Essentia Occult: The Fae Stalker

Essentia Occult:

The Fae Stalker

Chapter One: Fools Errand

Morgan had never seen so many stars. They filled the sky with a wonderful haze of blue and white dots. They danced and glittered about, holding with them the mythos of two hundred thousand years of human existence. They glittered amongst the majic, lavender aurora. He had spent two weeks in a low, cold mist, awaiting the moon and her entourage of stars to show their face through the clouds. Their appearance was all the warning Morgan needed to know that tonight was the night to be ready. So, now he sat with his motorcycle on the hill top, overwatching the digsite, awaiting the predator’s first move. He stood on a bluff made from ancient concrete, perhaps a house was there before the Catastrophe, or maybe something industrial. He wished a fair afterlife to whoever built the structure; it provided a good clearing for overview of the valley. The Northwoods of Minne were dense, heavy with trees, brush, steep river canyons, untracked majic entities, tall rolling hills, incessant marsh and bog, with basalt rock occasionally standing from the soil, eroded for eons, messengers of a time before time.

Far below dozens of men worked by floodlight to unearth- something. Morgan wasn’t given the privilege of knowing what that something was. Perhaps, he had figured, that was for the better. Whatever they were excavating, he figured it wasn’t metal, they were too far from Mesabi or Cuyuna. No, the Havenridge Company wouldn’t have hired a Fae Stalker if all they were doing was scouting for a new iron pit mine, or copper complex site. Of course, despite idle thought, Morgan didn’t care what Havenridge was digging for; Middian Dollars were just as useful if they came from Technocrat Corpos, or Syndie Communes.

Morgan felt his good hand, the right one, twitch as it slipped along his motorbike’s seat. He groaned. His nerves had one hell of a penchant for showing up at the moments he least wanted them to. He unbuttoned his jacket, and forced his hand inside it. He felt around for a time until he found his prize, a flask. He uncovered it from his trenchcoat’s interior pocket, and took a long swig of the whiskey inside it. It was the cheap stuff, filled with sugar and spice to hide the fact that it was sour and burnt like hell on the way down. It wasn’t that he couldn’t afford something better these days, but why buy the good stuff if the shitty stuff will still get you drunk, and taste good enough to not vomit up?

Morgan restowed his flask, buttoning closed its pouch. He knew it wouldn’t be long now; if the plotting werewolves took much longer to attack the digsite, the miners and hapless security units Morgan had the distaste of working with would make it back to the safety of their shelters for the night. He pulled the weapon that was slung around his shoulder to the forward position. He gripped it with both his hands, right hand with its fingers just shy of the trigger. The smooth wood grip of the rifle was cold in the late spring night. It was a surplus military battle rifle he’d personally enchanted and modified. Reliable, automatic, with a majic energizing sigil wrapped around the barrel of the weapon. For the past two weeks he’d kept it dust free, and loaded with the twenty, thirty-caliber silver bullets, each laced with incendiary white phosphorus in its magazine.

Morgan pulled his right hand from the grip of the weapon, and cracked its joints. He took a deep breath as he closed his eyes- not that it made much difference in the darkness. He focused on his senses. The cold, the dark, the smell of wet soil, the humid cold breeze that only spring could bring. He then opened his eyes, and reached his hand to the moon. In his trade, she was a villain as much as a boon. Her majic gave rise to lycanthropes and aided vampiric kindred in their powers. Yet, her glow was a source of light in the trying darkness. She was a neutral actor, Morgan had decided. Perhaps he had to believe that. If he didn’t, he was as corrupted by her darkness as the werewolves he was set to kill that night.

The moon had always been friendly to Morgan. He felt a strange kinship with her. As if she was trying, always, to tell him something. He felt a longing in his heart that only faded in the moon’s decidedly feminine energy. Morgan never knew why the moon was seen as feminine, perhaps it was because her light was gentle, understanding, caring, and guiding, while the sun was strong, omnipresent, consistent, and powerful. Gender and its connection to majic always made Morgan feel funny. Scratch that- gender as concept made Morgan feel funny. He always preferred “feminine” majics to solve problems in his schooling. It added that sense of longing, of worry, of wrongness. That sense when he looked in the mirror that someone else was looking back at him. That fake smile and nod when someone said he looked nice in a suit and tie, because he never could see it quite right. The tired sense of seeing his five o’clock shadow back after he’d shaven that morning.

Morgan felt the majic of the moon in the air. It played and tingled along his pale white skin, mixing with the aurora’s power. He smiled as he began to gather the power of Lady Luna and Madam Borealis into his hand. He pulled and manipulated the energy to combine and form a spell. He drew from his own well of power now, as every maje did. He pulled from every fiber in his being, through his flesh and nerves and bones into his hand. The energy spiralled around there for a moment, the two forms coallessing. He massaged it, and finally, “spoke” to the Field, the form majic took in the universe. Like walking through a park, he guided the energy until it suited his needs. The soft glow of the moon’s light slipped about with his own heat energies to form a spell. His hand began to glow in low, lavender color, that of his aura. He focused for a moment, returning back to when he’d learnt how to cast for the first time, following the words of his mother, almost to a tee.

***

Morgan and his mother had been in his parent’s study, in their manor, just outside Duluth. Their home was poised upon a hillside, overlooking the entire shipping and manufacturing hub. The city whirred below, blinded by low lake-effect fog. The study was located in the attic of the home, with its tall v-frame pitch. Up the entire frame were book shelves, filled with hundreds of books, old world harddrives, and upon one, a special shelf, a plethora of artifacts from his parent’s life before they became his parents. The room’s plaster walls were painted a highlight hue of neutral blue-grey that mirrored the low fog cover that had consumed Duluth that day. In opposition to the plaster was dark wooden paneling as trim. Morgan and his mother were sitting on the large, sky blue, circular sofa in the middle of the room.

Morgan held the distinct memory of reading an ancient, twenty forty two, Catastrophe era, scientific exploration of the “Majic Phenomenon,” that evening. Of course, as an adult, Morgan had long come to the conclusion it was always best to let dead civilizations lie, but his mother insisted on his reading ancient texts in youth. Morgan had always considered that Humanity’s First Industrial Era didn’t come to an end because of the Maji Rifts, or the Tempests, or the coming of the new age of Wildgrowth. No, he had long figured they were doomed by the same error as a pack of starving lycanthropes; they fought over the scraps of a dying world, rather than trying to adapt to the changes that were coming, induced by their own expropriation and exploitation. They were dead, by their own greed no less. They were fools, and their world wasn’t worthy of worry or contention.

That all said, Morgan found the way the scientists of old attempted to rationalize what was, to their eyes, unrationalizable, fascinating. Tests and queries and demands of why majic worked, rather than the simple admittance that it did work. He had been annoyed when his mother had pulled the book from his hands and sat him, alone, in the center of the sofa.

Her words floated, pointed like spears, as she slowly marched around the sofa’s perimeter, “Do you remember the Seven Manifests of majic, Morgan?”

He’d replied, “Of course, mother. Life, light, heat, material, cold, dark, death.”

His mother nodded, “Good, now, close your eyes. Link yourself to the Field. What do you feel about it today?”

Morgan’s eyes closed tight as he focused upon his senses, until he found the almost silent one that hid in the back of his mind. “I sense material from matter, cold and dark- from the weather, and…” Morgan remembered groping about the room’s majic “life- from you and me.”

“Good, but where else does life come from?”

“Life majic is linked with the soil, with the air we breathe, with the food we eat.”

“Good! Good.” Morgan’s mother ruffled his hair. He always liked that sensation. “I want you to focus. On the side table in front of you, there is a book. Extend your right hand, and, first, sense the book’s presence through the Field.”

Morgan could feel his mother’s eyes drilling into him as he raised his right hand. He felt the Field with it. It was a strange thing, some sixth sense. He could feel it wrap around him, not to his impedance, but to his benefit, as if it were a guide for every action and reaction in all of time. He delicately danced his fingers around, as if he were playing with a set of strings that at their ends held a sort of amorphous puppet. He played with the energy for a time, growing familiar and comfortable with it; majic required patience, not optimism. He moved the energy from side to side, up and down, until finally, he slid it away from the sofa, and onto the end table. This wasn’t a spell so much as a sludge of energies that could be formed into a spell. Alone, it could do some things, but lacked efficiency or, oft, efficacy. This was called a “wisp.”

“Now, Morgan, what do I always say?”

“Don’t overexert myself.” Morgan rolled his eyes, safe under their lids. His mother’s incessant worry of maje sickness had grown bothersome.

“It is serious Morgan. When your uncle was just a little older than you are, he spent himself; he was bedridden for months, and his aptitude to majic never returned to him, even with medical therapy.” His mother sighed, relaxing, “Majic is physics. Conservation of energy is key. If you put majic into a spell, that energy must come from somewhere. Whether that somewhere is gathered from the environment, or if it’s from your body. What does this mean, Morgan?”

“Spells that require lots of specific kinds of energy are easier to cast in an environment with majic related to that spell.”

“Example?”

Morgan groaned, “Like a warming spell is easier to cast if you already have a fire to draw heat majic from, instead of needing to purely synthesize the heat energy yourself.”

Morgan could practically hear his mother’s grin, “Good, and what happens when you overexert yourself?”

“You could lose your abilities.” Morgan set his hands behind himself, leaning on them.

“True, and you know as well as anyone that only a lucky few are gifted with aptitude for majic.”

“Yes.” Morgan nodded, a sense of annoyance, a tensing around the neck and hands, passed through him. Even as an adult, majic was his first love, yet everyone, all the time, expected it of him. That he was to be a great maje, not just a maje.

His mother sighed, “Good. Continue now. Move your wisp over the book, please.”

Morgan refocused himself. He guided the wisp along until, sure enough, on the end table, there it was; the book. He left the wisp to explore it for a time. Sneak into the crevices, get between the paper. He lingered. It was just a dumb book. Morgan sighed, he could feel his mother’s expectant gaze upon him. What was there to see? It was a book. A book. Leather, colored, bound, and printed upon.

A book in its totality. Every page, every word, its green color, the life that made up the paper’s now lost tree and cow’s leather which now made its coverings. The words and thoughts and ideas all spun together, the effort of a person spread over months and years poured onto the pages of this book. He felt the material majic of simply existing in three dimensions now. The light and dark energies of the room’s yellowed glow. The way the paper smelled, in that way old books always do. It was wonderful, a beauty he needed to explain, to shout about, how such a mundane object was so complex in its very existence, yet so simple. He saw it now, with more than his eyes! It was impossible and possible and true and false, the book was the world, and it was also just a book. A dumb book, but a thing more than the sum of all its parts. It was knowledge manifested into an object and now it spoke, spoke back to Morgan in silent words about its existence, its trials, its tribulations. He smiled wild and stupid, yet he dared not open his eyes, lest his mother tell him to stop for the day.

His mother cooed “You see it, don’t you?”

Morgan nodded, excited.

“Now, here’s the hard part, grab at it, and leave it floating there, left to its devices.”

Morgan, again, nodded. He’d read the mechanics of casting spells into the world a dozen times before. It drew energy, in the form of caloric burning, from a being’s entire form. It needed the correct combination of majics, almost all material, with a little bit of light- which in this case, was more of an electromagnetism. He focused the energy he was extending from himself like a forklift under a pallet. His smile grew wider yet as he felt it grow first light, then lift from the table in its entirety. He pulled it some two or three feet into the air, and commanded the energy to halt. He cautiously danced his fingers though the Field, pulling at his sigiled spells, preparing to pull one into reality.

Although not needed to cast majic, sigils were incredibly useful; hand writing a book compared to using a typewriter. Sigils were easy ways to form specific components to a spell that were repeated often. These sigils could be literal pieces of paper, or stone. But for majes trained in Conjure, like Morgan, sigils could be held within the Field itself, ready to be “pulled” from and used at discretion. Of course, it took time, effort, and preparation to “journal” these ethereal sigils into the “spellbook” Morgan drew from. Morgan loved making these sigils beautiful, swirly, and stylized, a trait he carried into adulthood even if he was the only one who could see them- perhaps it was better that way, don’t want people seeing the little hearts he etched into his sigils, after all. In the coming years, Morgan would become practiced enough to absentmindedly form simple, beautiful sigils as a form of nervous jittering. Small puffs of fog, or little orbs of glowing, lavender light. Yet on that day of his memory, Morgan was doing this for the first time.

Morgan tugged the sigiled “hover” spell he had formed earlier free from its ethereal binds. He played with it like strings in a harp, forming it and wrapping it around the book until it thoroughly clung to the object. Cautious as a new mother watching her child stand for the first time, he released the amorphous energy he’d been using. It lingered for a moment before it slipped back into the space between everything and nothing that the Field occupied. He waited for the thud of failure against the floor, yet it didn’t come. A moment passed before he finally couldn’t help himself any longer, and opened his eyes. There, before him, was the book, green dyed leather with hundreds of pages drifting in and out of openness, surrounded by a lavender aura that pinned it in the air. He had done it; Morgan had cast majic.

***

Morgan released the spell he’d prepared. He felt the energy slip into his open eyes, sieving through his eyelashes. After a few watery blinks, he smiled. The darkness around him grew less all consuming. The miners slowly faded from black imprints, lit only by floodlights, to being tiny, glowing specs of a color that most people would never get to experience. He looked to the sky, the stars all lit up like a christmas tree through the aura. Some of the smaller dimmer specs were suns so distant or small that they were invisible to the unassisted eye. Morgan always wondered what it was like on the Earths of those distant stars- though perhaps this was not the moment to become philosophically minded- he had a job to do. It was an amazing spell, but also practical beyond beauty; it allowed him to see infrared light.

Morgan scanned the hillside opposite of his. He scowled- just as the miners produced visible heat, so would any wolfish beast come to lurk. But there wasn’t just a small group of lycanthropes on the hillside. No, he counted, by groups of five, how many glowing dots he could make out. He gave up once he reached ten. They were streaming down the hill, like water down a river, with silent intent. The closest set of them were gathered just outside the perimeter of the dig site, beyond the glow of the spotlights. Morgan was puzzled as he looked at the figures. Of course, there were exactly who he expected in the bunch; the hunched, looming visages of lycanthropic war forms who were ready to pounce upon their prey. But among them were dozens of, what appeared to be, normal humans. Of course, Morgan knew you could never tell; lycans loved to hide among normal people. Perhaps, with the moon at only half, they choose to not show their true forms- it became more and more difficult and draining to shift the closer the cycle was to the new moon.

This was more than Morgan had bargained for. His contract stipulated that “a handful” of lycans were probable, not a small army’s worth. Whatever Havenridge was digging for, had better have been worthwhile- the company was about to get dozens of miners and poor security killed. Morgan considered just leaving. It was suicidal to try and help in this situation. Yet, he felt a sting in his gut at the thought. He couldn’t just leave innocent people to be ripped limb from limb- not when he still had a chance at fighting. He’d seen other Fae Stalkers do so before, choosing their own life before others. He didn’t want to be like them.

Morgan plotted for a moment before deciding on his course of action- the bright phosphorus rounds loaded into his gun could light the entire valley in an at least dim glow if he fired them into the opposing hillside. That’d reveal the hungry beasts that were circling. It’d give some chance to the guards and miners to make a retreat to the safety of their dugouts before the Lycans could close distance. It wasn’t a good plan, but neither was watching three dozen people be torn to tatters like wrapping paper at solstice.

Morgan unlocked the safety on his rifle and leaned down, kneeling in the mud. He rested his elbows on his bike’s seat and aimed his rifle. He drew the firing arc in his mind, then released the infrared vision spell- firing the rifle with it on, would normally hurt, firing it with tracers at midnight, would blind him. He’d made that mistake before, and it nearly cost him his life. Perhaps if he drank a little less on the job, he’d fuck up a little less- but then again, was sobriety worth living for?

He felt the energy of the spell linger for a moment, as if it were asking if he truly wanted it gone, before, all at once, it faded. The dark of night once more surrounded him. The whole world seemed to have fallen to silence. The bugs, the wind, the birds all stopped their hymns and howls and hums. All that was left was the forgone conclusion. He held his breath as he took a guess at the range before he fired- he didn’t need to be exact, he wasn’t aiming to kill; not yet at least. He snapped his right index finger down, and the rifle came to life. The bright muzzle flash seemed to light the entire valley in repeated shots of bright light.

Morgan held the trigger down and pulled the rifle to his right. Bright incendiary tracer after tracer left the barrel of his gun. With the majic being imbued into them, they left the air crackling with tiny specks of hissing, highly energized particles that glowed with his familiar lavender. The rifle kicked into Morgan’s shoulder with each cycle, forming a rhythmic thump-thump-thump. Finally, the rifle clicked, emptying its last cartridge. The lower part of the hillside was just as Morgan wanted, lit up with tiny white hot fires. The silhouettes of the lycanthropes and their accomplices were now clear as day, and the sounds of panic filled the digsite.

Morgan pulled the magazine free from his rifle, stashing it into his ammunition pouch, before yanking the first magazine he could grab free from his bandolier, and loading it into the gun. He stood from his crouched position just in time to see the firefight break loose below. He knew they stood little chance without his help- even if they were former military, nothing could train you for an eight foot tall beast charging you on all fours with hate in its heart. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and, in a smooth action, pulled one leg over his motorcycle before he forced himself down onto the seat. He turned the key, checked the kill switch, pulled the clutch, and pressed the starter all in the space of a second.

The engine cranked, yet sat silent. He pressed the starter again, before he groaned and he engaged the choke.

Morgan muttered as he hit the starter a final time, “Now is not the time, old girl.”

The engine sputtered for a moment before, finally, roaring to life. Morgan smiled as he practically hugged the machine. After eight long years together, the old work horse still had some juice left. He took a mental note to install the replacement carburetor he’d been sitting on once he made it back to Duluth.

Morgan looked forward as he turned the bike’s headlight on, illuminating the path back down to the dig site. He revved the engine and the bike kicked down the hill. Going down such a steep hill it wasn’t like he needed much throttle, but he gave it anyway. He rode down the middle of the dirt path- not that it was wide enough to do anything else. Each bump kicked up the smell of fresh soil- that sort Morgan remembered from childhood twilights spent dashing through the woods playing games. The darkness and green foliage that would dive past as he played hide and go seek, now threatened to yank him from his bike, yet no branch dared interrupt the Fae Stalker on his mission. He remembered when his father gave him a dirt bike for his thirteenth birthday. The thing was old, a piece of junk, but Morgan worked with him to make it run like new again. His mother still kept that bike in their garage, under wraps. It was a good bike- it made good memories.

The echoing sound of rifles and screams pulled Morgan back to reality as he turned the final bend into the digsite. The headlight flickered for a moment as he fully rounded the bend. Even then, he could see it. It stood there, in the dead center of the path. Its eyes glowed in the reflection of the headlight. Seven feet tall, built like a brick wall, with bloody claws and muddy feet. It was a lycanthrope. He slammed on the brakes, and the bike slid through the mud until it was side-on to the creature no less than twenty meters off. It was a grey female, with short hair, and complex majic emanating from tattoo markings in its fur- protection sigils meant to deflect majic and projects; Morgan had a dozen of his own. It stared him down for a long, long moment. Morgan shifted himself as he looked at the creature. It didn’t move, and neither did he. He scowled, and it pointed its ears back. He reached for his gun, it bared its teeth. Yet the tension didn’t break.

The creature took a step back. It raised its claws to its waist- Morgan decided that this was enough foreplay. He pulled the rifle free from his back, sliding it under his right arm, until its grip was firm in his hand. In the same instant, the wolf crouched down before launching forward with all its force. Morgan tracked the beast through the air with the gun, before he let go of the panicked breath in his lungs. He pulled back the trigger on the rifle, allowing it to recoil up, and thus, follow the werewolf’s movement through the air. Of course, to Morgan’s lack of surprise, this failed, and only served to spend five of his precious twenty rounds. The five he shot all ricochated off somewhere deep into the backwoods. He, as fast as his body allowed, rolled off his bike, into the mud. The beast came flying past- it’s bottom claws right where his head had been but a moment prior. It came to a sliding stop just before the foliage that surrounded the path. Lucky bitch.

Morgan fell to the ground, landing just right to knock the air from his lungs. He gasped as he forced his hands under his body, and pushed himself to his feet, sliding in the mud for a few ill placed steps. He rarely ever got this close to werewolves; distance was a boon against animals when hunting. He turned just in time to see the creature closing on him, its wide, pawed feet cutting through the mud.

Morgan grabbed his low slung rifle, this time with both hands. He forced it into his shoulder and fired a short burst. This time, two of his bullets found their target, one in the upper arm of the monster, and one in the leg. Yet, it kept sprinting towards him, its claws extended. Morgan growled himself. He pulled the trigger again, letting loose until every bullet had been fired. The mechanical click of the last brass casing being ejected made his blood run cold. He knew, beyond reason, almost all of the bullets must’ve hit his target- it was point blank! That should have killed it! Yet the beast hurdled towards him, very much not dead. Morgan’s eyes grew wide as he realized his mistake; he wasn’t firing silver. If he had been firing his silver rounds, it surely would’ve felled the monstrosity before him. But no, he had been shooting it with the lead ones he intended for road bandits and wildlife! Of course, lead bullets could still kill a lycanthrope, you just needed to hit it somewhere it couldn’t regenerate fast enough to survive. But Morgan hadn’t been truly aiming.

The beast seemed disoriented as it lumbered in an increasingly frantic pattern towards Morgan. He tossed his rifle over his shoulder just in time for the beast’s left claw to slice cleanly through his trench coat. He screeched, his voice echoing like a banshee’s call. He pulled the combat knife from his leg sheath, and charged at the monster. It was clearly caught off guard by Morgan’s attack, and fumbled about with its claws as he drove the silversteel blade into the beast’s stomach.

The lycan yowled into the sky as it grabbed Morgan by the neck with its claw. It pulled him into the air, dangling him like a prized toy. He pulled the knife free from the beast’s abdomen, before he drove the knife at its face. But it was too quick, or he was too slow, or some combination thereof. It grabbed his right hand and, with a shuttering series of crunches, broke at least a half dozen bones. Morgan could only groan, as he felt the pressure around his neck grow. He knew he needed to do something- anything- to break out of its grasp, he had less than thirty seconds before he blacked out. Morgan remembered when he was in school, one of his friends did boxing. He would use majic to increase the power of each punch he made. Of course, this wasn’t allowed- it could be lethal easily, but his friend thought he was slick. The poor boy who he nearly killed didn’t agree.

Morgan forced what energies he could into his left hand. It was only a portion of his total power, but it needed to be enough. He swung at the monster. His fist, surrounded by a crackling aura, slamming into the face of the beast. The majic followed the course of his hand, and gave his punch the extra force he sought, knocking a few of the lycan’s sawtooths from its mouth. Blood leaked from its maw, dripping down its snout. It seemed almost impressed at the Fae Stalker’s strength. Yet, it was of little consequence now. The lycan twisted it’s maw around, and bit into him, on his lower left side, deep into his flesh. It tore a chunk of him out and threw him onto the ground.

Morgan rolled through the mud a few meters as he felt the instant blood loss hit him. His sense of up and down was broken. All he could taste was metal, his ears were ringing, his skin was clammy, and his entire body shuttered like he’d been in a blizzard for hours. The light of his motorcycle was as blinding as it was blurred, his vision refused to focus onto the monster. He felt his stomach turn over and over before, finally, to his relief, vomit came up, escaping from his mouth. It spilled out into the cold, bloody mud in which he was lying. He couldn’t tell if it was bloody. He didn’t know exactly where the beast had bitten him, only that his entire lower left abdomen burned, with stinging bolts of pain that spread through his entire body like a fire following a wire’s insulation. It sent his mind reeling, spinning about like a top on a table. There was nothing he’d ever experienced quite like this. He’d broken bones, been slashed at, even bitten before, but nothing this painful or totalizing. He turned his head to see the visage of the monster stand over him.

Morgan felt hate, unbridled hate, for this thing. This animal had bested him by no work of its own claw. No, it was lucky. Lucky that Morgan made an idiot’s mistake. Lucky that Morgan filled it full of lead, and not silver. The wolf was to go home now. Home to its den, where it would joke with its murderous friends, lover, family perhaps about the pathetic Fae Stalker that it killed. How it loomed over him now, its body dripping with blood, wounds slowly slipping closed with little majic twinkles. Morgan looked at the creature’s face. It looked down at him. Its eyes were almost human, they were wet with tears. Its jaw just slightly agape, ears pinned, tail between its legs. It was unmistakable- the beast was afraid, mournful, angry even- not at Morgan, but itself. It gazed at its blood coated claws, then to Morgan, then to the lingering moon in the sky.

Morgan raised his head laughing, pulling all his strength together for one last show of power. He laughed. Morgan laughed at the creature, “You’re pathetic, animal.” His vision finally narrowed, as the darkness of night wrapped around him, coddling him like a mother would its child. Then, the abyss wrapped down his body, and pulled him under.

***

Morgan wasn’t sure if it was the song birds or the rain or the sense of impending doom that woke him, but he woke nonetheless. Rain poured, yet the wind didn’t blow. A fog clung close to the ground, flowing downhill like the water under it. He groaned as he looked around himself, bolts of pain shuttering through his form. He was laid on a cot next to his motorcycle underneath a tin roofed storage canopy. The roof was tapped by a constantly shifting rhythm. Drops of water slipped between the slats of metal, falling to the earthen floor, forming tiny streams that rolled down the slight slope the canopy stood over.

Morgan looked around himself, trying to orient. He eventually realized he was at one of the auxiliary storage bays for the mining site. It seemed mostly picked clean, boxes torn open, left with claw marks, their contents stolen- whatever those contents had been. Morgan looked out the open sides of the canopy. The world seemed so dramatically different in the daylight. The sky was a dim, shifting grey that lulled just above the trees, thin whips of cloud floating past. The plants were their true deep green color, absorbing whatever sun bounced through the haze above. The birds sang their songs, telling stories of deep lives that were all too short. It seemed almost too normal, given what had just transpired.

Morgan sat up in a haste, which was decidedly a mistake as pain splinted across his body from his lower left side. He instinctually pulled back his trenchcoat and looked down at his stomach. It was- shockingly, not that bad. A mild flesh wound at worst. He prodded around it a tad. It oozed a little blood with pressure, yet it seemed ok. Ok? That shouldn’t have been possible! Morgan looked at his side for a minute, then five, then ten. It seemed as if it had been healing. But, how? Morgan wasn’t adept at healing spells, and Humans couldn’t just heal a chunk of flesh that had been torn from their bodies the previous night. For matter of fact, the very notion that he was alive was ridiculous! A werewolf had broke a dozen of his bones, slashed him, bit him, and punted him into the ground, for fuck’s sake! Morgan ran through every possible explanation. If no one was out there to help him, and he didn’t have the skill to heal himself, and the last thing he remembered was some whimpering coward of a wolf that had bested him-

“Oh fuck.”

It was like a brick through his skull as Morgan realized it. Sure, it was a myth that werewolf bites turned people, you needed blood on blood contact to be turned to a lycan. But the myth had reason for existing. It was common that lycans were bleeding in or around their mouth prior to biting people. This lycan was no exception; he had punched out some of its teeth…

“No, no, no…” Morgan looked around, his muscles tensed as he tossed his legs over the side of the cot and shakily stood. He felt his brain spin around his own skull.

Morgan’s lungs pulled tighter with each breath. Was this real? The world ran around him like he’d just ridden the tea cups at a faire. Thoughts cascaded through his mind, completely disordered. What was he going to do? Where was he going to go? Home? He wouldn’t be allowed to show his face around other Fae Stalkers again! He couldn’t work in any job that involved rifles or hunting! That was a crime for lycans! What was he going to tell his mother? Was she supposed to lose her son in the same way she lost her husband? Was she to see her son turn to a beast, his visage consumed from inside out.

Morgan’s sense of place was pulled from him, like a nail from a board. All he could do was remember back his mother’s warnings. He should’ve gone to university like she had asked! He should have listened to her, fostered his majic to try and save his father.

The image still haunted him; Morgan’s father’s limb body, hung from a roof truss in his parent’s study. It was shortly after he was infected. Morgan had saved him, of course, pulled him down, and brought him to hospital. It was so odd, seeing his father so sad, so small, so scared. Literally blue in the face, cut down from his own rafters. Morgan tried to block out those memories, but they always slithered back to him; snakes through a vent. A thought tickled down Morgan’s spine. It would be a mercy in some ways, to kill himself. A mercy to his loved ones, to himself, to society at large. But no, he couldn’t do that.

Morgan felt hot tears run down his face. He hadn’t cried in, so long he couldn’t remember the last time. Morgan hadn’t cried when his father was sent to a Lycanus Bailey, a reservation for those with lycanthropy. He hadn’t cried when his girlfriend of five years ended things on a whim. He hadn’t cried when he watched his best friend board a train to move to a city Morgan knew he would never see. He hadn’t cried when his mentor of fifteen years died in his sleep from a stroke at fifty seven. He hadn’t cried when he broke his leg falling from a cliff on a job, for gods’ sake!

Yet now he wept, he whined, he whimpered; like a pathetic animal.