I carefully crawled from shadow to shadow following the almost hidden tracks, despite the heavy snowfall I could still faintly see the minute depressions. I loved the hunt, the skill and patience involved were meditative and in my early days, it was the only way to suppress the hunger. I now have other methods of course but I still find the hunt to be the best. I was careful to not make a sound but that doesn’t mean I needed to be slow, and soon I came across tracks untouched by snow. I paused and sniffed the air to detect if there were any traps and found none.

Now that I was close enough, I distanced myself before turning and scaling a tree beside me. Everyone expects an attack from the sides but almost no one expects death from above. I hopped from tree to tree while using magic to reinforce the limbs to prevent shaking and creaking, soon I was close enough that I could detect their residual body heat in the air. I paused and looked at the limb above me and found my little guest staring at me with eyes that faintly glowed a deep crimson. I had long noticed that I was being followed but I wasn’t expecting him to catch up so fast, even though I had taken to the trees I hadn’t exactly slowed down. I reached up to place a finger in front of him and he promptly stepped up.

I had noticed before that the little guest was not exactly ordinary but still to be able to follow me and even catch up was very impressive. I observed him a bit closer and found that he had more magic, a lower internal temperature, a remarkably slow heartbeat, and telling from the frequent nerve firings a very active brain. Hmm, interesting, I gently stroked him with the back of my hand, a very weird animal to say the least. I gently shook my hand causing him to take to the air and land on top of a nearby tree, telling from the look in his eye he seems hungry as well, so let’s feast together. I resumed my tree hoping session and with efficiency, I was quickly closing in, soon I could see the dim light from a campfire through the trees. I slowed my approach and analyzed the situation, three tents with a pair of heartbeats each, two lookouts sitting by the fire, and one person tied up to a tree at the edge of camp.

Unsurprisingly, the wolf was not in the camp but off to the edge in a hollowed-out snowdrift, my first goal was to contact the wolf to see if she actually wanted to get rid of these men or if I misunderstood her message. The object in question, a braid of hair had several strands from different people, all in the group, wrapped with one of her own hairs embedded with a curse, in my own understanding and common tradition usually means that it was a group of people that were wanted gone and in a very bad way at that. And the inclusion of the hair of the one who wants the group gone usually indicates sincerity. But something may be lost in translation here, after all, traditions and customs may look similar but they could have different meanings depending on who does it. I dropped from the tree and landed without a sound and started morphing my body, my bones cracked and twisted, my muscles squirmed and shrunk, and my cloak turned to shadows and scattered while hair started to emerge from my skin.

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3rd person---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The wind howled through the woods causing wisps of snow to fly up and dance around. The night was young, and the nocturnal critters were waking up. A lone wolf with a pelt of silver was resting peacefully in a din of snow, but despite her peaceful appearance her mind was in turmoil about the day’s events, she had never expected the long-dormant entity to finally awaken. For as long as when she had traveled to this land, he had been resting dormant, but something has changed. She sighed and rose up before walking out into the light of the crimson moon, she was looking at the sky in ponderance when a shadow landed on a limb above her, it was a crimson-eyed crow, a herald of death.

For one reason or another this forest was full of them and the wolf had come to learn that they weren’t all that bad, they loved little tricks and pranks, but they were always playful. The wolf looked up at the inky black bird above her when she noticed it was not actually paying its full attention at her but was looking into an abnormally dark portion of the trees. She got an uncomfortable feeling and her instincts were acting up but for some reason, she didn’t feel like she was in any actual danger. She attentively took a step forward and that’s when she saw it, a large hulking beast of shadows emerge from the darkness. It looked at her with a single eye and that’s when she realized, it was the creature of myth that she met not too long ago. Was it here to feast on her flesh and devour her soul, did she anger it in some way with her gifts? No that couldn’t be, from the legends those were the same gifts Thoom the giant slayer gave to be allowed passage through the fields of despair, unless… the legends were wrong?

She was panicking now but did not let it show, any sign of fear meant a sure death. She bravely stood her ground and was careful to not look into its sole eye. Suddenly the small thud of something soft landing caused her to look away. It was a braid of hair, the same she had given him. She swallowed her mounting saliva; she was confused but soon concluded that it may not know what the item meant. With a small sigh, she extended her magic to the braid and gently lifted it into the air before splitting it apart and conjuring up the wind to make human sculptures of snow and placing each individual hair into one before destroying it. Hopefully, that gets the point across she pleaded within her mind.