Azriel approached the scene of the fight after the first blow had already been made. He jumped from tree to tree, canopy to canopy, hearing the anguished screams of his father. As far as he knew, he had never heard such sounds before. They evoked, within him, a fire that had lied dormant till now, a burning rage, furious desperation.

Jumping on all fours like a puma, he popped out of a treetop diving headfirst onto the wendigo, grabbing it by its skull and head-slamming it into a rock while jumping off it to add extra force and break his fall.

The wendigos head was obliterated, and it was most certainly dead, but Azriel kept on regardless. Grabbing the dead monster by its wrist and elbow, he wrapped his legs around the base of its arm, twisted, and fell forward, tearing the bone out of its socket.

Seeing the axe beside him, he grabbed just above the pommel as he crawled to his feet. He was aiming for the body’s soft spot just below the sternum of the creature, but alas, he didn’t have the strength to lift the axe head off the ground, let alone swing it over his shoulder.

Azriel grunted as he struggled to lift it, but it was pointless, and he knew it. The wendigo was dead, and the damage was already done. Nothing would change if he kept on, so he let go and hurried to tend to his father.

Lazarus looked at him with astonishment at what he had just witnessed. No deviation of Fighting Spirit would be sufficient in explaining what he just saw his son do. He thought back to when Azriel spoke of being reincarnated and spoke.

“So, those stories were true,” he painfully chuckled while grabbing his dismembered palm and fingers.

Azriel was surprised at how relaxed his father had suddenly become. It was as though something about his personality had changed on a dime.

“Can you-?”

“Yes, I can. Don’t worry,” Lazarus assured his son.

Setting his hand, he produced from the stigma in the palm of the other living water, which flowed down between the two, slowly bonding the flesh that had been severed. It was a process that would take a few hours, but he would eventually regain most of the strength in his dismembered hand.

“It really is that powerful?” Azriel inquired, struggling to believe such a thing.

His father shook his head, “Never mind that. It is you that I’m interested in. You really are a reincarnated then?”

Azriel’s nervously unemotively nodded, “Yeah, I think so.”

Lazarus set his fingers, bonding each one after the other.

“A reincarnation born from the tribe of Ashur, worshippers of the Father God, it can mean only one thing.”

Looking up at him, he gave a serious look, demanding, “You mustn’t let anyone know of this. It is for the safety of you, for the safety of the world.”

He looked back to his hand and continued healing it with living water.

“You’re still young and weak. You wouldn’t be able to survive long-”

His words were cut short by the sound of footsteps.

“-but that is neither here nor there.”

He looked into Azriel’s eyes with an almost remorseful expression.

“Give me a day. I’ll explain everything to you.”

A group of male villagers with torches and pitchforks arrived upon the scene, Henric among them. His face was dismally dour. He didn’t want to see what had become of his younger son.

Hans approached, asking, “Where is he?”

Lifting his finger, Lazarus pointed to the boy’s head placed at the pentagram’s center.

Henric fell to his knees, bursting into tears.

“Nooooo!” He cried, pounding the ground with his fists.

Only then did Azriel take note of the gruesome scene before him. It was though he was blinded or as though he could not see the carnage before him. Like a bird in a tree or a bug crawling on a leaf, he didn’t notice until it was pointed out to him.

Azriel stepped toward and knelt before Erik’s lifeless head. Looking into Erik’s eyes, he saw something in them. He saw a blade cleaving off the head of a man clad in armor dawning the blue banner, the thoughtless expression the man had while his blood ran cold and is eyes fogged up; they were those eyes which he could not stand.

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He recited a poem, a reading of the legendary hero of the fifth era.

“Thou art dead by thine will, a stronger man than I. Children of romance rejoice, for he lives on forever.”

Henric lifted his head, revealing his face of wrath, shouting, “He didn’t die fighting on a battlefield, damn it! Close your dirty mouth!”

Azriel was confused. Death in battle without fighting, a preposterous notion. He hadn’t thought through an outcome where both sides weren’t contested, where both sides weren’t fought for. Before him now was a victim of a one-sided conflict, and he couldn’t see it.

Azriel wiped the blood from his fingertips to his pant legs, catching Hans’s eye. However, he didn’t push that detail. He knew things would only end poorer than they already had.

Lazarus roared, “Azriel say no more! Erik’s father is in grieving.”

Azriel shook his head, “Y-You’re right.”

Backing away, he returned to sit beside his father, still healing his wound with living water. Azriel wasn’t sure what he said wrongly, but he knew that having done such a thing wasn’t at all unlikely for him.

“I’m sorry.”

Henric ignored Azriel. He wasn’t interested in hearing anything he had to say when his second son’s head rested on a pedestal right before him.

He crawled toward the pedestal, loudly howling deep lamentation. The incredulity of such a happy, healthy young boy, the one he loved so dearly, not being able to even live past the age of eleven years old manifested in a pain that struck him right in his heart, a pain so real he felt as though he were on fire. It was too much.

“Why? Why did he have to die? A father should not have to see his son die. Is this a punishment? Did I-?”

“You’re blameless. It is me who is at fault,” interjected Lazarus. “If I could’ve gotten here just a little sooner.”

Lazarus looked down in shame, thinking about how powerless he had become in the face of the wendigo only for it to be beaten by a six-year-old child, one which may be masterful, but one still stuck within the confines of a six-year-old child’s body and the inherent limitations that arise from it.

Hans stepped over to the monster’s body and inspected it, saying, “This thing here is certainly a wendigo. They’re incredibly dangerous to deal with when you know nothing about them. As a witch-type monster they’re intelligent, spiteful, and know how to conduct rituals. That ritual being the ability to imitate a creature or person as though they were an exact copy in all but mind and spirit.”

Everyone but Azriel had come to the same conclusion upon hearing this. The wendigo was trying to impersonate Erik. From there, the picture became clear.

“The wendigo was probably mimicking a wolf it killed integrated with its pack and killed them all while they were sleeping in this den, and from there… well,” Hans caught his words.

Lazarus looked away from his wound curiously to Hans, probing, “How do you know so much about these wendigos?”

“On military campaigns for the northern front, we had many run-ins with wendigos and other northern monsters. They are weaker up there but smarter as well. They also have less evident skills that make them hard to fight if you don’t know their tricks.”

Hans looked back to the wendigo, pointing at its crushed eye sockets, “For example, wendigo have a skill that makes looking into their eyes, or rather their eye-holes, instill fear in their observer. If you don’t know this and you make the mistake of staring in their eyes too long, the fear will freeze you stiff. You won’t even be able to mo-”

“Shut your mouth, or I’ll kill you!” bellowed Henric.

A few other men rushed over to console Henric patting him on the back while he cried his eyes out.

Lazarus laid back, acquiescently tittering, “So that’s what happened, huh?”

Azriel turned to see his father beside him, smiling a weak smile, one not of happiness, as Azriel had come to think they were for, but for a new emotion, he couldn’t identify. Azriel didn’t know how he felt about the situation. He didn’t know how he felt about much of anything, but he was sure in that moment in time, were he to die then, he would have been happy for the time he did get to have.

Azriel stood back up and meandered over to Henric, positioning himself between him and the mess before him, plopping down on the ground crisscrossed while looking to the ground.

“S-Sir… Erik and I weren’t so close… but I know he really loved you a lot. I just think that if he were to… could tell you one thing… well, it would probably be… ‘Remember me for what we did have not what we could’ve had.’”

Henric lifted his face to meet Azriel’s. His tears kept flowing, but Azriel could see in his eyes that the ice had been thawed. His love for his son was apparent and infectious. It rubbed off a bit on Azriel.

“Thanks… for that.”

He stood up and wiped his eyes.

“You’re a good kid. A strong one, stronger than I.”

Azriel and the others returned to the hamlet while Henric and Lazarus stayed behind to clean up the scene.

When he was just about to return to his house, Hans grabbed him by the wrist, asking, “You killed that monster, didn’t you?”

Azriel looked at him and said, “Yes, why?”

He looked stunned, leaving Azriel to think he said something he shouldn’t have, but then Hans broke out laughing, “‘why?’ You ask me why? Ha- If you had said it any other way, I wouldn’t have believed you. A kid as young as you being able to kill a wendigo is really something’. Generally, that beast needs to be fought by at least two men with kite shields, one attacks while the other blocks.”

Azriel calmly replied, “No, you don’t. All I had to do was grab its head.”

Hans laughed again before ending their conversation and heading back to his hut. Azriel did much the same, turning in for the day, hoping that tomorrow may be a brighter one.