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Chapter 3: A New Life?

"Dammit, how far did it run?" The hunter cursed to himself as he followed the blood trail, freshly made upon the foot tall snow. His prey was stubborn today, managing to escape uphill with an arrow stuck in its hind leg. The witless doe wouldn't be able to run forever though.

"The ferals better keep off." He muttered to himself, lifting his legs just to have them plunge back down in the thick terrain. The top of the knoll came into sight with his prize finally in view. The doe stopped running, sinking into the snow but still looking around for what would make its end. The hunter came to provide, muttering a quick apology before sticking his shortsword into the prey's neck and jerking violently to one side, snapping its spine. Looking over his shoulder a few times for ferals or the afflicted, he proceeded to skin the animal and take whatever meat he could store in his rucksack.

Standing up from the corpse, he took out a red tinted eyeglass, scouting the area for anything to report back to base.

Marco tended to exaggerate the amount of afflicted that came towards the camp, claiming hundreds when it was merely dozens. Unaware of what specific disease or madness they had contracted, the afflicted were often easy to spot. Skin, fur and scale would produce a crystalline spore, growing in size as time went on. The red tint of the eyeglass viewing a normally blue expanse made the violet abnormalities stand out, their sharp ends and ghastly swelling around the base of each strand giving no subtlety.

Elders of the village said the glass-like sores and extensions on these unfortunate souls were harmless at first, but will eventually lead to the body exploding in a fiery inferno. That was learned several decades ago when the son of one elder set the old encampment ablaze, killing dozens. Each storyteller gave their own exaggerated details, but the agreed final state was when the son was stabbing his mattress with the growths on his spine.

Today was just an unlucky day, as the hunter saw a convoy of furs approaching the border of his village. Seven small carts, with at least a hundred heads to account for. Peering further, he tried to scan for signs of the crystalline infection.

Biting his lip, the worst had come to be. He knew what protocol was but didn't want to do it, someone else always would. He couldn't betray the trust of this place and its people though.

Reaching into his bag, he pulls out a specialized arrow: steel tip with a pouch attached to the center of the stick, and a rope cord tied with it. Bringing out a match, he struck it against his bow before using the flame to light the cord.

Deep breath, pulling the string back.

Deep breath, steadying his aim.

Deep breath, release the string and watch the arrow fly towards the front of the caravan.

A cloud of gas erupted before the travelers, forcing a blanket of gray that could obscure a mile across. The smoke was aided by a flurry of exploding bark and flora, making ricochet noises that would flood their ears before releasing a repulsive gas that would become lethal if stewed in for more than a minute.

_Come on, please. Run away. _He brought himself down to a prone position, quickly covering himself in snow for concealment. Thankful for every moment he didn't see someone trying to pass through the smoke. The yelling and screaming of the foreigners couldn't be heard over the cacophony of noises provided by the arrow bomb, but relief soon came in droves when he saw the group travel eastward in a panic, with no one being left behind.

Brushing the snow off and standing up, the resident considered firing off another warning shot to keep them going but thought maybe the children and elderly suffered enough. The afflicted's backside confirmed that he had done the right thing today, being able to see sores that started at the hands and spread to the shoulders. A few more days and the village would have been ash if he let these three travelers come through.

_Alright, that should do it for patrol. _He put away his bow and made his way back to the outpost cabin, keeping his shortsword unsheathed in case something tried to attack him on the way back. Something was riling the ferals up more than usual, getting closer to the evergreen and iron barrier that surrounded the village of Incantau.

---

The fire in the log cabin defrosted his tired fingers as he watched the sun outside dip towards the horizon. It was only three in the afternoon, but the long winter in an already snowy plain was upon them. Gusts of snow would bury the village if the barriers weren't there, and those less fortunate often had to travel south.

The cabin had a door on the front and back, one labeled Incantau and the other labeled The Expanse, the local's fancy way of saying the wilds and barren snow fields. By the village door, a bulletin board carved from wood hung, showing off names and dates for every day of every week for half of the year. Next to his name and the date, he drew a tally for seeing any afflicted, but marked nothing for encroaching ferals.

A crudely drawn map was spread out next to the tally chart, displaying at least five miles in every direction. The farthest the hunter had gone was two miles up north, but even then his expeditions were discouraged by the locals and the elder he served under. Red pins marked where he'd been, trying to set up pyres and red cloth banners, both of which barely lasted a week against the brutal winds. If he ever made the trek he wanted down south, he would need landmarks amongst the sea of snow, but square one was the only destination he'd been familiar with as of late.

Before he could open the door and make his way back to the village, a familiar hare opened it from the other side first.

"Hey hey hey!" The rabbit said with enthusiasm, giving the less vibrant of the pairing a quick hug. "Victor, I've been looking all over for you."

"You know I was going to be out on patrol, Marco." He said plainly. "And I had to scare off a caravan before coming back."

"Oooooh." Marco replied, his tone dropping as the vowel droned on. "The first time is never easy." He paused, looking contemplative. "But judging from your stoic face, I'm guessing it went fine!"

The wolf kept his face completely still, save for rolling his eyes as he assumed the hare was about to unpack another marvelous scheme or pitch to him. Marco wasn't a bad person to be around, but the slender furball mostly confused Victor. The rabbit seemed to take every measure to wear the least amount of clothing possible, even on the coldest of days. His clothing most of the time was a dyed tunic inundated with fur pelts but stitched together in such a way to almost melt into his body, wanting to show off whatever meager curves his body could provide. The hare looked closer to an erotic dancer than a hunter, and as much as Victor was fine with that choice, he feared the elders would one day have a reprimand ready. This eccentricity was only hidden by the token split-tunic he wore over the skin tight cloth, fashioned from a feral bear his father killed a long time ago.

"So why don't you come by the tavern, buddy?" Marco continued in his gleeful demeanor. "There's a gal down there who really wants to meet you."

"This again?" Victor replied exasperatedly, bringing his hand to his forehead.

"Yes, again." Marco adopted a scowl, or the closest thing he could to an intimidating face. "You'll need a mate or partner soon enough if you want to stay in the village."

"And I've told you and your father countless times that I won't be here forever." Victor barked back, asserting his much taller frame over the hare.

"Well you said that a year ago and you're still here, doing your damn duties, now come on!" Marco ended the statement by grabbing onto Victor's paw and trying to pull him through the village door.

The wolf could only sigh as he decided to follow the hare. I do have enough coin to at least get drunk if need be.

---

The Bitter Arrow was the only tavern in the village of Incantau, but was also considered the pride of the settlement. Everyone in the small community contributed to the betterment of the establishment in at least some way. Marco's father claimed it started as a mere market stall run by two foxes. The Arrow as of today was a large square of stone and pine, with torchlight illuminating it more than any other structure in the entire region.

Tables of four to twelve adorned the inside of the establishment, with a carved wooden painting decorating the ceiling, telling of the wolves that first found this village, conquering the odds after being hunted by a tribe long forgotten to time, or that's at least what everyone hoped. The tribe was dire wolves, a group driven or perhaps born mad, looking to tear flesh and lick clean the bones of their relatives.

Female bards performed at the front of the tavern, with a large window to their back, letting one see the radiance of the snow long after the sun set combined with the glow and power the performer would exude.

Amelia was the one performing tonight. Victor liked the sound of her voice as she sang lullabies of the cloud covered sun and how the hunter will always come home to their wife who carries with them an eager new life. The young hawk wasn't always great at playing her lute, but her voice overpowered the instrument in most cases anyhow.

The wolf found himself hyper focusing on the gal tonight, even if the best songs were several verses away. Drinking his sour beer, he really found himself not even able to enjoy the booze as much tonight. Couldn't get drunk too quick or Marco would get angry, and he was what he had to close his eyes to more often than not. The hare on the other hand was giddy to a point of absurdity, subtly hopping in his seat for minutes on end, biting hard on his lip.

Before Victor could think of putting his hand on his company to keep him still, the ladies of the hour arrived. The first one to sit was a familiar face to both of them, Kaiden, a young hyena that was training for the hunting patrol. Without saying a word, Victor knew that she wasn't there for him, seeming to find him scary.

The second lady however gave the wolf a look of beaming enthusiasm upon sitting down, a tigress that he was unfamiliar with. Green eyes attached to a snow white pelt accentuated with black stripes and a few tribal markings upon her neck, the symbols appearing to be her family's name.

"Wonderful!" Marco triumphantly said, standing from the table only to sit right back down. "Victor, you and Kaiden already know each other." The wolf and hyena locked eyes for the briefest of moments before nodding their heads and turning away, her to the wall and him to his drink. "But the one who really wanted to be here tonight is Jamie over here!" The loud tone of the hare made the tigress cower slightly as eyes around the tavern looked towards their table.

Feeling no investment but still being invaded by a pang of guilt, Victor extends his hand towards Jamie and introduces himself. The tigress takes his hand and shakes it rather violently before replying how she was happy to finally meet him.

"I told her a lot about you." Marco intervened. "She's not a hunter but she's in the medical tents all the time, asking for stories."

"Probably had plenty of time to tell stories after you twisted your ankle for the seventeenth time." Victor dryly replied before taking a swig of his drink. Marco protested by slamming his fist into the wolf's back, only hurting himself in the process, barely being able to hide it from the women across him. After the small chuckles between them all, their food had arrived at the table: cooked buffalo and wolf. It was still a little odd to the more sentient wolf to be eating meat from other animals, but that's something he's had to get used to just to have a meal out here. Meat was also such a rarity back home that he was just used to the bare minimum protein found in some of the pastes and mostly just indulging in fruits and grains.

"Marco tells me you're an outsider who was taken in by his family." Jamie spoke, her voice sounding like it belonged to an older fur, being partially sultry and low in tone and urgency.

"Yes, that's true." Victor answered briefly, feeling Kaiden's eyes burrow into him. "Not without resistance or suspicion at first, but I live with Marco and his father."

"Then where are you from? How did you get here?" Jamie reached out for Victor's free hand but he didn't react to it.

"That's a bit of a long story." The wolf replied in a low tone. "You sure everyone wants to hear that?"

Everyone at the table agreed they wanted this story to be told, to which Victor sighed and started with the day before him and Anya went down for the artifact.

"I lived in a kingdom called Sarengound. We existed for centuries on a mountain that laid in the middle of a desolate wasteland of sand and black stone. When I was very young, someone or something in our kingdom did something that took away half of our home, in an instant, boom. Disintegrated. " He made a gesture with his hands, expanding them further apart, his audience looking with wonder. "A decade had passed and no one thought to try whatever it was that caused the mountain to blow up, for obvious reasons." A chuckle came from Marco but no one else. "All the townsfolk ended up calling this event the Undoing. Rumors came about with such frequency years later that an artifact or something at the bottom of the mountain was what caused the Undoing and was the exact same thing causing the lower sects of our kingdom to relentlessly flood. People were drowning every month and when some people tried to pursue these rumors, they'd be exiled. That's what I'd heard anyways."

He took a sip of his drink, to which Marco bumped his shoulder to keep going.

"A companion of mine, Anya, she was...restless about the worsening conditions. We were losing homes and people at such a steady rate. We were both training to be guards of the kingdom, which would have let us live up higher, away from the tides. She however couldn't wait on the nobles to do anything, so she enlisted me to help her find the supposed artifact. We traveled through flooded homes and streets, dove deep under water in caverns that ran miles. Eventually, we found it." The lack of novella heroics and enthusiasm in Victor's voice encouraged more of Marco's nudging, but to no betterment.

"We were separated, a light came and I somehow ended up here, a few miles outside of your village."

"Buck naked." Marco chimed in. "My dad and I found him half buried in the snow, almost stepped on him."

"Yes, and his dad woke me up by pointing a gun at my nogan and asking if I was feral."

The two across started to snicker and giggle, though Jamie seemed to have her mind focused on something, to which Marco would probably suggest something terrible in Victor's ear. The last time Marco suggested a double date, he whispered "She wants your knot!", to which the wolf knocked over his chair with a tail whip.

"So you haven't found this Anya after being here for a year?" Kaiden piped up.

"I would have by now, but I don't even know where home originally was, and I sure don't know how far it is from here. We've got snowy expanses here and deserts there, probably on the opposite side of the world."

"Which is why you should just accept your home here." Marco interjected, guiding Victor's beer hand into Jamie's, to which the snow tiger blushed, heat rushing to her paws.

Victor simply retracted his digits and swung his head back and forth, standing from the table and finishing his drink. "I can't do that, and I'm not sure how many times I need to say that for you to understand."

"My father and I gave you a bed and were willing to give you our clan name, and yet you're always trying to run." Marco's joyful demeanor completely diminished, standing up and clenching his fist.

"I need to find her and find out what happened." The wolf barked, his teeth prominent on the last two words. "She could be alive. That's not a question I will leave ambiguous."

Marco raised his fist but the bubble of silence between the four was broken when the gong of the village was rung.

One ring: Visitors

Two rings: Intruders.

Three rings: Evacuation.

Ring.

Ring.

Silence.

The door of the tavern was flung open as two figures of strange attire entered the establishment.

Large heads, skinny and cylindrical bodies that led into expanding tails that coiled around the owners in several layers. Armor melded into their obscured scales, bearing a primary white with red tinges and accents on every sharp end of plating. Their faces were obscured with metal helmets with splits down by the ears and slits for the eyes and mouth, only letting witnesses see a mere fraction of their features underneath. Upon that helmet and their chest plate was a strange insignia: a wolf howling towards a dragon resting in the moon.

"There he is." One of them uttered, simply slithering forward towards Victor with a halberd by their side. Victor stepped backwards and unsheathed his shortsword from his back, raising it towards the approaching party.

"Who are you?" His blade was two inches from the serpent's neck, but his confidence wavered when he couldn't tell if they were intimidated or not. Marco and the others looked on in stunned silence, none of them holding weapons or anything that could help.

"Guard of the Empress, Mr. Farram." The second serpent said. "Your presence has been requested. We've been searching for you for a while."

Victor froze upon hearing his birth name, and with the first serpent continuing their advance, he panicked, thinking something did go wrong and his home was now cleaning up after what he and Anya did, the armor symbol being a trick or a disguise.

Thinking quickly as he backed away from the serpent's advance, he glanced to the barrels of booze being stored in the rafters above his head by a rope net. The serpent quickly attempted to wrap her tail around his legs, to which he jumped and kicked himself off of her chest plate, launching himself farther back and cutting open the rope netting with his blade, letting several barrels of Bitter Arrow specialty fall onto his pursuer. Separation gained, he dashed for the other door and ran towards the outpost cabin, bumping into and maneuvering around the crowds of people in the snow laden streets.

Even as his legs permitted a full on sprint and the booze hadn't taken its course, he felt weariness, which only doubled down with trepidation as he heard the downed serpent slink through the snow, gaining on him and screaming: "You'll burn for that!"

_I won't make it to the cabin. _A tree with some lower hanging stumps and branches came into view as he dashed up the knoll the cabin rested on. Jumping towards the base, his nails dug in before starting a speedy ascent. The serpent however wrapped herself around the tree and caught up with the wolf almost immediately. Making it to the top, Victor jumped onto the last sturdy branch, ready to jump to the next tree, but his pursuer grabbed him by the leg and kept him in place.

Hissing and pulling, the rage of the serpent could even be felt through their gloved hands composed of ice cold metal. My blade won't do anything. As he was being pulled, the branch creaked. An idea came and he lifted himself briefly to slam on the weakening wood, snapping it from the tree and letting his body fall freely from the grasp and towards the earth.

Rolling upon landing, he went into a full sprint, horror encroaching on his mind even further when he noticed the second serpent slithering through the trees on his left.

"Duck!" A voice came before a series of crossbow bolts flew from the right, pelting and repelling the second serpent as she blocked them with her scale-melded armor, but seeming to still get hurt from the impact of the projectiles. The bolts however made Victor stop to avoid being hit, to which the enraged guard caught up and coiled herself around the bottom of Victor's body. The guard squeezed tight around his legs, threatening to shatter them with every second passed, smiling like a sadist underneath the metal mask.

The second recovered from the assault of bolts, ripping off her mask, revealing her crimson scales and yellow eyes. With a deep breath, she bared her fangs to the cold night air and released a flurry of green flames. Victor looked over to see who tried to save him. That familiar hare. He tried to scream at him to run but the pain in his legs choked out the air he could use to form words. Marco got the picture though and ran as the flames consumed the trees.

The second serpent slithered over and called out as she saw the pained expression in Victor's face. "Val, we're supposed to deliver him unharmed!"

"Well if he made things easy, I wouldn't have to do this!" She replied, hissing but relinquishing some of her strength. With the tail wrapped tightly around her prey, it noticed that the armor couldn't cover every scale when the body flexed in such a way. Seizing the moment, it dug its claw into the opening, puncturing the crimson scales and drawing out an even brighter red. The grip released entirely as the angered guard screamed in agony. Turning towards her, the wolf grabbed the serpent by its helmet, finding the slits by the ears and digging in his nails, ripping the metal mask apart and exposing the guards face before slashing a claw across its throat, gushing blood onto his own face. Escaping the coil, he jumped towards the other and started slashing away as his first victim collapsed to the ground and audibly choked on their own bodily fluid.

The other half of the pair panicked and backed away from the wolf's relentless assault, blocking his attacks with her halberd while trying to swipe his legs with her tail to no result. Locking the brunt of his sword against the staff of her halberd, she was close to the edge of the knoll they fought upon.

"Empress, forgive me." She muttered before quickly breathing fire onto Victor's arms, setting his fur ablaze. The wolf broke his charge, stepping back to use snow from the trees. The guard saw her opportunity however and lunged at him, pushing his body into one of the trees hard enough to force blood from his mouth as he bit his tongue. Her opponent slumped down to the snow afterwards, losing consciousness and letting the snow on the ground extinguish the green flames.

Before the world faded from his sight completely, he could see the serpent move away and cauterize the other's wounds with her flames, to the reply of choked and gurgling screams that not even the thick packets of snow would be able to isolate.