The Huntsman finished wiping the blood off of his axe, then returned it to a loop in his belt. The familiar weight at his hip seemed to put him at ease, and he rolled his shoulders back to relieve tension in his spine.

"Nice job Klaus," he congratulated himself as he picked up the severed head and held it up, face pointed towards him.

He looked into its eyes, which were completely black, as if it had empty eye sockets filled with ink.

"You almost got me with that last swipe. Even with a successful stratagem you can never underestimate Grimm."

Not that this was a revelation to the man. He merely wanted to hammer the notion into his mind for the something-hundredth time. "A careless Huntsman is a dead Huntsman," as the saying went among those professionals. And Klaus Jaeger was anything but careless.

He had been tracing the movements of a Lupus Grimm, a Wolf-Type Grimm, which brought him to the forest where Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother lived. By chance he had encountered the Grimm while it was "hunting."

Grimm don't need to eat humans to survive, but they have an instinctive desire to kill and torture humans, and often eat them for pleasure.

The first shot to the heart with the crossbow was intended to weaken the beast- the only way to kill a Grimm is either to drown it, behead it (Klaus's go-to method), or completely destroy its heart by burning it. Afterwards, Klaus had snuck around to a position behind the Grimm. He was able to mask his scent by dousing himself in a liberal amount of fox urine. It wasn't a move that made him popular with the ladies, but it allowed him to sneak up on Grimm with keen senses of smell, which made the difference between a successful hunt and having his guts spread out on the ground on more than one occasion. Klaus then proceeded to tap his crossbow- it was well-oiled to prevent it from making noise while he was reloading it- to alert the creature to his presence. Thinking that it had uncovered its adversary's ploy, the Grimm eagerly rushed over to the Huntsman's position, confident in its triumph.

The moment you're closest to success is the moment you're filled with the most confidence, which Klaus counted on to blind the monster with a powdered concoction of spices, ashes, broken glass, and other nasty things. The fight had been practically concluded from then on as the Huntsman deftly manipulated its tempo. But, as evidenced by the Grimm's last-ditch effort at disemboweling the Huntsman, the unexpected is the only factor to be expected in battle.

With that in mind, the Huntsman stowed the severed head into a rough sack which he tied to his belt, opposite the axe. He preferred the even weight of a head and an axe on his hips.

Klaus walked over to where he had discarded a particularly large crossbow and checked to make sure it was in good order. He then rooted around in a nearby bush where he had hidden a packsack containing a blanket, rations, and other miscellaneous tools of the trade, including a waterskin, which he removed from the sack to take a drink. He returned the waterskin to the packsack before slinging the bag over his right shoulder, then slung the crossbow over his left.

The faint rays of sun piercing the treetops shone on the Huntsman as he strode away from the Grimm's corpse, back to the small dirt path that ran through the forest. As he stepped out of the trees, he saw a young woman's body sprawled out on the ground.

He had heard the Grimm threating to kill the woman, but humans have an inherent physical disadvantage when it comes to fighting Grimm that can only be bridged by creativity. However; Grimm are often as cunning as humans, or even more so, making the scales tipped heavily towards the Grimm when it comes to a clash between man and monster.

Klaus's feet carried him over to the woman's side, and he saw that her face seemed to be at peace, in contrast with the terror that had contorted it moments ago.

The Huntsman's face resembled granite with stubble and sharp features. His dark brown eyes were almost black, and he had a dark brown mane of necklength hair.

He knelt beside the woman with an expressionless face and put a hand to her neck, which had a healthy hue and felt cold to the touch. A soft sigh escaped his lips, so quiet that it was practically a normal exhale; however, the weight that the Huntsman always carried in his chest felt just a bit lighter.

"You're damn lucky, you know that," he said under his breath with a wry smile.

Maybe its that ugly riding cloak; the universe decided to give you a bit of good luck to make up for having the bad luck of owning something like that.

The red riding cloak was torn where the Grimm and raked her with its claws, but it was still intact.

He looked up at the sky, which was painted a deep orange by the brush of sunset.

"Looks like I'm the unlucky guy who has to carry you home," he said without a trace of resentment.

Klaus moved his packsack to his other shoulder, picked the unconscious woman up off the ground, and slung her over his shoulder.

"Alright, let's get going, Miss Red Riding Cloak."

As the Huntsman tramped toward the village he was sure he'd find on the other side of the woods, in the direction that the woman was running, a large crow cackled as it watched him leave with its obsidian eyes. Neither the crow nor any other scavenger would eat the flesh of the dead Grimm; it would decay rapidly, and they instinctively avoided its meat. A woodcutter or poacher might stumble upon the horrific sight of a mostly-decomposed headless corpse within the next three days and inform the nearest village of their macabre discovery. If the village had been informed that the body belonged to a Grimm, the corpse would be burned and a priest would perform an exorcism on the area in which the corpse was found. If the village was unaware that the body belonged to a Grimm, it would send for a priest and a gravedigger to send the departed soul off to the afterlife with a simple burial, and it would become another mystery and cautionary tale about the dangers of the woods. If the body was not found within three days, it would completely decompose- bones and all- as if it were never there, save for a patch of ruined soil where nothing would grow.

The Huntsman walking down the dirt path was indifferent toward the outcome of the Grimm's corpse after making sure it was dead. The young woman stirred several times during the journey, but remained unconscious as the trees thinned and the path widened, and the trees gave way to wheat fields and pastures surrounding a sizable clump of cottages. A few shepherds gathered their flocks together for the night, and a few farmers were returning from the fields with thick bundles of wheat carried under their arms. A few people took notice of the stranger. Some hurried home, while others stopped to watch his approach. A burly farmer flanked by two youths stood in his path when he got closer to the village.

The man in the middle had his arms crossed over a broad chest well-muscled from years of hard labor, and held a sickle in his hand. One of the boys carried a scythe, and the other had his fists clenched at his side; they tried to imitate the burly man's air of intimidation, but their nervousness showed like fresh blood splattered on snow.

"Hold up a second," the burly farmer said in a gruff voice.

"Perfect, here you go," Klaus said with a shameless smile as he maneuvered the woman in red off of his shoulders and thrust her into the farmers arms- causing him to drop the sickle in order to receive her.

"What the- Little Red? What happened to her? Who are you?"

The farmer eyed the armed stranger with suspicion.

"A Grimm attacked her."

"What! A Grimm?!"

A flash of fear appeared in the man's eyes at the mention of the evil spirits which feed upon the blood of humans and abduct children who stray into the woods.

"Don't worry, I killed it."

The chain of revelations was too much for the burly man, whose brows creased in distress.

"Then you're a... Huntsman."

He said the last word softly, with a measure of both awe and fear.

"Yes."

"... I see."

The two boys faces looked as pale as ghosts as they listened to this conversation.

"If your village has a healer, I recommend taking the woman to her."

"Right. Okay." the conversation took a visable toll on the burly farmer, but he managed to maintain his imposing stance, even with an unconscious woman draped over him.

"Does this village have an inn?"

A fairly large village like this, which was positioned along a trade route, was sure to have an inn, but the farmer's frown deepened.

"I'll be heading out in the morning."

That was the push the farmer needed to finish weighing not wanting to offend a Huntsman against not wanting one staying in the village.

"Yeah. Micha will show you to the inn. Daniel, help me with Katrina."

The boy with the scythe swallowed and scampered off toward the village without waiting for the Huntsman, as if trying to flee from the person he was leading. Klaus followed behind him with steady strides. The other lad supported Little Red's legs as the burly farmer lifted her up by her torso and started heading towards the village.

The sickle was left lying in the middle of the road.