Bronwyn trudged through the light dusting of snow, climbing yet another ancient rockslide that had buried a portion of the old road. Whatever civilization that had built the road had long ago stopped using or maintaining it, and as she moved ever northward and into higher and higher elevations, the going had gradually become rougher.

Over the last week or so, she felt like she’d covered a few dozens of miles, and her quarry didn’t seem any closer. Twice she’d been set upon by packs of boyii hounds or their cousins; they had similar shapes and tails, but their coloring wasn’t as bright as the ones down on the plains. These creatures were a bit larger, and shades of red, black, and gray dominated their fur.

The first time a pack had come out of the hills and surrounded her, Bronwyn had tried out her Solar Shell spell. A bright nimbus of yellow light had wrapped her, clinging to her flesh, and she’d been able to rebuff all but the strongest, most direct bites from the beasts. While they nipped and bit at her, yelping with pain from the glowing shell that seemed to scorch their mouths, Bronwyn had gone to work kicking and punching, driving them off in a matter of minutes.

The second pack hadn’t caught her by surprise, and when she sensed them coming out of the hills, she’d taken the attack to their alpha, a huge black and rust-spotted male with three tails. She saw him coming up over a rocky outcropping and charged, summoning her Solar Shell and Solar Arms. When she pummeled him into a yelping submission, running with his tails tucked, the other boyii had turned and slunk away into the hills.

Bronwyn slid down the rocky scree back to the road and picked up her pace, jogging down the old highway, constantly scanning for those “Cadwalli” tracks she’d been doggedly following day and night. She only slept for a few hours each night, tucking herself in under fallen logs, between boulders, or, on one lucky night, in a shallow cave.

The peaks had grown larger and more numerous over the days, dwarfing what she remembered of the Rockies from a camping excursion she’d gone on with a few friends in Colorado. One particular peak, off to the north and east, loomed over the others like a giant white claw protruding from the earth. It had to be twice as tall as any of the surrounding mountains, and the way it rose up and hooked over the range made it seem almost sinister and domineering. “I hope this guy isn’t headed there,” she huffed, but it didn’t seem like he was; the road had a westerly veer, and the Cadwalli seemed to be following it.

It was another four days of hard travel before the tracks veered off the road, moving more directly north through a high, frost-covered valley. Tall, scraggly, pine-like trees grew there, though they were sparsely scattered through the valley, almost like the place had been forested before. Bronwyn’s suspicions proved true when she tripped and fell on her face, having jammed her foot into a snow-buried stump. She slowed her pace, then, realizing that though the dusting of snow was new, there were older drifts scattered throughout the windblown vale.

Her tracking ability was strange; though the Cadwalli had passed through before the latest snow, and his tracks were buried, she still saw them highlighted on top of the snow. They glowed brightly in her vision, more so as the days passed and she gained ground on him. “Well, I think that’s why they’re getting brighter,” she chuckled, talking to her imaginary audience. She hadn’t done that in a long time, but out here, alone in the strange mountains, she’d taken to imagining she was live-streaming again.

Halfway through the valley, Bronwyn crested a small hill and froze in her tracks. Half a mile into the valley, she saw a long tendril of smoke drifting into the gray sky. “Ahh, is it you at last?” She crouched down and moved quickly down the hill to obscure herself among a stand of trees. She wore her spiked leather armor over a double layer of her Contribution Store clothes. Even with a pair of thick leather gloves on her hands and a heavy cloak around her neck, she was chilly. “Not the best environment for a child of Summer, wouldn’t you agree, chat?” She spoke softly, creeping through the trees, trying to get closer to the source of the smoke without making any noise.

The layer of snow on the mulchy, dormant grass of the valley made it easy to move quietly, so it wasn’t with any great difficulty that she found herself peering from behind the broad bole of a tree into a clearing at a bizarre spectacle. A dozen or more braziers had been set up in an elaborate pattern in the center of the clearing, and they smoldered with the red light of coals. In the center of the spiraling pattern was a stone slab, round and perfectly flat, and a larger brazier sat at its center, flickering with blue, smokey flames.

A very large goat-like man sat in front of the brazier, pouring over a thick black tome, one hand tracing lines on the page, the other shaking a strangely tinny-sounding little bell. Bronwyn had heard descriptions of Cadwalli before, and she’d always pictured them as smaller than humans, but this guy was hulking with black fur, red-orange eyes, and long, black spiraling horns coming out of the top of his head.

She almost started talking to her imaginary audience but pressed her lips together to stifle herself. With the noise the Cadwalli was making and the way he was intently staring at the book, Bronwyn didn’t think there was much chance he’d notice her. Still, she carefully backed away, moving twenty paces or so back through the trees, until she came to a large tree with thick, heavy boughs of needles hanging down, heavy with snow.

She clambered up among the branches, finding a nice, wide V where she could comfortably sit and bide her time. She’d found the mysterious Thun, and now she just had to wait until the right moment to strike. She fished her magical stone out of her ring and held it in her palm. Had the moon looked full last night? It was definitely big, but the clouds hadn’t made studying it easy. The stone was still black, and it didn’t give any hint that it was getting ready to change colors anytime soon. She tucked it into her belt, then leaned back against the tree's trunk, closing her eyes and catching fitful winks while she waited.

She spent the night, uncomfortable and cramped, up in that tree. When the black night faded to gray dawn, she looked at her stone, and it was still black. Very carefully, Bronwyn shifted and pulled herself to a standing position on her perch, allowing the blood to flow through her numb butt and legs. She stood there, leaning against the trunk, listening with everything she had, hoping for some clue as to what Thun was doing down there in the clearing.

After a long while, the wind brought with it a faint, droning hum, and she realized he was chanting something. Betting on his preoccupation, Bronwyn took the opportunity to climb down from the tree and sneak up toward the clearing again, hoping to catch another glimpse of the strange Cadwalli’s activities. His droning hum became louder, and when she got back to the tree she’d hidden behind before, she peered around to see the goat-like man kneeling in the center of the stone, a bloodied knife in his right hand and his left wrist held over the brazier, dribbling blood into the flames. His weird buzzing hum set her teeth on edge, and she involuntarily shivered.

Bronwyn carefully padded away from the clearing, dragging her cloak behind her to obscure her snowy prints, then reluctantly clambered back into her tree. She badly wanted to run around and stretch her limbs, but she couldn’t risk tipping the Cadwalli off. It seemed like his preparations were approaching some sort of crescendo, and she hoped that tonight would be the night, and in the morning, she’d be able to end this hunt once and for all.

Bronwyn paused to contemplate what that meant: she’d be trying to kill another person in the morning, all because the Summer Queen had told her that he was a bad guy. “I really must trust her, hmm?” Either that, she reasoned, or she’d been totally brainwashed while in the Fae Realms. “Maybe a little bit of both?”

There was no denying that Bronwyn felt different than she did prior to touching that crystal token that Hops had offered her. She was happier, less doubt-ridden, and filled with the sense of purpose that her task provided her. Even after a week or more of hiking through chilly temperatures, she felt good. She’d always liked hiking, though, and the fresh air and majesty of the mountains hadn’t hurt her mood one bit. What a task, though! For her first job, she was sent to assassinate a being that was, ostensibly, far more powerful than she. Just how weak would this ritual make him in order to give Bronwyn a chance at defeating him come dawn?

As she sat back against the hard tree trunk, Bronwyn marveled at the idea that she’d been hiding in this tree for a day and planned to for at least another night. How strange her life had become on this new planet! She’d gone from helping to settle a colony, to hunting around the plains and dueling Urghat, to visiting mythical fairy people, to hunting through the mountains to kill an evil goat-man. She hoped he was evil.

A slight frown twisted the corners of Bronwyn’s lips, but she shook her head to clear the thought; she had to be committed, serious, and one hundred percent game-ready. There wasn’t room for doubt, not if she wanted a chance to survive. Bronwyn wasn’t sure why she felt so confident that she’d need everything she had to win, but she did, and she’d learned to trust her gut when it came to judging competition.

Bronwyn fell into a fitful sleep as darkness settled on the valley, the little black stone clutched in her hand, and an extra cloak wrapped around her to provide more cushion against the hard bark. Sometime in the middle of the night, she was woken by an uncomfortable sensation in her hand. She was startled awake with her eyes wide open, listening for what had disturbed her before realizing it was the stone. She carefully extracted her hand from her wrapped cloaks and held it out in the dim moonlight. Sure enough, it was gleaming white in the darkness—her time had come. Bronwyn carefully stowed away the extra cloaks wrapping her, then slid down the tree, slowing her descent by holding onto one branch and then another.

She crept through the powdery snow toward the clearing, aiming for her usual watching tree, glancing up between the treetops to see that the moons were more than halfway through the sky. Dawn would be upon her in an hour or so. She approached the tree, pressing her body against the bark, and then slowly slid to the side, peering around to see what Thun was up to in the clearing.

The braziers were dimly glowing in the dark, faint wisps of smoke drifting up to the moonlit sky, but the central stone was empty save for the larger brazier. Eyes wide, Bronwyn scanned the clearing, looking for a sign of the Cadwalli. Something was wrong: before, when she’d watched him, her tracking ability had exposed dozens of sets of his tracks around the clearing and braziers. Now, the snow was pristine, without any highlighted footprints. Suddenly the hairs at the nape of her neck tingled, and Bronwyn spun around.

Thun smirked from the shadows, his orange-red eyes gleaming down at her from beneath his horned brow. “I thought I smelled the taint of Summer nearby. You came too soon, whelp; had the sun been in the sky, things might have gone differently for you.” Then, he began to laugh, a deep, wet sound that originated down in his chest. Bronwyn stood up and edged sideways, ready to slip behind the tree.

“I thought you were doing some kind of ritual?”

“Oh, I did, I did. I see your Lady sent you with some intelligence, hmm? Pity, she didn’t warn you that the weakness she promised I’d be stricken with wouldn’t come until the night was gone. I’m going to enjoy this, Summerling. My Lady will reward me for what I’m about to do to you; I’ll savor this night for many decades. Hah, if only I could thank the Summer Bitch myself! Sadly, she’s not likely to invite me to her court.”

“You’re awfully full of yourself,” Bronwyn couldn’t hide the false note in her bravado, though she tried.

“With good reason, whelp. Now come forward!” When he said those words, Bronwyn felt her muscles start to respond without her bidding. Her left leg took a step, but she scowled and yanked it back as soon as she realized it.

“Fuck you,” she said, a little more steel in her voice.

“Ahh, so there are some humans with spines, hmm? No wonder the Bitch recruited you.”

“Watch your mouth, asshole!”

“Did I touch a soft spot?”

“Nah, but how ‘bout I beat that smirk off your ugly face? Give you a chance to apologize.”

“Insolence, too? Wonderful!” Suddenly Thun moved; his body blurred, and a booming crunch sounded as his left hoof stomped forward, rippling the ground and sending Bronwyn flying to bounce off the tree trunk and roll into the brazier-lit meadow. She felt dazed but also pissed off, tumbling with the momentum of her fall to bounce to her feet, crouched and ready, facing into the shadows of the trees where Thun’s lantern-like eyes regarded her.

“C’mon, then. I heard the Winter agents were all chicken-shit anyway.” She taunted, backing further into the clearing. She didn’t want to give away her thoughts, so she forced herself not to look at the slightly lighter sky limning the eastern horizon.