The Baron left his young charge sleeping peacefully and strode through the quiet halls of the castle. He opened the great door to the main hallway and closed it again with equal care, stepping out into the moonlit courtyard. He paused as he passed the great fountain, bending towards the thorny flowers that bloomed there, shining in the soft light. To an outward observer, it would have appeared almost as if it were taking counsel with the vines and blossoms, and they would have been close to the truth. He straightened from the plant that was the heart of the castle’s power and magic, and began a steady jog out of the still open castle gates. Powerful muscles stretched as he lengthened his stride, feeling the carefully buried rage that simmered underneath the careful facade he had shown to the boy. He began to let the rage consume him as he increased his speed, feeling his senses sharpen as the strange magic that afflicted him granted him power as he sacrificed control to it. Swiftly reaching the place where he had found Skyrik earlier that day, he immediately detected the trail left by the twisted bear, and as he lept through the trees in pursuit of the monster, his features shifted in the dim light, transforming into an even more hideous version of the face that haunted him on most days. But now was not the time for vanity, or grief. Now was the time to hunt, to purge evil from his lands, now was the time to unleash his rage upon the Curse that had been inflicted on him in the only way he was capable of. A final leap brought him into a small clearing, and there he found his prey.

Yashik felt the Beast within his chest pounding against his ribs, screaming to be let out. His hands curled and uncurled and his teeth bared in fury as he faced the twisted abomination in front of him. The cursed bear opened its mouth wide, too much for the creature that it had once been, and then opened wider still. The lower jaw segmented into two parts, and black saliva dripped from pointed teeth that were packed into the monstrous mouth. Rearing on its hind legs, the creature stood above even Yashik, but the Beast within didn’t care about size. A deafening roar erupted from his own throat as he accepted the challenge and charged forward. The two met in the middle of the small clearing, smashing together with elemental fury. The bear tried to strike down on the young baron, but Yashik’s huge hands wrapped around the base of the paws, and he stabbed his horns into the chest of the creature with all his might.

They stood there a moment, locked in place but struggling for balance and position, then the bear ripped away from the horns impaled in its chest, tearing its forepaws away from the man-thing that held them and dropping to all fours, attempting to turn on his foe. But Yashik had played this game before, and the beast within him was as cunning as it was vicious. Before the bear could complete its turn, the baron was upon it. Leaping on the thing’s back, he gripped the neck with one arm, wrapping under the grotesque jaws and cutting into its windpipe. The other hand began to hammer mercilessly into the bear, massive blows that reverberated through the trees with the roaring of both combatants. Their fight had brought them to the edge of the clearing, and as soon as they were within range of the small trees there, Yashik ceased his pummeling and grabbed one with his free arm. He broke it from its roots, splintering the young sapling with a tug. Other small trees bent and shattered in the struggle, as the bear attempted to scrape him off, its roars and snarls lessening as the arm around its throat gripped tighter, tighter, tighter.

The broken sapling in Yashik’s hand was driven into the bear’s side with all the force the bunched muscles of his body could muster, again and again he drove it home, seeking the bear’s heart but finding only bone and twisted flesh. Finally, the bear reached a tree of sufficient size to withstand the impact and slammed into it, driving the wind from his tormentor who was forced at last to let go of both bear and bough, leaving the latter protruding from the side of the now panting and desperate creature.

Yashik gave the bear no time to recover, although his own ribs now shifted with a stabbing pain that told him at least one was broken. Snarling, he leapt forward, smashing a fist directly into the face of the bear, landing the blow between the eyes of the still reeling creature. Again and again, he struck with all the force he could muster. The bear bit at his hands but could not get a firm grip, the dark ichor of its mouth mixing with the blood that ran freely from them both. Great paws swept out, landing on Yashik’s body with enough force to kill a grown bull, but he only grunted, and kept swinging.

Finally, the bear tried in desperation to turn and flee into the woods, but again Yashik was relentless. Running next to the bear as it turned, his leg flashed up and down in a great kick, breaking the foreleg of the bear with a resounding snap. The beast tumbled forward and rolled through the forest loam, descending down a small hill, unable to control its fall as it smashed into boulders and trees alike. Landing at the bottom, it had no chance to make any further attempts to fight or to flee, as huge, bloody hands came crashing down on it, now with an enormous rock held between them. The stone was the last thing the bear saw before all went black, and the last sound it heard as the twisted remnants of its soul bled into the dark earth beneath it was a hissing, bellowing roar, horrible even to the monster that the bear had become.

The rock smashed into the skull, tenderizing it into paste as Yashik brought it down again and again, and again, until the boulder was thumping into damp earth where the head of his foe had once been. Throwing his improvised weapon aside, he threw his arms out and roared a challenge at the sky for any others to come face him if they dared. A brown flash at the corner of his eye was his only warning as his challenge was answered and a twisted elk stabbed its great antlers into his back. Lifted to his feet, he struggled to turn on his new opponent, but found himself tripping over the carcass of the bear, and the tines of the elk had pierced into the flesh on his back, pinning him in place as he was pushed forward. Instead of continuing to fight the momentum, he gave into it, rolling forward and curling onto one shoulder as he did. The rough summersault wrenched the antlers from his back, and with the nimbleness of a jungle cat, he caught the ground as he rolled and turned himself facedown, planting his feet in the soft earth of the forest as he did.

The last of the energy from the elk’s strike and his roll brought him to his feet, and a split second before the bloody antlers would have struck his chest, the mighty hands reached out and grasped them, stopping the huge beast with a jolt. A quick motion of his arms spun the antlers like a ship’s wheel and the monster’s neck snapped like a mast in a storm. As he dropped the carcass to the ground, he began to return to the senses that had been previously lost to battle.

Putting his back against a sturdy oak that grew nearby, he assessed his surroundings carefully for any other opponents. Being caught off guard had almost been the end of him, and as his mind slowly returned he cursed the ineptitude of rage. Sensing no other cursed creatures about, he began to take stock of his injuries. His hands and arms were covered in punctures and cuts from the abnormally sharp teeth of the bear, and his back bled freely from the wounds the elk had made. His ribs groaned as he inhaled, and he felt them gingerly. Only one was obviously broken, although he suspected at least a couple more of being cracked. Various other scrapes and swiftly forming bruises did not rise to the level of being noticeable next to his other injuries, and so were ignored. His once-fine clothing, already ragged, had sprouted new holes and tears, hanging off him in dirty, bloody strips.

But the cursed monster which had driven his latest guest into his blighted existence was dead, and the forest was a bit safer for a time. Previous experience had taught him that the conversion of a human seemed to sap energy from the dark magic that drove the curse, which he suspected was largely due to his mothers intervention. The beasts that were captured instead seemed to fuel additional transformations, leading to a gestalt effect that could overrun the lands if not kept in check. It had happened once before, in his younger days before he had become powerful enough to hunt the beasts on his own. A remote village had been overrun, its inhabitants killed or brought back to feed the curse. Fortunately, those captives had forced the curse into dormancy as they were integrated into the castle, and the area had known peace for several years. When it once again had begun to reach out for more victims, he had been ready to fight it.

That had been his life in the long years that had passed since his father had died. Fighting monsters, comforting victims as best he was able, and finding what moments of peace he could while wandering the paths of his mother’s garden. His life before then, at least since the onset of the curse, was not a time he enjoyed remembering. Instead, he preferred to dwell on earlier memories, of his childhood, of his mother. HIs father had been often absent in that time, off fighting in one war or another. The Baron had been cordial to his young son, but benign neglect was his preferred parenting method.

These idle thoughts and memories drifted through Yashik’s mind as he sat in the forest loam, allowing his monstrous body to do the work of sealing the wounds that even after only a few minutes, had stopped seeping blood and were now rapidly progressing into closed wounds that in a matter of hours would just be that many more puckered scars added to his collection. His thoughts about his father made him think wistfully of the armor the elder Baron had worn to battle, strong steel plate that would have withstood at least a few swipes of the bear’s paws. But Yashik had no skill for metal working, and the castle blacksmith had long ago left his forge to become a rather ornate coat rack in the castle hall. This led him to recall what his young charge had mentioned, that he was apprenticed to the blacksmith in Provints.

Slowly, he rose to his feet and began to walk back to the castle at a steady pace, new ideas and possibilities forming in his mind as he went. Perhaps his latest guest would be more than just a temporary companion. Perhaps the young Skyrik could be a useful ally in his lonely fight against the curse. He felt a rare sense of hope lift in his chest and he quickened his pace, reaching a full run by the time he reached the clearing where he and the bear had originally faced each other. Ignoring the smashed underbrush and uprooted trees, the Baron ran for home.