Astrid did not understand what strange emotions had fueled her only minutes ago. With her pulse racing and her lungs pumping harder than they ever had, she had dived into a space below a bush. That was when her energy had left her. The ferocity in her blood leaked out with every gasping breath she took until all that was left was a cold, tired, scared little girl. A little girl who had just killed a man twice her size. 

The thought took over her mind. His still body laying there in the snow as it turned crimson under him. The moon’s beams showed her exactly what she had done. The image was branded into her thoughts. She had killed a man. She had killed him with her own two hands and had smiled while doing so. It’s impossible to un-kill someone. He was dead and she was not. What kind of monster was she? 

Letting her body calm down from the overwhelming high it was on, she grabbed a fistful of snow and shoved it roughly in her mouth. What little warmth she had left melted the snow, letting icy water flow down her throat. She repeated this process several more times, freezing her lips, but she was unexpectedly parched after her repeated sprints through the night-time forest. 

A gap in the leaves above showed the moon very nearly at its peak. With its light, she held her hands up. The hands of a killer. They were trembling. Shaking. She couldn’t stop them even if she tried. Were they shivering because of what she had done or because she was cold? Did it matter? Wasn’t her soul stained now? What would her parents think? The image of a burned-out house flashed through her memory. What would they have thought, she corrected. 

As she lay still, the stink of burning flesh began to creep from her clothes. It was like a dense fog, slowly filling the space she was in until it was practically suffocating. The odor haunted her. It was her parents once again trying to snuff the life out of her. She was a failure to them now. Not only did they die because of her, but she killed a person. There was no repenting for that. Even if the Christian god did exist, he would not accept her now….

He would never have accepted her. She was aberrant. Why couldn’t she have just been like her father. Been the son they wanted. She already had the body for it, cloaked as it was in the clothes infused with the odor of her dead parents. It felt as though with every doubt that clouded her mind, a new wave of the sickly smell pervaded her small hiding place. She needed a breath of fresh air immediately. Anything to escape the putridity below the bush. 

Sliding out from below the frozen plant, she took her first lungful of the freezing air, and felt free, even if only for a brief moment. The moon was at its peak. Just as bright as the fabled midnight sun that she had heard about from northern traders and sundry stories from the priestess. But the clear sky showed her a new worry. 

Encroaching ever closer to her side of the mountain was a massive bank of clouds. The kind that towered high above her. Even taller than the peaks of the mountains she lived on. Those were the clouds that brought storms with them, and for this time of year, it’d be a blizzard. A new layer of snow that would trap her on the mountainside. And with her shelter burnt, no food to speak of, and a cloak that felt colder by the second, her hope of survival was continuing to drop. 

The storm would be here by sunrise. She squeezed the hilt of the dagger. That would be her deadline to find help, escape, or find shelter. The bandits might know how to navigate mountains, but they were imbeciles to burn the only shelter on the entire mountainside. At least the only one near enough to be of any help. 

Astrid jumped from root to root, from patch of frozen ground to patch of dirt, slowly navigating forward. She didn’t have any destination in mind; rather, she held the desire to simply move forward. To keep going. The moon fueled her, making her vision and hearing sharper. The woods felt completely different that night. Almost like a playground. 

As she stood balanced on a fallen log, she felt, more than she heard, the rumbling of horses and men heading in her direction. There was no shouting of threats or spurring their horses on. Their frantic speed was caused by something else. All of the bandits riding toward her were no longer chasing her.. They were focused on something else. But what?

The girl hid behind a tree just as the band of men came rushing past. Eight horses came charging through the trees. Their coats were covered in foamy sweat, and their eyes were wide with fear. They snorted and heaved at the exertion of running at that speed while dodging trees, branches, and brambles. Pressed tightly to the animals’ backs were the huddled forms of men. She could barely see them, but she could almost smell them. They were afraid. Not terribly so, This wasn’t quite running for their lives. But something had happened, and they were trying to get away. Their silence was the silence of fear. 

She wanted to laugh. These men had invaded her home, killed her family, burned her house, destroyed her bow, and thought they’d be able to escape. She wouldn’t let them. Evil men like them would never be allowed to live as long as the gods saw fit to leave her spirit on this world. That same manic energy was filling her again. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end, as the world became brighter, more focused, easier to hunt in. 

She did laugh when she realized that two of the horses running by were without riders. Those miserable men. They deserved worse. 

Letting her soul drink in the moonlight, she crept out of her hiding place. Judging by where they were headed, they were certainly trying to get to one of the major paths on the mountain side. Astrid would never be able to outpace them, even with this strange, supernatural speed that she suddenly seemed capable of. No, she needed something else. Something to draw them back. 

The men were afraid, she knew that much. But they were still in a group. Still running as one. She sniffed the air. If she could find one more, she’d be able to draw them back. 

The blood began pumping in her ears, feeling as though it was driving her forward. And that’s when she found the scent. There were two there. Hobbling far behind the group of riders and empty horses before. The acrid scent of a man and the mangy scent of a horse, both in the throes of terror. Their odors filled the air, twisted with the wind, and told the girl everything she needed to know. 

The wind howled at her, or maybe it was the wolves beyond it. They were hunting tonight, and Astrid was joining them, at least in her own way for now. Her two quarries struggled closer. She could hear them, sloshing through the snow. The girl channeled the anger that saturated her entire being and found a place to lie in wait. 

Soon enough the pair came into view. The horse was wide-eyed, thrashing against the reins, and clearly wanting to bolt. Dozens of wounds along its flanks oozed blood, and it moved forward with a limp, looking on the verge of collapsing. The man on its back was not much better. He’d tied himself to his saddle, and that was the only thing keeping him upright. His hand clung to an iron axe that was coated in an uncomfortable red paste. He gripped the weapon as though his life depended on it. Although, to be fair, it probably did. From her ambush point, Astrid could see the whites of his knuckles as he clutched the axe in his hand. 

He kept taking panicked looks behind him, urging his horse forward with every breath that he struggled to give. Much like his horse, he was also wounded. His arm had dozens of bite marks on him, and the sleeve was nothing but shreds. One of his legs was missing a boot, and with it, several toes.

That feral instinct in the girl told her this wouldn’t be much of a fight, so she stepped out of her hiding place as the man approached. She let a smug grin spread onto her face. This man had dared to take her life from her. Or at least what was left of it. He would pay. 

The man’s eyes went wide as she stepped into his vision. 

“You!” The word hissed between his gritted teeth. Astrid simply responded with a flourish that the first man she’d fought had done before their scuffle. For the briefest of moments, her mind substituted ‘fought’ with ‘killed’. And her focus slipped. Once again the woods were plunged into a murky, dark, menacing space, with the splatch of thicker darkness being the only proof that the wounded man was there. 

The man must have noticed the girl's change, because the next thing she saw was the flash of metal. She barely managed to bring her own blade up to block, but the force of his blow rattled the bones through to her shoulder. 

She tried to dodge to a gap in the trees, anything to illuminate her attacker. Injured as he was, he still carried much more strength with every swing, compared to both her diminutive fighting experience and youth. The whistling of air by her head indicated his next attack, and it was all she could do to twist out of its way. She managed to escape the deadly swing, but a few locks of her hair were not so lucky. 

Astrid did not notice this detail as she was attempting to fight for her life. Had she realized what she’d lost with the man’s attack, she’d have wondered how her hair had grown so much. 

What she did notice, however, was the wind once again blowing at her back. It came in a direction and intensity that no natural force could cause. And under the screaming of the sudden gale was a voice. One that the girl recognized from some faint place in her memory of this evening. 

“Survive.” 

With that single word, more a command than advice, the world crashed back into focus. The moonlight was once again brighter. Astrid could sense the man’s movements, smell his fear, feel the shifting in the air as his axe swung at her for a third time. 

She spun out of its way with almost a lazy movement, then attacked in kind. With barely a thought and no realization of her actions, she plunged her knife through the rope holding the man to his steed, and into the horses flank. 

The man screamed as his balance was suddenly upset and he found himself stumbling to the snowy ground. But that paled in comparison to the unearthly cry the horse made. It was the bray of an injured, dying animal, who knew that it was dying. And it instantly grabbed Astrid’s attention. 

The dagger dropped from her hands, as the weight of what she’d just done caught up with her. It landed blade first into the snow. Oh gods, what had she done? The horse bolted then with no rider to rein it in. The man’s scream broke the silence once again. And Astrid forced her eyes to his prone form. His leg was bent at a grisly angle, and she worried it would get worse if she looked for longer. 

But she couldn’t tear her gaze away from the horror she had just caused for the second time that night. Not even the encroaching howls of wolves could pierce the guilt she felt. 

With a desperate look in his eyes, the man pleaded. “Please, boy. We can escape. You surprised me is all. Just don’t leave me to the beasts…. Please!”

The fear that plastered his face was clear.  He was desperate. The wolves howled again, ever closer with every breath. 

“Please, son. I don’t want to die!” 

The bandit stretched his hand toward the girl, looking for any assistance. She stared at him. What kind of monster was she? She couldn’t even move a finger towards the man she had attacked. Guilt seeped through her mind, and she took a step away from the man. 

“No…” Astrid wasn’t sure if she said it, or the man. But the word lingered in the frozen air regardless. With a deep shame welling in her soul, she turned and ran. She didn’t want to be any more of a monster than she already was. And for all she knew, if she approached him, that feral instinct would cause her to kill him.

As her back turned, his voice came to her clearly: “You whoreson!” followed only by a grunt of exertion. She didn’t even have time to react as a splitting pain roared across her back, as she felt frozen iron split her skin. The axe was now embedded in her back, and she staggered to her knees as agony coursed through her. 

She reached her arm to her back, afraid of what she would find. Her hand met the wooden hilt of the weapon, and she felt a new wave of pain as she gripped it. With a wild scream she tore the axe out of her back and turned to look at the man, panting heavily.

With the blade no longer buried in her back, the pain faded quickly. Horror spread across his face, as she got back to her feet. 

“What are you?”  His voice wasn’t even a whisper, but even so she knew what he said.

She looked at the axe that he’d thrown at her. The blade was clean, for having just been an inch deep in her flesh, but she didn’t want to think about that. Some part of her, the feral part, wanted to use the axe to kill the man. But she couldn’t do that. She met his terrified gaze and let the only words she could conjure slip from her mouth. “I’m scared.” 

Then she dropped the axe and fled. She ran through the woods, not caring about hiding her tracks, simply wanting to distance herself from whatever had just happened. She should not be alive. No human survives an injury like that. 

In her flight, she touched where the axe had struck her. There was pain when she pressed against the wound, but when she brought her hand back, there was little blood, if any. What was she? Why couldn’t she die? Was she cursed? Had her parents' god worked his strange magic on her? 

Far in the distance, the man she had just faced began to scream. His fear was quickly masked by the howling of wolves. Astrid clapped her hands over her ears, not wanting to perceive the man’s final few moments. It did little to help. 

The bandit screamed for far too long. His hoarse voice invaded her thoughts and drove her to the ground. She had left him to die. She was a monster. Suddenly, it was as though the very air around her thickened. No matter how hard she breathed, she could not fill her lungs. 

Her entire body grew heavier with every thought, with every repetition. She was a monster. She did not deserve to go on living. 

A new panic filled her as she heard snow crunch slightly behind her. She unconsciously tried to grip her dagger tightly, but she didn’t have it. She’d left it with the man. The girl slowly pushed herself around to face whatever was behind her. 

A wolf stared back at her

Its yellow eyes shone in the light, looking almost as beautiful as it did terrible. Its maw was stained red from the hunt it’d been on this evening. Had this beast helped kill that bandit? Was it an instrument of the death she had caused? 

The wolf cocked its head at Astrid, as if asking a question. It was only then that she noticed what was gripped between its teeth: the sharpened blade with which she had killed one man and sentenced another to his death. 

More gently than she’d ever expected from a predator such as it, the wolf placed the dagger down, then stepped back. 

She could just reach out and take the weapon back. Did this beast know it was hers? What was going on? 

With her breath held in her throat, she crept her hand forward, hoping to grab the knife before the wolf remembered that it should attack. Inch by inch, her hand quested to the dark steel. And this strange animal only looked on. 

Yet as soon as her hand had wrapped around the polished bone, the wolf pounced. She couldn’t even react. The beast jumped over her arm and pinned her to the ground. Astrid felt her life was at an end as she looked at the blood-covered jaws and yellow eyes staring at her. 

Pure panic filled her entire being. The wolf waited, matching her eyes with its strange gaze. Why wasn’t it killing her? 

Instead, the beast barked slightly, then licked her face, before dashing off into the night-time woods. The panic in her rose to a crescendo, and she couldn’t stay conscious. Darkness clouded her vision as her head fell back to the snow. The last thing she saw was the moon just past its peak. 

Mayday

I apologize for posting this chapter so late. I'm in the midst of finals season, and I lost track of time while studying.