It had been at least a week since Arch left the lofty village that resided 30 miles from the forested mountain region that the local residents proclaimed was cursed. Arch doubted that it was that dangerous, despite how worried the wiley eyed villagers looked and sounded and yelled at Arch not to go into the mountains. So of course, to the nature of the slick shapeshifter, she went up into the mountainous terrain.
The mountains, unsurprisingly to the young shapeshifter, were cluttered with a diverse amount of needled trees, so many that Arch didn’t even try to count how many species of coniferous trees she saw. Secondly, she smelled a putrid scent of rotting meat, which she quickly recognized as the stench that appears after death when bodies start breaking down.
Swiftly, the black cloaked, yellow-eyed shapeshifter transformed into a black furred carnivore, with the same yellow-eyes and long snout, with sharp, white canines.
She flicked her radar-like ears trying to pick up any sound in the dead silent forest. She jumped very quietly at a ruffle in the rotting meat of a racoon in the woods. Arch turned around, eyeing the tree surrounded grove in the middle of the needled brush on the forest floor.
Arch snarled at the scent of a living creature upwind from her position. She nimbly morphed back into her humanoid persona, which was still covered in the cloak around her slender body which was attached to a hood which would always cover her head, hiding her face from any eye due to the shadow that appeared under the hood.
“I know you’re there,” Arch hissed watching the dead racoon, which now had a bull elk carcass piled on top of it. “Come out or I’ll force you,” Arch threatened, lowering her body with an unseen but agitated face.
Finally, she saw a rustle in the bushes, and then a poke of what looked like a wizard hat at the top of the bushes. “Wow, I wonder what this random hat in the middle of a bush, floating is doing,” Arch sarcastically stated while rolling her eyes because of how ridiculous this creature was being.
“You, see nothing.” A scraggly voice came from the bush at the same time a bush-headed teenager came crawling out of the bush, wearing a wizard hat with a puke green jumper, picnic table plaid pajama pants, and mismatching shoes. He also smelled of dead, rotting meat, and chemicals, so much so that the stench made Arch want to puke, more than his mortifying outfit did.
Arch shivered at the sight of the ugly boy, so she decided to walk away. She very rapidly transformed into the form of a leopard using its speed to get away as soon as possible. It quickly came to Arch that she was lost in the woods of the smell of death. Everywhere she turned she stepped on another body making the fur on the back of her spine spike up like a cat as it hisses.
She also realized another thing; why would any living creature want to enter the woods that were known to be the estate of dead animals. As soon as she realized that she turned around flicking the yellow, orange, and black ears located on her head. Arch raced up a tree before finding a branch to perch on and observe the forest floor.
Her eyes scanned her surroundings looking for any sign of movement as a brush of wind hit her pelt, that resided on her jaguar form. She hissed at the sudden touch of cold in the air. Arch arched her back, getting ready to leap off of the tree branch of the needle covered tree she perched in.
Suddenly, Arch lurched forward, reaching up to try to get back up onto the tree. She started falling off of the bark where she was perfectly positioned a few seconds before. Arch gasped as she fell to the ground landing in a perfect position four paws on the ground as while falling she had used the few seconds she had to shift into the form of a black, fluffy, cat.
She looked up suddenly as she felt a drop of some sort of liquid splash onto her fur. Arch looked up as the clear liquid droplets started coming down faster and faster with more of them consistently dropping to the ground. Arch shook her head, relieving herself of some of the water in her fur for about a millisecond before more water came crashing down as she realized that it had started raining.
She stared in front of her and backed up in slight horror that the ridiculously outfitted boy she’d previously sighted was staring directly at her with a butcher's knife in hand. Once Arch realized what was happening she raced in a leftward direction through the forest, her delicate paw pads touching the wet soil at every move.
Suddenly, she turned around her soaking paws screeching to a stop as she stared at the murderer in front of her. Arch hissed backing up from the knife wielder in front of her; this had turned out to be a harder fight than she had expected.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked, slanting her eyes directly into the wizard topped boy's eyes.
He grinned, “For your blood: a shapeshifter’s blood is rumored to be sweet.”
“You won’t get it,” Arch replied in a cold emotionless tone as she inferred that the wizard knew how to identify a shapeshifter by their scentless odors.
Not even a second later Arch swiftly shifted into her human form, before launching forward, lunging for the steel knife. The knife was sharp with a curve similar to that of a chef's knife; it was not at all the typical cleaver that a butcher tended to wield. The wizard boy made a fatal mistake of attempting to block the sudden attack with the side of his blade facing the nimble shapeshifter. The placement of the knife allowed Arch to forcefully grab the handle from his hands in which the wizard was forced to let go as otherwise there was a high risk of himself getting damaged in the process.
Arch gasped for air as she found herself in front of the boy again but this time she was the predator and he was the prey. She grinned as she lunged forward a last time, before plunging the knife straight into the boy's heart. She sequentially let go of the knife to swerve to the side to avoid the body that was dropping to the ground.
“You fool, I was going to let you go till you striked, so now you’ve met your fate,” Arch remarked in a snarky tone.
Adrenaline rushed through Arch’s veins as blood splattered onto her face. The shapeshifter let out a giggle as her victim was dead; just like the others before him.