FSE

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Second chapter is finally here. Was hoping to have it done sooner but, but it turned out to be far larger than expected. So I had to split it up into 3 separate chapters to have it at a reasonable length. So, hopefully, the next couple chapters should take too long to release. As always, Chronicles of Darkness is a very horror and gore orientated IP. So if that's not your thing it's best not to read this.

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Pain. That’s all David felt. His head hurt. He held his head as he came back to consciousness. He tried to think why he hurt, but he couldn’t think straight. It wasn’t the same as whenever he was sedated by orderlies. His thoughts didn’t feel smothered like they always did after waking up from sedatives. They felt shattered. All he could remember was a burning rage. And screams.

He shook his head. Something was wrong. Everything felt wrong. Something was fundamentally different about himself. He sat up in his bed.

He looked at himself. Wasn’t he strapped down? And these aren’t the clothes the asylum made him wear.

“Ah, good,” said a voice. “You’re finally awake.”

David’s attention snapped to the voice and he snarled. The snarl stuttered as realised with confusion that he sounded like a dog. Why did he act like that?

“Settle down, pup.” said the voice. Which was a rugged looking man in a suit who sat at a desk on the far side of the room they were in.

David looked around the room. It looked to be an office. Completely bare except for the bed he was laying on, and the desk the stranger was sitting at. There was a plain door to David’s right and there was a window to David’s left, but the glass was so grimy and the outside so dark that it was impossible to tell what was on the other side.

“You gave us quite a bit of trouble tonight, pup” said the man.

“Stop calling me that!” snarled David. There he was again with that dog-like snarl. What’s wrong with him? His chest started to hurt.

“Why?” Asked the man. “It’s what you are.”

“NO I’M NOT!” yelled David. The rage was back. The rage he felt ever since coming back home to Las Vegas. It burnt in his chest. Burnt so much that it hurt. He doubled over on the bed and groaned. His bones burnt. His muscles burnt. His skin burnt. He hurt all over. He felt red hot and was being reshaped by the blow of a hammer. He thrashed in bed from the pain. He tried to scream from the pain but all that came out was a strangled growl.

Then, suddenly, the pain was gone. All that remained was a dull, burning ache. He panted as he tried to catch his breath.

“Have you seen yourself in the mirror lately?” asked the man. A smirk infuriatingly evident in his voice. “You look like a pup to me.”

David snarled again at the man. This time David was shocked at the sound of it. It not only sounded like a dog’s, but it was a deep, guttural one. One that shouldn’t be physically possible. He noticed then his arms. They were covered in black fur-like hair. He brought his hands to his face, shaking. His fingers were tipped with short claws instead of nails. He brought a trembling fingertip to one of the claws and jerked away when they touched. They were razor sharp.

“There’s a mirror under your bed.” said the man.

David quickly scrambled off the bed and looked under it. He snatched it from the ground and turned it towards himself. What he saw made him immediately throw it away, the mirror flew across the room and shattered against the wall. He brought trembling hands to his face to feel what he saw. He felt pointed ears. He felt the broadened and flattened nose. It’s tip blackened and moist. His mouth was extended into a short proto-muzzle.

“This can’t be real. It can’t be happening,” stammered David. He dropped to his knees with his head in his hands. He had finally snapped. His doctors were right.

“Really?” asked the man. “Your file says that after your family was killed that you were quite insistent about all this stuff being real. So much so that your aunt and uncle in Utah had you committed several times.”

His aunt and uncle. He growled at the memory of the two. The two took him in only because they were forced to and made it obvious to him every moment of every day. They kicked him out the moment he turned eighteen to fend for himself. He’d been living on and off the streets ever since. With mental asylums being the only place he would find a regular source of food and shelter.

He turned to growl at the man for reminding him of them but started when he saw the man. He had changed. His nose was flattened and its tip black. His mouth extended into a short proto-muzzle. Just like David.

David was struck mute and frozen in shock. The man stood up from the desk and walked over to David. He offered the terrified David a tablet.

David took the tablet hesitantly. And saw a video on the screen ready to be played. He went to play it but was interrupted by the changed man. “Careful of your claws. I don’t want to have to buy another tablet.”

David curled a finger and used his knuckle to play the video. The video showed security footage of a hospital hallway.

“What is this?” he asked the man. The sight of the hallway on the tablet’s screen made David’s stomach drop and he didn’t know why.

“It’s security footage of your room back at the asylum you were recently committed to.” answered the man.

“Why are you making me watch this?” asked David. His hands started to tremble as a nurse appeared on screen. A short latina. He recognised her, she was one of the only people at the asylum that were kind to him. Even though she was clearly unnerved and afraid of him. She even snuck him an extra pudding cup at times when he wasn’t supposed to get any.

He fearfully shook his head as he saw her try and open his room’s door before getting a nearby orderly to help. He tried to look away but the man growled at him in a deep snarl.

“Don't look away,” he ordered.

David wanted to ignore him. But something compelled him to comply. His eyes teared up when he saw his door shatter outwards. He saw the orderly’s chest get caved in. He saw what stalked out of his room. A beast. A wolf with fur so black he looked like a shadow made manifest. He saw how the nurse screamed before she was set upon by the beast. His hands shook as he watched the slaughter. His slaughter. Cracking sounds started coming from the tablet before the screen was covered in a spider web of cracks. The screen then turned black and the tablet bent as David broke it.

“God fucking damn it,” said the man to himself.

“I look just like it...” David said in terrified shock and stared blankly at the broken tablet. He saw clearly in his mind’s eye the werewolf that killed his family. His brother convulsing on the ground. His brains spread across the hot, dry grass. He heard his parents' screams. The sound of their flesh and bones being torn apart.

David started hurting again, his claws grew longer and pierced the broken tablet.

“Stop,” ordered the man again with the same strangely commanding voice.

David, with tears streaming down his face, looked at the man. Who had shifted back to a human form. “Why did you make me watch that?”

“Because you need to know what you did,” answered the man.

“Why?” David asked again.

“So you can never let it happen again,” said the man. “And we can help with that.”

“Who’s ‘we’?” asked David as he wiped the tears away with his overly hairy arms.

“Who do you think is in charge of Las Vegas?” asked the man.

“The Mafia,” answered David.

The man chuckled, “A mafia of sorts.”

He put a hand into his jacket and pulled out a pamphlet and handed it to David. The cover of the pamphlet had a picture of a stylized silhouette of the Las Vegas Strip skyline with a large Half Moon and a baying wolf’s head. Below that was a laurel wreath and a pentacle.

David took a few minutes to read the pamphlet. Kindred and Awakened? What the hell were those? He asked the man as much.

“Vampires and mages,” answered the man.

“What?!” asked David in disbelief.

“There’s more to the world than you could possibly know,” said the man. “Like the things that you could see but no one else could. Those weren’t hallucinations. They were spirits and ghosts.”

David’s attention was piqued. “Ghosts?”

The man raised an eyebrow. “The restless dead interest you? I can think of a tribe that’d love to have you.”

“Tribe?” asked David.

“Us werewolves, Uratha or The People as we call ourselves, are separated into different tribes. All of them with different specialties. One of them being the Bone Shadows. Their specialty being spirits and ghosts,” explained the man.

“This your tribe?” asked David, suspicious that the man wanted to recruit him as a personal underling.

“No,” answered the man. “Mine is the Iron Masters. While I’d love to have you in my tribe. I have the distinct feeling that your territory would benefit most by having you join the Bone Shadows.”

“Why would I want to join any tribe?” asked David. He was acting stubborn. He didn’t like feeling like he was being forced into something.

“It’d be a waste of your talents,” said the man.

“Talents?” scoffed David.

“Yes, talents.” said the man with a nod. “Your file has a truly impressive amount of incident reports where you clearly identified a spirit’s nature and tried to intervene to save the human who was being Urged by them. As well as the other humans that that Urged human would’ve harmed. Not many who don’t know The Truth have such an innate understanding of spirits. Even more so someone like you who wasn’t born with your gift and gained it later in life.”

“I wouldn’t call seeing that shit a gift.” spat David.

The man rolled his eyes. “Gift. Curse. It’s what you make of it. Think of it as a curse and it’ll be one. All Mother Luna did was deal you the cards. It’s up to you to turn it into a winning hand.”

“What makes you think I want anything to do with this lunacy?” asked David. Finally standing up to square up with the man. He wanted to grab the man by the throat and wring it.

The man crossed his arms and shifted back into his wolf-man form. He glared down at David who couldn’t help but sit back down and look away. Something deep inside him, some primal instinct, told him that he had massively fucked up by trying to intimidate the man.

A long, low growl came from the man which made David tremble and give a small, uncontrolled canine whine in response.

“Do you really want to go back to being on the streets?” asked the man.

David trembled under the man’s intense gaze but didn’t answer. He’d spent the past eight years on and off the streets since his aunt and uncle kicked him out. He’d survive.

The man’s tone changed. No longer harsh, now softer and sympathetic. “Back to being alone?”

That was like a punch to the gut for David. He had been alone for the past sixteen years since his family died. He didn’t know why only now that the concept of being alone terrified him so much. He couldn’t help but whine again.

He looked up at the man who had a hand held out to David.

David raised a clawed hand and hesitantly took it.

***

The next two weeks were a whirlwind of constant non-stop training and the days started blurring together. The man, whose name David never got, left the warehouse when the Bone Shadow tribe he told David about about arrived.

It was them that they taught him to shift out of the wolf-man form he had found himself stuck in. Dalu they called that specific form. They also taught David how to shapeshift into two other forms. Urhan, which was a regular wolf, and Urshal, which was a monstrous wolf the size of a bull. Also called the hellhound form. They didn’t teach him to shift into the form he had taken in the asylum, Garu. The war form.

For that he was thankful. Learning to change into the differing forms was torturous. It tore him apart, mind, body, and soul each time to change form. The more drastically different it was from his base human form, the worse it was. He also found, to his utter mortification, that whenever he shifted to these more drastic forms that it shredded they clothes they gave him. But they always seem to have an extra change of clothes for him to immediately change into when he shifted back to his human form. What they called Hishu.

He never caught the name of any of his teachers. They never stayed long enough or he was too distracted with the lesson at hand to remember them.

Like now. He sat in the middle of a room by himself as he tried to keep his composure as he was blasted with overstimulating music, flashing lights, and smells.

The noise, because David hesitated to call it music, was ear piercing. It was nothing but discordant screaming and abuse of wind and string instruments played so loud on hidden speakers that he could feel the beat of the deepest notes in his stomach. There was also constant, unyielding high pitched squealing underneath it all that not even plugging his ears with fingers could block.

The lights were disorientating. Seizure inducing to the photosensitive. It was an erratic flashing of colours so bright that they would break through his attempts at closing his eyes and covering his eyes with his hands.

And the smell. It made him want to retch. It smelt of a noxious and suffocating blend of bleach and rancid cat piss. It was the first thing he noticed when they tried to have him enter the room. He tried to break away from them, but they grabbed him before he could take a second step and threw him into the room and locked the door behind him. He had beaten at the door, which was just a cheap plywood one, to try and break it down. But for some reason it held firm.

When he eventually gave up trying to break down the door, he had curled up into a whimpering ball trying to block it all out.

He was curled up like that for what felt like hours. If it actually was, he couldn’t tell. There was nothing in the room that helped him tell the time. He didn’t know what his mentors wanted from him. He wondered if there wasn’t any actual lesson to be learnt and that they just wanted to torture him.

He growled at the revelation, and rage boiled in his chest.

He opened his eyes. Something felt wrong. It was his rage, but something about it also felt foreign. Like it was being forced upon him. Stoked by an outside force. Like the night that fateful night a few nights before just before he Changed.

He looked around the room, sounds, lights, and smells suddenly at the back of his mind. The hair in the back of his neck raised as he felt like he was being watched. He snarled, he couldn’t see what it was but he knew it was there. Somewhere.

Ever since he Changed he could no longer see spirits anymore. Initially, he thought it a blessing that he could no longer see the spirits that tormented him for so long. But as time went on, he couldn’t help but feel a growing sense of paranoia. Seeing spirits always attracted their attention, but he could at least see them coming.

He remembered one of his mentors, a small old woman with clouded eyes. Despite her bad vision she had the uncanny ability to look David in the eye and follow him as if her vision was crystal clear. All of his mentors were intimidating to him but she was the most intimidating to him out of them all. He first met her after he failed to shift out of his Urhan form, his wolf form. He felt the atmosphere of the room change the moment she walked in and he couldn’t help but tuck his tail and cower before her.

She taught, with no kind words after getting him back into human form, how to look into the spirit world like he could before. But this time, be able to control when he could. And he did so now, his eyes watered as he shifted them to see past the veil that separated the physical world from the Spirit World.

He looked around the room again, doing his best to ignore the lights, sounds, and smells. He saw it then. In the room with him yet also out of it. Pressing against the veil between worlds, what his mentors called the Gauntlet, was a cloud of smoke and embers. The same embers that followed him from his childhood home to the asylum. He growled at it and the embers pressed more insistingly against the Gauntlet.

David wondered why a fire spirit would be so interested in him. The noise, sounds, and smell was distracting him from figuring out why. He put the thought aside and endured the room until his mentors came back for him after what felt like a millennia.

His ears rang for several hours afterwards which kept him from sleeping. So he spent the night pacing around his room. He had tried to leave, but like always, his door was locked. He could’ve tried breaking out but he had the feeling he was being kept an eye on the entire time and would be caught immediately.

A feeling that was proven correct when his door opened and a man with fluffy red hair popped his head in. He looked to be only a couple years younger than David and about half a head shorter. He'd often seen the man following around on of David's older looking mentors doing what the mentor told him and occasionally, hesitantly, interrupting her to inform her of things that David didn't understand. The man was the polar opposite of his mentors. They were cold and aloof, but he was cheerful and kind. Annoyingly so.

“You okay, David?” he asked, concerned. “You’ve been pacing around your room for the past few hours. You’re usually asleep by now.”

“You’ve been spying on me?”

“Yeah,” he said in a tone like it was an obvious fact. “Someone has to, and Elder Howls-For-Lost-Skies asked me to do it.”

David scoffed. Just like the asylum.

“You didn’t answer my question,” said the redhead.

“Can’t sleep,” answered David.

“Come on then,” said the redhead before opening the door fully.

“What?” asked David, confused.

“Walk with me,” said the man again while waving David over.

“Why?” asked David, even more confused. This never happened at any of the asylums he was committed to. Being allowed to just walk around.

“To clear your head,” said the man before coming into the room and ushered David out of it. “Now come on. I know you don’t want to be cooped up in your room all the time.”

David stood in the small, plain hallway of the office area of the warehouse he’d been staying and being taught at. He could run away. He was free to. But faced with this sudden freedom, David was at complete loss at what to do.

The redhead snapped him out of it by asking, “Anywhere you wanna go?”

There were only two directions to go in the small hallway, so he turned around and started walking.

“Except there,” said the redhead.

David spun around and glared at the shorter man who was unaffected by David’s glare. That surprised David. He was used to people getting unnerved when he looked at them, but all these werewolves he met were unaffected at best, and amused at worst.

“What?” asked the man. “They’re getting tomorrow’s test ready for you. It’s an important test too. So can’t let you cheat.”

“Can’t or won’t?” asked David.

“Both,” said the redhead. He turned and walked away from the direction David chose.

David grumbled to himself and followed. The man talked the entire time and David tried to listen but he was continuously distracted by a multitude of strange smells coming from the man, specifically a really strong, artificial fruity smell. But also the incessant ringing from his prior lesson.

The man noticed David was distracted and saw him rubbing the inside of his ear with a finger.

“You alright?” he asked.

“My ears won’t stop ringing,” said David.

“Ah, okay,” realised the man. “I heard of a way to help with that. Cover your ears with your hands so your fingers are on the back of your head.”

David did what he was told but looked at the short redhead with confusion.

“Now drum your fingers,” said the redhead.

David did so and was surprised to find the ringing suddenly diminish. It wasn’t gone, but it reduced to the point that he could ignore it.

“Better?” he asked.

David nodded and they continued walking until the pair eventually made their way outside. “Am I gonna have to constantly do that?”

The redhead shook his head.

“No. You’re an Uratha now. So you’ll regenerate your hearing back in probably-” he paused and thought to himself for a moment. “-an hour or so. Though if you were still a wolf-blood like me it would’ve been permanent.”

“You’re not a werewolf?” asked David, surprised.

The man shook his head. “Not yet, no. But everyone else in my family was. So it’s just a matter of time.”

“Why would you want that?” asked David.

“Why wouldn’t I?” replied the man. “To be able to run along with the pack as a proper equal. Surely you’ve felt that. Deep down.”

He did, but David didn’t want to admit that. He sniffled, the strong fruity smell was still irritating his nose. He covered his nose to try and block it out.

The man raised an eyebrow in question at David’s action.

“You smell really strongly of fake fruit,” David said through his hand.

“Ohhhh,” said the man before stepping upwind to give David space. “Sorry, that’s just my shampoo.”

“How much do you use?” David asked after he took his hand away from his nose.

“Just a normal amount,” said the redhead. “It’s just that since your First Change your senses have become a lot more sensitive. Far more than a regular human could possibly dream of having. You’re just not used to them yet.”

He pointed to his ear, “You know that high pitched squeal they were playing alongside the other sounds?”

David nodded.

“Yeah, that was just a regular dog whistle.” said the redhead. “And the smell?”

David scrunched his face as he remembered that horrible smell and asked, "What were they?"

“Just basic smelling salts,” answered the redhead.

“Fuck off,” said David.

The redhead recoiled from David’s response, “No need to swear.”

“I can swear if I want to,” spat David. He hated being told what he could and couldn’t say.

“Please don’t,” begged the redhead so genuinely that David’s gut twisted in shame.

The redhead continued, “I know the lessons have been hard, but you can vent about it without swearing.”

“What was I even getting taught today?” asked David. “I was just getting tortured the entire time.”

“Haven’t you been paying attention to your lessons?” asked the redhead.

“It’s been kinda fuc-” David snapped before stopping when the redhead's face saddened when David started to swear.

“It’s been kinda hard to,” David said, censoring himself.

He sat down on the gravely ground and leant against the wall of the warehouse. The redhead sat down with him.

“How can I pay attention when it hurts so much?” asked David while he brought his knees close and hugged them.

The red head put a hand on David’s shoulder but took it away when David glared at it. The redhead said, “The pain from Changes fades in time.”

David scoffed. He found that hard to believe.

“I can go over your lessons with you each night if you want,” offered the redhead. “I often tutor pups. I did it for Lucas.”

“Who?” asked David.

“One of your packmates,” answered the redhead.

David wracked his thoughts but couldn’t remember meeting any Lucas. Not that he caught any of his tutors' names. “I don’t remember meeting anyone here named Lucas.”

The redhead shook his head, “Oh no. We’re going to be your tribemates, not packmates. You haven’t met your actual pack yet.”

The redhead tilted his head and hummed, “No, that’s not true. You did meet them. You just don’t remember it. They’re the ones that saved you from the asylum.”

“So they’re my pack because they broke me out?” asked David.

“No,” said the redhead, “They’re your pack cause they’re fated to be.”

“Fated?” asked David before laughing. “You believe in fate?”

The redhead rolled his eyes, “Yes. Fate’s real. You’ve just found out that werewolves, spirits, and magic are real and fate is where you decide to draw the line? There’s an entire auspice whose entire thing is about reading fate.”

“Auspice?” asked David.

The redhead groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose, “Oh Luna. You really haven’t been paying attention.”

He looked to David and asked, “Do you remember your auspice at least?”

“Uhhhh,” David thought for a long moment. He was told that his seeming talent for spirits complimented him being something called, “Ether.”

The redhead glared at David.

“That wasn’t it,” said David. “Was it?”

“Ithaeur,” said the redhead through gritted teeth. “The Spirit Master.”

“Yeah,” said David. “That’s the one whose whole thing is spirits. The crescent moon.”

“So you’ve been paying some attention at least.” mumbled the redhead.

David yawned and the redhead stood up in response.

“Come on,” he said to David. “Let’s get you back to bed.”

David obeyed and followed the redhead back into the warehouse. When the pair walked past a window, David stopped when he noticed something about his reflection.

“Everything alright?” asked the redhead.

“My eyes,” said David as he stared at his reflection. “They’re brown.”

The redhead nodded in understanding. “Tells often disappear after the First Change.”

“Tells?” asked David, dragging his attention away from his reflection to look at the redhead.

“What makes it obvious to The Herd that a wolf-blood isn’t fully human,” explained the redhead.

The Herd. What David had heard his mentors call regular humans. He looked at his reflection again. He hadn’t seen his eyes that colour in a very long time. He and the redhead went back into the warehouse and to the small office that served as his bedroom.

As David settled in for bed, the redhead said, “If you ever need me, just call.”

“I’ll think about it,” said David before rolling over on his bed.

“Colin,” said the redhead.

“What?” David asked, looking over his shoulder to the redhead.

“My name’s Colin,” said the redhead. “Can’t call for me if you don’t know my name.”

“You’re the only redhead here,” pointed out David.

“True,” agreed Colin, “But it’s more polite to ask for me by name.”

David didn’t reply and turned back away on his bed. He heard Colin leave and shut the door.

David sat back up in bed and called out, “Colin?”

Colin popped his head back into the room, “Yes?”

“Do you think I can get some painting supplies?” asked David. “Watercolors preferably.”

“You’re a painter?” asked Colin, intrigued.

David sheepishly nodded, “I haven’t painted in a while though.”

“How come?” asked Colin.

“I wasn’t allowed to after I stabbed an orderly with a paint brush,” answered David.

Colin was surprised at that. His head jerked back, “How’d you manage that? Brushes aren’t sharp.”

“It’s easier than you think,” muttered David.

Colin nodded, “I’ll see what I can do.”

He went to leave before seeming to decide on something, “I can’t tell you what tomorrow’s test is gonna be exactly. I probably shouldn’t tell you what I’m about to, but tomorrow’s test is important cause it’s to see if you really have what it takes to join the Bone Shadows.”

“You don’t think I have what it takes?” asked David. Slightly insulted.

“It’s not my place to decide,” said Colin. “But I think you have what it takes. More than anyone else has recently. I’ve seen your file and-”

“Has everyone read that damn thing?” snapped David.

“Yep,” said Colin matter of factly before adding with a waggle of his eyebrows, “It’s impressively large.”

David’s face flushed at Colin’s crass innuendo.

“Goodnight,” said Colin with a wide smile and quickly closed the door.

***

David didn’t know what to expect from Colin’s comment about that day’s test, but it wasn’t this. He stood at the start of what looked like a regular obstacle course that looked like it was ripped right out of the black and white military documentaries he was sometimes allowed to watch during the many times he was committed to asylums..

Colin told him it was supposed to test him to see if he had what it took to join the Bone Shadows. The Bone Shadows were all about dealing with spirits and ghosts. How would a regular obstacle course test that?

He looked over himself. He stood with a slouch and was thin, almost unhealthily so. Food was hard to come by when he lived on the streets and what he could get a hold of was rarely ever enough. What food he got when thrown into asylums, while giving the nutrition he needed, was so bland and tasteless that most of the time he could barely bring himself to eat it. Sometimes he was left so wanting from the food he was given that he’d sometimes sneak into the staff area and steal their food.

Since he had Changed, he had found he was stronger than he used to be, but he didn’t think he had the endurance to be able to do the course. He walked up to the first obstacle. A plain wall with a rope hanging off the top that was well out of reach. Clearly it was intended for him to run and jump for it.

The wall looked to be made out of cheap, unpainted plywood. He tapped the wall and heard a solid thud in response. He tapped a different spot and got a hollow one in response. He pulled his hand back and punched straight through it. He pulled at the plywood to widen the hole and climbed through. He repeated that several times, ignoring the intended solutions to the obstacles. All until he punched a wall and it stood strong with a loud, hollow thud.

David immediately dropped to his knees from the unexpected pain and cradled his hand. His index and middle finger were bent at odd angles, dislocated. He grunted as they snapped back into place by themselves.

He looked at where he punched the wall. There wasn’t even a crack. It was just plywood, and there was no stud behind it, so his fist should have gone straight through it like it did for all the others. It simply wasn’t possible for it to hold firm like it did.

But it also shouldn’t have been possible for him to turn into a wolf.

He stood up and looked up at a rope that was still swinging slightly from the punch to the wall. It was just out of his reach. He jumped up and grabbed it, and immediately let it go with a scream of pain.

“FUCK!” he yelled, while holding his now bloodied hand. Sticking out of his palm were several rusty pins.

He shot a glare at the rope, blood staining the very bottom of it. His lip twitched as he wrenched the pins out of his palm. Of course it wasn’t just a straight forward obstacle course. They had to torture him with it somehow.

He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. He turned away to try and find another way through it but collided with another wall. That confused David, he couldn’t see anything but when he reached out he met a solid object.

“You have to be fucking kidding me!” yelled David with a punch to the invisible wall. There wasn’t even a sound when he punched it. His fist just stopped mid air.

He paced around the area of the obstacle course he was now trapped in, weighing his options. He couldn’t break his way through the wall, there was nothing in the area with him he could use to climb over the wall. His only option was to climb the rope.

“Fucking bastards,” he snarled to himself before jumping again for the rope.

He screamed again in pain as the pins hidden in the rope impaled his hands but he didn’t let go. He slowly climbed up, blood ran down his arm. He wanted to let go but he couldn’t. He didn’t want to start over again. Eventually he reached the top and dragged himself over the wall and let himself drop down into a bloodied heap.

He stayed in a heap, slowly pulling out the pins from everywhere his body touched the rope. Every time he thought he got them all, he felt a sting elsewhere from a pin he missed.

Finally, after actually finding them all, he stood up. Arms slicked with blood, and clothes blood stained and torn. He saw a door in front of him and wondered what fresh hell his teachers had planned for him this time.

What he found was just a regular home office. A simple, cheap desk, office chair, and a shelf full of books. The only thing that was out of the ordinary was a large, dark iron door on the far side of the room that had a handwritten note taped to it.

"There is a violent spirit on the other side of the door. Offer it payment in order to pass. You may select a book from the shelf behind you to offer as payment."

“What is it? A nerd?” David wondered out loud. How could a book serve as a payment?

He browsed through the books on the shelf and found that all of them were books on extremely violent topics. Books on war, the Holocaust, serial killer biographies. If they gave him this many books to choose from, there must be a catch. A specific topic that was the intended answer.

He started pulling more books off the shelf, quickly flicking through them before dumping them on the ground. None of them stuck out from each other. All except one. A small, nondescript leather bound journal. Something he almost missed because of how well the colour of the leather blended in with the colour of the shelf.

Curious, he took it and opened it to a random page. It was handwritten in a cursive script that was difficult for him to read. But what he could make out disturbed him. It was the journal of a serial killer that described in gruesome detail the stalking and killing of their victims. The perverse pleasure they took in the victim’s fear, and the subsequent mutilation of their bodies.

He slammed it shut and shuddered. If any of the books would serve as sufficient payment, it would be that.

He walked over to the dark iron door. It looked like the door belonged to a gigantic furnace and was spotted with brown rust. He grabbed the latch, and after a few yanks, pulled it up and unlocked the door. It opened with a scraping screech.

He immediately covered his nose as he was blasted with the overwhelming stench of blood. He felt conflicted. He was disgusted by the smell, but his stomach growled with a sudden hunger. He had a sudden craving for raw meat.

Ignoring the feeling for the time being, he looked into the room. It was dark, and he couldn’t make anything out. He walked in, journal in hand.

He looked down when his foot splashed into ankle deep into some liquid. It wasn’t water, it was just slightly too thick and sticky for it to be that. It had the consistency of a thin syrup. Blood, he realised. A lot of it.

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness he made out another iron door on the far side of the room. It had a wheel for a handle akin to a submarine hatch. In front of it stood a small, hunched figure. At first he thought it was a child from its size, but as it came into the light from the door, fear gripped David’s heart. Its skin was pink and glistening, like it had been flayed of the top few layers of its skin. Its tear drop shaped face was featureless except for two dark, cavernous pits. Its thin legs sloshed through the blood covering the room as it shambled towards David.

The sloshing of the blood on the covering the ground made David keenly aware of his own blood still dripping down his arms. Operating on some unknown instinct, he brought the journal to his arms and smeared the blood all across its cover before tossing it at the horrifying spirit.

The small spirit leapt into the air and eagerly grabbed the journal with both hands. It landed with a splash. It brought the journal close to its face, and with a wet tearing sound, its face split in half horizontally. A long, wet tentacle fell out and slathered itself against the journal, loudly slurping David’s blood from the cover.

David needed to get to the door on the far side of the room, but didn’t want to get anywhere near the spirit. So he sidled along the wall, taking small, sliding steps to try and avoid attracting the spirit’s attention again. Once he was away from the door he entered through, it slammed shut, plunging David into darkness.

He couldn’t see anything. He could only smell blood, and the sickeningly loud slurping of the spirits. Fear gripped his heart even harder and he struggled to breath. He stayed against the wall and slowly, painfully slowly, traversed the room.

He started when his arm bumped into something. The door’s turn handle! He grabbed it with one hand and tried to rotate it. But it didn’t budge. He grabbed it with both hands and tried harder. It moved slightly but with a loud, rusty screech.

David froze, terrified that he drew the spirit’s attention. But he still heard the constant slurping.

“Fuck it,” said David, and he put all his weight into turning the wheel. He cringed at the screeching. He felt the door shift as it finally unlocked and so he heaved the door open and leapt out the moment it was open enough to do so.

The door slammed closed behind him and he landed on all fours on the ground, trembling. His heart was pounding against his chest. A hard lump was in his throat. He could barely breathe, he was breathing too quickly and harshly. He remembered the breathing exercises his doctors taught him. Slowly in through the nose. Hold. Then slowly out through the mouth.

In through the nose.

Hold.

Out through the mouth.

In through the nose.

Hold.

Out through the mouth.

In through the nose.

Hold.

Out through the mouth.

Slowly, his heart calmed down. It got easier for him to breathe, and the lump in his throat shrunk and went away.

He stood up, still trembling. Spotlights flashed on, making him growl from the sudden light and the surprise of it.

Standing behind the spotlights were three of the oldest of his teachers, one of them being the one that Colin always followed around.

That one spoke up while clapping, “Well done, Pup. Well done. Now get over here so we can hose the blood off you.”

She looked over to a darker area of the warehouse that David couldn’t see because of the spotlights and said, “Colin, get the fire hose.”

“Yes, Elder Howls-For-Lost-Skies” David heard Colin say from the darkness and the sounds of a turning wheel and unspooling of heavy fabric.

“Now,” said Howls-For-Lost-Skies. “While Colin’s doing that, humor me. Why the journal?”

“The note said to give a book as payment. But there had to be some sort of catch. It couldn’t just be a book. They were all about violent things, so it had to be what the books were about that was the actual payment. Not the actual books. The journal had to be the right answer, it wasn’t like the other books. It was actually written by hand. It was more personal,” answered David.

Howls-For-Lost-Skies stayed silent, looking at David’s arm where the blood was smeared by the journal.

David looked at his arm and took a moment to explain his actions. “Uh, there was something else about the spirit. I’m not exactly sure how to explain it. How it looked, and all the blood that was in the room. It seemed like it needed more than just the journal.”

Howls-For-Lost-Skies was silent for the entire explanation and, after David finished, smiled and gave a few small nods.

“Clever,” she said, “Very clever.”

His teachers were harsh and their lessons even more so but David couldn’t help but puff his chest a bit from her praise.

“Though,” she added.

“God damn it,” David mumbled under his breath, deflated.

“There wasn’t really any ‘right’ answer per se when it came to what book to choose,” she said. Making air quotes when she said ‘right’. “Any of the books would’ve sufficed. The journal was just the best out of the books.”

“Best out of the books?” asked David. “So there was a better choice that wasn’t the books?”

“You’re a perceptive one ” chuckled Howls-For-Lost-Skies in response.

“Blood,” She said. She pointed to the blood covering David’s arms. “Your blood to be precise. Both the journal and your blood was a very good, and very clever, payment.”

She then stood aside and said, “Brace yourself.”

“What? Why?” asked David before he was bowled over by a blast of water hitting him in the back. His already torn shirt was ripped off him by the strength of the water.

“That’s enough, Colin,” Howls-For-Lost-Skies yelled out over the sound of blasting water after David was sprayed for several moments.

The torrent stopped and David stood up, slipping slightly. He shook the water off his arms and asked, “So why both the journal and blood?”

Howls-For-Lost-Skies growled something in strange, savage language. Something that lingered in David’s mind, like he should know what was said but its meaning was just out of reach.

“Su a sar-hith sa.”

“What the hell was that?” David asked while cringing and rubbing his temple.

“Pay Each Spirit in Kind. The Bone Shadows’ sacred vow. Each tribe has one,” explained Howls-For-Lost-Skies.

She pointed to the room that housed the spirit, “That was a spirit of blood and violence. And what you did was not only deduce the best payment for it out of all the books given to you, but also deduced its secondary nature and paid both natures in kind.”

“So…” David said, trailing off as he looked back at the room he came out of. “I passed?”

“With flying colors,” Howls-For-Lost-Skies said with a wolfish grin.

David was suddenly nervous. He fidgeted, wringing his hands. “So does that mean I’m one of you now?”

“A Bone Shadow?” asked Howls-For-Lost-Skies before shaking her head, “We still need to teach you more things before we induct you. No, this was just a test to see if you had what it takes to join us. Colin told you as much last night.”

David looked over at Colin who was still holding the dripping firehose, with wide eyes and his face drained of colour.

“I’ll be talking to you about that later,” Howls-For-Lost-Skies said to Colin, who put his head down and nodded.

“Yes, Elder,” he mumbled.

She turned her attention back to David and said, “Go get dried up. You can have the day off tomorrow. You’ll find those painting supplies you asked for in your room, so you should be able to entertain yourself.”

David awkwardly thanked her and briskly walked off towards his room. As he passed the start of the obstacle course he felt the hairs raise on the back of his neck. He was being watched.

He quickly looked around, but saw nothing. He hissed and closed his eyes as they stung. He opened them again and saw past the veil separating the mortal world and spirit world. He saw, very briefly, a cloud of smoke and embers fly out of sight.

He growled before storming off towards his room.