The chimera had fouled up. A blunder that had thinned the line between survival and death.

  Its concern over human life had taken over during an inopportune time, forcing the entity not to leave the man vulnerable before the female warg.

  Back then, guardian instinct had kicked in, guided by the bloodthirsty impulse so characteristic of Howling Talon. The chimera glided, the white of its plumage blending with the snowy crown of the pines, crawling through the branches almost like a squirrel.

  The barking of dogs drowned out any noise the avian entity could have produced. Good — this might be its easiest kill since this stressful chase had begun.

  Subterfuge was among its features. It had not failed in the past; it would not fail now. And as expected, success: the wargess was caught unaware, and keen talons and beak latched into its flesh, disembowelment coming like earthdin, short-lived but devastating. The wargess did not even have the chance to cry for help.

  One less warg to peel its feathers off. Several wolves scattered like skittish vermin.

  To that point, everything had unfolded satisfactorily. The only task left unchecked was scaring the man out of the territory; the man was strong, the chimera recognized, but the wilderness was not his place. It would be better for the fighter to suppress his pride and flee to his kind’s settlement, whatever that was.

  But progression had run into the unforeseen — the human had not fled, but also defied the winged entity! With strange steel that exuded nastiness, the man with copperish skin had opposed the apex predator itself!

  Shock. Frustration. Curiosity.

  How many had been able to stay close to its presence, let alone stand straight and fearless?

  The chimera could not help but contemplate the being in front, wrapped in monster hide, holder of bewitched steel. The contemplation drew out for a twinkling, a time as valuable as gold. Wonder had been a curtain of smoke that muffled the monster’s senses, and by the time the screen thinned, it was too late — Gruhulla had caught up with it.

  That had been the foul-up.

  The delay put the massive warg in an advantageous position, a mere three strides from the bird creature, grimly reducing the odds of the bird entity escaping his jaws.

  But as much as Howling Talon lamented its decisions and loomed closer to the wargish maws by the seconds, it refused to give in, relentlessly pushing itself forward. Like bodkin, it dashed downhill, zigzagging between tree and boulder, and gliding over chasms and every kind of obstacle.

  But if the conventional warg was stubborn, Gruhulla was fivefold that stubborn.

  The consequences of one night trying to escape beyond the fangs of many started to manifest in the worst moment, and Gruhulla reduced the gap to two strides.

  Running out of space to sprint away, the lupine-eared bird found itself forced to scale a pine, its wings impelling its lithe frame up the rigid bark, several yards covered in one bounce. Perhaps atop the tree, the creature could glide toward a safer location.

  But Gruhulla would condone none of that.

  Before the chimera had the chance to reach the branches, the oversized wolf-thing charged full speed directly against the wooden pillar. If his kind could not fly, no one would. If he could not climb, the chimera would neither.

  Eighteen hundred pounds of bulk. A speed that surpassed that of a snowcat. Gruhulla was nothing short of a living boulder shot by a trebuchet.

  The two-arm-wide pine could not resist the warg missile and splintered into a rain of shards. Such a deed of destruction carried detrimental effects, and the alpha warg lost his impulse at the same time he gained a handful of bruises. If Howling Talon remounted anew, Gloom Fang might lose its prey for the rest of the day.

  Not this time.

  As the tree collapsed, Howling Talon glided its way into the closest pine; however, its trajectory was abruptly shaken by a blizzard. It was Gruhulla’s supernatural breath attack.

  If a common warg’s breath was a gust of wind, then that of Gruhulla was the blow of a hurricane — a hailstorm with vaster coverage and potency than the norm, capable of stripping trees and vegetation naked from its leaves. Even without freezing the chimera over, the breath attack was enough to shake it with devastation.

  The streaming storm tore the owl-thing from the pines, blowing its forms through a cluster of branches of several other trees, leaving a path of snapped sticks in its wake until it successfully held onto another pine. Helpless against the snowstorm, the owl-thing could do nothing but dig its talons into the bark and use its wings to shield against the stormful onslaught. With time, the hurricane lessened — not even a warg of Gruhulla’s caliber could expel a tornado for so long — and without missing a beat, Howling Talon tried to jump and swoop away.

  This time, Howling Talon would not get to land atop the tree as another gust of chilling energy impacted its good wing. This exhale of cold carried less strength than the former, but it was enough to make the creature lose the little balance it had, chaotically gliding until it collided against a wooden pillar. Howling Talon continued wrecking through another two pines, going downhill and ending up crashing across the crisp soil, the valley's road already visible from where it landed.

  Aware of the fall of their enemy, it was not long before a regular-sized warg arrived at the crash landing scene. It was the warg that failed in killing Howling Talon earlier, Hollu.

  Playing dead would no longer work; the chimera had no time to engage in trickery with the alpha nearby, so it tried to slip away. The chimera barely managed to heave itself up when a wall of ice materialized to its right, ruining its escape — another common warg joined the scene.

  Snarls from behind announced yet another wolf monster. The owl creature was surrounded.

  Howling Talon’s collar fur bristled, lashing its tail and raising its marred wings in order to appear intimidating, expecting to scare off the predators enough to obtain a gap from which it could find an outlet from this situation.

  It had no success — the wargs disregarded the chimera’s beastly warnings as a mere act of desperation.

  Heavy thumps resounded, proclaiming the arrival of the pack’s leader, the oddity itself — Gruhulla.

  “Got you at last, Howling Talon,” the warg lord leered. The owl-thing loudly clicked its beak and snarled in defiance. “What’s the matter? Too tired to take flight? Too hurt to pounce in defiance? Resigned… at last?”

  Howling Talon shrieked, and Gruhulla responded by releasing a huff from his snout and flashing his fangs, the warg equivalent of a scoff. “Figures.”

  Gruhulla crawled closer to the surrounded prey, hot fog fuming out of his nostrils and between the gap of his fangs. “I want to taste this. Make sure it doesn’t escape again, but don’t kill it. I want to spill its aberrant blood by myself.”

  The rest of the wargs took a step back, giving space to the leader to carry out his execution, but not too much to show a potential exit to Howling Talon.

  The chimera’s talons dug into the snow, its nostrils flaring erratically. The owl creature stooped low, not to cower but to pounce at any moment. If it could score a crippling injury on Gloom Fang, perhaps it could prevent disaster from falling over the human settlements, at least until the humans could prepare a counteroffensive.

  Likewise, Gruhulla hunkered, preparing to rush forward, eager to dissect the flesh of this monster with his own fangs. But when he seemed ready to jump over his prey, a defiant cry penetrated his ears.

  “Monster!” The unmistakable sound of human language felt like the buzz of flies next to his ears. “These lands are not for you to possess! You and your kind will get the fuck out or die right here!”

  The bold yell diminished any immediate desire of the warg to pounce over the owl monster, his stare never leaving his so-coveted prey while his ears twitched behind. The noise came from his back.

  A human male, wearing a dark-brown hide cloak, with two extravagant weapons in both grips, was walking to the alpha’s location, unafraid of the wolf-thing’s intimidating form. Marek had to admit that the warg’s towering form, which would make a cattle appear like a pup, made his brow arch high. The creature stood over seven feet tall, perhaps even scratching the eight feet.

  It was no exaggeration to say that his upper body could fit inside the beast’s muzzle.

  “This is not the same old human we knew about,” Hollu murmured, some feet to the left of his father.

  “I did notice,” Gruhulla groused.

  “He stinks to Nnaj’s blood,” Hollu remarked. The alpha only growled, shooting daggers at his prey ahead, who responded with a hiss of its own.

  “Did the bird take your tongue? I know you can speak. I doubt your frigid dogsbody up there was smarter than you,” the human declared, slowly approaching the pack. “I’ve faced monsters as big as you—” Kind of. “—but you must already know that. In the end, two wargs already fell to my steel.” A half-truth, but if he attributed the dead cause of the wargess to himself, perhaps the remaining pack would think twice before attacking.

  In reality, Marek held no illusions about the chatter working. He was buying time to close the distance and regain his breath. How comes that running through the highlands drained his stamina more than fighting beasts by the tens?

  “Gruhulla, wha—”

  “You three, go and shred that human to pieces,” Gruhulla interrupted Hollu with a growl. “Slay him as fast as possible and then retake your positions. I go handle Howling Talon.”

  The three wargs shared looks, but no one protested. Gruhulla had not swallowed the human’s bluff about Burak’s killing, but the scent of Nnaj stank all over him, and for how insignificant that human could be, Gruhulla was not eager to take risks, not with Howling Talon within the reach of his fangs.

  “No human will meddle with my hunt. Bleed his life, now!”

  And with that final bark, the three wargs abandoned their positions and rushed toward the human. Parallelly, Gruhulla lunged ahead, the snow beneath his paws exploding with the strength of his strapping legs. Determined not to die for naught, Howling Talon met the attacking wolf monster with a rash charge.

  Bloodstirring shrieks, barks, and snarls announced the beginning of the fierce battle between hunter and prey. The violent dissonance perturbed Marek fighter in the slightest, who steeled himself before the incoming cavalry of winter-breathing dogs.

  Marek counted on the owl creature engaging with the bulky wolf-thing. However skilled he was, it was unlikely he could stand against three wargs and their ‘papa wolf’ at the same time; dust off the corners before sweeping the floor, and the wargs liked the idea.

  But the fighter should make haste — the sounds of the massacre disturbed the windy hillocks but did not drown out the distant barks. In minutes, more wolves would join the soon-to-be feast, and it would be preferable if they found warg corpses littered around instead of a lone human fighter.

  The wargs covered half the distance when the dog at Marek's utmost left stopped to expel its supernatural attack. Marek raised his hide garment as a shield and intercepted the condensed storm, recoiling one foot because of the blast.

  Notwithstanding, the human remained firm, ready to greet the incoming two wargs.

  Getting the timing on point, right before the middle warg snapped its fangs at its prey, Marek skipped backward, the attacker stepping into the chilling beam. The wolven grunted, but as expected, wargs could not freeze each other; the breath attack merely coated the wrong target’s mane with a layer of frost.

  The remaining warg, the one at the former utmost right, lunged, but a brandishing red blade interjected, cutting off its attack and carving a red line on its nose. Lucky you that I was in the middle of evading.

  The group’s ranger held its breathing attack upon realizing it was achieving nothing and decided to round on the human, seeking a new opening. Marek disregarded it for the time being, too busy sparring with the duo of dark-gray-furred wolvens in the fore.

  Like the sea, tactics had shifted, and now the wargs leaned more into defensiveness, to the man’s frustration. So far, none of the wounds Marek had scored were significant, and his foes remained undaunted by the numerous bites of steel.

  The prudence came to an end as soon as the third wolf-thing took its position behind the human fighter. The creature beset, its ivory knives spearing toward the prey ahead. But unexpectedly, the human bashed his back against the sneaky assailant, and the fangs, rather than cutting through flesh, clanked when they collided with the item attached to the man’s spine.

  Try chewing that, mutt.

  However, stopping biting jaws was not the same as stopping four hundred pounds of wolf bulk, and the impact pushed Marek directly into the ensnaring pit of sharp gnashers.

  Right the impulse he was looking for.

  Marek stretched his leg to kick right at the warg in front. However hard the soles of his boots were, the kick inflicted little pain, but Marek’s aim all along was to find a foothold to swirl in the air, his ax and sword twirling in the direction of the warg formerly struck by its kind’s breath weapon.

  Too dull to notice the maneuver, the wolf-thing stood in reach of both weapons. Iousterard cleaved through the side of the snout, not a lethal wound on its own, but Marek wanted not to give the kill to the elven ax — he wanted to feed Dalavut with the mongrel blood.

  The warg only had the time to yelp when the arterial-red blade thrust deep into the furred neck, the creature wheezing as the steel ruptured the windpipe along other vital blood vessels. A twist of the steel inside the creature announced the monster’s death with a gory squelch.

  Then it came, like a stream of magma through his veins: the sanguine rush of the blade. The bane of Dalavut.

  His mouth went ajar, exposed teeth stretching and sharpening by the instants. Just as the previous warg slain, the effects were minor — the ‘advantages’ of nourishing Dalavut were variable depending on the ‘strength’ of the victim — but the thrilling force flowing through his veins was enough for now.

  It was a prelude to a bloody frenzy that he generally avoided given the records of tragedies it had sown.

  But right now? He stood alone, surrounded by enemies. The only possible tragedy was his demise.

  Twirling around, Marek noticed the warg he just booted was now gnawing at his foot, the knives threatening to tear his costly boots and tissue and crunch his legbone. Likewise, the other canid tugged at the item fastened to the fighter’s back, both creatures trying to tear apart the man’s leg.

  But with the cursed sword’s effect active, Marek did not feel compelled to panic, nor did he feel pain as his foot was having the chew toy treatment. Instead, he stared at the biting wolf monster, a smirk plastered on his visage.

  “Aren’t you a li'l cute pup,” he remarked, tone tinged with a dash of malice, before smacking his other boot at the monster’s snout. It should not have been a big deal considering the last punt Hollu had received, but this stomp was more relentless, more inhuman, akin to a reindeer's kick. When one smack was not enough to persuade the wolf to let his foot out, more strikes followed.

  This strength is not of human origin. Hollu thought, tenseness growing with every kick, the fur of his visage beginning to get wet with his own blood.

  It took seven kicks to make the warg slacken his maw, the latest strike sending him staggering. In that brief instant, and ignoring his mangled leg, Marek pivoted and slipped off the item’s strap, turning to face the other monster, which still had the device trapped inside its jaws. When the warg glanced to confirm the doings of its prey, the only thing it perceived was a point going directly at its head. The sword pricked its left eye and lacerated the surface of the skull.

  The warg flinched in agony, wailing at the poking of one of its three eyes and dropping the wrapped device. The monster was alive only because Marek refused to cut through his belongings.

  The coal-haired fighter was about to finish the crying dog, but an unexpected tackle stemming from his back stopped him from delivering another strike. The warg, whose canine features began to swell from the many kicks, pounced over the man, plunging him into the soft frost. Still under the effects of the cursed surge, the human flipped over to face his annoying assailant, the meaty smell of the warg’s foggy breath warming his face, droplets of saliva moistening the snarling mien of the human.

  “But what an exasperating son of a bitch you are,” Marek groaned, flashing his unnatural long teeth at the monster above. Hollu snapped, the human reacting by using his left arm to block the bite, his own vital liquid pouring into his face.

  And in spite of that, the fighter had enough strength to prevent the biting creature from chewing his way past the arm to more vulnerable areas.

  This is absurd! My jaws shall have destroyed his armbone!

  The remaining warg, not at all recovered from his throes of pain, backstepped a few feet and started charging a new breathing attack. Marek heard the whistle and turned once again to Hollu. Unable to use Dalavut, Marek used the blunt end of his ax to hammer the head of the warg anew, deigning two blows — the first smack elicited a cry of anguish, and the second resounded with a sharp thud, and his arm went free.

  Hollu struggled to remain on four legs, recoiling as the last two strikes shook his world and blurred his vision, one single push away from dropping unconscious. Marek had no time to reassure himself that the warg he just hit was out of commission and hustled to flip on his stomach, lifting the ax over his head, ready to silence that annoying whistle.

  The gust was unleashed just as the gleaming metal flung out of the warrior’s grip, whirling at an accelerated rate, looking more like a silver disk than an ax. The spinning blade cut right through the waterfall line of cold, hardly deviating from its trajectory. Regardless, the weapon went stray by mere inches, just enough to trace the left side of the creature’s face, gashing yet another eye. The ax continued its path and lost itself in the heaviness of the snow.

  The warg let out no cry: the ax cut a bit deep into the skull, scraping its brain and making the lupine monster stagger and pant as every remnant of its movement faculties crumbled like a card tower. This was the best outcome for the black-haired swordsman: more life to bid the sword.

  Marek strode toward the dumbstruck wolven, starting to feel the growing throbs of his fresh injuries. But they would not last for long. The warg did not react — it literally could not; its central eye stayed unblinking as the scarlet shadow of a sword phased all the way through its lone eye. The beast’s stumbling stopped with dispatch.

  The lifeless dog fell flat to the cold soil as soon as the man unsheathed his weapon from the skull, the bloody surge resuming in the act. Marek hissed through his pointy teeth as the pain vanished again and the lesions mended close.

  Marek turned to the remaining wolf-thing, but instead of seeing a beast ready to engage in battle, the warrior only detected an immobile mongrel lying on a snowbed.

  “Now, now, only one mutt remains,” he said, grinning and turning in the way of the massive warg, who fought against the chimera about fifty yards from where the warrior stood. The warg-monster got the owl creature pressed to the ground while the avian entity struggled against the hefty body, using its talons to keep the jaws away from crushing its head.

  The barking and stepping sounds were more evident now, and soon, more packs would step onto the battlefield. He was running out of time.

  “The beaky beast lives,” he tilted his neck, emitting a crack. “Good. It only needs to hold the mutt monster a brief moment while I impale this blade in his furry head.”

  As soon as he finished that phrase, Marek lunged toward the hulking warg.

  ————————————————————————————————————————————————

  His pack left his side, yet he had the high ground.

  Howling Talon had been bolting all night and morning; its bones shuddered with exhaustion, and its aching flesh helplessly throbbed — it could not even conceal its panting.

  Victory was at paw.

  The chimera leaped toward Gruhulla, its feathery limbs springing its lithe form at the brawny back of the warg lord, the tip of its talons digging into the fibrous muscle.

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  Pitiful. Unable to face my fangs, you hide in my mane.

  The warg tried to shake the avian off, but the latter clung onto him like a tick, unsuccessful attempts achieving nothing but increasing the number of cuts underneath his mane. Resistance daringly evolved, and the chimera spun so it could face in the same direction as its foe’s. In short, it started to use its beak, the rigid snout piercing deep, eliciting a series of guttural grunts from Gruhulla.

  “Enough!” Gruhulla strode and rolled on his back like a larch log, crushing the owl-thing under his weight. The winged creature, ever the resolved one, remained attached to the lustrous back, and instead of releasing its hold, the avian crept along closer to the head. More rolls, they all hurt like a cave-in, but the chimera continued without loosening its hold over the wolf-monster, whose head now loomed at talon’s reach.

  In a swift movement, Howling Talon lashed out at the head and jabbed the rear of one Gloom Fang’s ears.

  Gruhulla issued a glottal rumble, fed up with the chimera’s embittering tries, and charged against a pine. With one crawly hand less to cling to the wolf-thing, Howling Talon was in no position to prepare a proper defense and consequently had its body smashed against the bark of the trunk.

  Howling Talon issued a short-lived screech, its world momentarily turning inside out by the violent impact, feeling how its bowels cramped inside its core. Between the lingering pain, the chimera lost vigor — a drastic bounce was all needed to shake off the creature from the warg’s back once and for all, the feathery figure plunging into the frozen soil shortly afterward.

  The pale creature tried to recover from the fall as fast as it could but was not quick enough to avoid the incoming tackle of the bulky wolf monster, a bump that knocked it down into the snow below, two wide legs locking the creature in place.

  The humongous jaws snapped, and the chimera threw its arms in defense, using the energy left inside its body to stop the fangs from reaching its head or neck. As Gruhulla tried to close the gap, Howling Talon used its hind legs to crawl on its back, sweeping the frozen soil aside with its body and carving a trench in the ground.

  It was not long before the warg stomped in one of the wings and ruined the chimera’s fruitless attempt to delay the inescapable. The bird-like arms of the feathery creature shivered in fatigue, its talons slipping into the razor-filled abyss of teeth, now fighting to stop the fangs from biting its fingers off.

  Howling Talon shouted in unavailing defiance as the rotten breath flooded its pained visage.

  Your aberrant existence finally met its end, Howling Talon. The puny wolves are mine. The highland range is mine. And soon, the human settlements will serve me and my kind as hunting grounds. My domain will be absolute, my reign about to rise from the winter, and the human will think twice before—?!

  The foolhardy daydreaming of Gruhulla came to an end when he heard the ground crunch by his right side. A dark-brown figure lunged, enmity palpable in his stride, with a sharp red metal in hand and plunging into his neck. Gruhulla reacted to this new assailant, but he was unable to avoid the cold bite of the blade, which drew a red, deep line at the side of the creature’s neck.

  Gruhulla flinched and roared in both outrage and anguish.

  “Crap. I missed,” Marek uttered, teeth bared in an awkward half grin, half grimace. Rebounding, the fighter withdrew his longsword and prepared to spear the monster’s head; the elephantine warg reacted faster and intercepted the blade with his foreleg, warding off the assailant backward.

  With the clawed paw busy repelling steel, the owl-wolf’s wing unlocked free, arms available to scram quickly. The fleeting gap did not go to waste, and Howling Talon hopped beyond the stifling embrace of the giant wolf-thing.

  “No!” A hoarse bark escaped Gruhulla’s lips, desperate to prevent his so-desired prey from escaping his clutches. He snapped with the expectation of seizing Howling Talon’s leg or tail, but the blurring image of a dark blade got in his way, threatening to enlarge the gaping wound in his neck. The alpha had no other choice but to recoil.

  A few heartbeats, and Howling Talon ran two strides away from its pursuer.

  One twinkling, and the aberration creature lost itself in the canopy of larches and snow.

  Gruhulla’s ambitions once again were hindered indefinitely.

  His three pupils, a blazing yellow from birth, shrunk to pitch-black dots. The lips of his jaws twitching erratically, peeling up to reveal rows of ivory daggers. The fur of his mane blistered into darkened spikes, like stalactites standing in the depths of the sea.

  Gruhulla snapped at the meddlesome intruder with a barrage of attacks, using pits of gnasher and bony claws. The human danced around, its blade parrying the trunk-like limbs, the weight making the fighter gradually step back. Occasional lacerations met the warg’s legs, but amid its rabid rage, the monster paid no mind — he had no mind to give either way, his reason temporarily lost to vengeful bloodlust.

  Marek was suddenly reduced to defense, struggling to elude the crushing gnashers of the warg lord. It did not pass long before the human’s defense broke, the beast’s bonelike nails landing on his side, blood and remnants of his long coat beneath his cloak soaring to the winds.

  Weirdly enough, the cut on his ribs gave the human an opening, the momentum of the impact allowing him to veer in mid-air and retaliate with an attack on his own. Human blood mixed with beast blood when a toe launched into the air, the pack leader shouting a rattling cry of pain.

  But with aching came clarity, and after losing a chunk of his flesh, the warg lord took a brief break to survey his new adversary. Marek stopped likewise, waiting for an attack that never came; the enchanted sword’s effects lessened enough for the man to avoid reckless action.

  Gruhulla shot a glance at what lay behind the man — his three underlings, son included, lay in the snow, blood surrounding their immobile bodies. All of them fell to the man in front of him.

  How?… Gruhulla mused, befuddled, casting his fiery stare back to the man, vivid yellow orbs throwing daggers at his new enemy. He does not tower above others of his kind. Does not seem to have grey ancestry. He seems to be no wizard.

  His eyes trailed across the man. The hide the human wore looked oddly familiar, similar to the manticores in the North. Blood flowed through his left arm, but no injuries could be discerned. The warg frowned upon seeing the most recent wound scored by him — three small gashes, deceptively tiny, considering he felt his nails had scraped ribs.

  There is no way in this frozen land that my claws inflicted so little damage. My strike was solid! His reasoning was in point, and his doubts cleared the second he flashed his three eyes at the blade in the man’s left hand. He observed just in time to see the leftover blood — his blood — leaking through the red blade. The liquid shrank and disappeared along the length of the steel. The weapon itself consumed the blood.

  “Accursed thing,” the warg muttered, his acidic voice rougher and deeper than ever.

  “I knew you could spit, monster,” said Marek, one mouth corner scarcely bent up.

  “You let Howling Talon escape,” Gruhulla barked. “You killed my pack!”

  ‘Howling Talon’? So that is the name of the owl creature.

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you about the consequences of not leaving these mountains,” the man chastised. “You should have known better about meddling in human affairs.” Marek’s brows twitched when a group of thuds echoed from both behind and left. The commoner wolves finally came, and by the dozens.

  “And you should have known better about meddling with warg’s hunt,” the wolf-thing snarled. “Pull warg’s tail and you get warg’s fangs.”

  “Going to send the dogs after me, you lazy mutt?” Marek asked in fake contempt.

  “So you could feed them to the steel? No, not going to underestimate damned weapons. You face me, I tear your arm along your blaspheme steel, then feed you to the wild dogs.”

  “Guess my flesh isn’t worth more than one bite.” No sooner had he finished talking than the hulking warg rushed toward him, the abyss of ivory knife gaping at him, anxious to rip his vowels out.

  ————————————————————————————————————————————————

  The events have turned surprisingly miraculously in the chimera’s favor.

  Gruhulla stayed behind without signs of coming after it, and, if the image of three motionless and lupine bodies meant anything, no other wolf-thing was available for dragging out the chase further.

  Gruhulla’s campaign had been rendered fruitless — he was alone, whereas Howling Talon was free.

  But… for how long?

  The owl-wolf creature halted to take a breather and to mull over its current situation.

  The warg pack had been dismantled, but the greatest danger was on the loose. Gruhulla still held domain over the wolves, and as long as that continued to be real, the locals in the North and the valley’s passers-by were in danger.

  That includes Imbi and the citizens of V?shla.

  The chimera’s head rotated all the way behind and stared in the direction where it had seen the human for the last time, the same human who now battled the dark-as-night wolf-monster in a solo battle.

  The hooman chose to battle. He knew the consequence of attacking a warg, the monster mused. Besides, he is strong, and there are no more warg besides Gruhulla. He shall be able to defeat the nasty warg.

  …

  Right?

  As the creature considered the possibility of retiring into a hole to recover, its acute ears caught the sound of barking. Wolves — tens of them — were already on the scene. Oh no. It was already pretty difficult to stand against a warg almost twice as big as a polar bear, but against several packs of wolves led by a canid monstrosity was a feat beyond what was deemed humanly possible.

  The owlhead rotated once again to the closest town’s way — V?hsla, the settlement that housed the only person deemed family by the chimera. It knew that, if the human failed, Gruhulla might be cornered into madness, and a massacre could extend beyond the narrow valley.

  I have no choice… right?

  The snow-white creature took its choice. It was risky, but that was the last shot to stop the tenacious warg and his delirium of conquest. It would return to the warg and help the swordsman kill the alpha once and for all.

  Gruhulla would die, or the life of an owl-thing would meet a gruesome end along with the human.

  The chimera swiveled uphill and resumed its sprint, this time in return, back to what could be its last stand.

  I hope the hooman is still alive. I hope the hooman doesn’t attack me.

  ————————————————————————————————————————————————

  Fang and sword danced amid the hillock, entoning a cacophony of clunks, a lethal choreography wherein the slightest mistake meant getting gutted. Or at least, that was true for the human fighter, whose petite figure could not stand the wall-cracking swipes of the warg’s legs or the crushing potency of his jaws.

  The audience, tens of wolves, remained several feet away from the arena, barking and sporadically howling, awaiting any order from their leader. Eager to savor human meat.

  Marek had scored a few slashes at the creature, occasionally alternating the sword between hands to have a better angle to strike at, but those were mere scrapes that did not dampen the warg’s onslaught in the slightest.

  Seconds ticked by, and the blood surge halted; every wound he had sustained during the battle had healed into bearable levels, but his body no longer benefited from orc-like strength. Dalavut’s bane was gone, and Marek was back to his human level of strength.

  The rhythm of combat prolonged steadfast — two, three, four minutes — time blurred just the swift swing of his blades.

  The warg pounced at the man, the former rolling ahead and brandishing his sword at the creature’s ribs. The swishing of gouged hide was music for Marek’s ears, and the gushes of blood landing over his shoulder like spring water. Surely a wound of such magnitude would reduce the strongest of beasts into a wailing mess.

  “—!” But he had erred — Gruhulla was fine; so good was his shape that he could easily deign a back kick with one of his hind legs, the paw hitting like a sledgehammer against Marek’s spine. The warg did not even release an anguished cry as his liquid vitality waterfalled from the gash.

  He took that on purpose, didn’t he?

  Marek did his best to recover quickly, pirouetting and flipping to one knee, but when he raised his head and locked his sight onto the enemy, the man witnessed the deep darkness of an incoming razor-filled mouth. Curses. He ducked, miraculously getting out of the attack’s path.

  Or so he thought. The strain in his back told him that the warg had seized his cloak.

  “Fu—”

  He could not even issue a curse when a wolfhead yanked his garments, body included. What followed was the warg flailing the man like a ragdoll, frost blowing up high each time Marek’s body smashed the snow. Bones groaned, muscles throbbed, and snow leaked in every hole of his face.

  Marek tried not to linger in the punishment he was undergoing and pinpointed the right time to escape his painful situation, swinging the scarlet blade close to the creature’s two eyeballs, gashing its eyelids and stopping the shaking raid, the warg yelping roughly in return, raising one of his legs to rub the damaged zone.

  Gruhulla’s sudden stop flung Marek into the air, his helpless body drawing a sharp angle before plummeting to the ground with a thwack. Seeing double, the fighter struggled to rise to his feet, rushing to break into a defensive stance and firming his grip over the handle, which felt… air thin?

  Thud.

  Somehow, that noise sounded more dreadful than every smack he had given off combined.

  Dalavut slipped out of his grip and now rested some yards away. And like the fighter, the warg had not missed that unfortunate occurrence.

  A bark boomed like a tombstone plunging into the depths of a cave, and the horde of furry creatures beset the human.

  Crap. Crap!

  Marek could not reach out for the sword in time, so he resorted to the dirks on his belt. Through stabs and sways, Marek defended skillfully, shedding the blood of many wolves and even scoring two or three lethal strikes.

  But the siege was relentless, and the number overwhelming. One by one, fangs found the man’s cape, then his boots and arms; no injury had been lethal, courtesy of a monster hide, but every motion was thwarted. How he stood, Marek felt like a poor deer.

  An intense whistle found his ears and hit him as an omen of death, a glance at the pack leader confirming his fears — the warg was preparing a freezing hurricane inside its mouth. The situation turned desperate, assuming it was not already at that level. Marek had witnessed the force of the hailstorm that the monster was about to unleash. Even if he could defend with his cloak, whose hem was tugged by salvage canids at the moment, the very potency of the gale could pin him against a tree and encase him in solid ice. Needless to say, if such a scenario were to happen, Marek would be dead for good.

  A copious amount of fog surrounded the warg, a misty mass that could engulf and reduce a man to frost.

  Two days. I couldn’t even survive two days…

  Marek clenched his teeth, no longer sharp, and prepared for what would be his demise.

  However, something popped up from the utmost corner of his view: a pure white blur dashing across like a crossbow dart, approaching the velvet black monster’s side. The warg noticed the assailant too late, the noise of his own attack blocking his hearing. With a collision that defied the size of the feathery form, the great warg was tackled and pushed several feet across the slush, the localized blizzard missing and blasting the arctic sky.

  It was the owl-faced chimera. It came back to challenge the warg.

  It’s back… but why?

  Why indeed, but this was not the moment to linger on the subject. Askance, Marek spotted the animals that had him immobilized: they all were gawking agape, stunned by the arrival of the chimera; more importantly, the hold over his garments had slackened.

  That’s the voucher.

  Marek shook his arms and clothes out of the toothed shackles, elbowing and fisting the wolves that surrounded him. Yelps buzzed, and growls riposted, but because of the shock caused by Howling Talon’s return, none managed to stop the fighter from retrieving his sword; the few wolves that got in his way were sliced up by a dirk.

  With Dalavut back to the leathery embrace of his gloved hand, Marek rushed straight and dashed toward the humongous warg and the winged chimera; no wolf dared to go in pursuit of the human and only stayed at bay of the confrontation, barking, as if an invisible screen prevented them from joining in.

  Meanwhile, the chimera pushed its onslaught on the warg, even poking one of his eyes. The aching of his jabbed eyeball made Gruhulla shout, retaliating by catching one of the hybrid’s arms; the warg thrashed its prey and threw it against a close pine, bark crunching with the strike. Following, the warg turned to the wolves and roared, invoking them to his aid. But rather than staring at the numerous packs, Gruhulla gazed into the incoming fighter. The warg’s intense stare, burning like embers, speared the human’s very being. Marek could have sworn that the wrathful snarl had torn the warg’s lips apart.

  No longer shy, the wolves went after the human and the chimera. Not even they knew the exact target this time.

  The fighter and mutated warg engaged in another violent choreography. Eventually, the pack closed the distance, ready to tear the first prey apart, but another howl, one more harmonic than the croaking shout of Gloom Fang, made the canids abruptly halt in their tracks. The chimera showed a bellow of its own, discouraging the tens of gray dogs.

  “Disloyal mongrels! Obey me!” the warg lord scolded with another roar, but the opposing high-pitched cry overrode the angry command. The bewildered wolves were only limited to cowering and flattening their ears, exhaling half-hearted barks and yelps. They were both scared of the chimera and their leader. The presence of the damned sword did not help either.

  “Bunch of cry-pups you all!” Gruhulla issued a deafening rave and wildly snapped at the engaged human. His mind got lost amid its raging instinct once again. Not even black dots remained on his eyes this time — they were completely pearlescent white with savagery.

  Angrier than ever, the warg assaulted Marek with another series of swipes, no longer caring for the wounds he might obtain from the black-scarlet sword. Parrying the strikes would no longer work: they carried so much weight that they could overturn a carriage, horses and all.

  Papa Wolf is angry. Marek joked in his mind, trying to soothe himself in his one-sided struggle. He was in a better spot than three minutes ago, leaving no gap for complaints. Without the wolf-monster noticing, the chimera prowled at the rear of the lupine monster and sank its keen beak into one of his hind legs.

  As Gruhulla shouted a primal cry of anguish, Marek took the opportunity to swing his sword at the warg’s head. The enchanted blade slashed dense fur and tough hide, even gashing the hard skull, but failed to sever beyond, leaving the brain intact. Even worse, the brutish creature showed no sign of pain, retaliation coming in the form of a leg swipe, which flung the human several feet away, close to the cliffside.

  Marek got back rapidly, preparing to lunge against the monster. But as soon as he poised to attack, he sensed that his grip was lighter than usual — the sword was no longer in his grip. And it was then he noticed the sword drawing a bow above his head, directly to the cliff and plummeting into the valley below.

  “Fucking again?” he groaned. “Now what?”

  Back to the two monsters, Gruhulla swirled back at the creature chewing his leg and seized one of its wings, yanking it from his ankle and smashing it against a nearby pine. The owl-wolf chimera, not at all recovered from the fatigue of the last encounter, was losing terrain, and the warg was biting his way to victory.

  The fighter quickly inspected his clothes, urgently looking for another weapon to use: his device was behind the pack of wolves, and Iousterard was down the valley meeting with an equally stray Dalavut. The only pommel he touched belonged to one of his dirks, a tiny knife without magic, hardly useful against the fibrous skin of a warg, not to speak of a mutated whopping specimen. But there was no other choice; he needed to take advantage now that the chimera lived and battled by his side.

  However, before plucking his dagger out, Marek felt another metallic shape within his garments. “Since when you—” he started to grimace, shocked, disappointed, but mostly relieved at this ‘new’ finding. It was settled: this was his move. And this time, he would not miss the mark.

  Back to the two monsters, Gruhulla had the avian entity pinned against a tree, his jaws striking at the same time they were diverted by bird-like forearms. The wide legs lashed out, the defending white monster evading the demolishing rakes by scarce inches, the bark of the wooden pillar shattering by the missing swipes.

  Stamina and luck finally ran out empty, and the chimera stumbled, its stance dropping, its head now at the perfect level of the enemy's fangs. The mouth snapped, its depths an abyss of spades that led to death, getting closer by the seconds. Howling Talon saw itself in the darkness behind the fangs, its eyes quivering in dread, more fearful of failing in slaying Gloom Fang, who would torment the humans.

  It had been all for naught. Its body would be presented as a trophy and used to bring the warg clans together against humankind.

  The maw of annihilation expanded wide one last time, big enough to engulf a dog in one swallow. Howling Talon shut its eyes tight, preferring the darkness behind its own eyes.

  “—Grah!”

  A clean swish, followed by a wet hiss, resounded. Out of nowhere, blood splashed over the chimera’s whole head, the liquid warmer than saliva. It was blood, there was no doubt, but the weird thing was that it was not its own.

  The blood belonged to Gruhulla.

  “That was for Evert Hort.”

  The silvery ax, whose sharpness surpassed Dalavut’s by nearly twofold, sliced the neck of the warg clean with such accuracy that it trailed over the previous wound caused by the red sword. The warg lord did not even have the chance to breathe a cry of agony, gurgling a raspy puff as the blood streamed out of the fresh wound, its massive head rocking against the attacker.

  Marek Blakesley commented, skipping backward as he dodged the lamentable flail of the bleeding warg.

  Despite the undoubtedly lethal wound, the wolf monster refused to crumble, battling to stay on four legs, helplessly wheezing to keep the air from leaking out of his lungs. The gravity of his wound was such that Gruhulla failed to notice his prey, formerly thought defeated, rising in front and pushing him back a couple of yards, a snarl printed on its beaky visage. The yellow returned to Gruhulla’s eyes, which crashed one last time with the resentful metallic azure of his so-hated enemy.

  “H-ho— Hwl— Hl Talo—” he did not get to finish as a talon sunk into the mortal wound and prevented more syllables from being choked out. For a brief moment, the bird creature stared at the dying warg, regarding him with disdain, observing how the yellow cinders inside his eyes extinguished more and more.

  Then, Howling Talon lashed out wildly.

  Using its disproportionate strength, the feathery chimera knocked down the weakened Gruhulla to the right and thrust into the bleeding neck.

  “Wow,” Marek hopped back at the sudden display of brutality, the owl-faced creature tainting its pure white plumage with the red of blood, digging deep into the flesh and splashing blood around. The spectacle lasted a few seconds before the chimera stopped tearing the flesh. Gruhulla, one of his kind that appears once every two generations, lay dead above a scarlet pool.

  The avian creature panted and whistled through its beakholes, worn down by its own feat of violence. Without warning, it gyrated its head at the crowd of packs, spotting even a gaping warg between them — it was Hollu, his mien bloodied and swollen because of previous smacks to his head. He was also shivering in horror.

  The chimera inhaled and puffed its chest to release a strident shriek a eyeblink later, forcing Marek to raise his hands to protect his eardrums from potential rupture.

  The entire battalion of wolves abandoned the scene like underground bugs after picking up a rock, whimpering with their tails between their legs. Hollu fared no different than his primitive cousins, sprinting full speed as far away as possible from the owl-thing. A long journey back to the East of the Frostscape awaited him.

  Quietness reigned supreme over the highlands and the valley road beneath, shut afresh from barks and howls, the omnipresent whistling of the chilly wind taking possession of the land once again.

  Seconds passed by, a period during which both individuals — chimera and human — stood uncomfortably close to each other. Marek wanted to say something, but he was not sure what. What could he say to a killing machine?

  His musing met an end with the sudden rotation of the chimera’s head, completely turned around, a gesture Marek recognized as characteristic of the owls. Notwithstanding, the movement made his shoulders flinch.

  The avian-thing regarded the human for some beats, Marek hardening the grip on his silvery ax in response, letting his heart rate lessen back to normality. The bloodied feathery monster conveyed no emotion, but some part of the fighter knew the creature lacked any hostile feeling toward him. The scrutiny continued, and Marek felt compelled to talk.

  “I helped you get rid of your pursuer. I am not your enemy, and I have no intention of wronging you,” he declared, hoping the creature could understand him.

  This may be a stupid idea.

  The winged beast rotated so its body aligned with its beaky face. It stood slightly hunched, a clunky posture for a monster used to running on four legs, yet it was half a head taller than the human in front.

  Both stared at each other’s eyes, the silvermist of its eyes clashing against the clinker of his. The creature issued a couple of soft, dulcet hoos and flapped one of its ears. The tension made Marek gulp. Come on, just turn around and disappear. I’m tired…

  As if reading his mind, the creature turned around once more and crouched in four, hopping into the woods above. The chimera trotted uphill, eventually disappearing in the canopy of frost-coated vegetation.

  Once beyond his range of vision, Marek released a heavy sigh as if he had been holding his breath the whole time.

  “What was that?” he asked, his tone weary. “How is it that no local told me about this… thing?” Indeed, no one in Gr?t?h even mentioned the presence of a bipedal wolf with a bird face.

  With adrenaline worn off, he grunted and placed his left arm around the zone where the trunk-like leg struck. For Marek’s fortune, the claw had not sliced deep, but his ribs ached anyway. He glanced at his enchanted ax. “Thanks for not leaving me hanging—” he squeezed his eyes shut as pain flowed through his side once more. “If only you had joined me sooner.”

  When the aching lessened, he turned to his wrapped item, lying on the snow where the wolves used to stand to witness the fight. “Hope the fangs of these monstrous wolves haven’t nipped the weapon,” he said as he approached the device, fastening it to his back afterward. Likewise, he recovered the other dirk, which protruded from the neck of a dead wolf.

  His eyes wandered around, trying to localize the missing Dalavut. He breathed an exasperated groan at the reminder of the sword falling into the valley. “Why couldn’t you magically return to me just as Iousterard?”

  And so, Marek moved downhill to the main road. Fortunately, it did not take long before finding the scarlet sword, the weapon’s flashy design standing out amidst the colorless scenario.

  Just as the man retrieved his missing weapon, he glanced up, in the way the chimera was last seen, wondering what creature that was, if an invention of magic or some subspecies of the manticores. The image of the white-as-snow feathery creature lingered in his mind like a dream.

  The crooked, sharp beak. The vast wings. The spotless plumage and fur...

  “…” he pursed his lips, an unexpected thought coming to his mind. “That thing was slim… humanly slim even. Could it be that it was a female specimen?” He theorized but quickly disregarded the pointless thought with a shake of his head. “Not like it matters anymore.”

  He continued his walk, knowing that the coming night would be his first in the wild Frostscape.

  Too lost in his thoughts about the incoming night, Marek was unaware of an owl creature wandering the highlands, occasionally casting glimpses at the valley beneath. Watching the human with keen interest.

  The Frost on Her Feathers.