Amicia stood in a small clearing. It was one of the campgrounds near the waters. She set up a pyre with 3 rabbits in the middle. She had drawn a summoning circle made from blood. She kneeled on the ground before starting a hymn of calling. Her voice was smooth and melodic as it rang through the air.

She carried a bundle of sharpened peach wood stakes on her back. Her gun was resting in her holster. She pulled some matches from her pocket and struck a light. She tossed it into the pyre where the rabbits laid. The pyre lit in a blaze. The ritual had begun. An offering of 3 was made. She sang for the better part of an hour. The fires had dimmed low. The rabbit carcasses diminished as they burned in the pyre. She heard a sound to her left.

There stood a fox. Its coat of fur was midnight blue. It raised its snout in the air, breathing in the smoke from the burning hares. It shook itself as it absorbed the smoke. Amicia looked deep into the eyes of the fox. It considered her. Slowly its tail began to wag. It laid itself down on the gravel and gave a big yawn. The fox appeared to be almost falling asleep when it bolted upright and ran up the river. The hunt was on.

Amicia chased after the fox. She ran fast and hard. She felt her feet pound the earth as she sprinted at full speed. The fox would track down the variant, but it would only show the way once. If she couldn’t follow its path then she was shit out of luck. She was fortunate that this section of the park was wide open.

The fox was faster than her, but she could still see it. It was running into a wooded area. Fortunately, there was still a path for her to follow. She kept up as best she could, dodging around trees and skipping over debris in the park. She followed the fox up a rocky hill. She was close behind when the fox made a sharp right. She rushed after it, but when she looked to where it should’ve been, she found nothing.

Amicia was on a circular plateau, overlooking the river. The drop to the water’s below was 80 feet or more. A drop from this height to the rocky terrain below would almost guarantee death. She drew her gun, scanning the surroundings. It was dark. To her right was a trailer, which seemed to be placed there by the park. To her left was another path that went downhill. If the fox led her to this location, there had to be a reason. If the variant wasn’t here now, it would be soon. There was only one place to check out.

She slowly crept up to the trailer. There was a light on inside. She could see a figure moving through the window. There shouldn’t be anyone in the park right now. It was after curfew and this place was supposed to be locked down from the public.

She took up a position to the trailer’s left. Whoever opened that trailer door would have a blind spot where she was hiding. She heard them still moving inside. She yelled out “Whoever's in there, come out with your hands up!” The light flicked off inside. She only had the stars out for any sort of light, but it was still brighter out here than it was in there.

“I know you’re in there! Last Warning. Come out or I open fire. Your choice.” she said.

“Okay! Okay! I’m coming out.” they said. It was a man’s voice on the inside. She could’ve sworn she’d heard it before. They slowly opened the door. She expected to see a man, but a woman came out first. Then she saw that the woman was blindfolded and had her hands bound. She recognized her. It was Susie Jacobson.

Trailing behind her was Landon Rowlton, the man suspected of having started all of this. He held a knife to Susie’s throat. His eyes flickered nervously to the left and right, trying to find Amicia. He held Susie in front of himself, using her as a shield. She could see that his hands were shaking. Him being nervous wasn’t a good thing. If she just shot him, he could end up cutting Susie’s throat.

He walked to the center of the plateau still searching for her. Amicia crept up to the trailer door behind Landon. She had to cut him off from the trailer. As she slammed the door shut, he whirled around.

“Drop the knife, Landon. It’s over.” Amicia said. Landon backed away towards the other side of the plateau. He dragged Susie with him.

“I didn’t kill those people! I didn’t! You’re not gonna take me in for it. It’s bullshit. It’s all bullshit!” He had the crazed eyes of a cornered animal. She stepped towards him. He didn’t seem to recognize her. Maybe it was too dark for him to tell who she was.

Amicia knew he didn’t murder those tourists, but he did kill Gracie Espinoza in cold blood. “If you didn’t kill all those people Landon, why’re you holding Susie hostage huh?” Amicia said. She needed to keep him talking. She needed to wait for the right moment to put a bullet in him.

“I came to clear my name! Then I found this bitch in the trailer. She ran up to me with a knife! This is just self defense!” he screamed.

Amicia kept her gun pointed right at him. She said, “If it’s self defense then you can let her go now, right? She’s tied up and defenseless. She’s not a threat to you. Let her go Landon.”

He pulled Susie closer to him, using her to cover his body. “I know the whole town’s out to get me! They’re all hoping I'll get done in by the police! She saw me and I couldn’t let her go. Not till I made sure they couldn’t set me up.”

Susie spoke then. “He’s lying! I saw him. I saw him. He went in the trailer and came back out with a hammer! It had blood on it! I knew he would hide out here. He killed all those people and dumped them out here like they were garbage! I tried to call the police, but he saw me. He dragged me inside. He was gonna kill me like he killed Emily and Sam!”

“Shut up! Shut up! I didn’t kill those people. They had nothing to do with me. The police want to frame me cause they can’t find the real killer. I ain’t gonna be the fall guy,” he shouted. He yanked at Susie’s hair and she shouted in pain.

“What about Gracie, Landon? We know that one was you. We have your fingerprints on her wallet. We have the messages she sent you.” Amicia said. She kept walking towards him and he kept backing ever closer to the ledge of the plateau. “What’d she do to piss you off, Landon? Ask you to be a man? Did she want you to take responsibility for getting a highschooler pregnant?”

“She was gonna mess up my life. I barely knew her. She was just a fling, but she wanted to be more. She wanted me to marry her. Like I was gonna get stuck in shit ass Pocatello!” he screamed. Amicia heard something. A faint cry. She glanced around, but nothing. Landon was still rambling about how he was dealt a bad hand in life. “Gracie was just a whore! I knew that the baby wasn’t mine, but she said she was gonna tell everyone how I got her pregnant! I told her that her kid was a loser just like her. I wasn’t gonna take responsibility for a worthless mongrel that’d be better of dea-”

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Landon’s words were cut off as a creature 13 feet tall grabbed him from behind. It had surged up from the ledge below. it was an monstrous mixture of human and fish. Its eyes were bulbous and yellow. Its skin was pale and was layered with grey scales that dripped black blood. Where the blood dripped on the ground, there was a sizzle. Its lower half was that of a fish. The upper half would seem almost human if it wasn’t for the arms. Each arm of the creature had small hands sprouting up from beneath the skin. It had gills full of teeth on the side of its neck. The sound the creature made was so incredibly disturbing. It sounded like a baby crying in pain and a jackal laughing all at once. Amicia was unnerved to see that the creature’s face resembled Landon’s.

Landon was screaming as the creature held him with both hands. Amicia ran forwards to grab Susie from where she fell as the creature was distracted by its father. This was Amicia’s only chance to get her to safety. She pulled Susie into the trailer behind them. She heard Landon shriek in pain behind her as the creature crushed him into its chest. Amicia shoved Susie inside. “Stay in the trailer. Lock it and don’t come out.”

“Wait! What’s happening? What’s going o-” Amicia slammed the trailer shut. She ran to her right where the path going down the plateau was. The variant started slamming Landon into the ground. It treated the man like a toy that didn’t entertain like it was supposed to. She aimed her gun up, firing off 5 shots into the creature’s head. The variant roared in pain. It shook itself with such force that the ground below Amicia rumbled. She almost tripped but caught herself before falling. The creature was looking at Amicia now. It flung Landon’s body behind it. Amicia heard him splash into the river. If the man wasn’t dead before, he definitely was now. The creature charged at her.

Amicia ran down the plateau as fast as she could. She fired wildly behind her, hoping that her hail of gunfire would slow the thing down. She had to draw it as far from Susie as she could. She didn’t want it going back for seconds if she couldn’t kill it.

Amicia tried to get as far in towards the land as she could. She knew that the creature would be stronger and faster in the water. She risked a glance back. It was crawling towards her, propelling itself with two giant arms. It moved by using its hands to dig deep into the rocky earth and dragging itself forward. She re-holstered her gun. Still running, Amicia took a match out and lit it. She used the match to set her satchel of herbs on fire.

The creature grabbed her leg from behind. She yelled out as she felt her ankle being crushed. She was on the ground but still she chucked the satchel of herbs right at the creature’s face. The smoke from the burning satchel caused the creature’s skin to sizzle and melt wherever it touched. The creature howled in pain. It tried to rub at its face and eyes, but this just caused it to pull its own melting skin away.

Amicia almost threw up at the sight of it. The flesh on the thing’s face had been ripped off, exposing the muscle and bone underneath. She unloaded on the creature with her pistol. 1,2,3,4,5,6, Click. 6 cracks of her gun before she ran out of ammo. The pain of her series of attacks caused the creature to roll on the ground. She could see the bullet holes that had pierced the muscle underneath its face. The creature flailed wildly, hoping to crush her underneath its massive body.

WIth an unsteady leg, Amicia stood back up. She pulled out one of her peach wood stakes. She watched the creature flail, picking her moment to charge in. As it started to slow, she ran at full speed despite the pain in her ankle. She leapt up and drove one of the stakes down on its head. The wood struck deep into the creature’s skulls. The monster flung itself around even faster, writhing in agony. Amicia was clipped by its erratic movement and she rolled back away from the creature. She watched the thing twitch a few more times before it finally stopped dead.

Amicia sat there, letting the cool night breeze come into her lungs. The sharp throbbing feeling in her ankle made her grit her teeth. When she thought she had recovered, she got up and hobbled to the creature’s prone body. The Variant was grotesque in form. She spit on its corpse. Good riddance, she thought. She took more matches from her pocket and struck them. She bundled them together before throwing it onto the creature’s corpse. The fire spread slowly but soon enough the entire thing was on fire. She could smell the skin of the creature blister and char. Amicia sat back down on the ground, her leg going out underneath her. She closed her eyes and put her head between her knees. She had done it. She won.

When Amicia looked back up again, it was to her horror that the creature was staring right at her. She pushed up off the ground as fast as she could, pulling another stake from the bundle on her back. The creature was still on fire as it snatched her in its hands. The smaller hands that sprouted from the creature’s arms pulled at her skin and yanked her hair. The monster slammed her into the ground and she felt the air go from her lungs. It had pinned one of her arms to her body, but with her other arm, she stabbed the creature’s hand with her stake. It pulled her to its face and roared at her. Then it went to bite down on Amicia's head. She pulled the stake out of its hand and with as much force as she could muster, she threw it into the creature’s mouth like a javelin. The Variant started choking on the stake stuck in its throat. It flung Amicia away from itself, towards the direction of the river.

She flew past the top of a hill and hit the downward slope. From there, she continued rolling while she screamed. She knew she had to keep her body loose and nimble if she didn’t want to break anything. It was hard to fight against her own instincts. She wanted to go rigid. To reach out towards something to slow herself down, but she didn’t. She let herself roll down the hill until she stopped at the shallow edge of the river.

With shaky arms, she pushed herself up on all fours and got on her knees. In the distance, she saw a light. The light was moving, coming towards the river. The variant. It was still alive even as it burned. She saw it emerge from the woods. It stopped at the edge of the clearing, preparing to charge at her.

The thing screamed at her and she screamed back at it. It barreled towards her, as fast as a moving car. She took another stake from her bundle. The creature leapt up and dove towards her with its hands out. Once again, she was caught by it, but this time the creature dove into the river.

A rush of cold water surrounded her and the creature swam blindingly fast into the heart of the river. She stabbed her stake into its neck. She felt the creature’s grip slacken. Amicia slipped from its hands and swam towards the surface. She gasped a single breath of air before being pulled under yet again. She punched at the thing, but her fists did nothing to deter it. She remembered she had one last card to play. She pulled her peach wood carving out. It was a statue of a child and her mother. She had refined it earlier this afternoon. She used a picture of Gracie Espinoza as a reference for the statue. Amicia presented it to the monster. It stared at the statue with an innocent wonder.

It let her go in favor of holding the statue. It was enraptured. The statue represented a mother’s love for her child. Everything that the creature would never have no matter how many people it killed. As it was distracted, Amicia swam downwards so she was aligned next to the creature’s heart. One last stake. One last chance to end this. She grabbed the creatures skin with one hand. She pulled herself in and used the force of her pull to drive her last stake into the monster, piercing its heart.

There was no roar of pain this time. It didn’t flail around. It simply stopped altogether. Amicia swam towards the surface. She was so tired. Her ankle was definitely fractured, if not broken. Her back felt like one big bruise from when the creature slammed her into the ground. There was a ringing in her ears. She had to keep swimming though. She threw one hand in front of the other while painfully flapping her feet in the water. Finally she reached the shore. She crawled away from the river before she collapsed altogether. She laid on her chest and she cried. All she could do was cry. She shed tears of both victory and horror as the river's waters washed over her.