Charandis
Ben McCallum

	I


	Prey, drunk and foolish, blundered onward, oblivious and uncaring.
	The scent stung his wet nostrils, sinking hooks into his brain, flaring his bloody instincts. He could taste the blood that ran in their veins even from this distance, a coppery tang that made his lolling tongue ache, and sang up the length of his killing fangs.
	Each step he took betrayed a burning hunger that physically hurt. Claws that were too long slid in and out of his monstrous paws with a lethality he had forgotten how to control. They itched so incessantly, so furiously, with pain that echoed up limbs swollen by the anger that had plagued him for so long.
	Thick ropes of sour drool swung from his open maw as he moved, his lethal bulk passing soundlessly through a woodland that had been blessed by rain only a few hours ago. Water was no longer a relief to him. Each raindrop that fell from the leaves of whispering trees sent spikes of migraine-fierce pain through his leonine skull. A pelt that was once the pearly white of pure moonlight felt heavy on his back, soaked with cold rainwater and caked with a thousand kinds of filth.
	He quickened his pace, his loping gait lengthening into a staggering gallop. The prey-scent intensified, and his nose burned in sympathy. He was close enough to hear the breath in their lungs, and smell the stinging reek of alcohol sweating through their pores.
	Other smells clung to them, too; scents he dimly remembered as city-smells, laden with the promise of glittering spear tips and baying horns. There was a time when he would have shrunk from this scent in favour of softer, less dangerous prey. But now the anger wouldn't let him. The anger burned in his guts and banished his instincts, compelling him to drown his pain in the hot rush of the kill.
	They were making noises, now. Elf-speech whispered under the trees, their voices softened by the wine that had compelled them to journey out here. The sound lanced into his mind, firing a predator-rage he once knew how to contain. This was wrong. This was not how he was supposed to hunt.
	His quarry stopped, and the low murmur of their soft voices began to grow louder. This prey was not as lethal as the other elf-creatures that moved through the woods like ghosts, but he was not blind to the danger of the metal that gleamed in their slender hands.
	Slowly, agonisingly, he prowled forward, even as the unkind rage knifed arcs of pain into his bleary eyes and screamed at him to lunge.
	When the moment was right, it would be satisfied.
	'A Chracian myth,' Darath said through smiling lips, his thin arms spreading in an expansive gesture. 'That is all this is, my friends.'
	He spoke the words in the sing-song accent of the Lothern aristocracy, his diction flawless. The bleariness of his dark eyes betrayed his drunkenness.
	'Hundreds dead?' Nesselan slurred, announcing every glass of wine he had put away today. 'This is no myth, Darath. There is a terror loose.'
	'There is no terror here in this Chracian wilderness,' Darath snapped, the wine fouling his temper. 'You are a fool to believe so. We are all fools for coming here, through the rain and the wind, hunting for a ghost that does not exist.'
	Darath's sculpted cheekbones flushed red. Here, in these woods, even as the sun edged ever closer to the distant horizon, he wanted to strike Nesselan. The fool was bleeding the fun from this journey with every word that passed his lips. He had never met an elf so negative in all his days.
	Thyran tried and failed to banish the tension with a false laugh.
	'These woodsmen are not liars,' Nesselan said, crouching low and pressing his fingers to the damp earth, as if this somehow proved the truth of his words. 'Hundreds, this ghost of yours has claimed over the years. I swear to you, by Asuryan's blood, that this beast is real.'
	Darath knew he believed those words. Only hours ago, as they strode into the woodland of mighty Chrace, they had been warned off the trail by unwashed, uncouth locals. A great beast, they claimed, was skulking beneath this canopy. Whole scores of men had fallen to its filthy claws. Armed men, too.
	In Darath's most humble opinion, this tale was a mean-spirited jest by the lesser folk of this barbarian wilderness.
	It simply would not do.
	Thyran held a flask to his lips and drank deeply. The wine was perfection, if a little too sweet.
	'Exaggeration, Nesselan, you silly man,' Thyran laughed, ever the voice of reason. 'Maybe it does skulk through these trees. This doesn't mean it has slain so many. This doesn't mean it can't die at the tips of our blades.'
	Darath watched as Thyran's sword rasped from its sheath, feeling a jealous pang at the work of art in his fellow noble's hand.
	'I have sparred with the very best Lothern has to offer,' he continued, brushing a strand of fair hair from his eyes, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. 'I promise you, we are in no danger here.'
	Darath filled his lungs to speak, to curse them both for their foolish notions and their uncouth bravado. They were nobles, after all. Maybe the other two were minor nobles, of lesser houses, but the blood in their veins was of privileged stock. They were being ridiculous. They were above this.
	But the words caught in his throat.
	'What was that?' both Nesselan and Thyran said at once.
	All of them had distinctly heard the loud, brittle crack! of a fallen branch being snapped in half. Darath's fingers, thin digits armoured in gold rings, wrapped around the handle of his sword. His tongue traced a nervous circuit around his lips.
	'I told you this was no ghost,' Nesselan hissed, his eyes wide with fear.
	'Be quiet!' Darath could feel how heavy his breath was, laden with alcohol fumes. They should not have taken the wine with them.
	'Do not worry,' Thyran spoke, sounding infuriatingly composed. 'I think it was just--'
	The sound that interrupted him was torn straight from a nightmare.
	'Charandis,' Darath breathed, as the lion pounced.
	A small sound escaped the prey's trembling lips as he thundered from cover in a blur of dirty white fur and scything black talons. 
	He associated those three syllables with hunt-kill sensations: the pungent sting of urine in the air; the quickening percussion of a fluttering heartbeat; the cloying fear-musk screaming from their pores; the widening of their dark eyes as their gaze locks with his, a connection between predator and prey.
	He would never know the significance of that frightened little noise. He would never know that the elf-creatures had characterised him as a soul-shaking rumble of deadly thunder, the booming echo of lightning lashing the wet ground.
	To him, it was just a noise they made before they died.
	His paw thundered like the hammer of a wrathful god into the first elf's fragile skull, pulping bone and flesh. The echo of its snapping neck jarred up through his front leg from claw to shoulder, throwing the elf ten yards.
	His claws snagged on skin, stunting the creature's flight. It landed in a wet crunch of broken bones, twitching fitfully as it died.
	His head swung to face his other prey, their harsh breathing and thundering hearts like a balm to the disease that was slowly killing him. His eyes were bleary red orbs, locking the two elf-creatures somewhere between fight and flight.
	He opened his jaws and roared. A sound like a volcanic eruption tore from his chest. The fury of a predator king vomited forth in a deafening torrent through fangs that had snatched life from a hundred souls. 
	It was only natural that they fled.
	The chase was brief and violent, and his instincts sang with exultant rightness. This was how things were supposed to be. This hunt was pure, lifting him from the ravages of sickness. Blood slicked his claws as he pounded across the wet soil, his breath like rumbling like a summer thunderstorm in his chest.
	He tasted elf blood before the creature even knew it was dead. His fangs crunched through ribs and pierced lung and heart in the time it took for them both to hit the ground. He lashed out with leonine claws at the body beneath him in afterthought, spattering blood against a tree, painting it in wet smears.
	His limbs burned, though unlike the pain behind his eyes, this was wholly natural. Welcome, even. It was the ache of taut muscles and expended strength, the kind to be slept off with a full belly.
	The third creature actually turned. A yard of shining metal sang from its sheath, making a series of panicked slashes. Maybe it actually thought it could survive. Maybe this display of desperate aggression was intended to scare him off.
	It did not.
	The elf was in two pieces in as many seconds. Both fell to the ground. Both bled crimson fountains into the soggy earth. One tried to crawl away, raking its fingers across the earth in an effort to escape.
	Even as the creature burbled a garble of broken syllables, Charandis bellowed another peal of thunder to the skies.
	Everything was as it should be. Everything was normal again.
	II


	'You said you were coming alone,' he says, as if I am not even here. His teeth flash milky yellow in the afternoon sun, his white lips pulling taut against a dozen scars. His tone is even, but he doesn't look happy. And those scars tell me that saying something... brash, would be unwise.
	Very unwise.
	'Is this a problem?' Alvantir's voice is confident, yet his hand strays to the oval birthmark blotching his cheek. I know these men make him nervous, and I don't blame him.
	There are three of them, and underneath the swaying trees they look like kings. Their pointed helms rest in the crooks of their arms, glinting bright silver against the sunlight, each adorned with oval sapphires staring out like cyclopean eyes.
	Their armour is... magnificent. I have never seen craftsmanship like this before; not even on the shoulders of strutting peacocks on the streets of Tor Achare. From steel cuirass to masterfully wrought sabatons, they radiate authority. They lean on their heirloom axes with a casual ease born of confidence; centuries-old weapons gripped by well-oiled gloves.
	But it is what they wear upon their shoulders that sends my heart racing.
	The dead faces of conquered lions glare at me from over their armoured spaulders. The pelts are draped like tattered banners over their armour, frayed in places like forgotten standards, ending in claws the length of my fingers. Their leonine faces snarl soundlessly, the empty sockets of their eyes still narrowed in silent fury.
	It marks the greatest honour a Chracian can earn. It demonstrates the exultant heights to which a lowly woodsman like myself can rise.
	I am... jealous.
	I stand before the Phoenix King's chosen blades; his loyal shields against which a thousand foes have fallen. The eyes of the White Lions are upon me, and all I can think of is how jealous I am.
	'You said you were coming alone,' the lead elf repeats, his thunderstorm-black eyes locked on Alvantir. The sound of creaking leather reaches my keen ears. I know this to be his grip tightening on the oak haft of his weapon.
	My companion dips his head. I can feel his aching desire to be anywhere but here.
	'I crave your pardon, kinsman,' he says evenly, sweeping a braid of autumn-brown hair behind his ear. 'He knows these woods unlike any other. Whatever you are looking for, he can find.'
	He looks at me for the first time, and I see nothing but cold, pitiless scrutiny in those dark eyes. I fold my arms across my chest without thinking, shielding myself from his attention.
	He nods, as if satisfied.
	'I am familiar with your friend,' he says to me, directly. His voice is deep, worn raw and gravelly by distant battlefields. 'But not you. Tell me your name, and we can begin.'
	I incline my head as I speak, but I do not break eye contact.
	'My name is Korhil.'
	The scene before us is repugnant in a thousand ways.
	Chrace's forests are famously beautiful, but equally dangerous. A woodsman does not roam beneath the evergreen canopy unprepared. This is why our axes know the kiss of a whetstone every day. This is why our tunics are oiled and treated every time we leave our homes. This is why our fathers spent endless years teaching us the manifold ways of surviving the forest. This is why we are Chrace's proud children. 
	I step over a severed hand bedecked in fabulously expensive rings, fighting the rising urge to empty my guts. Blood paints the boles of trees in dried smears, and innards festoon the forest floor like wreckage wreathed in swarms of black flies.
	The first body lies by a mossy boulder. His features are... gone, but I know him to be a noble by the fine cut of his bloodstained clothes. His arms and legs are bent in ways that defy reason, and the blow that snapped his neck was close to taking the head from his shoulders.
	The second body sprawls near the roots of a powerful tree. This one died as he fled, that much is obvious. His chest is crushed, his broken ribs jutting outward in angles that speak of unthinkable strength. Whatever killed him came back after it had finished, and vented its wrath on the ragged corpse. The coils of vital organs decorate the gnarled fingers of clawing roots.
	The third is in two pieces, and the upper half tried to crawl away. His spine is a jutting cord of bone, black with dried blood and alive with a carpet of flies. His legs bear the ugly lacerations of scything claws and...
	And I have to look away.
	When outsiders speak of Chrace's wild and untamed beauty, this is what they mean. This is what they foolishly think they know. I have been a woodsman for a long time; long enough to know that I am the best at what I do. I have seen a wealth of unsettling scenes underneath this canopy; a menagerie of horrors that have actually made me want to run.
	But this... this is something else.
	Alvantir worries at the plain band of gold around his finger, a wedding ring he could barely afford. The look on his face tells me that his thoughts are awash with worry. He thinks of his stunningly beautiful young wife, and the son who he has tried to shield from the hardships of the forest.
	But beneath these thoughts, I know he is also thinking the same thing as I.
	There is something in the air; something that lingers between a taste and a smell. It settles on my tongue and gathers at the back of my throat; a copper tang that speaks of old blood, and a musty reek that whispers of burial grounds.
	There are too many flies. The drone of the feasting insects is loud, aching my ears and building a pressure behind my eyes. This is unnatural.
	Alvantir meets my gaze. Both of us know what did this.
	'They were nobles,' the lead elf says, breaking the uneasy silence. He hefts an axe that is almost the mirror of my own over his armoured shoulder, the lines and angles of his face tightening. 'Lothern born and bred.'
	'Why were they here?' I ask, with genuine curiosity. I know outsiders to be stupid at times, but this...
	'An adventure in wild Chrace? I neither know nor care.' The words leave his lips laced with bitterness, biting like acid into the still air.
	'And why are you here?'
	He laughs, a series of hoarse barks that are anything but genuine. 'We are their shields against harm; their bulwark against danger. They were our charges.'
	Realisation is a shard of ice knifing into my guts. This is why these men are so grim and unwelcoming. This is why they stare out at the forest with narrowed eyes.
	'I am sorry,' I say, and not because Lothern lost three of its spoiled children this week.
	'Charandis.' Alvantir blurts out the name because he can hold it in no longer. Four pairs of eyes turn to look at him. Only one grasps the meaning of what is said.
	'What about Charandis?' This is asked by another White Lion, the one with a sickle-shaped scar blighting his cheek. He sounds as if he is stung by that name being spoken in the presence of such an atrocity.
	Every woodsman knows Charandis. He is Thunder, the King of Prides, the Child of Kurnous, the Hunter under the Canopy. A thousand romanticised poems detail the tragic fall of his pride, the clack of his claws upon the rocky mountains, the grace of his every movement, the mercy in his killing blow...
	'Charandis is no longer pure.' There is no regret in my tone. Not even slightly.
	'A foul wind blew down from the Annulli Mountains last year,' Alvantir elaborates. He clutches a small wooden token around his neck, a mirror of the one he carved for his boy.
	'You are saying the lion is tainted?' This, asked by the third White Lion, sallow-faced and hook-nosed.
	'A child of Kurnous does not hunt like this. If this slaughter were pure, then why have only the flies come to feast?'
	Silence. Droning.
	'Then our path is set? Thunder dies by our hand tonight?' says Sickle-Scar.
	'No.' My reply is coloured by my smile, brought unbidden to my lips at the look on Alvantir's face. 'Mine.'
	'I will restore your honour,' Korhil said, still with that smile creasing his slanted eyes. 'But more importantly, I will earn my own.'
	Alvantir pinched the bridge of his nose, suppressing a heartfelt groan. The silence that met this wondrous announcement was filled by the frenzied buzzing of a thousand flies, ignorant of the staggering stupidity that just left Korhil's lips.
	'You,' spoke the senior White Lion, 'are going to restore my honour.' His tone didn't make it a question.
	Korhil unfolded his arms - noticeably big, eye-catchingly brawny - and laughed.
	'This is no longer about you. I mean you no insult, kinsman, but you have failed today. We stand in the aftermath of an evil you were duty bound to prevent. I will right this wrong. I will kill Charandis. And I will walk with you to Lothern with his carcass slung over my shoulders.'
	So this was it. The glory Korhil had been talking about for years. Korhil did not see a gaggle of bereaved lovers and mourning relatives in the clotting blood of these dead nobles. He did not see lives cut short and ambitions slashed by a sick beast.
	This was about the glory.
	Bringing him here was a bad idea.
	To say the lead Lion looked stung was understating things. White-lipped, he stood speechless for several long moments, his gloves creaking as he tightened and relaxed his grip on his weapon.
	Finally, 'You would stand in defence of the Phoenix King.'
	'I would.'
	He sighed, a weary exhalation whispering through his teeth.
	'Then go, Korhil. We will camp nearby for two days. That is how long I will grant you. That is how long I will wait before I come and destroy this beast myself.'
	Alvantir cleared his throat.
	'Come, Korhil. I will help you pick up the trail.' 
	A fool could find where Charandis's claws had touched bare earth.
	Alvantir silences the question about to pass my lips with a withering glare, his brow creasing in ugly furrows.
	'Fool.'
	'I can track him easily-'
	'You insulted Valeth.'
	For this, I have no response. Valeth the Wyrmslayer. Valeth the Kinhammer. Valeth the Mighty. Why, I ask myself, do I live to regret insulting his honour? 
	This... puts things into perspective.
	'You don't realise, do you? We stood under the gaze of Captain Ironglaive's second.' When I don't respond, he continues. 'The Phoenix King himself knows his name. This goes straight to the top. This is...' He gestures weakly. 'Big.'
	I look at my closest friend walking next to me, our boots sinking into wet mud as we leave the White Lions and their charnel scene behind. He sees my perplexed smile.
	'Why is this a bad thing, Alvantir?'
	'Charandis will kill you.'
	'No, he won't.'
	'What if he does?'
	I laugh, and he knows why. He should know better than to say 'what if' in my presence. A bad habit of his.
	'Why does Ironglaive send his most esteemed warrior to Chrace, picking up after foolish nobles?'
	Alvantir answers with a shrug of his narrow shoulders, ducking under an overhanging branch. 'It is a different game in Lothern, Korhil. It is political.'
	'Nonsense is what it is. When I stand astride the White Lions, I will march to the defence of worthy charges. Generals, scholars, spellweavers; not spoiled children. Never spoiled children.'
	'They march in regiments, fool. You go where they tell you.'
	'But I'm about to kill Charandis. You think they would damn me to mundane duties like that?'
	'Why don't you ask Valeth that question?' 
	I ignore this last remark, lowering my gaze to the ground, focussing on my task. The forest speaks to me in a voice I know well: a patchwork of muddy browns and vital greens, whispering morsels of secret knowledge.
	My strength is my axe - it always has been. Tracking is Alvantir's expertise, but it takes no master to follow the trail Charandis has left behind him. Here, a faded print twice the size of my hand. There, a claw mark, scored into the jutting root of a tree. The clumsiness of the lion's passing is a testament to how sick the creature is. White lions move with a grace that matches their savagery. That is why the Chracian rite is such a hard test. Usually, finding them is hard enough.
	Usually.
	'I have come far enough.' Alvantir thumbs his wedding ring, giving me a look that I find hard to read. 'I am not going to convince you that this is folly.'
	'No,' I agree. 'Because it is not.'
	He sighs.
	'I will go back to Valeth for my payment. Be swift. And don't die, fool.'
	In the shadow of the forest, as the sun sets in crimson fire, we shake hands.
	III


	At first, he could not move.
	This was something new. This was a fresh affliction, added to the dozens that already blossomed in his blood and bred behind his eyes.
	It was impossible. His bones were shafts of ice, his muscles frozen in painful stiffness. Breath vented between his locked jaws in volcanic hisses. Dreadful cold was beginning to settle on his guts. The thump of his heart was sluggish, beating without vigour, languishing beneath his ribs.
	In the stillness of night, the lion whined.
	Perception had steadily become harder to grasp as he awoke from slumber these last weeks. He always emerged from a realm of nightmares - where prey is predator - into a world of threats he couldn't see, and dangers he couldn't hear. Being aware of any difference between the two was difficult. So sometimes he would awake roaring, lashing out at shadows with extended claws and yellow fangs.
	But not tonight.
	Again, a whine escaped his jaws.
	Maybe he would slip into prey-sleep. Maybe it would be for him that the ravens wheeled overhead. Maybe it would be his bones that the wolves gnawed upon.
	But that didn't happen.
	The prey-scent was faint, diluted by distance. It reached him as a weak spice, hanging loose in the air, drifting at the mercy of gentle breezes. It spoke of something far away, alert yet relaxed; wary, yet oblivious. He tasted flesh, wet and tender, torn from the bones of something taken by surprise. The promise of a successful kill raced through his mind. 
	Normality. Rightness. Relief.
	With a snarl of effort, the lion moved.
	It was slow, at first. He clawed trenches into the ground in an effort to crawl forward, his muscles burning red hot under his skin. Agony came afresh with every beat of his heart, coursing fire through his veins, painting his vision in varying shades of murderous red.
	But at least he wasn't cold any more.
	At least he would hunt again.
	The lion staggered shakily to its feet, no longer mewling meekly at imagined predators. His perception was sharpening again, throwing his world into blade-sharp clarity. His eyes rolled in their gummy sockets, identifying his surroundings. His nostrils flared, sucking in lungfuls of nectar-rich prey-scent.
	It was... that way. Beyond the trees. Out of the forest.
	He reeled at first, his gait drunken and clumsy. Twice, he stumbled, and both times he vented his aggression on thin air, lashing out at nothing.
	He couldn't hear the soft thump of his shaky footfall as he moved. He couldn't even hear the blast of his breath, gusting in and out of his lungs. All he heard was a strange buzzing.
	Like flies gathered on a carcass.
	She fought a rising thrill of panic, straining to see out into the void-black darkness.
	Nothing moved. There were no animals out here, tonight. The familiar rustle of fallen leaves as the nocturnal foragers came out to hunt was an absence she sorely wished wasn't there.
	There wasn't even a breeze. Not even slightly. The treeline was a collection of pale silvers and dark greys, unmoving and soundless in the moonlight. It was an unreasonably close night. The air spoke of thunderstorms yet-to-be, which was hardly ideal, given the situation they found themselves in.
	She clutched her boy closer to her waist.
	'We are lost.' He stated this simple truth without a trace of fear, in a matter-of-fact voice that reminded her painfully of his father.
	The father that should have been here. Now. At this very moment.
	'Hush.'
	The silence that met this gentle scold told her everything she didn't want to hear. The boy was young - an infant, even, but he was perceptive beyond his years. She knew that he knew she was scared. But then wasn't his father always saying she was so easy to read?
	'Where is he?' This, not so blunt. A tremor of doubt crept into the boy's voice, making him sound like the child he pretended he wasn't. She squeezed his shoulder.
	'I don't know, dearest. Just keep walking. Please.'
	Their feet whispered over the rocky outcrop, their slow advance defined in the soft swish of a silk dress and the gentle creak of the boy's handmade shoes. The moonlight was dim and worthless, spilling weak silver light across shoulders of jutting rock, casting shadows that made leering faces of mundane features.
	They stuck to the line of trees because it was a point of reference. Her instinct was to turn the other way, and be as far from the shadows under the canopy as possible - but that would make them more lost than they already were. She knew that they would find shelter if they walked for long enough, but walking in the dead of night, blind, unarmed, scared...
	'He said we shouldn't leave the house,' the boy whispered. She heard his fingernails scrape along the wooden token that hung around his neck.
	'I know he did. But if anyone can find us, it's your father. You know this.'
	He was silent for several moments.
	'What if he doesn't?' This question scared her, spoken from the lips of her own son.
	'I said hush. He will. I promise you.' To her own ears - city ears, as her husband called them - these words sounded empty.
	The need to blame someone for this nightmare was a tingling in her fingertips. Her husband, for not returning home tonight. Her, for leaving the house regardless of his absence. This Kurnous-damned wilderness, for its silent promises of danger.
	He had enough money. This was what he had told her, yesterday. He had enough money to move them into the city, away from the pointless harshness of life out here. Years of guiding outsiders through the safe trails of Chrace had paid off.
	One more errand. That was all he said it was. One more errand, for a wealthy outsider, and then they could leave.
	But he had not come home tonight. Why did she leave? Why did she drag her child into this?
	'There is something over there.' The boy pointed towards the trees.
	She squinted until she saw. A gleam of something white moved on open ground, a ghost something big made small by distance.
	It looked like it was... running. Bounding, on muscular legs. Straight for them.
	'What is that?' 
	She clutched him tighter, her slender hands grabbing his shoulders white-knuckle tight.
	In the dead silence, she thought she heard the droning of flies.
	The lion was galloping.
	His claws sought purchase on rock that the great lion prides had claimed as their own for generations. He had run across this very same plateau years ago, before the world had become varying shades of danger and pain. The females of his pride had shed the blood of countless prey, hooved-creature and elf-creature alike, across this highland of rock and tall grass. The land was fat, nurturing his cubs into strong hunters, almost without exception. 
	Good land. Rich land.
	His prey was no different now, even if he hunted for reasons other than hunger. A female, scared and alone with her cub, had spotted him. He didn't need to see this to know it was true. Prey-scents were rich in the air, the usual cocktail of fear-laced sweat and... something else. Something that stung his nostrils. A curious musk that females often had coating their skin. It would taste vile, but that was not what this was about.
	They were running, and he savoured what all but one of his senses told him. He was still deafened by the constant dirge inside his head. He was denied the patter of running feet and the rapid gasp of filling lungs.
	He quickened his pace, a bound lengthening into a sprint. Flecks of drool stood at the corners of his mouth, spraying behind him in sour ribbons as he began to close the distance.
	He was probably close enough for them to smell him with their blunted and clumsy senses. The blood that caked his filthy hide was nearly four days old, the gory dappling blighting a mane that had once shone silver under the moonlight.
	His moment came all too soon. The female looked over her shoulder as he leapt, his finger-sized claws flexing in predatory menace. Their eyes met before the kill came, as he widened his jaws and bared his leonine fangs.
	With hunt-kill came blood.
	And with blood, there came relief.
	My axe is in my hands.
	The haft is two yards of Chracian oak, carved with a screed of flowing Asurii script. The names of my forefathers are tiny grooves against my fingers, reminding me of the weapon's legacy every time I shift my grip. 
	The head is a work of art that could shame princes. Subtly enchanted steel catches the dawn's first rays as I turn the weapon over; as light as a walking staff, and in the right hands, as deadly as dragonfire.
	A weapon Vaul himself would be proud to wield.
	A blade that could one day save the life of my king.
	I bring the weapon to bear because there is something up ahead. The shapes that lie across the rocks tell an ugly story. I know a kill when I see one.
	The flies alone are enough for me to be wary as I approach.
	The woman's dress would be pretty if the body it clothed wasn't lying in a dozen pieces. Her hair is black. Her skin is pale, paler even than mine. There is literally nothing else I can see that identifies her, save for the ring that adorns a hand that would once have been long-fingered and slender.
	I blink sweat from my eyes and turn to look at...
	No.
	Blood of Kurnous, no.
	That is a child.
	I cannot - will not - look at the ruins of what was once a mother and son. I have seen enough. My boots whisper over grey stone as I stalk around the edge of the killing, my jaw hardening, my eyes watchful for clues.
	These bodies are hours old. They died in the hours before dawn. Why they were out here at night is anyone's guess, but the clues are arrayed before me. I see recent gouges in the earth where something huge propelled itself forward. I see a scattering of tracks that speak of a lethal sprint from the forest. I see bloody paw-prints leading a meandering, drunken path back to the line of trees.
	Still new. Still fresh.
	Charandis is scant hours ahead of me. I can waste no time.
	A burial for the dead is not even an option. I will not touch what this tainted beast has defiled. I will not be surrounded by those fat-bellied flies. I will not draw another breath of this sickly air, blighting my lungs in the name of ceremony.
	No, mother and child can lie here, in the first minutes of dawn's pale light. My quarry is too near. My glory is too close.
	I break into a run, leaving the mounting drone of feasting flies behind me.
	IV


	The lion was afraid.
	He paced in wide circles, his fear manifesting in strangled whines coughed up from the back of his throat. The Wind was back - the Wind that had brought this sickness to him, blown down from the ephemeral peaks - but this time it was... everywhere.
	Literally, everywhere.
	On every moon-drenched leaf, on every fallen branch, even on the ground he walked upon, the Wind had settled. It was a filmy substance, sticking to his claws; a slime that squelched between his toes and burned his skin like acid.
	He could feel himself becoming sicker by the minute. His consciousness waxed and waned, coming and going like a red tide. He couldn't focus. The buzz of flies had become all-consuming.
	He made a sound, something between a yelp and a roar.
	He saw creatures watching him. Their eyes were the pale yellow of dying suns, leering from every shadow, bright with the promise of yet more pain, yet more agony... The predators from his dreams. They had come with hunt-kill on their minds.
	His own eyes felt like they were aflame. They burned in their sockets, making the predators little more than phantoms, escaping his vision.
	But he knew they were there. And he wouldn't let them drag him into prey-sleep. Ever.
	Tonight is a night of ill omens.
	I have tracked him for a day. I have followed his trail without rest, tailing him deeper and deeper into the forest. My cloak is unrecognisable under the inch-thick layer of grime, earned from the tireless chase through mile after mile of endless nothing.
	My braided hair falls about my face in dirty ribbons, sticking to my sweat-slick skin. My heels burn with hot blisters, and I bleed from a dozen minor cuts and scrapes on my cheeks and forearms.
	That is not why my confidence has fled me. That is not why I am certain I am going to die tonight.
	It shows through a crack in the clouds, staring blearily down at the world below. It colours everything in its own sickly shade of venom-green, staining the skies noxious.
	Tonight, as I set my gaze upon the tainted lion I must kill, the Dread Moon waxes.
	Fear is my guts turning to ice, and my skin crawling with each moment I linger out here, in the open. I should be indoors, hidden from the Dread Moon's baleful gaze. Not risking my life for a glory that could see me dead.
	Charandis howls again, and I rise to my feet. I am being ridiculous. I have come this far. At this point, I would rather die than turn back.
	My axe leaves its sling in a whisper of motion, its weight a balm to my sudden doubts. The subtle enchantments laced within the age-old steel shines bright in the insidious glow of the watchful eye above me.
	I step from my hiding place, emerging from a thorny bush.
	I am ready. Charandis must die.
	As it moved from the shadows, the lion flinched.
	He knew what it was. Pale-skinned and baleful-eyed, it stalked forward with something lethal clutched in its hands, hunched and feral. It flashed its leonine fangs in angry challenge, a territorial roar hammering from its throat.
	Maybe it walked upright like an elf-creature. Maybe it clothed itself like an elf-creature.
	But he knew that the pride leader of the dream-predators was coming for him.
	The lion's reply was thunder of his own, a hoarse bellow torn from ravaged lungs. They stood at opposite ends of the clearing - aggressor and defender, challenger and challenged.
	The lion wasted no time.
	He charged.
	My eyes widen as this... thing... comes for me.
	I do not even recognise the beast as a lion. Haggard and sunken-eyed, it is wreathed in flies. Patches the colour of sour milk show through what little isn't a chittering, buzzing carpet.
	Its mane hangs loose on its ravaged frame, sagging with each leaping bound. As it tries to barrel me to the ground, I leap sideways, moving fluidly into a painful roll over jutting stones.
	Charandis moves fast. He is nearly on me by the time I have regained my footing, his stinking, fetid breath a hot blast in my face. My axe howls in a blistering arc, thumping into the lion's side.
	I wait for the scream of anguish. I wait for him to back away from me, bleeding from his crushed ribcage, mewling in his last moments of defeat.
	But none of these things happen.
	My axe bounces from Charandis's hide as if it were made of rubber. This is unthinkable. I have felled trees with a single swipe of this weapon. That is their purpose. That is what they were made to do.
	He does not bleed, nor does he back away.
	Instead, he nearly kills me.
	The lion's claws tasted the flesh of his tormentor in a flash of venomous fury.
	Blood, salty and stinging, flecked the lion's face in spattering droplets. The dream-predator staggered backwards, clutching his ruined visage.
	Three bloodied canyons ran from cheek to brow, raining waterfalls of crimson down the aggressor's front. The predator roared in anger, futilely lashing out again with the gleaming blade it held in its clawed hands. It was useless.
	The lion was the dominant one here.
	He went for the throat, even as it screamed a meaningless screed of guttural sounds.
	Even as I circle around Charandis's lethal bulk, I roar in pain. My vision is painted arterial red, my face a bleeding mess snagged by filthy talons. I will have these scars for the rest of my life, even if that life is measured in minutes or years. But at least he didn't take my eyes. At least I can still see.
	We pace around each other like dominant males sizing each other up, gazes locked and teeth bared. My axe is useless, here. The taint must allow him to endure the blessings wrought into the steel of my blade.
	He comes at me for a third time, his matted fur flashing acid-green under the fell light of the moon as he thumped forward. My life is saved by throwing up my hands, letting his claws scrawl against my axe's haft. Countless names of my bloodline vanish under his talons, buckling my knees with the force of impact.
	As his sword-like talons lock with my weapon, he begins to push down.
	I do not know how I manage to even begin resisting. Ropes of drool hang down in foul-smelling strands as I push back against the lion's strength, the muscles of my arms and legs burning with slowly faltering effort. He is slowly forcing me to the ground.
	What I do next is out of desperation. I do not know what I am trying to achieve, but my life at this point can be measured in painful seconds.
	I drop to my back.
	My hands fasten around the small stone as if it were as precious as the Phoenix Crown itself. It leaves my fingers in a blur of motion, just as the lion sweeps down.
	I hear the thok of impact, and close my eyes.
	Death does not come.
	The lion could not breathe.
	Something cold and hard lodged deep in his throat, filling his windpipe with a painful lump. It was as if a band of iron had been placed over his chest. His lungs could not move.
	He could not even roar in pain.
	His heart - wet and thumping - began to beat faster, soaking his blood in adrenaline. The fight was bleeding from him rapidly. He leapt away from the predator under his claws, trying to choke and gasp.
	Soon he was writhing on the ground. His lungs were burning. The desperation to draw breath was a need that sang in his blood. He rolled over onto his back, writhing in fear.
	He was not aware that the predator had gotten to its feet.
	I toss my axe aside. It has failed me here. My walk is a purposeful stride, my features bloodied and ruined. Charandis is on his back, like a dog rolling in mud, swiping gamely at imagined assailants. He makes no sound. He can't even choke. I bare teeth, wet with my own blood, in a triumphant smile.
	But I am not finished yet.
	My fingers are not slender, delicate things. When they wrap around Charandis's throat, they squeeze with vice-like strength. I climb atop this Chaos-maddened lion - thrashing and biting - and I throttle him in the light of the Dread Moon.
	I know he would die if I just left him. He would choke to death on the stone I picked up in desperation, but that is not enough. That is not how I want this to end. A legend dies under my hands, caked in the filth of his own corruption. I will throttle the last vestiges of life from his ravaged body.
	And I do.
	The lion was dying.
	He did not feel sick. Not any more. There was still pain, settling on every bone, biting into every muscle, but this ache was an absence of affliction. It was... gone. Just like that. It vanished, as if it had sensed he would soon be gone, fleeing his body.
	He was still going to die. He had stopped fighting his impending demise - that was pointless. He had been sick for too long to even think of surviving beyond these next minutes.
	The predator was on him, and with the sudden passing of the sickness, he saw what was truly there. No fangs. No hunched shoulders, overgrown with a mane that had no place there. No claws. No bleak yellow eyes.
	It was just an elf. Blunt, rugged features; maybe brawnier than most elf-creatures, but one of them all the same.
	As prey-sleep took him, he still looked upon a predator.
	V


	Valeth spat the pulpy remains of a bitter herb onto the fire.
	Two days, he had said. Two days, and the White Lions would hunt the beast themselves. That was his promise to Korhil. That was the terms upon which he allowed the woodsman the honour of this hunt.
	The Khaos Moon had set over the distant Annulli Mountains, the jutting peaks that knifed up from the faraway horizon. The sun took its place in a rising curtain of ruby fire, bathing the trees in warmth, banishing the moon's corrupting influence.
	The woodsman had not returned, and that meant he was probably dead. Who knew what last night could have done to creature like Charandis?
	No, he had said a prayer for him this morning. That would have to do.
	Alvantir was twitchy, and had been this whole time. He kept on mentioning how he should get home to his wife, but Valeth bade him stay. The tracker was phenomenal, he had a nose like a wolf's, and eyes like a hawk's. He would be useful when it came to finding the beast.
	Valeth rose to his feet, his shoulders unburdened by the weight of his trophy and armour. 'Get kitted up.' His voice was clipped and tightened by discipline. 'We move after we eat.'
	His two companions murmured their assent, and went about their tasks silently. Only Alvantir didn't move.
	'He might still come back,' he said, chewing at his fingernails. 'There is still a chance.'
	Valeth hadn't the heart to tell him that his closest friend was probably lying in pieces. 'Maybe,' came his doubtful answer. 'Maybe.'
	'Such little faith, kinsman.'
	The voice was hoarse, gravelly and raw from a night without rest. It rumbled over the clearing, reaching their fire in a hoarse whisper. Four pairs of eyes widened in surprise.
	The speaker looked as if he were dead. The bags under his eyes spoke of exhaustion and fatigue, and the clumsy stitching across his face did little to halt the blood that oozed from his ugly wounds. His teeth were a slash of white in a sea of grime; a smile that seemed out of place considering what the man had on his broad shoulders.
	The head was... huge. Bigger than the rest of its kind, by far. Blood-caked dirty white fur in inch-thick blotches, most of it the lion's own; some of it the blood of its old victims. The mouth was still open, still roaring soundlessly. Its empty sockets glared with the anger that had sealed its demise, biting through the air with hot intensity.
	'You...' Valeth began, uncomprehending.
	'Yes,' Korhil replied. 'I did it.'
	I became used to the smell on the journey. My nose is numb to the stench, now. It does not affect me.
	I watch as it hits them, one by one, and my smile widens. I know I have stunned them. They look at me, slack-jawed and wide-eyed.
	I do not blame them. They have just witnessed the birth of a legend.
	'I did it,' I say again, savouring the way the words sound. 'I have passed the rite. I am a White Lion.'
	Silence, again. As I walk forward, dry blood falls from my skin in crimson snowflakes.
	'That is Charandis?' Alvantir asks, choking on his own words. This is the first time he has seen the beast.
	I shrug my shoulders, feeling the heavy weight of my burden. The skull alone weighs as much as a child. 'Yes, my friend. This is Charandis.'
	He laughs, cutting through his shock with surprised amusement. As he does so, he runs his fingers through his hair. The gleam of the ring adorning his hand catches the firelight. I begin to laugh, too, and-
	The ring.
	'Alvantir,' I say, my heart thumping. 'Let me see your hand.'
	He obeys, still laughing, still hardly believing what I have achieved.
	The ring is a band of plain gold, its plainness its true uniqueness. It is tradition for rings of betrothal to be gaudy and bejewelled. This is something Alvantir has never cared for.
	Neither does his wife.
	I step forward and snatch at the wooden disc he has hung around his neck. It, too, is simple - carved into a rough circle, engraved with the Asuuri rune for courage.
	His boy has such a pendant, too.
	'No...'
	'Korhil? What?' He sees my fear. He sees the recognition in my eyes as I look at these very personal trinkets.
	'Alvantir, I...' I cannot say it. I cannot say I am wearing the carcass of the beast that has killed my closest friend's only family.
	But he is a smart man. He knows.
	'No!' He shouts at first, railing at me. 'That is not true!'
	'My friend, I am so sorry...'
	But he is gone. He sprints into the woods, choking on his grief, following the trail I have left behind me.
	The weight on my shoulders doubles.
	My elation vanishes.
	'Come, Korhil,' Valeth says, clueless as to what has just transpired, here. 'It is time for you to come with us.'