The Reckoning
Story by Cederwyn Whitefurr on SoFurry
In the depths of a forest shrouded in whispers and shadows, a young fawn’s world is torn apart by a single, brutal act. As his mother lies lifeless, a cold, unfamiliar presence emerges from the darkness—a hunter who takes everything the fawn once knew. Consumed by an insatiable thirst for vengeance, he transforms into a creature of nightmares, haunted by memories and driven by an unrelenting fury. As the hunter flees, the forest holds its breath. The stag has come for him, and the price of survival is about to be paid in blood and terror.
The Reckoning
© Cederwyn Whitefurr
5th September, 2024
All Rights Reserved.
Wisps of fog shrouded the forest, as the young buck fawn followed his mother – his large, expressionate eyes filled with wonder and fascination. Here and there, rays of sunlight peeked through – the young fawn playfully jumping from one to another, his spotted coat rippling as his mother kept a protective watch over her only offspring. He had never known anything but this – the quiet whispering of the leaves so far above his head, the chirp of birds, and the steady, comforting love and warmth of his beloved mother. Life was simple, and the forest was vast and welcoming – endless possibilities for a fawn to play and explore. His dark eyes, wide and innocent, held the curiosity of youth as he played without a care in the world, unaware that this morning would be the last time he would ever feel safe.
His mother paused at the forest edge, her nostrils flaring, eyes alert and ears twitching. Beyond lay a place all the deer knew well – the sweet meadow clover and grasses were the sweetest and tastiest for miles. For generations, deer had come here to graze – and as she glanced back over her shoulder at her fawn, a smile touching her lips, she thought of the other reason they come here...
As she nervously crept from the shadow of the forest, feeling the warmth of the morning sun on her fur, her mind turned to thoughts of her stomach and food. Raising a fawn was hard – he nursed readily and regularly, and she had to eat three times as much, just to ensure she could sustain herself – and her rich, hot, life-giving milk she still nursed him with.
One step – her senses at full alert, as she froze and her ears twitched and rotated. Something unsettled her, her muscles tensing...
A sudden crack shattered the air, ripping through the quiet morning air. Her fawn instantly dropped to his belly, flattening himself and his heart racing. Instinct commanding him. He could see his mother in the clearing. His mother did not move. His own eyes widened, as he seen the warmth and light in them dim, before she stumbled and collapsed in front of him, a horrible stillness overtaking her once graceful form.
He stared, horrified before his mind overrode his instinct. He stumbled towards her, nuzzling her neck, confusion and fear mixing into a desperate bleat. She did not respond. Her warmth began to fade.
He called for her, a soft, trembling sound that she would never answer. He waited for her to rise, thinking she was playing some new game, she would get up, her gentle voice and nuzzles warm and reassuring...
Yet she remained still, her body unmoving and eyes fixed and unseeing.
Tears began to well in the fawn's eyes, as he bleated and nuzzled her again and again, pleading, begging... to no avail.
Then he became aware of a new sound – heavy, thudding footsteps, foreign and unnatural. They grew louder, closer, every step like thunder in his small ears. He shrank onto the ground, his body trembling uncontrollably, as the sound was followed by an acrid stench that filled his nostrils. It was a smell unlike anything he had ever known – sharp, metallic, and bitter, stinging his nose and turning his stomach. The fawn's young mind recoiled in confusion. The forest had always been a place of life and warmth, but this – this – was something different. Something... wrong.
The shadow fell over him, vast and suffocating. The thing looming above wasn't an animal, wasn't anything the fawn had ever seen. Its outline was jagged, unnatural – towering far above him, blocking out the sunlight. Its movements were slow but deliberate, as if it owned the forest as if it feared nothing. For a moment, the fawn dared to lift his gaze. He saw heavy legs wrapped in strange, rough material that scraped the ground, and hands – twisted, fleshy things, like paws but worse. Then there was the sound. The scrape of something being drawn from the thing's side, a high-pitched hiss that made the fawn's heart almost stop.
It grunted as it grabbed his mother's lifeless body, lifting her up, her limbs dangling like broken branches. A strangled cry almost escaped the fawn's throat, but he bit it back, flattening himself lower, willing the earth to swallow him. The thing muttered something, its voice deep and guttural, the words making no sense but filling him with a primal fear. When it turned, the fawn saw the glint of something cold, shining – metal. Light flickered off it in harsh, sharp angles. His instincts screamed at him, and in that moment, he too, screamed...
His mother's body fell to the ground, as the shadow turned, then grabbed him by the neck, lifting the hysterical fawn off the ground. His little legs kicked and struggled, as the shadow's fetid, vile breath surrounded him. He did what he had to do – his little cloven hooves kicked out with all his strength, driven by grief and fear – making the shadow drop him with an explosion of exhaled air. Without thought, the little fawn twisted and did what he knew he must...
He fled into the forest...
*
Time passed, but the grief never left him. Seasons come and went, yet the memories of that day clung to his heart, warping the once-innocent fawn. His eyes, which had once sparkled with innocence and curiosity, grew darker, haunted. His small, spotted body had grown taller and stronger, but with every day, he felt the darkness pressing in on him, suffocating, stealing away what he had once been.
One morning, the doe who had adopted him had fled from him. He didn't need her anymore, he didn't need anyone anymore... his fawn-hood friends hand all abandoned him – abandoned or become his playthings... and he wasn't one who played well with his toys...
The memory remained seared into his entire body. The memory of his mother's stillness, the shadow, it replayed in his mind, over and over again, an unrelenting nightmare he couldn't wake from.
It began with the dreams – twisting, painful dreams, where ihis body would shift and change....
He thought the dreams would stop...
He thought wrong.
It began with the dreams... it ended in horror...
*
They were nightmares, twisting, painful dreams where his body would shift and change. He would wake in the middle of the night, his legs cramping, his bones aching as though something was gnawing on them. He'd stumble through the woods, collapsing by the edge of the stream, panting as his reflection rippled in the water. There, in the moonlight, he saw what he was becoming. His soft face was hardening, his eyes hollow and emotionless, and from the top of his head, small, budding antlers began to twist and grow like thorns.
The forest animals that'd once surrounded him began to flee from him. Even the gentle doe who had taken him in after his mother's death looked at him, her eyes filled with uncertainty – then fear – before she too fled, sensing the creeping darkness that now curled around his soul. Her warmth, her body, the things they had shared as he matured... It didn't matter, nothing mattered – nothing existed – nothing... except the agony that seized him mercilessly.
He thought the pain couldn't get any worse... he was wrong. His muscles twisted and cramped, his limbs stiffening as if they no longer belonged to him. He writhed, breathless and in excruciating pain, his body contorting, stretching unnaturally. It was not graceful – it was beyond anything he'd ever imagined. His once smooth coat became coarse, his bones grinding as they shifted under his skin, his fur. His legs grew longer and more angular, and his cloven hooves, once delicate, now grew sharp and heavy, like weapons. His back arched unnaturally, and from his mouth, a low, guttural groan escaped as his spine snapped and reformed.
The physical pain was nothing, compared to the mental anguish inside. His heart, once filled with warmth and love, was now a cold, hard thing, beating slowly in his chest, every thud filled with rage and sorrow. He wanted to scream, to tear the darkness from his soul, but it fed upon his pain, his anger, growing stronger and stronger with each beat of his heart. It had become a part of him – and he had become a part of it in turn.
When it was finally over, he stumbled to his knees, three-fingered hand gouging at the forest floor, then curling inwards, the fingers crackling. His breathing was ragged, tears streaking down his cheeks as the pain slowly eased. As he dragged himself forward, he stared down into the stream – his mind recoiling at the reflection. He had become a creature he no longer recognised. His antlers were fully grown, jagged and sharp-tipped like the branches of a dead tree. His eyes, once brown and innocent – were now black as a moonless night and filled with a predator gleam, hollowed out by hate and rage. He struggled to calm himself, tried to attune himself back to the forest as it once had been – but all he saw when he reopened his eyes was the place where his mother had fallen. He had no recollection of coming here – walking no more on four legs but on two.
He knelt down, his fingers gouging at the soil, his nostrils flaring as the scent of blood filled his senses...
All he could think of was the creature who had taken her....
*
His friends, his family. They had begun to turn from him long before the transformation was completed, but now, it was final. He felt their absence like a void, the silent judgement in their retreat. The doe, his second mother, who had nursed the grieving fawn, had later become his mate – his first...
All he felt now was hatred, cold, bitter hatred. In his mind, the memories of the past burned away like a forest fire, leaving nothing but destruction and ashes in its passing.
The loneliness was unbearable. Yet he would endure. He was no longer a creature of the forest – it turned its back on him – as had those he had once called friend, mother...
Mate...
They were weak, pathetic creatures, unworthy of even a seconds thought or glance from him.
He knew what he had become... what he must do...
What he would do...
The forest had rejected him, and in turn, he had rejected everything it had stood for. He was not a part of that world anymore, but something beyond it – something made of darkness and shadow. He would become the thing that others feared in the night. He had nothing left by his desire for revenge...
He would use it...
*
The hunter crashed through the underbrush, his breath coming in ragged gasps, adrenaline driving him and blood streaking down his face from where a broken branch had caught him. The dense forest, once familiar, closed in around him like a predator itself, every shadow twisting into shapes of eyes watching, waiting. His legs burned, and his chest heaved, but the only sounds that filled his ears were the relentless, merciless pounding of hooves behind him – slow, deliberate, unyielding. He couldn't see his pursuer, but he felt him. Closer with every faltering step.
Branches tore at his clothes as he stumbled, his boots twisting then tangling on the tree roots, sending him sprawling onto the forest floor. He scrambled to his feet, his rifle falling from his shoulder and lying forgotten. He turned and fled, panting, eyes wild.
This can't be happening. This can't be real!
He had hunted these woods his entire life – stalking countless prey. Now, he was the one being hunted, and the irony twisted like a knife in his guy. His fingers reached for the rifle – only to find he'd lost it somewhere in his panicked fleeing. A cold, cruel reality settled in: no weapon would save him from what was coming for him...
The thud of hooves grew louder, impossible, implacable, unstoppable. Branches were torn and shredded as the beast roared – its voice cervine – but not. It wasn't a mating call or a dominance challenge, no, this was something far worse. He turned, stumbling out into the clearing, where he fell onto his back and crabbed backwards, eyes wide in terror and fear as the beast stalked out of the woodlands – then stopped – its impossible form towering and imposing.
“You're not real...” Shouted the man, his voice breaking into a panicked moan. “Wait...” Pleaded the hunter, crabbing backwards on his heels and palms. “No... it... it can't be --”
His mind reeled. Do you_ recognise that unmistakable marking, that white mark on its flank? No, it can't be... The fawn? The one you tried to kill?_
He screamed and pleaded, as the huge, implacable and irresistible force stomped towards him, lifting the rifle with intent and purpose. This was no innocent, gentle creature of the forest that he'd once known...
The stag before him was something else entirely – his eyes hard, unfeeling, like the forest itself had filled this hybrid with its ancient, unforgiving rage for the crimes the human had done.
He got to his knees, the weight of his fate pressing down on him as the buck approached, silent and terrifying. There was no escape now, there was only the reckoning...
Standing on two legs like a man, the half-human, half deer, glared down at its victim, from behind its back, it pulled the discarded rifle, awkwardly pulling the bolt back and slamming it home again – reloading a new round, the spent brass falling to the soil at its cloven hooves.
Its black eyes were lifeless, devoid of warmth and emotion, as it raised the rifle, pointing it directly at the broken and sobbing human before him. As a finger began to squeeze the trigger, the moment stretched, agonisingly slow, as the stag seemed to savour the moment – the culmination of his revenge.
“Please – I'm sorry - “ Wailed the hunter.
The stag’s eyes narrowed to slits, his muscles tensing as he tucked the rifle hard against his shoulder, his finger a single heartbeat from pulling the trigger. The hunter froze, his breath hitching. But just as the shot seemed inevitable, the stag paused. A heavy silence fell between them, the forest itself holding its breath.
The stag’s grip loosened, and with a sharp exhale, he lowered the gun. His black, hateful eyes flickered, turning brown—soft, almost gentle. The hunter gasped, his hands shaking as the stag’s gaze shifted from rage to something deeper, more profound.
‘I’m not like you,’ the stag said, his voice low, rough, and thick with emotion. ‘I don’t kill in cold blood.’
In one swift motion, the stag slammed the rifle against the nearest tree. The wood splintered under the force, the gun falling in pieces to the ground. The stag turned, but before disappearing into the shadows, he cast one final glance over his shoulder, his voice chilling the hunter’s blood.
‘Leave this place. Never return. You will remember this day, haunted by the knowledge that your life was spared by a creature far more humane than yourself. But remember—this is my forest now. And if you ever return…’
His voice lowered to a growl, ‘I will kill you without hesitation.’"
END