It wasn’t long before Hawkins disappeared. Now all alone in her own personal hell scape, Cooper slid to a stop in yet another clearing. Or maybe it was the clearing she had just been in, there was no way to tell. She would never admit it, but she missed having Hawkins around. Not for Hawkins, of course, it was never — could ever — be for that rampant bitch. It was clearly for the company alone, not specifically her captain.

But damn, she missed Hawkins.

Cooper swung around, gripping her sword like a lifeline. Her heart hammered against her ribcage as she whirled around. The forest had changed — truly this time. There was no mistaking it.

“Hawkins?” whimpered Cooper, hissing at how her voice came out. Hoarse and scared. She sounded nothing more than a timid child. She was better than that. She tried again. “Mycah?!”

The sound echoed back as if mocking her. Gone was the cocky young Cub (not that Cooper knew what that meant) trapped within the Temple walls, replaced by the lone woman she might always have been. She wanted to call again but felt as if she had already pushed her luck enough. Whatever Hawkins had seen was still out there, and she refused to die in the goddamn forest.

Fresh snow blended into perfectly green grass. The air was warmer here, the sun cutting through the trees in bright blades. Her armour became too hot, too uncomfortable. If it weren’t for the Thing in the trees she would have removed it and stashed it, though death was quickly becoming

It didn’t make sense, fairytales were not real.

But if they were, what else was? The horror stories of walking corpses in the Omos Temple, or the tales of Artemis Valcari? Bullshit, the lot of it. She didn’t even want to get into the conspiracy surrounding the dead at Omera, because frankly, she didn’t want to know.

With gritted teeth, Cooper pushed forward. The grass rose to her waist the further she went, with no sign of any other living thing. It was silent again, save for grass swishing with her movement, and the clink of her armour. Her stomach churned, a bundle of electric crackling in her organs. She silently weighed her options — staying put or searching for her squad. She gripped at her temple’s crescent sigil, near ripping it from the surrounding purple fabric that covered her breastplate before pressing on as if she ever had a real choice.

Her sword was a comforting weight in her hand. It was sabrian, like her armour. Lightweight and incredibly hard to damage, unlike her iron training swords that Hawkins refused to use even when sparring. Silver in colour, with a purple gem in the hilt that she suspected was actually glass. Not that it bothered her, it was pretty regardless. The second nicest thing she owned.

At that thought, her shield arm drifted to her throat but stopped before she could wack herself in the forehead with the sheet of metal. The leather still hung around her throat – she knew that. Still, she couldn’t help feeling anxious that she had lost her prized possession. A ring. The same ring Iarden had promised herself to her only weeks before. And now here she was, lost and alone in a forest.

What a fantastic warrior she was.

The Thing – what she had cleverly named the creature that Hawkins saw, no points for creativity – was likely still out there. She wasn’t sure exactly what she should do, she hadn’t even seen what the damn thing looked like thanks to listening to Hawkins. Maybe she should have disobeyed. At least then she could consider weaknesses, but alas she had to work with what she knew. Red blur, clicks. Could be anything, and it hardly rang any bells. Big lobster, maybe. That might be fun. She had never fought something like that before. She had never fought something inhumanoid before; it was always demons, and humans, and human—shifted—werewolves, even whatever the hell Sioni Pen Rhosyn counted herself as these days(no one could be sure – the woman had scales and fur, despite arguing that she was human).

The unmistakable crack of bone broke the silence. No yelps or screams followed, but that did nothing to settle Cooper’s racing heart. She gripped her sword like a lifeline.

Nothing. Nothing was around. Cooper swallowed. The air was thick with the smell from before – one she could place easier now. Maggots. The sickening sweet smell of rot and decay. She knew the smell well since the time she hid food under her bunk, hoping to stock up but instead returning to a writhing white pile of grubs. Rutherford had helped her dispose of them, thankfully. She wasn’t sure what the Temple would force her to do otherwise.

The smell seemed to wrap itself around the immediate area, leaving no escape. Cooper’s throat constricted, forcing a gag.

The clicking echoed through the surrounding area, loud and unnerving. Cooper forced down the bile that rose in her throat, the convulsing in her stomach. She couldn’t be afraid. She refused to die in this goddamn forest; least of all by some creature that refused to show its face.

With no other choice, she ran straight ahead, even though it was likely she’d be turned around much like the weeks prior. She only wished to be out of this hell. To at the very least know what she was doing. Instead, the likelihood that she’d die for a foreign Queen seemed larger by the minute.

It was snowing again. Of course, it was. The cold seeped in quickly and with it the night. Cooper’s breath fogged in front of her, and she cursed softly that she didn’t inherit night vision among her elven traits. Naturally, she only had the facial features and backwards taste buds. Nothing useful.

The forest plunged into darkness, despite it being morning mere minutes ago. Not even stars were visible under the canopy of trees, not this time. She could hear creaking, but whether or not it was the trees or the creature she wasn’t sure. Somewhere behind her a branch snapped. Cooper let out a yelp, immediately cursing herself. More creaking. More silence. Crack.

Cooper would never have pegged herself as a coward, but her legs didn’t care. She fled into the deep unknown, the name of her false God at her lips.

She found herself in a deep pile of snow, the temperature dropping by the second. Colder and colder, as if controlled by an irritated god. Her mouth was thick with the taste of iron. She must have cut her lip in the fall.

Groaning, she managed to pull her broken body into a seated position. Her muscles screamed at her, and she could feel slick wetness on her skin that she couldn’t tell if it was sweat, blood or water. She felt around her neck, relieved to find the necklace that Iarden had proposed with. It hadn’t left her throat since she put it on for the first time. The ring slapped against her chest under her armour, cold against her warm skin.

Her vision blurred, squinting in the bright light of morning — for it was morning again, though she didn’t know how long it had been — as she shakily stood, and discarded her helmet in the snow bank, too dented for reuse. She shook out her ever—growing hair that had accumulated within the scrapped metal. Thick, damp curls reached her jaw once more, tickling at the skin. She wondered that if she were to see her reflection, or remove her gauntlets from shaking hands, that she would see change. To see age.

She shuddered at the very thought.

Her body protested as she felt around for her sword. Pain shot up her joints as she finally wrapped her hand around the hilt, pulling herself into a defensive stance with her sword held diagonally. She felt too weak to hold it, but giving up was a far worse fate.

She got lucky. So stupidly lucky that it barely registered. With nothing important broken, she forced her bruised body forward one shuddering step at a time.

Stumbling forward, her armour creaking as she tried to keep herself upright. Whatever that thing was, it did more damage than it should have in that one strike. She was a Templar, for crying out loud. She had trained to withstand being knocked around, her training should have made sure of that.

It was silent again. No fighting, no movement, not even the birds that inhabited the forest. Peaceful, despite everything. It made Cooper’s stomach churn and flip like a disobedient animal. It was a feeling she could not swallow down, it fighting back in the form of bile when she tried. She had not been trained to be alone.

Her wild curls clung to her face, hanging in her eyes no matter how she brushed them away. They obscured the depth of the woods before her, dimming the world in slotted blackness. Nevertheless, she persisted, trudging forward though it pained her with every step.

A shadow, one too large to be a templar, overcast the clearing before her. The same clearing she had been in with Hawkins. It had returned, then. The being that stalked them. Cooper was ready now, no Captain to hold her back. The desperation too much, she charged, forcing herself forward though her lungs screamed for her to stop.

What she found was not at all what she could have imagined. The creature stood near motionless, besides from the gnawing of its teeth into the hardwood of a tree. It paid no mind to the needles falling around it, sinking its human teeth into the bark and tearing off chunks. There was no swallowing, the wood chips tumbling from its deer skull head.

Cooper swallowed, staring at the beast. It was easily triple her height, perhaps more. Long legs that at first glance looked to be exposed muscle were dozens upon dozens of human legs and arms fused together into each appendage. One of the hands flexed its horrible little fingers, a type of wave, in Cooper’s direction. She watched in sick fascination as it continued ripping off the bark, the chips tumbling into the brown and black fur Cooper hoped to whatever God that it was fur and not human. The legs were bad enough. Swallowing down her apprehension, she readied her blade.

And charged.