The Wilds, somewhere East of Beltram

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The monster appears at twilight.

Cold wraps its tendrils deep into my bones as I hide, buried in the snow. The cold in the Northern Wilds is so deep, Cyrion's frozen ache is a permanent knife in my bones. I've been waiting here for two days, numb fingers clenching gold-tipped blades. Only my eyes peer out, watching, waiting.

The fuchalla fades in and out only a dozen paces from me, blurring as it picks through a patch of elderberries for the coyote carcass I left there. Thick, ropey muscles ripple under her leathery black skin as she steps over the snow. Thin webbing between her toes keep her massive clawed feet from sinking. She's beautiful, long and lithe like a cougar, except for the wide maw that takes up half her round face, hundreds of needle-like teeth clattering together as they spill past her lips.

I take a deep breath, steeling myself. I’ll only get one chance at this.

Monsters fill the north, most of them small and virtually harmless. They might try to take food or occasionally shelter in our villages, but the monster hunters keep them away and off the roads. As if these simple creatures are the biggest threat. 

But the truly old monsters, the ones that live deep in the Wilds and exist only in myths to most people—the ones that have been around for a thousand years since the world broke—those are dangerous.

They also have the most magic.

I take a deep breath, summoning every ounce of courage I have, and launch myself from the snow with a silent prayer that my knives might strike fierce and true. My heart races, beating with a frantic pace. Each thud echoes in my ears and my nerve endings come alive, igniting with adrenaline that makes the biting cold of the northern wilderness melt.

My blades leave my hands, spinning through the frigid air, slicing the stillness of the night.

She’s impossibly fast—faster than me, faster than I anticipated. Her head snaps around. The glint of my daggers reflects off of her onyx-black eye before she blinks out of existence.

Just gone.

Both blades embed themselves in a winter oak, the heavy thud resonating in the silence.

My ears strain, the crash of my pulse drowning out everything in this frozen meadow. Quiet descends over the trees, an ominous blanket pressing down around me, the air heavy in my lungs.

There’s no sign of the fuchalla. No crack of branches or crunch of snow. The nightsong has stopped entirely, not giving any clues where she might be.

I keep my hands still, palms clammy in my leather gloves, and force my breath to stay even and controlled despite ice-cold dread crawling along my spine like frozen fingers.

Just because I can't see her, doesn't mean she's gone. The monster will be back. They always come back.

A tree creaks suddenly, the only warning before the fuchalla lunges from behind a thick trunk. I launch another blade, fire surging through my veins, and drop to the snow, rolling to the side just as she dives over the spot where I just stood and lands in the snow. Her body fuzzes out of existence, and my dagger sails harmlessly through the air.

In an instant, leathery black limbs rematerialize to my side. Again, she leaps over me, lithe muscles rippling under her skin. She opens her giant maw, snapping at my side. Hundreds of needle-sharp teeth glisten in the starlight, each one capable of rending flesh and bone. Saliva, thick and viscous and toxic enough to paralyze a giant icebear, drips from her jaws, landing on the snow with a sickening hiss.

Then, in the blink of an eye, she’s gone again. The meadow falls still once more, raw with the promise of her return.

I can only wait. She knows where I am. Knows I'm hunting her.

And now, she's toying with me. Coyote offering forgotten, I'm her prey now, and she's playing with dinner.

I keep six blades on my belt whenever I go into the Wilds, each finely crafted, weighted perfectly. As I rise to my feet, I palm two of the remaining three, refusing to think about how she's dodged all the others. If I can get just one into her flesh, I can get what I need and walk out of here unscathed.

The monster roars, charing from a new direction, it's hulking form a blur. Another blink. Another blade lying useless in the snow.

Two left.

She appears and reappears. One moment, she is there, a shadow of terror flying straight for my neck, the next she vanishes, nothing but a gust of wind crashing over me.

With each blink, each sudden reappearance, she moves closer. Moves faster. She transforms into a chaotic swarm, an unrelenting abomination that shifts too quickly for me to track.

My body is sluggish in comparison, dread weighing me down and deadening my reflexes. Each crunch of snow is an avalanche in my ears, my heart racing uncontrollably.

Why did Horvus have to ask for the blood of an ancient? Why not something smaller, like a giant rat-like rottevor or a saber-toothed sirkleth?

Or maybe the question should be, why does Horvus need so much magic? What could the rebellion possibly use it for?

She appears again, jagged claws glinting black in the starlight. She swipes with terrifying speed, and I fall backwards purely on instinct. My blades fly.

The daggers bite into her foreleg and chest, gold-inlaid steel sinking through her monstrous flesh, before she blinks out of existence. Eerie silence replaces the frantic storm of limbs and teeth.

I exhale, a split second of relief washing over me, only to be overrun by a new terror. She shouldn’t be able to blink, not once the blades have hit her. She shouldn’t be able to do anything.

I rise to my feet, scanning the nearby trees frantically. I curse under my breath as my hands go to my belt and find nothing. I don't have another weapon. My blades have always been enough, even with ancient monsters like her.

A nightmare come to life, the twelve-foot tall beast emerges directly in front of me. She huffs out a sound that sounds suspiciously like laughter. I'm helpless as she strides languorously towards me. As if she knows, with a cruel sense of satisfaction, that I've spent all my weapons and am now entirely at her mercy.

If the god of war has forsaken me, then I hope Noctor, the god of shadow, will make my death quick.

My blades dangle uselessly from her dark flesh, looking ridiculously small against her massive form. She’s far from the first monster I’ve hunted, but she is the largest. The four-inch blades that have taken down hundreds of beasts are nothing to her.

I can almost see my mentor, Horvus, grimace at my stupidity. The knives aren't long enough or heavy enough to pierce all the way through her skin. And if they can’t breach her hide, then the golden designs can’t subdue her.

My jaw clenches, prepared for what's coming.

When my home, Fjialldljin, turned to nothing but ash and haunted memories, I knew my life was forfeit. Whether from what I'd just survived, or what my grandfather had asked me to do, I'm on borrowed time. But I always thought it would be the human-type monster to end me, not a beast like this.

In a blink, her body blurs, a dark whirlwind of terror. Before I can even process the shift, she is on top of me, her weight pinning me to the ground. Darkness runs deep in her oily-black, godless eyes.

Pain rips through my thigh, her claw sinking deep, grazing the bone, and I scream. Her wide foot drapes over me, talons forming a prison around both of my legs. Her other forefoot lifts with deceptive grace before she slams my chest into the snow.

My lungs gasp for breath, my vision spotty.

I’m not in the clearing anymore, but a mountain top. My mind takes me into the memory of another enormous creature—truly the largest I’ve ever faced—pressing me to the snow, blood spilling freely across the pristine, white surface.

I thrash under the weight—of the memory, of the beast, I don't know.

The fuchalla roars, pulling me back to the depths of the Northern Wilds where the air is heavy with the scent of pine and fear. All of her teeth are on display, rows upon rows of glistening needles.

She pulls free of my leg, and a visceral scream tears through me. Blood wells up from the wound, a crimson fountain cascading over my caribou-hide trousers.

My clenching muscles lift me off the ground, my vision fading to black and transporting me into a decade-old memory once more: Dark granite cliffs rise like ancient sentinels over a sacred place. The Sun blazes, burning bright, closer than anywhere else in the world. I squint at the outline of the huge beast—a gryphon, rearing back, golden wings spread wide, paw lifted to deliver the final blow.

I'm with the gryphon. And with the fuchalla, vision fading to black between glimpses of past and present. It's as if my mind can't decide which horror to plague me with. Noctor's grip wraps around the edge of my vision.

The fuchalla's claw—painted with my blood—descends languidly. She teases my neck with the edge of her talon, a cruel game that leaves my insides churning. Her other foot presses down, squeezing out what little air is left in my lungs.

A whippoorwill shrieks. 

A good omen, my grandfather would have said. A sign of hope and prosperity. A gift from goddess of light herself. In the stories, the birds always carried messages from the divine, whispering tiding of favour and fortune.

He’s dead now.

Because while the gods can be charitable and sympathetic to our pleas, they can also be callous and cruel.

Still, my head turns towards the sudden bird call. Starlight glints off a dagger, its blade flashing as it swings from the monster’s forelimb. Flashing hope.

Pain sears through my spine as I reach up as high as I can, my head and shoulders lifting off the snow. Her claw digs into my skin, a finger-breadth away from draining my lifeblood. 

I strain frantically, my arms rubber, fighting against her crushing weight.

The blade comes away, and I blink in surprise as the sight of it in my hand.

She presses all her weight into my chest, my ribs popping like crashes of thunder. Pain radiates from my leg, blurring my vision.

With the last of my strength, I take the knife in both hands and drive it all the way to the hilt, burying it in her toe.

Gold isn’t common in the North where the chill of winter renders such luxuries rare and useless. Even harder to come by when it’s reserved for the royalty and upper classes of the South. Yet, the smith in Fjialldljin made these blades when I was just a baby, inlaying the steel in soft, pure gold.

Why my grandfather asked the smith to make them, I’ll never know. But in my life now, they're invaluable.

The fuchalla falls with a resounding thud, her massive body tilting to the side before she crashes into the snow.

For a full minute, I lay there, half-buried, the weight of the giant fuchalla pinning me down. The stars twinkle above. Not dead yet, then.

With a grimace, I start to push and pull myself from under the sleeping monster. My leg screams in protest as I drag it through the snow. I pause to catch my breath once I'm free, steeling myself to look at the damage to my leg as I sit in amongst the red slush. I won't be alive long if I bleed out or can't get myself out of the woods and back to town.

Her claw pierced into my thigh, tearing a circular hole through my trousers and flesh. But she pulled out cleanly, leaving only a little tearing near the top. Feeling the underside, I'm not surprised to find a matching puncture where her claw pierced straight through me. But she missed the bone and major artery.

If I can stand, I can make it home.

My boots are unsteady beneath me as I gingerly rise up, balancing on the monster's forelimb. My thigh protests, pain radiating through my body, but I grit my teeth and manage to shift my weight onto that leg. If only for a breath before the pain becomes too much.

But the leg can work. I can get out of here.

I collect my knives, digging through the snow to find the fallen blades and prying the two that hit the tree trunk out of the wood. Blood drips down my leg, starting afresh with each step—I need to conserve energy, maybe find something to pack the wound until I get home and can treat it properly—but I can't leave my blades behind.

I can't leave what I came for behind either.

Slowly, I limp back to the fuchalla. Resting carefully on her oversized head, I pluck half-a-dozen teeth using my thick gloves and wrap them tightly in leather. Then I reach down and cut pieces from her long, sharp claws.

Tiny patches of fur cover her shoulders on her otherwise hairless body, and I gather that too.

The little trophies fill me with a grim sort of satisfaction. I fought, I won. And these pieces of an ancient monster will fetch a good price in Beltram—enough to support the rebellion for a few months, at least.

Finally, the most crucial task and what Horvus sent me out here to find, I ease myself down and nick one of the thick veins in her forelimb. Thick, dark blood flows from the cut, and I catch a quart in a glass jar. The very sight sends a shudder down my spine, bile rising in my throat.

Monster blood is what gives the kingdom's sorcerers their incredible magic. The more they drink, the more powerful they become. It's an addiction, gathering more and more power until it drives them to madness, consuming them. Eventually, their eyes take on a disquieting black, glassy hue, mirroring the beasts they consume.

But Horvus doesn’t want the blood to drink. At least, I don’t think so.

Horvus saved my life when I was nine, after my home and everyone in it was destroyed. He took me in; he is my protector, my saviour, and I trust him with my life. And in the rebellion, I trust him to lead us as well as he'd led me for as long as I've known him.

Whatever Horvus asks, I will do. Including, apparently, collecting the darkest, purest, oldest monster blood I can find.

With a practiced motion, my boots slide into the metal bindings of my skis. I've spent more time on these two pieces of wood than I have walking on my own two feet. They're an extension of me, and for a moment, my eyes close, bones relishing in the feeling of coming home.

Then my leg throbs and I’m reminded that I’m in fact very, very far from safety.