Another uneventful week passed.

Mannat left the clearing one morning to go running with Pandit as usual. It was a normal day, cool, windy, cloudless. There was already a bunch of people on the road. Summer was coming. Short nights and hot weather forces people to wake up with the sun whether they like it or not. They stared and whispered upon seeing Mannat, but didn’t speak out. Usually, Pandit would have snarled at them, but that day, he was remained quiet and lost in thoughts.

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” Mannat said earning a glare from Pandit.

The boy sped up. Pandit didn’t leave his friend in dust, since he knew Mannat wouldn’t be able to catch up if he did. The difference between their physical attributes was bigger than before and it was growing with every passing day. Mannat’s vigor was still level nine, while Pandit’s Athleticism had long evolved. Thanks to his height of 5’5” and muscular build, Pandit looked older than Mannat who was scrawny and short in comparison. Their voices were also on the two different sides of puberty. Pandit’s voice was heavy and grainy, while Mannat’s voice still had that childish innocence to it.

Mannat didn’t increase his pace to catch up with Pandit. No. He knew the boy would slow down soon. Pandit had never kept any secrets from him. It was not a matter of trust. Yes, they both trusted each other unconditionally, but Pandit didn’t have the stomach to keep secrets. Like Mannat expected, Pandit soon slowed down to Mannat’s pace and told him what was keeping him occupied.

“I have to tell you something,” Pandit said looking straight ahead and didn’t meet Mannat’s eyes.

“What’s the problem?” Mannat asked, half expecting to hear about some girl, but his friend surprised him.

“Yesterday, we caught a rabbit in the woods.” Mannat was intrigued, but Pandit’s next words turned the emotion into a sensation. “It was similar to the one we found in the old man Sardar’s fields.”

“What?” Mannat exclaimed and hurriedly came to a stop. Pandit saw him slowing and stopped a little ahead of him with his face turned in Mannat’s direction. Both stared at each other. Mannat was breathing fast, puffing his cheeks to bring his heart rate under control. Pandit faced no such problem. He wasn’t even sweating; while Mannat’s shirt was drenched. The sweat rolled down his body as steam condensed into a cloud above his head.

“Did you kill it?” Mannat had two motives behind the question. He wanted to know if the monster was dead, and… to know if his friend had received experience for killing it.

Pandit shook his head. “My dad killed it.” He said and carried on when Mannat nodded. “We buried it in the woods. It wasn’t as big as the one you killed, but calmer. It was small as an adult hare and very lethargic. It could barely jump around. Thought I had a good catch, only to see it shrink up like the red-eyed beast. It stank badly, like a pus-filled wound. I wanted to bring it back to show you, but father decided to bury it right there. I know you wanted to find it because of the Witch’s quest, but we had to do it.”

Mannat let out a defeated sigh. “That’s all right. You did what you had to do.”

When Pandit grinned, Mannat realized the boy had been feeling guilty. He punched Pandit in the chest and gave him a smile to show they were good. Pandit's pupils dilated and his muscles relaxed. It was a job well done.

He wouldn’t think so if he knew Pandit’s thoughts. The Witch wasn’t the only one with a killer smile.

“Where did you catch it?” Mannat asked as they walked back to the village. He watched Pandit go through various expressions before settling down upon helplessness.

“Near the cave where,” Pandit didn’t say and Mannat didn’t ask. They had a silent acknowledgment.

On the way, Mannat asked Pandit to let him accompany them into the woods once again, but his friend was not so sure about it this time.

“It’s been getting harder to hunt these days,” Pandit explained. “Every day we go deeper into the bewildering forest. I--” He glanced toward Mannat and admitted, “I don’t think my father will agree to let you tag along after what happened last time.” He paused to let Mannat understand the weight of his words.

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If it was a few years ago, the man would have definitely agreed, even encouraged the boys to face travesty in the face and fight it with courage and confidence. That was the reason he had brought Pandit along for a hunt into the dreadful, wild forest when he was barely eight years old. That was then, the past, when the man still smiled, and laughed, and made jokes. It was before the tragedy, before the darkness, before the death of everything that made him the man he was. It was not only little butcher whom the monster, the dreadful cave beast, had left for dead. It had also bitten the life out of Pandit’s father Khargosh, and perhaps their whole family.

“I will still ask,” Pandit said after an eon of silence. “Maybe he’ll agree to bring you to the cave since it’s not that deep and we haven’t seen any predators in the forest lately.”

Mannat agreed with a nod.

Half an hour later, they were near the shops and separated for the time being. Mannat entered the smithy and Pandit left for the butchery.

Back at the workshop, Mannat could not stop thinking about the rabbit and the cave. Why was it the cave again? What happened to the beast? What he really wanted to know was if Pandit’s father had received the notification for killing the beast. He also needed to make sure it was dead, completely and utterly dead with no chance of getting up again. They had a way of staying alive, he knew. The only way to surely kill the beasts was by cutting their head and stabbing the brain. It was the only way to do it.

Raesh was once again working on the arrowheads. The month had passed and it was time to prepare another barrel full of arrowheads for the second month of the commission. It was after all not a one-time job, but one that would get them paid all year long. Since it was the first day of work, the barrel barely had any arrowheads for polishing and sharpening. So Mannat was at the forge, working the bellow and pumping air into the furnace. The heat was dizzying and his mind was not on work.

Raesh called him a few times, but Mannat didn’t hear him. He couldn’t concentrate. His tried and trusty skill ‘focus’ also seemed to have given up on him. Moreover, his newest skill ‘computing’ was acting up, bringing his focus back to the rabbit and the cave, as if he was ignoring some important detail about them. Then there was the Witch’s warning. She had told him to be quick, and find the source of the Demon rabbit before it was too late. How quick? She hadn’t told him. Perhaps, there was still time. He definitely hoped so.

“Mannat!” suddenly he heard a shout and his dazed eyes found his father pushing him away. A huge fireball had erupted from the furnace and shot toward him. He would have definitely taken the brunt of the damage had his father not pushed him!

Their eyes met just as Mannat was falling. He saw the fear in his father’s eyes disappear and as the fireball engulfed him.

“Father,” Mannat screamed. It looked awful.

Raesh stumbled out of the fire with a groan and fell to the ground. Mannat quickly got to his feet to help his father only to find the man crawling away, unharmed. The fireball expanded above him into a cloud of fire before disappearing as quickly as it had erupted, but not before raising the workshop temperature by a few degrees despite its short appearance.

Raesh didn’t take much damage thanks to his high constitution, but his leather apron was singed and smoking. It hadn’t caught fire, but the fire had managed to damage one of the shoulder straps. Raesh personally had come unscathed from the explosion, but his favorite mustache and beard didn’t survive the burns. Most of his head hair had also gone up in smoke, and the remaining had shriveled up to the scalp. The side of his face that faced the fire was red as a tomato. It wasn’t swelling, but it looked painful and made Mannat cringe.

There was no need to panic; his father was safe. Mannat kneeled beside his father and checked his body for hidden burns. Raesh arm had met the same fate as his face; it was also red and swelling, which meant no forging for a while. A glance at the furnace told Mannat he didn’t need to worry about his father insisting otherwise. The furnace was on fire, the bad kind.

“Are you all right? Are you burned somewhere?” Mannat kept asking, and Raesh kept denying his worries.

“Don’t worry so much.” Raesh raised a hand to twirl his mustache and his eyes opened wide in horror when he didn’t find it there. He touched his face all over and his forehead creased further upon learning that his beard had also met the same end, as did his head hair. He couldn’t believe it.

“No way… my beard!” He said sadly, but it was true and no amount of touching and rubbing his face could change the truth. His heart fell further when he saw a smile grow on Mannat’s face.

However, Mannat couldn’t see his father's pain. He wasn’t mocking Raesh but smiling in relief. The worst hadn’t come to pass. He didn’t know how he would have handled another tragedy. He was happy that all was well.