It was never that easy, of course.

While the unknown archer’s arrow had managed to pierce the beast, the kynokephalon was a titan of physical power, dumb resolution, and scorching hunger. A little thing like sadistic living arrows wouldn’t stop it for long, although Kosta had to wonder how long it had been since the beast suffered a true injury.

He’d battered and bruised it, but the injuries had been as much a result of the kynokephalon’s actions as Kosta.

Kosta wasn’t too surprised when the dog-headed man snarled and yanked the living shaft free with one of its four clawed hands. The beast howled to the blue sky again as the arrow twitched and leapt in its grip, desperate to dive back into the bloody wound, but a simple twitch of the kynokephalon’s brutish fingers snapped it in twain.

Two of the kynokephalon’s great claws came pounding down upon its burly chest, scraping the thick flesh raw and red, and it howled its victory, although it paused to bring the broken half of the arrow to its nose and took a great sniff.

After a moment, the monster raised its black nose to the sky.

Its floppy ears perked up again. The beast’s tail wagged.

Kosta had no doubt that it had just found its prey. That was only confirmed as it sprang off into the woods. Flocks of birds fled, disrupted, and it turned a blind eye to a small roe fawn that came sprinting out on its unsteady legs, bleating in terror. A creature of such little power wasn’t even a snack, though an adult deer who had come to possess some measure of magic wouldn’t emerge unscathed.

He heard the keening sound of an arrow, the yelp of the kynokephalon, and realized the unseen archer had likely predicted that it would come at him like a berserker. Kosta sighed, allowed himself to sway unsteadily on his feet as the exhaustion he’d suppressed came rushing in, but groaned as the kynokephalon howled in victory.

It must have found its hunter.

“Not even a minute of peace!” Kosta complained to no one in particular. The kynokephalon howled again in the distance. “Damn it all.”

Perhaps Kosta would regret this in time, but he stowed away his sword and kept his staff firmly in hand as he slowly and steadily climbed down the mountainside. It was difficult and draining with only one hand, but the kynokephalon’s frantic attempts to scale the cliff had left all sorts of grooves and furrows and crannies that his magic could stick to.

His arm and shoulder positively burned by the time his feet landed amidst the rubble he’d collapsed upon the dumb monster, but Kosta put it out of his mind. Kosta listened keenly for the sound of battle, and it didn’t take long to identify the sounds of cracking trees, the twang of a bowstring, and the snarls of the hungry kynokephalon.

Kosta must be mad to come down from his perch, but that position ensured nothing but a slow death. The kynokephalon would hunt him as long as it must, and Kosta doubted that he had the weapons to truly damage it. Even a fall from the cliffside had only broken small bones or left it limping and whining for a few minutes.

That was the true threat of monsters like the kynokephalon: they didn’t stop. Clymere spoke of more cunning monsters that could weave spells, pluck the minds of mortals like ripe fruit, and sing servants into the world. They could be reasoned with, tricked.

And if worse came to worst, she could bury her spear in their gut and call it a day. They wouldn’t rise again.

But brutish creatures such as this dog-headed man were feral and possessed no such subtlety. They sacrificed external manifestations of their own souls in favor of fortifying their flesh beyond imagination. Wounds would vanish before their foe’s eyes. They may take a hundred blows, but attrition still laid in their favor unless one could deal damage faster than they could recover.

There was a reason that Dytifrourá’s militia didn’t—hadn’t, Kosta realized with a pang—go hunting alone. Two spears were better than one. A dozen would overcome even a brute like the kynokephalon and wear it down through a thousand cuts.

So Kosta pushed forward.

He could not slay the kynokephalon. He could not outrun it.

But he could aid one who might.

There might be logic to his actions, but Kosta still cursed himself as a damn fool as he followed the wake of destruction left by the large monster. Broken twigs, saplings rent asunder, enormous footprints, tufts of brown fur left on branches, its rank scent pungent and overpowering…the kynokephalon wasn’t a subtle creature.

Kosta could only be grateful that the beast was alone. A pack of kynokephalon would have had Headsman Linus himself involved.

He turned away from such thoughts as the sound of battle came closer.

Twang.

The kynokephalon screeched.

Twang.

The kynokephalon roared.

Twang.

The kynokephalon howled.

Despite the fear piling in Kosta’s gut, he couldn’t help but smile. Perhaps the hunter had employed the same tricks that Kosta had. Still, he didn’t want the kynokephalon’s attention turned upon him. His barriers would stop it in its tracks, but Kosta wasn’t willing to gamble on how long that would last.

“Wretched dog!” A voice laughed joyously in the glade beyond. The silver path shone brilliantly to his left. Kosta longed to simply walk away and follow along, but he had no doubt that the kynokephalon would hunt him down within a day’s time if it came out of this battle victorious.

Better to see it dead.

“Stupid mongrel!”

Twang.

“Rabid beast!”

Twang.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“You smell like piss and mold! How does that big nose bear it?”

Twang.

Every snap of sinew marked a new cry from the kynokephalon, although it didn’t sound too exhausted. Just mad beyond belief.

And this was just what the Lifestitch’s hounds had been reduced to. Aretans above, Kosta couldn’t even imagine what an army of these would have been like. They would have been an unstoppable plague.

Kosta shuddered at the thought of the smell.

He used what little experience he possessed to creep closer. Kosta could see the kynokephalon now. Despite himself, a stir of pity welled up at the sight of it. A dozen arrows quivered in its flesh, embedded deep and squirming within their new home. Each scraped and carved and jabbed and undulated, dancing inside the fur and skin and muscle to renew its injuries again and again and again.

The arrows hummed as they did so, the reed projectile singing with contentment as they did their bloody work. He only caught brief glimpses of their heads, shaped of bone rather than the sharp gold-veins of apeironic bronze that Kosta expected, as they plunged in and out of the kynokephalon.

They only made it madder.

Blood streaked the monster’s body, bubbling out of the gaping tears in its flesh steadily. It would weaken the beast. Its endless reservoir of brute power would fade with time. Eventually it would have expended so much energy trying to regenerate that it would collapse, or else the blood loss would take its toll.

It was just as Clymere had said: the militia’s preferred method of dealing with one of these rare, feral kynokephalon was to surround it with a dozen spears and poke it until it bled to death. Her job would ordinarily be to sear its flesh when it was trapped to speed up the process and wring its deep well of magic dry.

Hardly a glorious battle to record in song or marble, but it was simple and effective.

Practicality was the name of the game out on the frontier, and that seemed to be a lesson that the hunter had learned well.

Kosta’s eyes had trouble finding the source of the voice. It would come from one side of the glade in one moment, spitting insults and laughs and jeers, then the opposite once the enraged kynokephalon had charged off in pursuit. The creature was confused, swiping at the air, and bared its white teeth as it snapped at nothing in particular.

He prayed that it wouldn’t see him. The monster clearly needed something to take its frustrations out on.

So Kosta waited for his moment. He didn’t care to go in with a swinging sword or dendrac staff set ablaze by the phaetra core. No, if the hunter could bleed the kynokephalon dry, then so be it. Kosta would have no complaints.

All that mattered was that the monster died. If only it had some nice horns that he could carve. While its bright teeth might be valuable to the right person, Kosta didn’t think it would fit his style very well. The bone might be sufficient to craft something, but he had his doubt that he could even carve away the iron flesh.

A breath upon his neck.

“Why the hell would you come down from that cliff? Are you mad?”

Kosta jerked, instinctively swinging his staff to bonk the unknown voice, but the brass wood struck nothing but air.

“No wonder you resorted to throwing rocks!” the voice laughed. Kosta turned to see a tall man garbed in a crimson chiton with the thick pelt of a red lion draped over his shoulders. The lion’s jaws hung over his head, and Kosta found himself fascinated at the sight of its eyes still blinking and its great nose still twitching. The lion’s eyes stared at him hungrily.

Kosta found himself growing far too accustomed to receiving that sort of look.

The hunter’s hair was dark, flecks of the kynokephalon’s blood spattered across it like bright red beads, and a wide grin carved across his features. An enormous bow shaped from the great horns of a minotaur (and still thrumming with the monster’s power) was clutched in his left hand. The twisted lengths of bone overlaid a core of bright yew, the wood only visible in the grip. Amber eyes watched Kosta like a hawk. “Easy there, killer.”

“Don’t sneak up on people like that!” Kosta hissed. He angled himself so that he could see both the hunter and the kynokephalon, which still rampaged through the clearing with a dozen arrows shredding it apart, only for its incredible regeneration to patch it up. How long could it possibly go on like this?

“You made for a pretty good distraction, traveler. I’ve been stalking the mutt for days.”

Kosta could believe it as he scanned the hunter and his too-wide smile. He swore that the man had more teeth than he should. Several were carved to savage points. Saliva dripped from the skinned lion’s jaws as the remains of its tail flicked behind the hunter.

“You had good timing,” Kosta rasped, suddenly aware that he hadn’t spoken to another human in days. That wasn’t all too unusual for him, not when he was in the midst of a project, but it was normally by choice. Not like this. “I couldn’t do anything but wait it out.”

The hunter didn’t look away from Kosta as he carefully nocked another of his bone-tipped arrows, snapped the sinuous bow string with a twang, and cast another of the singing arrows to pierce and torture the kynokephalon. It cried out in pain.

Kosta almost felt pity for the thing.

“You did well enough. You gave me time to set my traps,” the hunter said breezily. He tapped a stone on his belt when the kynokephalon strayed closer to their side of the clearing, and Kosta heard the hunter’s voice call out another insult from across the glade. The kynokephalon roared and charged in that direction. “It’s a nasty mongrel. Dumb as a rock, but twice as ferocious to compensate. The beast’s been a pest. Slaughtering livestock, tearing travelers apart, digging holes, howling at all hours of the night. Shitting outside innocent hunters’ doorsteps.” His expression grew stormy. “The Headsman had enough.”

For a moment, Kosta imagined the burly frame and black beard of Linus, then remembered his head toppling to the ground. He felt sick.

“Headsman…”

“Headsman Phillip of Yoreme,” the hunter said. He shot another screaming arrow into the kynokephalon, which staggered as it dove into the monster’s chest with glee. It stumbled around dumbly, clawing and gnashing its teeth. “We’re not too far from there. Perhaps a day’s journey.”

Relief struck him. Civilization. Yoreme was a name he knew. It was a tiny town of only a few hundred, just a speck in the frontier, but it was the nearest village to isolated Dytifrourá. Yoreme was around fifty miles away, so few hunters ranged to that distant spot, but plenty of merchants trickling in from Notelos along the silver path stopped there.

He looked at the savage man again. While his presence was like that of a great cat, Kosta felt at ease near him. The hunter seemed friendly enough. Not to mention that he’d likely saved Kosta’s life.

“Kosta Kondos of Dytifrourá. Sculptor.”

The hunter grasped his forearm with a strong, callused hand. His nails were sharp and curved like a beast’s. “Pavlos of Yoreme. Hunter,” Pavlos’ too-wide grin stretched again. “That explains your tricks, sculptor. What’s a craftsman doing wandering the wilds?”

Kosta grimaced. How long had Pavlos been on his hunt? He’d suspected that the Hesperian messenger had carried word of Dytifrourá’s loss to the Dipoli. They would have claimed ownership. No doubt they were already hearing war drums on the horizon.

“Dytifrourá is no more. Dust on the wind. The Hesperians took it.”

Pavlos’ toothy smile only faded a hint. It seemed permanently carved into his flesh. Some part of Kosta still found it surreal that they were talking like this while the kynokephalon rampaged in the clearing beyond. “Hesperians…hells. And I thought the mongrel was bad. You bring ill tidings, friend.”

“Yoreme has likely already heard. Our Headsman, our guard…all gone,” Kosta’s throat tightened. “I was separated.”

The hunter glanced him over. His eyes paused for a moment on the ragged remains of his chiton, his tangled hair, the grime caking him. “Aye. You’ll be welcome in Yoreme, sculptor. No doubt the Headsman will be desperate for whatever news you bring.”

Pavlos frowned as the red ears of his lion pelt twitched, although the edges of his mouth soon curled up into a light smile. His grip tightened on the yew grip of his bow. “Prepare yourself.”

Kosta had only moments. The brush shifted. Heavy footsteps pounded closer. A rank smell drifted near.

And then the kynokephalon, spotted fur stained red and bloodied flesh exposed, came tearing through with murder in its black eyes.

He tightened his grip around his staff. Magic surged in his veins.

The kynokephalon charged.

Pavlos grinned.