—Sally—

  As I ran over to help Icaro, I tried to tamper down the glee that was coursing through me. As excited as I was to have succeeded at attacking and fighting off the Mutt wendigo by myself—gods did it feel nice to finally be able to protect myself—the wounded Medicine-Man needed my attention more right now.

  The well-past-middle-aged man had been slapped into the veranda of the Mutt's house. His body had ploughed through a support beam and was currently lying limply in the rubble of a recently destroyed rocking chair.

  I jumped up onto the wooden platform and investigated the Medicine-Man's wounds. I had to poke at his side through the clawed remains of his shirt to see the—thankfully—unbroken skin underneath. But from his half-conscious groan of pain and the growing discoloured splotches of viscous bruises, I did not think that his ribs were as lucky.

  After a few—very gently—slaps to his face with my claws failed to rouse him, I decided to test how effective [Life-Giving Dew] was at healing.

  [Activating: [Cloud Magic (Beginner) – Level 11]]

  [Activating: [Heart of The Ouroboros]]

  [MP: 43/46 -> 40/46]

  I cultivated the yet-to-be-tested healing clouds with my claws, using the ivory digits to work the immaterial substance into long strands. After a few minutes of creating and weaving, I had created semi-workable bandages, and I hastily wrapped the synthetic cloth around Icaro's torso.

  [You have given [Icaro – Medicine-Man] a new condition!]

  [Boosted Vitality]

  [[Notable Emergence] discovered: [Self-Taught]!]

  [[Self-Taught]: Teach yourself multiple useful techniques without guidance from the Path or instructors.] [2/3]

  [Using [Appraisal – Level 1] on: [Icaro – Medicine-Man]]

  [Icaro – Level 30 Medicine-Man]

  [A healer of all ills, uses herbs and long practised rituals to nigh-perfection to cure maladies]

  [In the lands of beasts where the serpentine Thing of poison's progeny roam far.

  In the hills of terrible afflictions, where simple cuts could lead to death.

  In the towns where only one can be afforded to be spared from the labouring under the bow and scythe, to be given the opportunity to spare the time to learn how to heal their maladies.

  Few could treat all ills.

  In such places, the ones skilled enough are few. Only the Medicine-Women, Witch Doctors, and Shamans could match the Medicine-Men and their ancestral knowledge, and keep their villages alive and free of sickness.]

  [Health: 20/36]

  [Mana: 29/29]

  [Conditions: [Crippled], [Boosted Vitality]]

  [[Boosted Vitality] -> [Icaro – Medicine-Man] will regenerate: 1 HP/m]

  I waved away the flurry of notifications to focus on the last couple of sentences, and did the mental math to calculate how long it would take for Icaro to heal. I scowled when I realised that it would take at least fifteen minutes for him to heal fully—much slower than Orion's near-instant recoveries.

  As Icaro began to open his eyes, his body shifting with more intent behind it than its pained struggles from before, I reassured myself that [Life-Giving Dew] wasn't that bad. Faster regeneration is still useful—being able to take a ten-minute break to fully recover from most injuries is better than what modern medicine can do.

  "Ugh… What happened?" Icaro grunted as he shifted himself up into an upright sitting position.

  "Mutt fa-hace hit you. I’d fought it off, and am healing your wo-unds." I eloquently explained, the Medicine-Man glancing down at his abdomen and he almost poked the clouds I’d made.

  "Don't t-houch, fragile." I stopped him before he could damage the mist's integrity. I was fairly certain Icaro would only have [Boosted Vitality] as long as my clouds were touching his skin. And it wouldn't take much to reduce my creation back to its gaseous state.

  "This feels… surprisingly effective." Icaro mumbled as he reached into a pouch around his waist, but was shocked when he opened it. He lifted the cloth sack up, and revealed the large gash on its bottom, whatever contents it held all long since lost.

  "Such bad luck to lose my new batch of wound-pills before I could even use one." The Medicine-Man sighed. Before I could suggest that we attempt to scavenge for a couple in case of emergencies, the sounds of a building loudly collapsing reminded me of my ranger—who was fighting a much stronger wendigo than the one Icaro had almost died to.

  "Let's go help." I instructed as I bounded off the balcony and then jumped while flapping my wings. The combination of the two were enough to get me the height needed to land on a nearby roof. From my higher viewpoint, I was able to see the trail of destruction the Wolf wendigo had made, and that it led to a large plume of dirty powder from what must be the most recently pulverised home.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  I gestured in the direction of the recently destroyed home to Icaro, and bounded over the rooftops towards Orion as the injured Medicine-Man hobbled after me in the streets below. I half-flew, half-ran over the buildings, and when I reached the site of the settling dust, I heard the out-of-breath ranger before managing to spot him.

  I adjusted my course towards the panting, and quickly found Orion sprinting down one of the larger side streets that splintered off the main street perpendicularly. Behind him was the Wolf wendigo, the massive beast just barely able to fit between the buildings as it ran after him, its body clipping the walls and roofs of the homes it ran past.

  But as I arrived, I could see that the wendigo was quickly catching up with the ranger, its long limbs—at least three times the length of Orion's—carried it far faster than Orion's piddly legs. As I assessed the situation, I watched its limbs curl up and tense, just like a house-cat would before it leapt onto its prey.

  "DUCK!" I shouted as loudly as my little lungs would allow. After a momentary delay, the Wolf wendigo leaped at Orion, and the ranger narrowly avoided it by falling forwards, rolling over his shoulder as the monster's outstretched claws clipped his shirt.

  As Orion landed on his knees, the wendigo went flying over him and skidded to a stop on the main street of the village. Its claws cracked and broke when they smashed against the hard stone and dug them into the rocks for friction. The monster’s careless action fractured and snapped the talon-like nails back down to monstrously inhuman proportions.

  It glanced upwards at me, glaring at my perch—which was the house on the corner of a small side-road and the street leading to the town-square. As it silently glared at me with its one remaining eye, I gagged at the sight of its other desiccated visual organ. I might have played up the action a bit to taunt the monster, letting my jaw fully unhinge and tongue stick out to make the act of gagging impossible to miss.

  "Two against one?" It growled with a guttural croak, its skull tilting at an angle as it glared at me—swampy saliva dripping out of its mouth as it did so.

  I wanted to banter with it so badly that I almost corrected it, but decided that letting it experience the encroaching tide of medicinal mist as a surprise would be far funnier to watch.

  "Surpri-hised I can talk?" I said instead, and it grinned rather than be shocked by my reveal of my true nature.

  "I listened. You've both taught me a lot." It choked out its reply with a grin. I froze in confusion as its skull-like visage taunted me, and I could see its almost thin lips twist into a smile.

  As I struggled to understand what it was talking about, Orion began to move from where he landed after his roll, circling around the wendigo so it had to face away from the town-square to keep its eye on him. I regained my confidence as I watched its singular pupil track Orion's movement. If it still had that missing eye, then it would've been able to see the Medicine-Man’s approach.

  Before the monster could decide what to do next, the sound of metal chains clinking loudly began to ring out as Icaro pulled his chain taut and launched his censer. The Medicine-Man let out a grunt as he swung the metal sphere over his head, the ball leaving behind a smoke-trail as it curved towards the wendigo. The projectile arced into the top of the wendigo's back, making a wet 'shunk' noise as it crunched into the area where its shoulder bones and neck connected.

  A spray of black blood burst out of the impact zone as the Wolf wendigo collapsed to the floor with a wet scream of pain. Icaro struggled to reel his weapon back in, but after he did dislodge it after his third tug of the chain, he moved closer to the monster and gave his weapon an underarm swing. From my point of view, Icaro had tried to follow up his attack with an uppercut, using the ball to strike the underneath of the monster’s skull. But before the silver wrecking ball could connect, the wendigo had managed to fling itself out of the way at the last possible moment.

  With its head shifted higher and slightly forwards than where Icaro had aimed, instead of hitting its chin, the ball had flown past it. With the wrecking-ball on the wrong side of the wendigo, the chain in between the metal sphere and Icaro clotheslined the monster’s neck. The weapon’s momentum carried it around the monster's neck a couple of times, wrapping the billowing and clanking censer to the wendigo like it was a cat’s bell and collar.

  From its sudden lurch forwards and eviscerated back, Icaro didn’t even need to tug his chain to cause the beast to collapse to the floor. Its body pinned the Medicine-Man's weapon to it, trapping its face next to the source of the poisonous—to wendigos—mist.

  It let out coughs and weakly struggled as the censer's clouds enveloped its head and upper body.

  [Using [Appraisal – Lvl 2] on: [Wendigo Walker]]

  [Wendigo Walker – Level 39 Aberration]

  [Health: 89/120]

  [MP: 46/60]

  [Conditions: [Starvation (Stage 2)], [Nature's Purification (38%)]]

  I appreciated the sight of the Wolf wendigo becoming completely incapacitated, its abrupt defeat a bit too sudden to be completely satisfying, but an enjoyable sight all the same. Icaro did attempt to retrieve his weapon a few times by giving the iron wrapped around his hands a few tugs, but the weight of the wendigo held it fast.

  Orion pulled out one of the few remaining arrows in his quiver and stepped towards the prone wendigo. The monster weakly rolled its head back and forth until its skull was lying on its side, its working eye staring upwards at the encroaching hunter.

  "Please… I was… Just hungry…" It pleaded. Orion barely flinched at its pathetic begging as he knocked the arrow onto his bow.

  The ranger then planted his foot onto the monster's neck and put his weight onto it. After he’d pinned down the wendigo's struggling, he kept it still as his arrowhead was slowly lined up with its remaining eye.

  "I… Just wanted to Live… Is that bad?" It continued to beg, tar-like tears etching black lines into its mummified skin as they rolled down the contours of its wolf-like skull.

  But instead of simply killing the monster, Orion paused when he heard the monster’s crocodile tears. Was he really believing its words? I swear I've heard the most cartoonishly evil villains from movies make more convincing pleas to be spared.

  "Orion j-hust do your job and kill it!" I screamed at him. The ranger glanced at me, returned his attention to the monster below him, and then repeated this cycle a few times as I watched on with a mixture of rage and incredulous shock.

  Was it really that hard to just kill the man-eating monster? Was it really that much of a moral quandary that it had originally been a child?

  Pretty much every living thing had been some sort of innocent kid at one point in their lives, and this one had eaten a dozen people since its childhood. Just because it had probably been a few weeks since the beginning of its inhuman transformation, that didn't make it any less responsible for its own actions, no matter how fucked up the scenario—because we gave it access to food.

  On the first day—just after we had arrived—it ate its first victim. We brought that deer for everyone to enjoy that very afternoon. It chose to continue killing, and eating more people, it was never forced to keep going under the threat of starvation and death.

  Before I could shout my righteous anger at Orion, I heard a cheery giggle that had no place being in this dreary place.

  My heart swiftly dropped with the heavy dread that came from hearing Aylin's carefree voice so nearby. I threw Icaro a desperate glance, hoping to see some sign on the man's face that could reassure me it wasn't her.

  But the pale ghastly face of someone who'd been told the worst news imaginable shattered that fragile hope.

  I looked towards where I'd heard the young girl's laughter, and spotted Aylin running down the path towards us. Her feet loudly slapping the cobblestones as she dragged a cloaked figure by the hand, the tall and incredibly thin figure unable to be hidden by the sheet they had draped themselves in.

  "I brought mom to come help!" Aylin shouted at us while pointing to the person behind her.

  I couldn't help but feel that things had taken a massive turn for the worse. I watched the pair with a mind shocked into silence, my thoughts absent as I saw the person's other hand reach out of the cloak, the greyed hand clasping Aylin's shoulder. The girl let out a whimper of pain as the long claw-like nails dug into her shoulder.