Hazen whirled into motion, unsheathing, raising, and slicing down with his blade in one fluid motion. His actions would have been one a nearly imperceptible blur, but he was invisible so they were completely imperceptible.

The Direwolf fell down in two neat halves.

The other wolves perked their ears up, lowered themselves on their powerful haunches and prepared to strike.

Hazen didn’t give them the opportunity. He wove through the clearing and swung his sword again, and again. He used so much force that he felt no resistance to any blow that he landed. He learned his strikes were successful only from the delayed splats of blood spraying from his clean cuts.

A wolf slipped behind a tree, and Hazen chopped down the trunk and felled the beast with the same blow.

One wolf aimed for his invisible leg, another bounded for his neck, and a third darted away, choosing to flee from the invisible terror for easier prey.

Hazen kicked the first wolf in the head, throwing it against a tree. The frightened predator ricocheted off the trunk, and landed on the ground, hard and unmoving.

He caught the second wolf by the scruff of its neck like a pup, and tossed it at the fleeing wolf. He was slicing down at both of them before their bodies could register how many bones they’d broken.

Hazen turned to slash at the remaining wolves, blade held high.

His hand went limp. A dozen wolves laid on the ground, bruised, broken, and diced up. He’d gotten them all

A few of the massive beasts whimpered as they struggled to aise despite cut tendons. Their pleas sounded like little mammals, nurslings crying for food.

He walked up to them slowly, with solemn purpose. His mercy was a flash of steel.

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The whimpering stopped.

The woods were silent for a few moments as the blood soaked into the soil.

Hazen looked around and called out, “Rosalia! Tano! Dina! It's done.” There were vibrations in his throat but no real sound came out. He couldn’t see them anywhere. It was all over and he was still invisible.

He walked over to the largest clumps of wolves, towards the spot that they had been circling around initially. He caught a whiff of fresh peppermint, and a trace of iron.

Hazen knew what he might find there, but the breath still caught in his throat as he felt around. His hand met resistance in the open air and he touched something wooden, smooth, thin and curved. He moved his hand around it until he felt an invisible fist circled around the object. It was Dina, lying on the ground, holding her bow.

Hazen gripped her wrist, “Dina, are you okay? Dina?” There was no response, even though they were touching. He moved his hand from her wrist, tracing the area where her arm would be and then reaching for her body. It was sleek, and wet. Torn apart by the jaws and fangs of the wolves.

Hazen didn’t separate Dina from her bow, despite it getting in the way. She held onto it in life, and he would not tear it from her death grip. He checked her pulse and heartbeat as best he could considering he could not see her. There was nothing. No life left to ebb away.

He got up to continue his search, and tripped over an unseen log. There was another whiff of peppermint. It wasn’t a fallen tree, he knew. It was Tano. He groped around in the open space, and his hand landed on the barkeeper’s face. He felt the bristly beard, and one of his fingers settled for a brief, icky moment in the squishy hole where Tano’s fake eye had been.

Hazen picked up Tano and Dina’s corpses and brought them to the center of the clearing, as far away from the wolves’ cadavers as he could without getting back into the clump of trees. His heart was beating incredibly quickly, his blood was pumping, but the sounds were dimmed. He made his grief as invisible as he was, stuffing it away for the world outside the woods.

He still had a responsibility. He had to find Rosalia. They were still invisible, her spell was still active, so she had to be alright. He reached to take a step-

And something cold grabbed at his ankle, clutched his boot tightly. Something not there.

He crouched and made out a wheezing sound, labored breathing.

“The world needs to know what I did…” Rosalia whispered. “They need to know that he didn’t really…”

Hazen leaned into the space where the words came from, but there were no more words forthcoming. Just a soft gurgling that transitioned into silence, like a fountain running out of water.

“Rosalia,” Hazen said, shaking her invisible body. “Rosalia!”

There was no response. He grabbed the area where he assumed her shoulder was, ready to shake her again. He felt something veiny, bubbling, and hard. Her bone and muscle, exposed.

He traced the wound blindly. It wasn’t a jagged bite, or a tearing jab of a claw. It was linear, precise. A sword stroke. His sword stroke.

His hand tremored. He hadn’t seen her when he was slashing at the wolves. He’d been striking so hard he wouldn’t have noticed if he’d met resistance.

“I thought you’d run,” he said. “How did you end up in the frenzy?” He lifted her body and then reached for the other two, He clutched them all tightly to his chest as he trekked out of the woods.

Tears fell from his eyes. They became visible, drops of water materializing seemingly out of nowhere, when they left his face. Then they disappeared again as they landed on the corpses in his arms.

Rosalia was dead, and they were all still invisible.