“Run, Raoul.”

“What? And leave you behind?”

Alwig didn’t look back, and he said with an ice-cold voice, “You will only hold me back. Just go.”

The boy gritted his teeth. His friend was correct, of course, but could he simply just run away without doing anything? When Alwig could be in danger? He knew that the young wolf was strong, but with this many soldiers, Raoul wasn’t sure if his friend could emerge unscathed.

Regardless, he didn’t want to hinder Alwig, and the boy got up. “Take care of yourself, Al,” he said before turning around.

“That’s what I should be saying,” the wolf replied, eyes still fixed on the soldiers.

Raoul darted away, heading toward the cave.

“That brat is getting away!” one soldier shouted, dashing after the boy.

Alwig got in his way first and tackled the man to the ground, biting through his shoulder’s armor, blood gushing from the wound.

“Don’t show your back to it!” the scarred soldier commanded. “Surround this unholy beast!”

Raoul gritted his teeth and continued running, the sound of fighting slowly fading with distance. Please be safe, Al.

“That brat is there! After him!”

A group of soldiers and villagers closed in from the sides, having circled Alwig, the boy assumed. Raoul needed to get to Agnes soon. And with the thought of the mother wolf came the composure that he needed. He steadied his breathing, shuffled his legs back and forth rhythmically, and shifted his arms in a running posture with precision.

Raoul didn’t feel any change, but he knew there had to be differences. He chose to only look forward to his destination with a clear mind.

It felt like forever before he reached the hideout. Raoul almost fell forward when he stopped in the middle of the glade, looking around and unable to find traces of Agnes anywhere. Did he come back when she was out hunting again?

“T-there he is!” a soldier panted as he entered the glade.

“D-damn devil. T-this kind of stamina must be from dark magic!” a villager cursed.

Raoul ran once more, or he tried to, but his legs completely gave out, and he fell face-first to the ground. Daze took over his mind, but he held on to his consciousness and started clawing at the dirt ground. He wasn’t even sure if he was moving, but nevertheless, he dug his nails into the dirt and strained his arms to push himself forward.

Pain suddenly shot up from his back and stomach.

“This brat,” said the soldier stomping on Raoul’s back, grinding his foot with each word. “Do you even realize how much trouble you caused?”

The boy didn’t scream. He gritted his teeth through the pain.

A middle-aged villager, Uncle Felic, caught up to them, a pitchfork in his hand. “Devil in the guise of child,” he panted. “You will not harm another soul more!”

There were other soldiers present, but Raoul could only watch the villagers with wide eyes. Those who had been nothing but kind to him all his life; those he had trusted; those he wished to have a peaceful life with. They were all dead, and the people standing in front of him were husks of what were supposed to be his allies.

Tears rolled down the boy’s eyes.

Where did things go wrong? What did he do to deserve such scorn? And would his parents have the same eyes as these people when they looked at him?

Pain kept him barely awake, but he could hold on no longer. He supposed they would drag him back to the village. And from what he heard of devils, he remembered that people would burn them at stakes in the stories. Would that happen to him? He hoped his parents wouldn’t be there to see him.

Before his consciousness faded away, he thought he saw a pair of ice-blue eyes emerging from the forest, but he was also sure that he was simply hallucinating.

Giant green eyes were staring Raoul down from above.

The boy trembled under the pressure, and he quickly looked down, only to see black eyes the same size staring at him from below. Then, he noticed all kinds of eyes staring at him from every direction, endless shades of irises spanning in the black space, each pair telling a different story.

One pair was different. They were eyes of oceanic blue, and they grew with each passing second, expanding into his vision until he could see nothing but the color blue.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Child, can you hear me?”

Raoul jolted awake and saw Agnes’s face uncomfortably close to his while everything else was dark. He blinked.

“G-greetings?” he said on instinct.

“Greetings, child of man. I was hoping to ask whether you have been well, but the answer is quite apparent.” Agnes strode out of his vision, and Raoul had to sit up to see her exit the cave. Something was strange about the mother wolf. Perhaps it was how she went away without saying anything further. Perhaps it was how she didn’t help him up. Perhaps it was how distant she seemed.

Raoul tried to stand, but his muscles wouldn’t allow him to. Instead, he crawled out of the cave, and the sight outside sent a chill down his spine.

Corpses littered the moonlit glade, blood still spilling out of the lifeless bodies, pools of blood spreading. The boy threw up that instant, his throat burning with bile. He coughed, slowly looking up and hoping the sight from before would already be gone. It remained.

“Did you…” he rasped. “Did you do this, Agnes?”

“I did,” the wolf replied, still striding toward something. “And I have no regret.”

Raoul willed himself to get up, yet he couldn’t help feeling that the wolf’s back was larger than he remembered. “Why did you…” His voice trailed off, not because he couldn’t find words but because he saw the reason she did what she did.

Lying in front of Agnes was Alwig with swords, spears, pitchforks, and arrows lodged into his skin, his blue fur visibly darker, blood pooling under him.

“No… no, no, no.” Raoul broke into a run, only to stumble and fall to the ground. He got up immediately and hobbled past Agnes to his friend, going down to his knees and grabbing the young wolf’s paw. Alwig was breathing, if only barely. The boy breathed a sigh of relief before he looked at Agnes. “Is… is he going to be alright?”

Suddenly, wind enveloped the mother wolf’s body, spiraling into a miniature hurricane. Her fur seemed to spark lightning while the earth seemed to tremble under her feet, droplets of ice condensing in the air, falling, and shattering on the ground. Raoul watched with wide eyes while feeling the gust, the heat, the tremble, and the cold simultaneously. It took a second for the mother wolf to calm down, the elements vanishing into thin air, and replied in an emotionless tone, “I do not know, child…”

“What… can we do?”

“I have done everything I can to heal him, but as you can see…” the mother wolf said, looking at her forelegs, “I cannot remove those steels myself. At least not without excessive blood loss. I have already tried that with his other side; I don’t think he will last if I proceed with this side.”

Raoul swallowed. “If… If I remove them… will you be able to help him?”

The boy and the mother wolf locked eyes with each other for a long moment, each moment that passed somehow unbearably intense. Alwig was half a step away from crossing the threshold called death, and Raoul pleaded in his mind that there was a way to pull him back.

Finally, Agnes replied, “I believe I can.”

Raoul brightened up. “Then—“

“However,” the wolf interrupted, “that is in the case that the wounds do not expand from the removal, not even as far as the thickness of your nail, which is to say impossible—“

“Mo… ther,” Alwig suddenly said, his voice so tiny it was almost drowned out by the sound of leaves rustling, his blue eyes determined. “I… can take it…”

“Child…” Agnes whispered with a trembling voice. Raoul thought he could see tears welling up in her eyes as she opened her mouth and closed it, but perhaps it was because she also noticed the determination in those eyes of her son that she said afterward, “I understand… Raoul, child, please… please save Alwig.”

The boy took a second to reply, “I’ll do my best.” He looked his friend in the eye, gripping his paw tight. “You will be fine, Al. You will be.”

The young wolf smiled, though it was still twisted and looked nothing like an actual smile. “That… is a given…”

“Yeah…” Raoul said, smiling back. “No way this kind of thing will put you down. You will be back up hunting in no time!”

“Child, we should start.” Agnes circled her son’s body and pointed her snout to a spear on the young wolf’s back. “We should start with this. It is the smallest and most shallow wound.”

“Alright,” Raoul said, moving himself to the spear. He gripped the hilt tight while trying not to move the weapon yet. He looked toward the mother wolf, and when she nodded, he pulled the spear up in one quick movement.

Alwig howled uncontrollably, his limbs frantically shuffling back and forth, his mother holding him as best she could. Blood gushed out from the open wound briefly before luminescent green light covered it, and Alwig’s flesh started connecting and closing. The source of the light was Agnes.

The mother wolf gave out a sigh. “You are doing well, both of you,” she said, pointing her snout to a sword this time. “We will do this one next.”

Raoul and Agnes continued until there was only one left, a pitchfork that was lodged deep into the wolf’s body. The boy didn’t know how much time had passed, but he knew he had to hurry, as apparent in the pool of blood on the ground. “It’s almost done, Al!” he shouted. “Just a little more!”

However, there was no reply.

“Al?” Raoul looked toward his friend, but he saw no light in those blue eyes. “A-Al?”

The boy felt his heart drop, and he knew that it shattered. He had seen death before, but those were all people outside his life, someone he had met only once or twice and never talked to ever again. He had never lost someone truly important to him.

Suddenly, his vision blurred, sobs replacing any words that he could say.

“Raoul!” Agnes roared, the boy jumping at the sudden sound. “Remove this steel first!”

“A-alright,” Raoul said, gripping the handle. Agnes nodded immediately, and the boy pulled out the pitchfork in one quick, yet trembling movement.

Verdant light gushed out of Agnes, covering the wounds and closing them in a blink of an eye. “Get away, Raoul!” she shouted as her body exuded gold. The golden rays intertwined and merged with one another as they made their way to Alwig.

Extreme heat enveloped Raoul’s body, and he had to step far back. The golden light continued surging from the mother wolf into her son, yet the boy also noticed the changes that were happening to Agnes.

Her fur was losing its color, and her body was shrinking. Wrinkles started appearing all over her body, and she looked no different from an old Great Wolf.

Her sacrifices were not in vain, as light reappeared in Alwig’s eyes, and the young wolf manically gasped for air. The young wolf blinked, looking at Raoul at first, then his expression was of pure horror when he looked at his mother.

“Mother!” the young wolf shouted, hurrying to her side. “Did… did you just use your own life to heal me? W-why would you do such a thing?”

“It goes without saying,” Agnes replied, smiling. “You are worth to me more than that, Alwig…”

Then, she collapsed.