Caiden had never cared much about where he called home. Not even if that place was Castle Greywatch, with its dust, cobwebs, and worn-out masonry. The Red Legion he’d been in for so long liked to say that home was wherever you could sleep.

Trouble was, he could never get any sleep anyway.

Ever since Samhain, Caiden felt certain everything was getting worse. Each year, it all became more intolerable – the whispers louder, the emotions sinking deeper into his own and trying to make a home there. Influencing him, or trying to.

While in Greywatch, he took to his usual routine: trying to find the closest thing he could to solitude and savor it. What he did now that he’d never done before was keep a book from the Venatori’s small library with him when he did manage to find moments to himself.

He’d always heard the Venatori didn’t have much of a library, and he’d heard right. Still, they had books on monsters, and even a few on magic. There was always a chance, however small, one of those books could tell him something about whatever was wrong with him. More specifically, how to fix it.

He had to find a way, after spending all his life fighting this – struggling while it steadily became more unbearable. The edge was closer now than ever, and he was ready to fall down it head-first. He could feel it.

So it was time he learned how to read.

Sitting alone on his bed that creaked ominously whenever he dared to shift positions, he leafed through the one book he tended to keep close now, trying to decipher all the various symbols written there. A trouble with reading, he quickly learned, was that everyone wrote every letter differently. Sometimes the words themselves, too.

At least this one had pictures. Damn, he felt stupid for being glad it had pictures.

But the illustrations, he could recognize. The symbols – words – underneath them made him wonder if he’d managed to pick out a bestiary. The image of someone’s very rough idea of an undead standing over several illuminated letters gave him an idea of where to start.

Or he thought it had, until he realized there were a good dozen names for any given type of rotting corpse that shouldn’t be walking again. To make things worse, there were dozens of names for most any kind of monster. There were no rules about this.

Caiden pinched the bridge of his nose. This would take a while, and if he had any sense, he’d shoot his pride in the foot and ask someone for help. Which was never happening.

Footsteps approached the door. He still slept in communal quarters, like most Venatori, even if these were empty right now. Yet the moment he heard someone approach – and recognized the particular aura of eager nerves Gwen carried with her when they were assigned a new hunt – Caiden shoved the book under his pillow.

Gwen knocked on the door. Caiden grunted, until he realized that’d probably leave her standing there in confusion.

“What’s the hunt?” Caiden asked. Except he shouldn’t realize they were going on a hunt yet, should he?

“Good guess,” Gwen said as she stepped inside. For a moment, she stood there and watched him, looking thoughtful and probably wondering what the hell he did with all his time when he wasn’t training.

“What?” he prompted, trying to diffuse the stillness by standing and starting to lay out his gear to check it. Armor, harness, silver dagger, steel dagger, steel sword, quiver of steel and silver bolts, potions, crossbow…

Gwen blinked and cleared her throat.

“There’s a berserker around Gryphon Roost, a city up in the Northwestern Empire,” she said. “He’s scaring most of the locals, so they want a Venator to talk to him. They say the berserker’s not acting right… Whatever ‘right’ is for a berserker.”

Berserkers. Caiden hrmed and rubbed his chin, gloves scratching the stubble he’d not shaved off his face. Shaving close was a part of his Legion routine he’d finally decided to drop.

“They said he keeps coming back into town and they don’t know why.”

“Maybe he wants a drink.”

Gwen gave a short laugh. “I’m sorry, did you just make a joke?”

He lifted a brow and grunt-shrugged. Hadn’t meant to. Maybe the man wanted a drink. Nothing monstrous about that.

“Anyway, this one sounds like it’ll be real, not just a rabid animal or something.”

Caiden nodded. He and Gwen had been on three hunts since Samhain, and two were false alarms. Silently, he slung the crossbow over his back, readjusted his harness now already stocked with the rest of his equipment, and was fully geared and ready to go before Gwen had even finished briefing him.

“At least the gryphon was interesting, though, right? Kind of funny to go to a city named Gryphon Roost after that.”

He huffed, scowling in disagreement. And he tugged at one of his bracers, where some scars on the inside of his forearm itched at another bad memory he tried to file away as nothing more than information.

The ride to Gryphon Roost was long. North from Castle Greywatch, up to Stonebridge, and still north from there. Despite how much he’d heard about how he must have a considerable amount of Nordling blood for his height and build, this was his first time traveling so far north.

Not that there was much to see with all the rain.

It started the morning they left from Stonebridge. With a day and a half of riding left, Gwen commented that she hoped it would clear, but it never did. Despite the rain pattering at their hoods and making the horses miserable, Caiden still got to hear all about how supposedly unusual that was for the Northwest, how the weather here was – again, supposedly – usually clear and beautiful and almost like the weather back home in Piera.

He didn’t have much to add.

“Well, there are the Plains of Illikon,” Gwen said at one point, dejected. Caiden looked over, following her gaze to the sheets of billowing grey and the impenetrable dreary mist hanging thick in the air. They could barely see the grasses around the hard-packed dirt road they rode along, much less anything beyond that.

Caiden huffed. He dug one hand into his nearest saddlebag and found something to eat.

But before he started on that, he said, “You were looking forward to seeing them?”

Gwen squirmed uncomfortably in the saddle. “I’ve never been this far north. I grew up in a temple of Athena, and I heard plenty of stories about almost everywhere, the Northwest included. They always painted a pretty picture of everything around here.”

Caiden grunted. He wasn’t sure he minded the steady rainfall. At least it kept the roads clear, for the most part, so the only intruding emotions were Gwen’s.

The ride was a quiet one. They made camp only once. The following evening, the first few tall towers of Gryphon Roost peered over a rolling hill, still barely visible in the sheets of rain. Squinting, Caiden made out a great castle perched on a thick stone outcrop jutting from the mountains, which surrounded the town on every side but the one they approached: from the south.

The wall wasn’t much to look at. A tall wooden palisade stood around the city. Looked almost like it’d only been erected fairly recently. Caiden couldn’t help but furrow his brow at it and wonder – what business did a city so close to Northrim have with only sharpened tree trunks, cobbled together, spanning the length of its approach? He’d expected walls of stone, at least. Even relatively simple ones.

Even cities near the Imperial Heartland had walls, including his home city. Not that it was surprising, with its reputation. Redfield was a city always prepared for war, for offering shelter – even for the downfall of the Empire and having to fend for itself again, which many thought impossible. Always prepared for the worst. Always prepared for anything, like he tried to be.

But the simple defenses here made sense once they’d passed them, admitted in by a watchman who threw only a glance at their blue cloaks and nodded them through. The city was thick in the process of expanding. New buildings were cropping up outside the original walls, many still only partially built. Men worked late into the fading light, carrying wood and tools as they slogged through the mud.

The inn they headed to lay well beyond the outskirts, past a sturdy stone gatehouse much more befitting a city on a frontier still untamed. One that often saw bandits and the occasional marauding monster, which had become little more than legends in most regions to the south – not a gatehouse seen often in many settlements deeper in the Empire.

But, apparently, it hadn’t kept one monster out.

That inn was practically in ruins. Debris lay scattered in the dirt, a trail of wooden splinters leading away from where a door used to stand. An entire section of wall, with the roof having sagged, looked ready to come crashing down. Fear and fury, equally as overwhelming, soaked the scene – thicker than the rain-cast fog and unwilling to fade. It lingered even with their owners long since gone. Gone because they’d run. Or gone because they’d died.

The rain busily washed acrid blood from the wooden landing, down the cobbled street, and into the nearest ditch.

“Son-of-a-bitch.”

Caiden dismounted first, not wasting a moment reaching the massive hole that had been physically ripped into the side of the building. Looking inside, he saw two or three bodies. Motionless. Dead. Blood on the floors, some blood on the walls. Wrecked tables, splintered chairs. Tankards scattered and overturned, their owners leaving in a hurry. Some broken windows, their jagged corners dipped in blood, like people thrown themselves out through them. Or had been thrown.

Something inside the inn did this. Carved a path of destruction toward this spot and escaped.

And it left claw marks behind. Massive ones.

Caiden knelt and ran a finger along a deep, wide rut carved into the floor, furrowing his brow. There was something else too: tattered clothing. Strips of cloth and leather, torn to ribbons, scattered around the room but centered near one of the smashed tables.

Rising to his feet, Caiden ducked out under the sagging roof and returned to his horse.

“He turned,” he said, throwing a look back toward Gwen, who had been trying to find any witnesses in the area. From the look of it, she hadn’t succeeded.

“Everyone ran – this must’ve just happened.”

He grunted. Yeah.

“Think we can chase it?”

“Maybe.” He turned his horse to face the direction the monster presumably ran, based on the destroyed wall. “It shouldn’t be hard to follow its trail.”

No more buildings stood partially demolished, but the berserker had left in his wake a distinct lack of people. The streets were all but cleared – except one corpse, left behind almost like an afterthought, sprawled out with arms flung out wide and a caved in, pulped chest. As if the monster had simply run the person over, crushed them under its weight, and never even missed a step.

“This is a big berserker,” Gwen said as they passed it by. Caiden swallowed and tried to ignore her disgust and her fear.

That stinking corpse brought with it a trail of bloodied prints, too smeared and indistinctive to make out other than the fact that the creature had to be—

Gwen blurted, “It looks bigger than you.”

Caiden huffed.

The blood led toward the city walls – stone walls, not the palisade beyond it – and up the stairs. But unlike the way they’d come in, these gates were shut. The watchmen on the walls were only just returning, faces pale and eyes wide, weapons clutched white-knuckle in shaking hands. Every single one had fled at the sight of the monster.

“I said we wait for the captain!” one barked, voice quivering. Caiden halted his steed just before the gatehouse and looked up at them on the wall, instantly drawing their attention.

“Venatori!” another blurted. “It just came through here – huge – covered in fur— it killed—!”

He went on, rambling, sputtering something about a demon. His speech devolved, peppered with swears. Gwen threw Caiden a look, and he barely gave himself time to return it. He didn’t have to, to know she was thinking the same thing.

They didn’t have time for this.

“Open the gates,” Caiden ordered.

“Wh—?”

“We’re going after it. Every second we talk is a second wasted.”

“Listen, Venator, we’re under command of a Legion captain at the moment, and I’m not about to disobey him. So unless…”

Caiden growled, reached down the collar of his leather armor, and pulled his signaculum from around his neck, holding them up in plain sight. A pair of small, flat metal disks, inscribed with letters he couldn’t even read, but he knew what they said. More importantly, he knew what it meant to wear them. Every Imperial soldier and every enemy of the Empire knew the seal of a Legion commander.

Gwen glanced at him and then stared. Blinked. The watchmen on the wall stared too.

And Caiden said again, “Open the damn gates.”

For a moment, the man’s jaw worked and nothing came out. Then he sputtered, “Y-yes, Sir!”

With a creak, the gates slowly edged their way open as the watchmen on the ground steadily pulled and dragged them apart. The moment the gap stood wide enough for Caiden and his horse to fit through, he set off, Gwen hot on his heels.

The construction zone outside Gryphon’s Roost seemed to be an open enough space that the berserker had only knocked one half of a building over in its mad rush to escape the city. On they rode, following the prints left in the tightly-packed dirt by a monster heavy enough to leave impressions on such well-worn paths. The rainwater puddles along the way had cleaned the blood from whatever paws it now had for feet, but that hadn’t lessened its trail.

A crash, then the snap of wood, shattered the stillness. Something had broken through the palisade wall – something that didn’t care the wall was made of wooden spikes.

Caiden’s head snapped in the direction of the sound. Behind them. Gwen could reach it first – she was only a few feet closer, having taken up the rear. More importantly, she was a lighter rider.

But Gwen hesitated, drawn up for half a moment, startled.

“Go!” he said, even as he wheeled his horse to face the sound.

With that order, Gwen immediately set her steed off toward it. Caiden took off after her, chasing the blue cloak trailing behind her until his horse finally gained at least a little—

They were too late again.

The palisade had been all but torn in two, like the monster had simply shouldered through, ignoring the spikes and splinters of wood that it’d colored in fresh red blood.

Gwen looked ready to ride straight through and after it, but Caiden called out, “Wait!”

She halted, turning and looking at him with wide eyes. “We’ll lose it if we stop!”

“We can track it again,” Caiden said, stopping beside her. “That’s our job. But if we run in headlong, we’re facing gods know what, and it’ll still be angry.”

For a moment, she stared – then she nodded, and her rushing, frightened excitement quieted considerably to a more familiar anxiety. “Okay – okay, we wait for him to turn human again. Do you think he will?”

“I don’t know. But I do know berserkers are fueled by rage, and we shouldn’t be near him when he’s in the full of it.” He ran his hand through his short hair that the rain tried its best to flatten, and now it was just a mess of short-cropped spikes – not that it ever wasn’t. “Let’s go find someone who witnessed the whole thing back at the inn. If we’re lucky, they even know who he is.”

Nodding for her to follow, Caiden led the way into the heart of the city again, back toward that unfortunate little inn.

While they went, Caiden took his signaculum again, shoving them back underneath his jerkin and his shirt. The cool air and rain had quickly chilled the metal, leaving it cold enough against his skin that he tensed at its touch.

Gwen eyed him, her curiosity almost crowding. “You mentioned you were in the Legion… I had no idea you were a commander.”

Caiden returned his hands to the reins. “That feels like a long time ago now.”

“I guess you had a pretty high rank, then.”

He nodded, but that was it. Because this wasn’t a conversation he much cared to have. It made old wounds twinge and made more scars itch, even if they were from a lot longer ago that the marks of that gryphon’s claws. Not all of those wounds he carried on his skin, either.

And more emotions were the last thing he needed.

Gwen didn’t say anything else. Her curiosity didn’t abate, but it did ease off enough to give him some space.

It didn’t take long to find someone who knew what happened. Or, at least, someone who thought they knew.

The inn was occupied again, about half a dozen civilians and a few watchmen and local soldiers finding their way over. Each one seemed just as scared as the other, horror coming off them in waves, filling the air and mingling with all that was left behind from whatever had happened.

Even a local knight had arrived to help. Or, at least, to mill around looking like he wanted to help, occasionally using his boot to nudge some of the rubble from the broken wall.

As usual, the arrival of a pair of Venatori drew almost everyone’s attention. This time, now that everything had already gone to hell, most of the reactions ranged from relief to annoyance. If Caiden had to guess, that annoyance was for monster hunters not being stationed here already, to swoop in and save everyone before these threats even happened.

If they weren’t already looking at them before, everyone turned when Caiden said, “Were any of you actually here when this happened?”

“Aye, sir, I was,” said one man, stepping forward and mussing with his long, oily hair. As if that made him look more presentable and less like someone who lived on the bottom floor of the tavern, which it didn’t. “It was that berserker.”

“I think we gathered that much,” Gwen put in.

Caiden grunted.

“He turned into a bloody giant monster and killed folk, then busted down half the bloody wall and ran!”

Gwen glanced at Caiden, then asked, “But what actually made him do that? There had to be some kind of a reason.”

“Don’t need reason with monsters, do you?”

“Yeah,” Caiden cut in flatly. “You do. What happened before he turned?”

“Well, that’s it, sir, I didn’t actually see him turn, as you put it.”

Caiden sighed. “What the hell did you see, then?”

“A couple boys were trying to talk to him, and he just went mad. I, uh, hid right under my table the moment that berserker stood up. And I stayed there too, right through all the screamin’ and awful noises, and…”

His vision seemed to cloud over, his gaze dropping to the street in front of him, and a frigid chill of horror shocked the air suddenly enough to make a shiver run up Caiden’s spine.

“So, you heard it happen,” Gwen prompted, her voice gentler now. “Did you hear what those people were saying to the berserker?”

“They were just talking crap; you know how young folks are,” the man muttered, his eyes still halfway glazed, looking at no one and nothing.

“Okay… So they talked down to him, and the berserker didn’t appreciate that. They must’ve really said something that set him off…”

“Did anyone else see what happened? Has anyone seen him before? Know a name?” Caiden said, glancing around at the others present.

Met with nothing but awkward silence and some murmured negatives or nonspecific shrugs, he rumbled quietly in frustration and turned away from the crowd again. Gwen edged up alongside him in the corner of his vision, watching.

“Thoughts?” she asked.

Caiden threw her a quick look. “We check the forest north of here, the direction he was heading. By now, maybe he’s calmed down some, even if he hasn’t turned back.”

‘Turned back.’ It was insane. Humans weren’t meant to turn into anything else, and neither was any other creature. The curses and magic he’d learned about since joining the Venatori, even not being able to read… He still couldn’t imagine a man turning into something he wasn’t.

No way he could imagine what that actually sounded like, what that drunk had to have heard – or what it looked like, for that matter. What it actually involved. It defied all nature, all sense, or at least any he’d known for his entire life.

They left their horses in town, setting off on foot to track the monster. As Caiden pulled his crossbow from his back and loaded it, Gwen nocked an arrow to her bow and spoke.

“So what do we know about berserkers – we know they bond their souls somehow to some kind of magical skins they wear, and this gives them special powers. Usually they bond with wolves, but they say that’s also the most dangerous, so some of them bond with other animals like bears instead. Because if they take it too far, they can lose control and lose themselves, turning into monsters.”

Caiden nodded. “Do we know for sure if they ever turn back?”

“There were at least two cases where they did that I read in some old accounts, but I don’t know how accurate they were.”

Tracking the berserker was easy, like Caiden figured. The monster had carved a swath of maddened destruction leading away from the city, toward the forest. He’d barreled over saplings, charged through streams, knocking aside underbrush and stones as he drove ever deeper into the wilderness.

Then, the tracks stopped.

There, sitting with his back against a tree trunk, was a man clad in little more than a few tattered clothes and furs that barely kept him decent. Every inch of him was made of tattooed muscle, scars, and some fresh bloodstains. A ragged grey beard covered half his face and reached down to his chest, full of unkempt remains of braids…

But he wore no animal skin.

What he did wear was not physical: a palpable cloak of regret. A pain so deep Caiden almost felt inclined to regret along with him as he drew near, the berserker’s emotions filling the air like a cloud of dreary, remorseful rain.

“I won’t fight,” the berserker said at once, showing empty hands and fingers stained with blood. “Show me mercy – I won’t fight.”

Gwen stood a few feet away, bow at the ready again, watching them. Caiden narrowed his eyes at him.

Slowly, the berserker stood, keeping his hands in plain view. Gwen swore under her breath, just loud enough for Caiden to hear. Even if he couldn’t match up to Caiden’s height, that didn’t make him small.

“I never meant to do what I did,” the berserker said slowly, his deep green eyes flicking between the two of them. “Whatever it was that I did.”

“You don’t remember?” Gwen asked.

“I remember some Imperials gathering around me and throwing insults…”

Caiden could hardly focus on the berserker’s words for the emotions churning in the air. Worry, even fear, and some strange anger that seemed to lurk like a monster waiting to spring. But there was a weariness, too. Something old and tired that yearned for only one thing: peace.

And always that remorse. Like someone who’d taken a life out of necessity, not desire – like a soldier in his legion who’d killed a man in self-defense. He’d felt this regret before, this guilt.

But monsters, supposedly, didn’t have remorse.

Caiden blinked, scowled harder against the sensations, and locked his eyes firmer onto the berserker before him.

“I fought for control, but… I am old. My skin took me years ago. I can fight it, but when pressed, it will always win in the end.”

“Yet,” said Gwen, “you came into an Imperial settlement knowing perfectly well you might lose control and kill innocent people there.”

Caiden glanced at her. Gwen kept her bow trained, ready to loose, a fire and distrust in her tone not quite like any he’d heard from her before. Still the berserker didn’t move, maintaining his calm, despite a sorrow in him that deepened to the point of leaving a lead weight setting heavy in Caiden’s stomach.

“Yes,” the berserker said, quieter now. “I was traveling – tired and hungry, in need of only shelter and nourishment.”

“None of that,” Gwen answered firmly, “excuses what you did.”

The berserker’s voice lifted, defensive, and pride came to grapple with his fear. “I am Gundahar of the Frost Raven clan, once a respected warrior. This is the first time I’ve ever harmed another with this curse – do not accuse me of not being careful. I know what I am and what the beast will do.” Wearing a scowl, he let his hands drop at last. “I only wanted a drink.”

Gwen glanced at him. Caiden glanced back.

And he lowered his crossbow.

“Caiden?” she said, perhaps a little stunned, the grip on her bow tightening in a way Caiden didn’t much like.

“Easy, Gwen,” he said, extending a hand toward her, lowering it, motioning for her to back off. “He doesn’t deserve this.”

She wasn’t having it, and she didn’t lower her bow. “Monsters hide in good men. The Venatori have taught it for eons – once someone is cursed, they can’t be trusted.”

Cursed. There was that word again, one he’d heard so often in this order of monster hunters. It meant so many different things, and every time he heard it, he wondered if there was some dark corner of that word reserved for him.

“Maybe not,” he said, stepping nearer to her and looking her in the eye. “If that turns out to be the case, I’ll shoulder the blame. But I’m asking you to lower your weapon.”

Gundahar neither moved nor spoke. He stood there watching with a dark look of jaded weariness etched across his features. Caiden couldn’t help but feel he’d seen a look disturbingly similar in one of the mirrors in Castle Greywatch.

At length, Gwen nodded. She lowered her bow, straightening herself and taking a deep breath, saying only, “I hope you’re right.”

Caiden nodded back. He returned his attention to Gundahar, but the berserker spoke first.

“I am sorry, truly, for what happened… Though perhaps your Imperial youths could use more lessons in how to stay their tongues. I came here peacefully, did nothing wrong, and they ridiculed me. Insulted me. Accused me of witchcraft and devilry – they didn’t know the holy powers of Odin they slandered with their words…”

His voice drifted. The pride faded away again, dissipating, pushed aside by the resurgence of guilt. Caiden’s near-eternal scowl almost softened around the edges. Almost.

“Tell us what happened,” he prompted.

Gundahar folded his arms. “You are Imperial monster hunters. After my experiences with Imperials, and even with some of my own kin in these lands who’ve spoken ill of the old ways, I have little doubt you’ve already passed your judgment.”

Guilt again, but frustration too. Just a hint of it.

Caiden huffed. “If we had, we would’ve shot you already.”

That made Gundahar pause. He nodded.

“I wore an animal skin into town. I hoped perhaps if everyone thought me a berserker, not hamrammr, they would leave me in peace…”

Caiden lifted a brow slightly. “What?”

Gundahar frowned deeply into his beard, making it look even droopier than before. “Hamrammr,” he said. “‘Shape-strong.’ Or perhaps more befitting in your tongue, eigi einhamr… ‘not of one shape.’”

“A turn-skin,” Gwen clarified in a low voice. “A shapechanger.”

“There are many terms. If you know of them, then you also know the pelt I wore wasn’t my own, as the one I was bonded to is eternally joined with my soul.

“But the Imperials ripping it from my back, pouring ale on it and holding up holy symbols as if to ward off a demon— they didn’t know it wasn’t my blessed skin, yet they treated it in such ways. And the beast in me… it reacted before I could stop it.”

Silence fell between them, heavy and waiting, yet not half as heavy as Gundahar’s guilt. With every word, it’d grown worse.

Everyone exchanged still more significant looks. This time, Caiden was the first to speak.

“What happened may not have been your fault, but my partner’s still right,” he said. “You made a mistake coming here to the Empire, and it’s our job to make sure you don’t kill again. You’re a threat, no matter how much control you think you have.”

Nodding, Gundahar replied, “I understand. I know of your order. Many berserkers have goals much like your own, we accept Odin’s gift to protect the weak, to—”

“We’re nothing like you,” Gwen interrupted, defensive now, and sending a sharp spike of hot anger stabbing into him that almost physically hurt. Caiden glanced at her and grunted.

Gundahar, on the other hand, didn’t seem to mind. “I… apologize. I meant no offense, only respect.” He bowed his head before continuing, “I regret what happened. Even fools do not deserve the fate they received. If you’ll allow me, I’ll sleep here for the night and return to Northrim first thing in the morning. On this, I give you my word.”

With that, Gundahar extended one of those bloodstained hands.

Gwen hesitated, her expression dark and worn in an all too obvious display of what Caiden felt from her: hot and cold frustration, worry – a cocktail of distrust.

Nothing like what he felt from Gundahar. In him, there was only the truest regret for what he had done, for the lives he had taken. All of it like that same guilt he was familiar with, someone forced to do something they had never wanted to do.

After a moment, Caiden gave the berserker’s hand a firm shake and said, “All right. We’ll hold you to it.”

A weathered smile creased a few more lines onto Gundahar’s face. “If you see me again, Venator, you may kill me without worry. Your partner will be right – since a man who breaks his word is truly no man at all.”

Caiden replied only with a grunt and a nod.

They left him there in the woods, trusting him to hold his promise. Caiden did, anyway. Gwen trailed along after him, both of them on horseback again, all that worry compounding on itself.

“Did I just watch the most unlikely friendship between two old soldiers?” she asked. Under her breath, she added, “If a berserker even counts as a soldier, turn-skin or not…”

Caiden threw her a look and huffed. Then added, “They pushed him. Even if he shouldn’t have been there to begin with, they knew what they were doing, but were too stupid to care. This is on them as much as it is on him.”

“They weren’t the only ones who died.”

Any chance to argue about it further was lost, as a gaggle of civilians had gathered around the gates, awaiting their return. Word traveled fast of something as terrible and absurd as this, and with it came almost disgusting amounts of interest from men and women of every station in life. It was some morbid fascination with blood and death many liked to exercise from a safe distance.

Caiden set his jaw and tried to ignore the questions and hushed whispers swarming them the moment they’d drawn near enough – the ones physically around them and the ones echoing deeper through him in places they shouldn’t. Wouldn’t have for anyone other than him.

“Did you bring its head?” “Do you have some of its teeth?” “Did you kill it?” “Do you have proof?” “They don’t have a prisoner…” “Did they not save us from that thing?”

Their horses stopped, snorting at all the people crowding inward, asking their questions, their curious eyes crawling all over the two of them and their steeds, searching for any sign of the berserker’s death.

Caiden did his best not to let his bristling show.

“No,” he said. “Now move.”

His tone dispersed more than a few, making a path that he immediately took, setting his horse off at a trot to get away from them. Gwen, on the other hand, seemed eager to explain. If nothing else, eager to part with a little Venatori wisdom.

“We couldn’t bring back a trophy,” she said. “He’s a berserker, so if we killed him while he was a beast, the body-part would turn human again not too long after we…”

“So you didn’t kill it,” one of them sniped.

“Doesn’t sound like it,” another agreed, his tone accusing.

Anger, suspicion, frustration, fear – emotions rose up behind him in a specter, its fingers reaching like fog down the street and toward him.

The crowd was gathering again, and Caiden stopped, looking back over his shoulder to see them swarming around Gwen like ants. He’d seen mobs before, and this was often how they started.

Shit.

Turning his horse, Caiden rode back over and snapped, “Get the hell back, all of you!”

They scattered, puffing up a cloud of fear, guilt, and confusion. With a jerk of his head, Caiden motioned for Gwen to follow. Sheepish now, she went after him as he led the way toward another inn they’d passed while coming this way before: one without a hole in the side of the building. And no blood on its floorboards.

On the way there, he said pointedly, “You shouldn’t talk so much.”

She scoffed. “Apparently not.” After a moment, she sighed and added, “I was trying to be nice.”

Caiden huffed.

At least the innkeeper and his daughter were accommodating enough, keeping their questions to themselves as they traded coin for keys. He could appreciate that.

When he closed the door to the room, he even considered trying to sleep. Briefly.

Though what good would that do, with Gryphon’s Roost still loud and fearful out there? Instead, he took off his gear and his armor, laying them out on the bed. He re-counted his bolts, rearranged them in the quiver, oiled his sword… and almost fell into the distracting routine before even that was knocked askew.

Shouts drifted up to his room. Distant at first. Almost hard to tell apart from the whispers that never quieted. Though then the voices became louder, closer, more urgent. Crossbow in hand, Caiden went to the open window and tried to find the source of the commotion.

Down in the lamplit streets, a mob surged furiously around their quarry, torches aloft and voices raised. From here, Caiden couldn’t make out much, but he didn’t have to make any guesses to know what was happening.

Turning, he threw his crossbow over his shoulder, grabbed his harness covered in weapons and potions, and pulled it on over only his shirt while he burst through the door to his room and stormed down the stairs. No time for his armor or the rest of his gear.

Not far from the inn doors, where the innkeeper and his daughter stood watching in horror, Caiden found exactly what he’d feared.

In the center of that mob they dragged Gundahar along by a rope around his neck. He struggled, clawing at it, getting to his feet to stand tall around most of the civilians around him. The instant he did, several rushed forward, brandishing cudgels to beat over his arms and legs, trying to force him back down.

Gwen, groggy and confused, appeared at his side with her weapons in hand.

“Dammit,” Caiden growled.

Charging forward, he shouldered his way straight into the mob with Gwen following in the wake he cleared. They parted around him like water against a stone.

He glanced at her and said, “Talk them down or distract them. I’m going after the berserker.”

She nodded.

Each step he took toward Gundahar, the air seemed to grow thicker. Stuffier. Harder to breathe, full of a desperate fear, a wild need to escape. He felt like he walked toward a cornered animal, one tired and scared – but not wanting to hurt anyone.

They reached the center, where Caiden grabbed one shoulder of a man with his club raised over the fallen Gundahar and shoved him aside hard enough to send him staggering away, teetering awkwardly like a drunk. Judging by the smell, he probably was. As was half the mob.

Somewhere behind him, Gwen tried to raise her voice over the din of confusion, anger, and accusations. Telling them to calm down, that this was their job, to go back home…

Caiden barely listened. He trusted her with that. With the talking. She liked doing it, after all, and he would be damned if he had words for these idiots. Not since he felt something in Gundahar that wanted to snap. He couldn’t let that happen.

Kneeling, he put a heavy hand on Gundahar’s shoulder as he half lay in the street, bruised and bleeding. He’d fallen silent. Gone were all the hoarse yells and pleas and him trying to explain. Spent. There weren’t any words left in him, only ragged, sharp breaths and a hard twitch of the muscles in his neck. The instant Caiden touched him, something almost seemed to lash out – something with claws, and something very intent to kill.

Caiden gripped his shoulder anyway, prompting Gundahar to look up at him. He blinked, locking gazes, sending Caiden almost more pain and remorse than he knew what to do with.

“Gundahar,” he said, “breathe. Focus. Get on your feet – I’m taking you out of here.”

“N-no— no, Venator—” he gasped. “Too late— please—”

Whatever else he might have said died on his lips, fell to a look of resignation that passed over his features in a blink. Caiden knew it was over then, even before Gundahar’s jaw set and frigid determination rushed from him, like a gale from the North.

Gundahar surged to his feet, and with one swipe made of inhuman strength, slammed his arm across Caiden’s head powerful enough to send even him sprawling into the street, skull cracking hard against the cobblestones.

Whatever happened next, Caiden didn’t see it. Didn’t much hear it, either, for the ringing in his ears. Screaming, ripping, popping – strange sounds rippling like water swam through his head as if they were ten leagues away and drowning.

This was new. All of it. The wash of cold, biting down deep, right to the bone, and the fury. It was like nothing he’d felt before, a high-pitched scream tearing on around him, and into him, settling like it wished to stay. Wished for him to scream along with it, to give in to the anger. He almost didn’t even realize that the screams – even worse, distorted, full of more pain than he and all his experience could even imagine – were also very real, filling the air around him.

And when Caiden scrambled to his feet again, his head pounding from where he’d knocked it against the ground, Gundahar was already gone.

A monster stood in his place.

Caiden stared straight down a wrinkled muzzle, lips already starting to drip strands of white froth. The thing before him looked like the largest bear he’d ever seen. Massive, hulking, covered in brown, grizzled fur and twitching muscles the size of which no man could ever achieve. Yet its shape looked almost human, with arms, and great hands bearing fingers that ended in long, hooked claws.

No recognition stirred in the green eyes like he’d seen on the man wearing this monster’s skin – or the man skin the monster wore. Maybe Gwen had been right.

Because when the bear-monster turned, it opened its wide, toothy maw and lifted a hand-paw the size of Caiden’s entire head, ready to bring it down on the nearest fleeing civilian.

This was their fault – the civilians.

But right now, that wasn’t important. All that mattered was stopping it.

Launching forward, Caiden caught the monster’s thick, hairy wrist in both hands, stopping it dead in the air before it could find its target. The beast paused half a second in surprise, glaring at him.

The other paw came around, swiping – Caiden felt it catch on the back of his arm, hook claws raking, drawing deep gashes of hot blood and searing pain. It struck again and he barely dodged, releasing one hand from its wrist to take hold of its other arm too. One in each hand, he planted his feet and pushed against it, trying to drive it anywhere but the middle of the open street.

At first, the giant monster staggered, letting out a deep, thunderous grunt. But unlike him, it had another weapon.

Lunging, jaws open, it tried to take a chunk out of his shoulder. Caiden didn’t let it, releasing its arms and kicking off the cobblestone underfoot, trying to launch himself backward and away from it.

It didn’t work – not entirely.

He escaped, landed flat on his back and the monster’s jaws snapped on nothing but air. Still the monster kept coming, long before he had time to move. Saliva dripping off its lips, it thudded forward on all fours, chuffing and grumbling – just before, with a roar, it settled both paws on his chest and pushed its massive weight onto him.

Instantly, something inside him popped. Creaked. And half a second later, it gave, pain shooting into his ribs as one let off a muffled, sickening snap. Caiden bit down hard against it, strangling a cry in his throat as he reached for the dagger on his harness—

An arrow thunked hard into the monster’s neck, with enough force to knock its head askew. The shock and rage that followed almost blinded him as the beast staggered a pace back, letting loose a deafening, ragged roar that pitched into a scream.

A human scream.

Caiden sucked in some air, ignoring the searing agony that cut into his chest and tried to stop him. Making his breath stutter – making each breath like he sucked fire into his lungs.

“Caiden!” Gwen shouted. He heard her already nocking another arrow. “Silver!”

The beast found its sense again, wheeling to face Gwen now instead. Caiden wrestled to his feet, pulling his silver dagger that felt like a toothpick compared to the size of the monster.

At the same instant, they charged – the monster for Gwen and Caiden for the monster. Deftly, Gwen leapt aside from the hulking beast’s slow, heavy swipe. It landed on all fours, grunting, lifting a hand to paw at the arrow in its neck, effortlessly snapping it but only worsening its pain.

Caiden slammed into its side, driving the dagger as deep as he could. Which, considering the creature’s size, didn’t seem deep enough. It only pissed it off more.

The monster whirled, and Caiden had half a second to duck before one set of claws nearly took off his head. Gripping the blade tight, he pulled it free and moved back, hunkering low, dagger dripping blood. He flipped it in his hand, reverse grip, eyes never leaving the beast as it brought its paws down again, running right for him.

Another arrow struck its hide, this one in its shoulder. That barely slowed it. Still it ran, maw open, teeth dripping hunger for his flesh. Caiden didn’t move.

Only when it lifted its forelegs one final time, rearing high, did Caiden relinquish his position. Boots scuffing the cobblestone, he dodged aside, bringing the dagger up for a quick slash and carving a rut along the side of the monster’s head.

Again the beast roared – roared and screamed all at once. The sound tried to maul Caiden’s soul, leaving marks deeper than any those claws had hooked into his flesh when they’d dug into him.

Gwen loosed again. Another arrow struck the beast hard in the neck, lower this time, almost straight in the throat.

It still didn’t fall.

It only reared once more, too close now for him to escape. Caiden flipped the dagger again and charged in return, barreling into its chest and bringing the dagger with him. He slammed the dagger into its hide – once, twice, three times – again and again, slamming his palm into the pommel to drive it in up to the crosspiece—

Claws sank into him, the monster pushed its weight forward again. His back met the ground, again the weight crushed downward into him as hot breath wafted onto his face.

Thunk – thunk, as Gwen rained arrows upon it, into it—

And it fell.

All at once, the monster shuddered and collapsed. Caiden grunted, arms shaking as he felt it go limp, struggling to hold its weight with wounds stinging on his shoulders.

With a hard shove, he wrestled his way out from underneath the beast’s bulk. Gwen was there in an instant, quiver half empty, putting a hand on his arm and almost craning her neck to get a look up into his face.

“Are you okay!?” she blurted.

Caiden nodded, taking a deep breath that made his ribs protest again, just as sharply as before. After a moment, he answered, “I’m fine.”

“You just… wrestled a freaking werebear, Caiden, and – your arms are bleeding and… there’s no way you’re fine.”

The monster’s corpse twitched, drawing Caiden’s attention. The enormous werebear, made of muscle and fur and frigid determination, began to change. Muscles creaked, cartilage popped, and its fur seemed to shift despite belonging to a cold corpse…

Before he could watch it happen, the sound of footsteps drew Caiden’s gaze away from the sight he could scarcely start to believe. The civilians were wandering back toward them, strung along by horror and curiosity, the kind that got people – themselves and others – killed. The kind that caused everything that’d happened here.

At the lead was the man Caiden had thrown, one of them who’d been beating Gundahar with a club. He wore no remorse, only fascinated terror. To him, this wasn’t a man that’d died. To him, this wasn’t even his damn fault.

Caiden threw the corpse a glance. When he did, there was no werebear there, and nothing even resembling it. There was only a man: an old soldier who’d just wanted a drink.

A man who hadn’t gone back on his word. A man who wasn’t a monster at all.

But the fury of the beast he’d become still lingered in the air, expelled with its dying breath. It had lessened – but it hadn’t fully abated. Emotions tended to lurk, especially around death. That almost made them easier to feel, maybe even to absorb. Right now, they were so acute Caiden almost tasted them. They came and they settled, finding a home in him and kindling there. He could do nothing but drink them in.

The rage in particular.

Eye twitching, lip twitching along with it hard enough to pull it over a flash of white teeth, Caiden rounded on the man. Before he knew it, his arm snapped out and his fingers found the man’s throat.

“Caiden, what the hell!?” Gwen shouted, grabbing Caiden’s arm.

But he only tightened his grip, glaring into the face of one of the idiots who’d started this. The man choked and yelped, pounding his fists on Caiden’s wrist while Caiden ignored them completely.

“No one,” he growled, “no one, had to die here, but you assholes had to pick a fight. His blood and the blood of everyone who died in that inn, everyone this monster killed, is on all of your hands.”

“Caiden, stop—!” Gwen started again.

He gave the man’s throat one last squeeze, hard enough to make him yelp like he thought he’d die, and then he threw him to the ground. Rage bit at his mind, rumbled in his chest, and Caiden gave Gwen one quick look before he turned and started walking.

Back toward the inn, back toward their horses. He was finished here.

“What was that – I’ve never seen you lose it like that,” Gwen blurted after him, voice shaking. Now her fear nipped at the back of his skull as he passed out of that blinding cloud of rage the monster had left.

Caiden grunted. Maybe a little too aggressively, but it worked, because she bit her tongue and didn’t ask again.

Mounting, Caiden turned his steed and set off without another word. Without so much as looking at any of the people who’d called them here and asked for their help. As he went, they passed by stores, homes – buildings with still more civilians.

Women, children… and plenty of men who hadn’t joined the drunken rabble. Frightened and confused, all of them. Some standing on street corners and trying to figure out, from afar, what had happened. Others stayed hiding in their houses, or at least looking out through the windows.

And he tried to remind himself: it was these people he was protecting. Not the mob, even if they too fell under his duties. But no, it was them, the innocents, the normal everyday people just trying to live their lives. No matter who’d started this, the werebear would’ve freely slaughtered these people after it’d fully lost control.

Rage – and hunger – like he’d felt from it couldn’t be easily sated. Maybe Gundahar had managed to curb it before, just enough to run… That wouldn’t have happened this time. Somehow, he felt sure of that. And these people, the good people, ultimately would’ve suffered and died for it.

It took until they were at the edge of the city again before Gwen spoke.

“Caiden,” she said slowly, sincerely – he could sense that, too, “are you okay?”

“I’ve been through worse.”

“That… isn’t what I asked.”

He glanced at her again, briefly met gazes, but offered only a low huff.

The rain stopped. When the sun rose, the skies were clear, shining down on the billowing, golden Plains of Illikon. An untamed land of rolling hills and distant cities sitting on the horizon, the wind brought from afar the refreshing, salty smell of the ocean.

“It is beautiful here,” Gwen commented as they stopped atop a hill along the road back to Stonebridge. They still had a very, very long way to go.

He nodded. “You got to see the plains after all.”

She forced that smile; he could tell. It was a bit of a struggle, but she managed it, maybe just to try to make him feel better.

Then fate threw him for a loop again.

Over those open plains, thundering hooves rushed toward them, riding fast and hard. He knew the sound: a cavalry contingent with somewhere to be.

Soon enough, they came up behind them, knights on horseback. “Make way!” shouted the lead rider, a man clad from head to toe in thick steel and wearing a great helm.

But when Caiden and Gwen directed their horses off to one side of the road, the knights slowed, heads turning toward the Venatori. The variety of armor told of many noble houses and sons here, with the family spearheaded by warriors in armor decorated with red dragons.

A knight in a full-face great helm rode at the head of the army, flanked by a taller knight clad in an older style of helmet with a tall, blood red crest. His sleeveless armor looked more reminiscent of the old style worn by hoplites back in Redfield than anything Caiden had seen so far in the Northwest.

“Venatori,” said the knight in the great helm, “we ride to Eloh, answering a call to take up arms against marauding beastfolk. Perhaps the gods happened to put you here – yours is the exact aid we could use. Will you help us?”

Gwen blinked and looked at Caiden. Briefly, Caiden looked back at her.

Then, he turned back to that knight and nodded.