The Beast.

[Author's note: Yes, I updated twice in one day, but keep your readerly pants on. Don't read and comment on this unless you've read and commented on THIS. Kayfanks.]


Traveling in the snow is not so very terrible as it may seem. Traveling for hours upon hours in the snow is worse.

Dragging your aching legs through the endless tundra by night, that’s a different story entirely.

Especially when you’re the only one who realizes you’re being watched.
By the time we saw them, they were right on top of us.

It is a keenly unsettling thing, stopping to listen for the alien voice caught in the wind and realizing that the shadow a few feet away that you’d assumed was part of the night sky had eyes.

Bright blue eyes, that blinked at me and stared as if not quite believing my existence either.

I peered into them until the moment Jakell roughly grabbed my arm and forced me behind him. Attempting to see the figures was useless, in the pelting snow, but Jakell obviously intended to be prepared for their assault. His one hand flickered out, an ancestral bone needles clasped between his index and middle finger; the other formed a circle of the thumb and first finger. He was preparing to channel an energy thread through the eye of the needle, but for what purpose, I wasn’t exactly sure yet.

A woman appeared very suddenly before us, wide-eyed and vacant-faced. Her fur hood had been lowered, and her dirty blond tresses were whipping all about her pale face, each strand burdened with sticking snow. In one hand, she held a knife. The other was held up, the palm facing towards us, in a sign of submission.

She said only a few words, but the wind graciously carried them to us.

“Please. He’s trying to kill us.”

Jakell stepped towards her and they conversed quietly for a second. He turned back to me, smiled, and pulled me along after the woman. A couple minutes of trudging passed before the landscape dissolved into a strangely comforting, hollow darkness.

“Where are we?” I asked in a whisper; it echoed all around me, sending fingers of sound resonating up and down the path we trod.

“She says there’s a cave in which we can find some shelter.” Jakell murmured back to me. “Very small, but that’s where they’re hiding.”

“From the storm?”

“Sure.”

We moved suddenly into a place of light.

My eyes adjusted with fidgety reluctance, slowly taking in the sight of the fire and the light that flickered back at it from the ice walls enclosing the small room.

Two men set beside the fire, and both turned to glance at us as we entered. They were both wrapped in blankets. The first man was large, imposing, and dark, and wore on his head a red cap. The second was much younger, of about my years, and wore a white kerchief. He smiled at me.

“I found some help out in the blizzard,” the woman announced, smiling. “Apparently we aren’t the only ones roaming this godforsaken ice cube after all.”

The dark man’s eyes hungrily roamed over the double-sash slung around Jakell’s chest and the single across mine, each bearing the Mender’s Star, the symbol of our profession.

“Menders.” He astutely formulated, raising one thick eyebrow.

The boy beside him stared, his mouth falling open a bit. “From the outpost? You survived?”

“Unfortunately, no.” Jakell said, “We were jumping in from Serenec for a training week and missed the entire outpost by what looks like three days.”

“We were passing through from Kand.” The woman said, shaking her head. “We’re colonists, the lot of us, and we were just hoping to find some work. Lucky we thought of bringing our gear or we’d have joined the sorry souls out at the base.”

“How long ago were you there?” Jakell asked.

“About a day or two back.” The boy answered, “We didn’t see the damage done, but the embers were still lit when we got there.”

“And a piece of the raid followed us home.” The man grunted, spitting into the fire.

Jakell set his pack on the ground and rummaged inside for a moment. As he searched, he said, “I believe that’s what this kind lady here told me.” He removed a blanket, and without prompting, tossed it around my shoulders and pushed me towards the fire. I struggled subtly, but submitted as the heat washed over me.

I sat across from the boy, whose dark, perusing eye I continuously caught.

“It was only a few hours ago that I realized he’d tracked us out here. There’s only one, I’m sure, but he’s unbelievable. He would have had Nicholas dead if he wasn’t so intent on playing games with us first.” As she said the name, she nodded at the boy. His glance didn’t leave my face. I felt the warm, sickly pangs of discomfort under his gaze.

“Likes to hide.” The man said. “Likes to sneak up at the very last moment and tap your shoulder before his sinks his bloody teeth into your cheek. Show them, Sylvie.”

The woman turned, and pulled her long hair away from her right cheekbone.

A fresh bruise, the shape of two crescents joined at the tips in a oblong circle, marred her face, and dried blood crusted inside each. The unmistakable bite of the human jaw.

We sat together for several hours more, exchanging information and comfort, and sharing a pack of rations from Jakell’s bag.

“We’ll have watches.” The man said after an impressive yawn. “Two sets of eyes for one hour of the remaining night each. That’ll make sure the filthy lunatic freezes out there.”

“I’ll go first and second.” Jakell said.

“As will I.” Said the woman, her eyes fixed on the fire.

“I’ll take third and fourth.” Nicholas said.

“And I’ll watch alone for the fifth.” The man said, “Leaving the apprentice to help Nicholas.”

I caught his gaze again and smiled weakly. “Sounds great.”

We laid out our sleeping bags a small ways away from the three acquaintances. I quickly clambered inside mine, weary and frigid, and more than content with two hours of sleep. Jakell woke me what felt like only moments later, but the fire was low.

“Lauriel,” he whispered, “are you awake?”

“Yeah. Oh, god, is it my turn already?” I fumbled about in the bag, attempting to rise. He pushed me back down with a steady hand.

“No, but I need you to listen very carefully to what I have to say. Don’t fall asleep on your watch. Promise me that.”

“What?”

“I might be gone for a moment, but while I’m out, you must not fall asleep. Alright?”

“Jakell, I’m not super cognizant right now, but isn’t that the point of a watch?”

“True. I won’t leave until it’s your turn.”

“Where’s the woman?” I asked realizing for the first time that Jakell and I were the only awakened individuals.

“She’s down the tunnel a ways- I told her I heard something down there, but I just needed a second alone.”

“What’s wrong?”
“You just need to stay awake when it’s your turn, okay?”

“Okay.”

I didn’t remember falling back asleep, but the next awakening I received was at the hands of Nicholas.

I rose, rubbed my eyes, and climbed regretfully out of my bag. I donned my parka quickly, and sat motionless besides the boy for some time.

He continued to stare.

“Where’s Jakell?” I asked, realizing I hadn’t seen him.

“Oh, he went a little ways down the tunnel,” the boy said, still staring unblinkingly. “I’m sure he’ll be back soon.”

I turned and surveyed the room around me. I could make out only one sleeping form, too big to be anyone but the man.

I returned my attention to opening at the cave’s front.

“Maybe we should rekindle the fire.” I suggested blandly, attempting to fill the silence.

“I’ll get it.” Nicholas said. He didn’t move.

I slowly turned towards him; he was still staring with his huge dark eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I said at last, now catching his gaze with a ferocious exasperation, “but is there something particularly interesting attached to my face, currently? Or did you simply never learn that staring at a person for an hour, interrupted only by unconsciousness, is rude?”

“Hours.”

“What??”

“I’ve been looking for hours.” He corrected me, smiling politely. “I didn’t sleep, I just watched you.”

“Look, I know I don’t exactly look like much, but I am in fact an assistant mender in my eight year. I could pop your little weasel head off your shoulders with my mind.”

He laughed, and for the first time, looked away. “I’m sorry.”

“So am I.”

“It’s just that I never, ever get to see girls with black hair.”

“Excuse me?”

“I only ever run into blondes and brunettes and whatnot- redheads are okay, I guess, but it’s not everyday that you see a girl with black hair. On top of that, the freckles-“ He was staring again. I wanted to vomit. “They’re unusual. Striking and captivating, but unusual. Not to mention the blue eyes.”

I gagged, turned away, and replayed what I’d write in my mender account of the mission as a distraction.

However, the concept of blue eyes resurfaced as I remembered what had happened only hours ago.

“Nicholas, you said you don’t see blue eyes very often?”

“No, not at all.”

“Doesn’t your mother have them?”

“The woman’s not my mother, she’s just my supervisor. But no, hers are all wretched and brown.”

“And the man, how about him?”

“Darkish green.”

My mouth went dry. Then the face, out in the tundra, the eyes that had been so close to my own, must have belonged to the zealot.

And he hadn’t struck.

This thought clouded my head for the next hour. As time drew on, I realized not the weight on my eyelids, or the way that as I grew ever wearier, Nicholas crept ever closer.

I woke up screaming.

I had dreamed very briefly, but in my dream, a beast of the night had stolen up to me, pressed its paw against my throat, and set its tongue to my cheek.

My hand was at my face instantly, and came away wet and hot; my fingers were coated with red. I felt the wound and cried out; what felt like an enormous gash ran, somewhat semicircular, around my cheekbone.

Nicholas was at my side, pressing a cloth into my hand and shielding his eyes from the wound.

“Oh, god, girl, I think we both dozed off and he got in.”

“What?”

“I think he bit you.” He dropped his hand, unshielding his face, and the only thing I could notice in the dull light was the blood streaming from his mouth, and the filed points, just barely visible from behind his curled lip.

I didn’t need much more than that.

I repelled myself forward with a burst of energy and hit the ground running. So stupid. How could I have been so stupid?
Jakell said not to fall asleep, and what did I do?

And a group of colonists, but not a family? Oh, it was too impossibly obvious.

And the obscured male heads?

He said he liked my freckles. My hand was at my face, tracing the line I knew the speckles of pigment took; across the middle of my nose and the higher parts of my cheekbone- right were he’d sunk his teeth.

He was screaming down the tunnel, and I could hear his footsteps behind me.

“Girl, wait- please, please, please wait, blue eyes-“

I was out in the tundra before I even realized what I was doing. I fell face-down in the snow and kept on thrashing forward.

An attack. I needed to go on the defensive, now.

I buried my hand in my pocket searching for something, anything-

A feather totem brushed my fingertips and I clawed it out, holding the thing in my hand.

Totems are the main study tool and aid for the student mender. When one hasn’t yet developed a signature mending style, we use tools to focus our energy into more concrete objects.
The feather totem is a simple enough object- a jade tube with a feather tied to the back with a beaded string.

I threw it into the air, focused my energy, and held it vertical above my hands.

And I waited.

It was only a matter of seconds before Nicholas the Zealot came charging after me, and I was prepared.

The energy arrow flew straight and true, striking him in the left shoulder and sinking all the way through to the other side. The totem, now useless, zipped back to my hand, and I pocketed it on the run.

The ensuing screams were lost in the wind that separated us.

I’m not sure how Jakell found me, but he managed. The sky had lightened considerably, and our visibility had returned somewhat, but the feat still seems impossible.

But he was there, pressing a fresh bandage to my wound and clucking his tongue.

“You fell asleep, didn’t you.”

I answered him by leaving my arms hanging at my sides, dropping my head, and burying my face in the front of his parka for the second time in the last thirty-six hours. His gloved hand rubbed my back soothingly.

“Lauriel, I hate to remind you of our imminent danger, but we should probably find some cover.”

I mumbled my disagreement into the fur, but the comment was lost.

“Lauriel, we really should- oh, sneck.”

His soothing hand at my back curled into a clawed grip. He tossed me into the air, caught me, and raced forward into the snow.

“Put on your goggles.” He whispered. I obliged, and a moment later, was airborne.

We both landed in enormous snowdrifts.

Fortunately, too, for within a minute, all three of the zealots were within fifteen feet of our hiding places. The males had removed their hat and kerchiff, and the Zealots’ signature shaved heads, with the exception of a short topknot, were visible.

Religiously pure and regimented, morally monstrous, as always.

They sniffed the air about them, trying to catch any scent of us.

“I think,” the woman said, sampling the air again, “that they’re just east.”

In our hiding places just west, both Jakell and I relaxed.

They moved in their expected direction, and the snow began to die down.

The zealots stopped, and looked at one another.

“Do you hear that?” Nicholas asked.

“Yes-“ The man said, and took another step east. Nicholas stepped in front of him and stooped down towards a large snowbank before them.

“Ohhh, blue eyes- we’re going to spend a little more time together.” He crooned.
At first, everything stayed silent.

The eruption of snow and ice started a moment later, spewing from the mound as a form launched itself high into the air.

I could just make out the figure’s excellent combat form and what I could only assume was a sword before the weapon was embedded about five inches down through Nicholas’s shoulder muscle.

The newcomer was decidedly male, obscured from head to toe in winter gear, and shrouded in a black face kerchiff and a pair of heat-seeking goggles.

He removed the knife from the screaming boy’s shoulder and allowed it to dance past his neck, just barely nicking the jugular was an intense result. Nicholas collapsed to the ground leaking astoundingly.

The stranger turned his attention to the remaining adult zealots, and made quick work, this time going so far as to remove limbs and inflict multiple stab wounds with the ice-climbing spikes affixed to his boot tips before ending all with the same deft little slice to the jugular.

I had to turn away at certain parts, but Jakell watched the entire time, his face set with focus.

When everything was all finished, the stranger removed a black bag from his pack and picked up a couple severed limbs, dropping them into the satchel before returning it to his back with the nonchalant absence of a Sunday shopper.

I even thought I heard him humming.

He then dragged away the bodies of the woman and Nicholas.

It took him a few minutes to come back for the man, but return he did.

As he stooped over the body, his gaze fixed directly upon our hiding spot.

He froze for several minutes, before cocking his head.

Jakell sent me a sidelong glance, steeped in his ‘don’t panic’ expression.

The stranger was rising slowly now, and stepped over the corpse with a spiked boot and moved very slowly towards us.

I could tell without looking that Jakell was holding the ancestral needle, but in the end, it was unnecessary.

The figure stopped a few feet away and simply looked.

He then slowly removed his goggles, squinted at our snowy, whited-out forms, and turned.

A moment later, he was dragging the man’s body away, and was completely out of sight.

But the piercing blue eyes I had seen just over the black mask were not yet out of my mind, and linger there still.

“Zealots eating other Zealots,” I chuckled dryly as we rose from the snow twenty minutes later, “what are the new worlds coming to?”

“He wasn’t a Zealot.” Jakell said plainly, removing a compass from his satchel.

“Why not?”

“Did you see his head? Buzzed, not shaved. Man had hair.”

“So maybe it’s a new sect.”

“Definitely not. He was also wearing a pilfered Mender’s sash.”

“Seriously?”

“Kept his knife sheath on his back. Mender’s star looked like it had been cut and gnawed out. Also,”

“What?” I asked, removing my snow-caked goggles to see his face more clearly.

“The woman zealot’s bite-“ Jakell sighed, running a finger down his cheek. “Bruising showed a natural bite. No files, old-school incisors still included. The man’s something else.”

“Any idea what?”

“Whatever a man who kills three zealots and makes off with their limbs without so much blinking an eye can be called.” He looked westward, after the blue-eyed man. “A badder beast.”