy, simply keeping a meter out of spear range as he circled what was left of the phalanx, which at this point looked more like a sea urchin. He made eye contact with each of the ten survivors in the low light. After finishing a loop his demeanor changed: he began walking faster and frequently doubling back. It was his usual response to annoyance and impatience, and would undoubtedly be soon followed by a touch of recklessness.
After a minute of this he stopped, and a moment later blindly charged into the spears before him. He still kept his head from injury, but in the first moments three spears pierced his chest, one pierced his shoulder muscle, two were evaded, and the other four were out of position.
In exchange, the remaining men were thrust into a short lived melee. Their bodies were broken, either underfoot or between molars. Two men did not die immediately. Their midsections were crushed and they were not long for this world, but the adrenaline kept them just conscious enough to visibly take pride in their apparent victory. To their eyes, their opponent would appear mortally wounded, and they could die having avenged themselves.
The last vestiges of the militia died with smiles on their faces. Perhaps the exact moment of their deaths was fortuitous in a way. Had they held on but moments more, they would have borne witness to their victory being stolen away. They would have seen their opponent’s body expel the spearheads and knit the wounds closed, not even leaving scar tissue behind. They would have seen him, still somewhat annoyed, walk away from the grove ultimately unscathed.
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Kilometers away, deeper into the forest, stood a cottage of lichen and stone. A woman stood in its doorway; her hair was pitch black with flecks of white and held in an unkept bun. She was wrapped in a warm shawl and between her hands she held a steaming cup of tea.
“There’s no reason for you to have taken it so personally. Territory challenges happen all the time. It hardly matters that the challengers were a pack of humans,” she addressed the great trees rising from the edge of her homestead.
No reply was heard. The early night carried only the sounds of nocturnal creatures waking, of crickets chirping, and of a woman sipping her tea as she waited for a reply.
“True, but the distinction is a minor one; you’d get the same result either way,” the woman rebutted the forest shrubs lit only by starlight, “Regardless, twenty-seven of them before you started acting recklessly is rather good.”
The woman brought her cup to her lips, but was interrupted by the middle distance.
“I was not interfering,” she refuted, her left eyebrow raised indignantly, “I was merely... helping the situation along to its inevitable conclusion.”