Loss of a Loved One
"Fillin? Where are you brother?" I called through the immensity of Afflicted Forest, the forest that surrounds our city. Strange really, how it was named this even before werewolves made their residence here. I hear howls in the distance, reminding myself that I'm in werewolf territory at midnight during a full moon, and should tread carefully. As interested as my family is in the creatures, we're bright enough to keep our distance. I mentally reviewed beast spells in my head as I wander the forest, in search of a twin whom has run off. Where? Darned if I knew. He never tells me where he goes, but it happens more often as time passes. I strain to remember what was so important that I would stretch my radius of looking this deep into these Afflicted Woods, then I remember. Raina has been keeping a secret from us. One that will change Fillins' view of her. Our family vastly dislikes werewolf hunters, humans that don't know any better than to shoot what they don't understand. I was so close to encountering a werewolf firsthand when a silver arrow hissed past my ear, sinking its venomous fangs into the creature's hide. The arrow's owner slithered out from her hiding spot, and I saw a WeHu rushing to ensure the beast had died. She held her Bane Silver sword high above her head, ready to sink the massive fang into the poor lycan's throat. I remembered my voice, shouting, "No!" and throwing myself at the viper girl. A threw her to one side, immediately turning my attention to the dying werewolf. I tried to yank the arrow free, muttering encouraging words towards the dying pup. "Come on, stay with me. You can live, but you have to stay with me." I urged it. I yanked at the arrow, I pulled, I clawed, desperately trying to free the stinger from the beast's fur. I stepped back, sensing its heart stop. I was too late. "What is it with you people?" the hunter asked, "It ain't human, why do you feel sympathy for it?" "That's where you're wrong." I said, not looking away from the most recent causality of a mindless homicide of the different. This genocide of the Not Normals, this murdering of those who were dealt a peculiar hand in life...I never could really stand it. I turned to the WeHu, my eyes flaring with the fire of the beast I stood above. My soul screaming the vengeance of the innocent life just lost. "I pray no weapon you swing shall ever find its target. For as long as you remain fully human, your hunting skills will be reduced to obsoleteness, your only way of recovering what's yours is affliction." I made sure this point got across, and when it didn't, "By the day you get your hunting skills back starts then the day you are forever hunted. You will not be allowed to kill me, as I know you will want to. No, make that no human will ever die at your hands ever again. On top of that, you will not die of anything but natural causes." I glared at her, an alpha wolf ready to condemn the most recent outcast to forever being alone in a world full of those just like her, "When you come to this realization, that the things I've said are true, you will be filled with such regret that it will consume you. I can see it now, oh, how it will. When you beg on your knees for forgiveness, then is the time I know you've learned your lesson." "You must be insane." said she, snorting in skepticism. "I'm a beast mage." I snapped, "We're never sane." I then walked away, never to see her again. The only thing that affected my life after that was that one of my uncles had disappeared and so had she. I didn't tell her, but I also made her invisible to her WeHu brethren and a beacon to her soon-to-be pack mates. I shook myself from the flashback. That episode has been haunting me ever more, as if it was a message that the sender was desperate to get across...
"I have to go." Fillin urged in the empty vastness of my head. From the scenery of an hour before, my brother's most recent scene of worry filled guilt flooded my vision. Twas also this time I learnt of my brother's girlfriend's terrible secret. "But where?" I urged, "You always say these things. I'm used to it, in fact, but all I ask is, 'Where?'" The twin shifted his feet, looking past the ground towards a nowhere that contain enough courage for him to tell his twin everything. He did not see that nowhere. "The forest. That's all I can tell you." Crystal tears poured from his eyes, realizing that he lacked the courage to trust his twin, "I wish I could tell you more, but I'm not brave enough." He looked down towards that nothingness, that nowhere that he longed to exist, finding a black emptiness staring back up at him from the wood of the floor. He quickly turned and padded away. Padded? Is that what he did? Yes, it is. He made almost no sound as his bare feet...wait, no there were no feet. I stopped walking for a second. There were no feet. I didn't notice as he ran off; how could I? He didn't have feet, but rather dark furred paws. They made no sound on the ground, unlike the bare feet of someone, anyone else. Why had I not noticed before? "I thought he'd never leave." Raina grumbled behind me. Thought he'd never leave? Wasn't she his lover? "That's a bit cruel." I commented without looking away from the grains of wood in the door at the front of our house in the city of werewolves. Raina huffed, "As if. He reeks of werewolf." She saw the grains of wood in the door that I had been staring at. The ones in the door at the front of the house in the city of werewolves. "That's..." "My family's sigil." I finished. It depicted a full moon, shadowed by a lupine form howling at the celestial body. In a complex writing was our family name: Úlfur. Raina's not known until now of our fascination of werewolves. "It's like you guys are trying to get between us hunters an--" she stopped. Had she just said something about hunting? I scanned her face. Clues, yes, loads of them. She's a WeHu, a Werewolf Hunter. Should I feign ignorance? Should I confront her? No, the latter is suicide. She stronger than me and weapons are faster than spells. Ignorance it is then. "Get between who?" "No one, it's nothing." she stuttered. I ignored her obvious dodging of the subject. Or should I have? What would I have gained from pressing her about it? Who she's been hunting? If she's seen the cursed hunter, perhaps? Is she the cursed hunter? I can't remember her face; the cursed one's, that is. What did she look like? "So where did Fillin go?" "He wouldn't tell me." I lied. I walked out the door, ignoring anything else Raina said. I calmly locked the door from the outside with a spell, ignoring the furious rattle of the hunter's newfound cage. I'll let her roam free eventually, but until then she must learned what it's like to be treated like an animal...