Chapter 4: Chapter 3 – Wendigo

The sound of a loud bell ringing woke me out of my stupor. Not too long afterwards the sounds of feet crashing through the snow could be heard heading down the alley towards my home.
I quickly dove for my usual corner and threw up the darkness aura around me. This was clearly a pointless move, if they had planned on coming into here, they would have before I had even woke up. I'm absolutely exhausted though and completely on edge, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised I'm making bad decisions on instinct.
..... Apparently I can still use the magic from earlier. The feeling from earlier was embedded into me, and I knew how to replicate it thanks to that I think?
I had no idea that I even knew any kind of magic, let alone darkness... wait, was it Eris? If she was a darkness caster, that would... explain very little. Unless that was her earlier taking control, but the thoughts of eating people with a tail came to me before I was Eris... I really don't know anything it feels like.
However I do know one thing, sleeping here was stupid of me, very stupid. Whether some other entity controlled me or not, I will still be the one with a noose around my neck if I'm caught here.
I need to take a moment to calm down and steady my heart rate, it's pounding way too hard and my ears won't stop ringing.
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Alright, this is either good news, or horrible news. Apparently, the fighting is still going on. So either I slept for 30 seconds and this is a completely natural sound to be hearing right now, or... I don't even know what to think of the alternative. The footsteps running past me must have been the southern outpost troops coming to assist the north gate, but why would they go all the way around the east side? No matter how much help they need, they wouldn't empty the entire watch on the towers, so there should still be one guard up inside the tower only 15 or so yards down this alley.
Just then I could hear shouting in the Tevras home next door, and I swear one of the words was "sword". Soon after I heard the door slam and the slight sound of snow crunching, almost overpowered by the sounds of yelling at the North gate. I thought that bell was a warning to the citizens to wake up and be ready in case things take a turn for the worst, but it must have been a call to arms.
... Did I completely doom this town by killing Steward? I have no regrets about killing that man, and there is people I've met in this town that I'd have no issues with dying to a monster attack, but they're not all bad... Some people treated me kindly or paid me no attention and just went about living there lives, which is perfectly fine and definitely not worthy of *death*.
I feel like I'm about to pass out right here on the spot, but at the very least I can go take a look to see if there's anything I can do. I can't allow myself to be seen though... This is a problem.
Reaching out I grab the flap on the tent and slowly move it aside so I can take a peak outside, I don't see anyone down either side of the alley. Apparently being an amateur at magic doesn't prevent you from telling exactly how much ether you have and how fast its draining. Ever so slowly, I can feel my ether going up, which shouldn't be possible. It's all secondhand knowledge from overhearing conversations in the compound, but ether is regained very slowly at a passive rate (it depends on where you are, but that doesn't matter right now), or at a much faster rate if you've learned to meditate and channel it from your surrounding.
I, have a rather scary alternative in mind, and that would explain why I'm feeling this now after what just happened. Steward... whatever I was before, was very happy about absorbing his soul. I don't know anything about souls, but if ether is stored there then that makes sense. I'll have to figure this out later after I've slept on it, assuming this town and me even survive the night.
Also I understand what the other... me, was saying before. Standing still invisible by that bookcase for 3 minutes had taken my ether down very little. However, when I tried moving with the aura up, I lost probably 5% of my supply just moving to the damn tent flap.
If, there is a guard in the tower, he'll be watching the torch-line outside the gate, so I don't need to worry about him spotting me down below in the alley. Worst case scenario I can always run into a dark corner and go invisible. Everyone is way too busy dealing with whatever the hell showed up at the North gate to care about one girl walking around anyways. Well, if they see my leg from below the knee covered in dry blood there may be some questions. Speaking of which, I didn't even realize I was half limping. Honestly I shouldn't be able to walk at all.
Walking out of the tent and down the alley, I can't help but think that there isn't really anything I can do while not being seen, but I might as well go make sure this town isn't about to be wiped out. "At least one village a year gets overrun due to bad planning or bad luck", said a man at the compound once.
I remember very little from when I was a kid before I was sold, but I know this blackout -once every 43 days that lasts roughly about ten and a half days-, did not exist. Also those ladies in the compound weren't lying, the sky really is completely blocked by thick clouds. I loved the night sky as a child, the massive green planet next to us was beautiful and ominous at the same time. All of the other moons had their own charm, with some of them being very unique. Now there is thick clouds covering the entire sky... One thing I wanted to see more than anything while in that damned cave for 14 years, was the sky, and now that's impossible. Between the blackouts which brings with it monster attacks of all kinds around the moon, and the sky being filled with thick clouds that never disappear, this moon is a completely different place from what I remember. Obviously I had heard about them in the compound, but I guess thanks to my situation, I didn't fully grasp just how bad things out here really are.
While I was lost in thought (but still aware of my surroundings), I had reached the end of the alley. Yep, nobody in the tower looking this way, but... something is off. My hair is standing on end, some primal instinct inside of me is telling me to hide, which is exactly what I was about to do before I saw it.

It's no wonder I didn't see it at first. Halfway between my home and the guardhouse, there is a pitch black looking stump not moving at all. If this was a new street I hadn't been on before, I'd assume it had always been there. But now that I know it's out of place, I can just barely make out a tiny slit orange eye looking at me.
My brain is going at a million miles an hour trying to figure out the best course of action.
Do I run and turn invisible when it loses sight of me?
What's the best spot to hide in that I can reach? How fast would this weird tree-thing even be?
Will invisibility even work on a creature like this?
Where are the guards?! A group literally just ran past this location, I can see a bunch of tracks leading from this alley right past the creature.
Did it let them go...? Would it let me go?
The creature immediately answered that question by dislodging itself from the ground (apparently it was rooted into the ground?), and smashed several of its limbs into the ground, turning it into a mad dash directly at me.
I have to give myself credit for once, I didn't fall down or panic. I had already turned around and started running down the alley back towards Stewards tent. This Eris girl, really is way faster than I was as Eve, but it might not be enough! The footsteps behind me are more like 4 trunks slamming into the ground in fast repetition. It's annoyingly fast and I can hear it gaining on me even through this short sprint. I was initially much closer to the tent than it was, but it still managed to catch up to me right before I reached the tent. And yet, instead of being maimed or killed as I was expecting, the creature began screaming in pain instead.
I didn't even bother turning my head around to see what had saved me with almost perfect timing. I was back in my corner by the bookcase in no time at all, listening to the tree writhe around on the ground outside the tent. The moans of pain coming from it were constantly switching back and forth between low and guttural to high pitched like a bat, the erratic sounds fluctuating in octane all over the place was absolutely nightmarish. Now I could also hear the sounds of humans from different directions yelling and approaching this position. The one in the watchtower (turns out I was right, someone was still up there), and a couple of people behind me farther into the alley had also heard the screams, they must have eyes on it because I heard one of them yell to the guy in the watchtower "Yes I see it! It looks like a small Wendigo!!"
So it's known as a Wendigo? Good to hear they know what it is, hopefully I can stay here invisible until they take care of it. I was told the outer villages were filled with veterans that served their time in the northern mountains fighting off the Frost gods constant stream of monsters being sent to this side. They spend 7 years there before they can leave, and need to serve their time in the outer villages for another... 10 years I think? Then they can finally retire (but they're still on call in emergencies like this). I might be wrong on that part, but regardless, they should be able to handle this.
I heard a weird thunk noise outside with another scream from the Wendigo following up directly afterwards, leading to a flash of light appearing through the slits in the tents flap. Ahh I know what happened, nicely done Mr.Outpost guard. Nothing like an oil dripped arrow on fire for a tree creature.
"Keep hitting it! It's blowing through its ether to freeze the fire!!". More shouting but this time they are very close to the tent, probably 10 feet to my right.
It uses frost magic huh? I assume that's a subset of water, I've never even heard about it before but it's not like I'm an expert mage. Everything I know is second-hand information from conversations between the talkative nobles or enforcers.
It continued like that for about another minute, a loud thunk followed by a scream of "Again!!", before the Wendigo either lost its patience, or ran out of ether. I'm guessing the latter, if it had any intelligence it wouldn't have sat there eating fire arrows until it was low or tapped on ether.
"It's coming! Don't stop shooting Yuu!"
A scarily loud whoosh sound came from directly outside the flap, knocking the flap all the way open, allowing me to see a massive trunk swinging past the entrance, followed by a booming metallic noise. "Agh..!! Damn that hurts!!"
As expected, he blocked it with those medium-sized shields all the guards carry. Pretty impressive that he could block a punch from this thing considering the force behind it, the whole tent shook just from the wind pressure. Maybe some type of magic was used? I feel like a regular human arm would be blown off from an attack like that, no matter how good the shield is.

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They have a pretty good combo going here, and if it really is out of ether then it's only a matter of time before the fire arrows bring it down. At least, that's how it should have ended...
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"Well crap, now what boss? I aint fighting it in close quarters."
"...How annoying. Steward, are you in there?!"
Yeah... This isn't good. In its final moments the damn beast used its brain or just instinctively ran into the closest area to hide. Now its in the tent no more than 4 feet from me, bellowing in pain and challenging the people outside with some type of loud grunting. I'm invisible so I'm okay for now but... I can think of way too many different scenarios where this could go wrong, and fast. But some silver lining is I got to see why it stopped short of killing me earlier. I'm not used to this tail, in the heat of the moment I must have been creating acid inside of it while I ran. I can see a large portion of its head is broken up and crumbling so I must have hit it pretty good.
"Can't we just burn down the tent boss? You know Steward isn't gonna be in there... He ditched town the second he got the news, and I don't blame him one bit."
"No... No we can't burn down the tent. The captain would strangle me and pretend the monster did it. You see this material? It's called 'silk' and was something only the Croatia can make from those creepy man-sized bugs they farmed. They abandoned this moon and left enmasse through the portal. On the way out they gave us everything they couldn't carry, so now this is a limited resource. Why they made an entire tent out of it is beyond me, but I'm not gonna be the one to burn it down. YUU GET DOWN HERE!!"
The Wendigo apparently planned on just waiting in here until they either came in to fight him, or left. It was still grunting but the people outside didn't care at all. It wasn't long before the sounds of more snow crunching could be heard running this way.
"Alright good, you're here. Yuu, how many incendiary arrows do you have left?"
"Only four, am I lighting up the tent?"
"No not the damned... Listen, get your back against the wall and draw, I'll throw the flap up and you shoot as many arrows as you can back to back before it charges out here. It shouldn't be able to kill the fire anymore, we'll block everything it throws at us while it burns to death. Get all 4 of those arrows blazing and 1 knocked, then we'll go. DON'T HIT THE TENT!!"
Sounds like this guy knows what he's doing, I shouldn't need to do anything. It's also a prime opportunity for me... I really hope they don't touch the corpse or I get at least 30 seconds alone with it.
.............Wait.
Did I just get excited at the idea of eating this thing? I don't have 'the other me' to blame this time... but I can't deny the feeling of Steward *supposedly* getting absorbed into my soul was infinitely better than anything I've ever felt before... okay, maybe just a nibble. I mean it's a monster that tried to kill me, and they're going to dissect it and sell its parts anyways.
They're doing a great job of being quiet, I can't hear anything out there. The Wendigo must have realized something is up because it stopped grunting and is completely still like when I first saw him. That is one creepy eye it has... he's moving it all along his body trying to look outside the cracks in the flap, but that will only give him very limited vision and won't help him at all since the archer is directly behind the flap about 25 yards away.
In one swift motion a spear tip poked under the end of the flap and flipped it up on top of the tent, followed immediately by a blazing arrow piercing the creatures front left limb. The scream that took place in this tiny tent felt like it blew my ear drums out. As I covered my ears, the Wendigo leapt forward out of the tent swinging wildly with all of its limbs, screaming the entire time. I was just as confused as the men fighting it, but that's when it hit me... The arrow had landed right where its eye was as it was trying to look through the cracks in the flap on the left side. I don't think the archer, or the men with shields fighting it, realize how lucky that shot was.
"STOP BRACING IDIOT AND START DODGING!!" I can see the 'boss' yelling at his underling who is standing there blocking all of those wild swings head on, but it's not going to last... his shield is cracking all over. There really has to be something special going on here, no way a human is standing still blocking those hits.
Thunk
Yet another arrow sinks into monster, and now the boss is chipping away at its limbs from behind with his spear after he tossed his shield to the man taking all the blows. His underling couldn't hold out any longer and bent down while throwing away his shield with the intention of picking up the one by his left foot, but he just barely dodged a punch from the Wendigo as he bent down. It's obvious that it wasn't intentional, the punch just happened to go high while he was bending down. Very lucky indeed underling...
At this point the Wendigo's front left leg and upper right trunk were both burning quite brightly, and the Wendigo was slowing down quite a bit from its initial assault.
The third arrow put a stop to the fight.
Right in its neck, its entire head lit up like a bonfire. Weird, the other parts took time to burn like wood usually would, while his head acted like it was doused in oil. Maybe they threw some on it during the fight? That's pretty impressive if so but I doubt that's the case, the only one who could have was the underling and he was desperately guarding himself with the super shield that's now broken into a couple hundred pieces. It shattered when he tossed it, he really was cutting it close...
There was no more fighting after that, it literally just collapsed into the snow, which hilariously, put out half of the fire. I guess it never thought to just roll around on the ground.
The underling spit on the ground where the Wendigo collapsed. "No more... no more boss. I'm leaving this place forever if they leave us high and dry again with the reinforcements."
"They won't. Leaving a town to fend for itself twice in a row always leads to collapse of the defensive line. The 'very important' people behind us would never risk their own safety. Lately they really are pushing their luck though..."
"HELL YES HOW WAS THAT?!" Yuu the archer came over doing a weird little spinning dance.
"Yeah yeah, you did great Yuu, but there is no time to celebrate yet. Yuu go back into the tower and make sure nothing else slipped in while nobody was watching, Ray come with me to tell the captain we took down a Wendigo in town. It's really bad for the town if one slips in like this. If it managed to kill even one mans family who was supposed to be safe in their home... this whole place really would burn down."
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Those guys did a great job taking that monster down without receiving any damage in return, and they were kind enough to leave the corpse for me~. I can see 'Yuu the archer' climbing the tower right now, while the others had already exited the alley heading for the north gate. If the 'captain' is at the north gate, then I don't have much time left. Yuu might keep an eye on this direction as well since from their point of view, this is where the Wendigo appeared. This is risky, but my greed to feel that sensation again is beating out my fear of being seen.
Removing the invisibility, I dash out of the tent and grab the closest part of the Wendigo with my tail, pulling on it with as much strength I can muster and it immediately crumbled into the tails mouth. Keeping an eye on the tower, I begin filling the tail up with as much of the Wendigo as I can. I thought I was going to have to douse it in acid and slowly bite it one piece at a time, but the fire must have weakened its entire body. Instead it's chomping it down in large bites and crushing them inside with ease. Need to eat this as fast as I can and pray Yuu doesn't look down here...
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Well, it wasn't exactly bad, but it wasn't really delicious either. I would love to know why Steward was infinitely better than this creature was. Also, while I was waiting, I noticed Yuu had left me a gift on his way out. Yuu only lit 3 of the arrows, and he left one of them behind. He was too excited after the victory and immediately jumped into his weird little dance. I have a pretty good idea on what I can use this for...

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