Nimrod Hunter was following the trail of what he sincerely hoped was a deer. His logging village was fortunate enough to have a resident Disciple who was as diligent in her duties to the village as she was to her cultivation, and therefore kept the surrounding woods free of Beasts.

Even a Disciple, however, couldn’t be everywhere at once, and she was naturally more thorough when sweeping through the loggers’ designated areas than through the rest of the forest. After all, the only villagers usually found there were the few hunters and gatherers that supplied the loggers with fresh food and the village herbalist, Simon.

Which meant that while it wasn’t very likely that he was tracking a Beast deer instead of a normal animal, Nimrod has had enough close encounters with Razorhoof Deer and Horned Hares to know he had to stay on his toes. Thank the Five Sages that she never missed a predator Beast. Nimrod had no illusions about his ability to run away from a Fade Jaguar or Roc Falcon.

It was a sad fact of life that a normal human had no chance in a fight against a Beast. Even the weakest of Beasts had enough essence running through their body to deflect arrows and spears. It took a large group of hunters to take them down, and such an endeavor always ended in casualties. Even the most desperate of hunters preferred to avoid such suicidal hunts.

Disciples, on the other hand, had the advantage of the same essence the Beasts were using. They were faster, stronger and more durable than regular humans, and had access to abilities and techniques that let them use that essence to perform feats that shouldn’t even be possible.

Of course, in order to become a Disciple, one had to have access to a Beast Core. And the only way to get a Beast Core was to kill a Beast and harvest it.

None of which mattered to Nimrod at the moment, since he’d reached a break in the forest, and could see a magnificent twelve point white-tailed buck drinking from the nearby stream, less than thirty meters away from his position. The large animal looked to be about a hundred and ten centimeters tall at the shoulder, and he estimated that it weighed somewhere around a hundred and forty kilograms.

The large deer was, Nimrod thought, just on the verge of developing a Core and changing from an animal to a Beast. It would also be worth a nice sum back in the village. Loggers tended to work up prodigious appetites when working, and the fresh meat supplied by the local hunters was a lot better received than the preserved foodstuffs brought by the merchants.

There were no farms in Nimrod’s nameless logging village. The forest was a font of essence, and trees grew back too fast to even consider clearing enough land to plant on. Even the actual village area was in constant danger of being overgrown, and the loggers had to keep felling trees to keep the houses clear. Which was, of course, precisely why the village was located there.

Nimrod carefully took an arrow from his quiver and placed it on the string of his short hunting bow, making sure to make as little sounds as possible. The experienced hunter drew back the string, aiming at the drinking animal, and waited for the deer to lower his head to the water before shooting. There was very little chance of missing at such a short range, and Nimrod’s arrow flew true and struck the large buck’s flank.

The wounded deer immediately started to run, but the arrow must have hit his heart, and the large animal collapsed less after less than a dozen steps. Nimrod happily approached the fallen buck, his knife out and prepared to clean and dress the kill. He’d also need to skin and butcher the deer on site. Carrying the full hundred plus kilos back to the village wasn’t going to work, after all.

Four hours later, with the winter sun starting to set and his backpack full of carefully wrapped up pieces of venison, Nimrod started on his way back to the village. It’d be full dark before he got back, but he figured that today’s cold dinner would be more than made up for by tomorrow’s marinated deer heart. He’d sell most of the meat to the loggers, but he almost always kept what he considered the best parts for himself.

Nimrod’s pleasant musings about the profits and the cuisine waiting for him were rudely interrupted by the howls of a pack of wolves, somewhere ahead of him. He wasn’t particularly worried about the wolves. They were likely attracted by the smell of his recent kill, and would just as likely ignore him and go after the parts he’d left by the stream.

This confidence in the wolves’ behavior didn’t last much longer. A deeper, echoing howl joined the canine chorus, and Nimrod’s eyes widened in sudden alarm. He’d been spending most of his time in these woods for the past five years, and was more than familiar with every sound the local animals made. This new howl did not come from the throat of any mundane wolf, and if a Beast wolf had either found its way into the vicinity or evolved from inside the pack, it would definitely not be satisfied with Nimrod’s leftovers.

No, a Beast would be much more interested in the meagre essence found inside living prey than in the purely material flesh of an animal killed hours before. And unfortunately for Nimrod, even mundane humans had more essence than all but the biggest of animals.

There was no way to know which rank the Beast was. He’d never run into a Beast wolf before, and had nothing to compare the howl to. Not that it mattered, of course. Even an Emergent Beast wolf was more than any mundane human could handle. The only difference the rank of the Beast made was in Nimrod’s chances of running away from it.

With the wolves between him and the village, and the howls growing nearer by the second, Nimrod didn’t have much time to consider his options. It took mere seconds to drop his backpack on the forest floor. The Beast wolf wouldn’t bother with it, but it might distract the mundane pack for long enough to evade them. And he’d run faster without the extra weight.

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This wasn’t his first time running away from a Beast, but it was his first time running away from one who came from predator stock. A Horned Hare might be able to take a five meter leap and pierce a man’s heart through a boiled leather jerkin, but its tracking ability wasn’t any better than that of any other herbivore. A wolf, on the other hand, was a natural born tracker and hunter, and those skills would not be any less prevalent in its essence empowered form.

Fortunately, some of the skills needed to evade a predator weren’t much different than the skills needed to stalk prey. The wind was leading away from the direction the Beast’s howl came from, which meant that only the mundane part of the pack was able to scent him. If he was lucky, those wolves would stop to eat his hard-earned venison, and he’d be able to skirt around them and get back to the village.

Running in the forest silently wasn’t an easy feat, but years of hunting, and occasionally being hunted, had given Nimrod a lot of experience. He started running back towards the stream, planning on either breaking away from his path to flank the mundane wolves, or head back all the way and use the river to mask his scent. It all depended on the Beast’s control of his pack, and whether they’d stop to eat or stay on his trail.

Nimrod kept an ear out for the wolves’ howls as he ran, and it wasn’t long before he realized that any hope of easily going around the pack were nothing more than pipe dreams. He considered, for a brief moment, trying to climb a tree, but there was far too big a chance that a Beast wolf would be able to either climb or fell the tree.

Unable to circle around, Nimrod kept running back to the stream. The wolves hadn’t caught sight of him yet, and were still in more of a tracking mode than in outright pursuit. Which was very fortunate for him, since there was no way he could outrun even a mundane wolf. Reaching the stream, Nimrod ditched his bow and jumped in. The large weapon would make swimming a lot harder, and the water would ruin the string and make it useless anyway.

The stream was deep enough that Nimrod could swim underwater, and slow enough that there was little risk of being swept away or dashed against a rock. It also felt cold enough to make a vetrarbjörn feel at home. And anywhere that suits an ice attuned Greater Elemental Beast does not suit an ordinary human. Nimrod stayed in the water far longer than was prudent, but the cold didn’t seem to be quite as urgent as the Beast wolf hunting him.

Each time he broke the surface to take a breath, it felt like an icy spear was stabbing his chest. And each breath drew in less air than the last. But the wolves’ howls were scattered further and further apart, unable to track him with his scent hidden by the water.

The sun had fully set by the time Nimrod felt that to stay in the stream any longer would result in as sure a death as facing the wolf pack, and crawled, shivering, out. His clothes, fit for a cold winter day, were soaked through with icy water. Hopefully, the stream had masked his scent for long enough to lose the wolf pack. But wolves or no wolves, if Nimrod wanted to survive the night he’d need to make a fire, and fast.

He’d managed to gather a few branches dry enough to catch fire when the howls started up again. They were further away from him than before, but there was no doubt in his mind that they were still on his trail.

Chilled and tired, Nimrod knew he had no chance to outrun the wolves, and he couldn’t afford to get back into the water. But quitting and letting the wolves get him was not something he could even consider. Lacking any other choice, the shivering hunter stumbled deeper into the forest.

Exhaustion, cold, darkness and terror joined together to turn the forest into a surreal landscape where time lost all meaning, and Nimrod had no idea how long he’d been stumbling, with the wolves’ howls coming ever closer, when he broke from the woods to stagger into a large clearing. The mere presence of a clearing in the essence rich and wildly growing forest was enough to shock him back into full consciousness, and he noticed a short tower dominating the middle of the clearing.

It could barely be called a tower, really, rising a mere nine meters above the grass, but for a man coming from a village whose tallest building was the Disciple’s two storied shrine, it was more than tower enough. And for a man suffering from cold and exhaustion, and running from a pack of wolves, it was a gift from the Sages themselves.

Nimrod paid no attention to the tower’s seamless stone walls, having eyes only for the metallic looking door. A door which, thankfully, opened easily as soon as he tried its latch. Staggering into the tower, he slammed the door behind him and immediately barred it behind him. If he had even a tiny bit of luck left to him after this terrible evening, the Beast wolf wouldn’t be strong enough to break the door down. And if it was, well…

Nimrod was in no condition to keep running. If the wolf could break down the door, he was doomed anyway.

The next order of business had to be a fire. Nimrod had his flint bound in an oiled leather in a pouch on his belt, and a good steel dagger he could use to strike it with. He could also see a fireplace in the single roomed first floor of the tower, complete with enough logs to last for at least a week. Not stopping for even a second to wonder at being able to see so clearly inside a windowless room at night, Nimrod rushed towards the fireplace, only to find that whoever stocked the fireplace had completely neglected any sort of tinder. And, of course, what tinder Nimrod carried with him was soaked through and would never catch a spark.

Going outside to gather dry leaves was out of the question. The wolves were still out there, and even without them he wasn’t sure he could make it back. A search of the tower itself revealed that the first floor was some sort of sitting room, with comfortable looking chairs and short tables fit for holding drinks. The second floor was a library, full of books in a language Nimrod didn’t recognize, and the third a bedroom, with a wardrobe full of clothes made in a style he’d never seen before.

Everything in the tower was in perfect shape, and yet covered by a layer of dust from years of neglect. And not one thing Nimrod could use to start a fire.

Hating the very thought of what he was about to do, and yet knowing that he had no other choice, Nimrod went down to the second floor, and took out a book at random. Taking it back down to the first floor, he winced as he tore down the beautifully calligraphed tome and shoved the pages between the logs waiting in the fireplace.

With the last vestiges of his strength, Nimrod took out his dagger and flint, struck enough sparks into the fireplace for them to catch on one of the pages, and breathed on the small spark until it took. The last thing he saw before unconsciousness took him was the merry dancing of the fire.