Stalk Strike Survive: From Beast to Legendary Beast Tamer

Silver arrows hissed through smoke-thick air, tips leaving trails of pale light in the darkness. Bran dodged another. He'd been doing this for what felt like hours now. His bare feet were bloodied and bruised from the sharp stones and bushes he'd run through. Normally, his wolf senses would have kicked in and provided a better path but he was too tired to care.

Behind him, Ariana's breathing had lobg turned into irregular heaves broken by sporadic bloody coughs. Her white-tipped tail visible in brief flashes wagged and wove between burning trees, blackened in soot. Bran gripped Ariana's wrist, carefully avoiding the rope-scarred flesh where Meera had bound her last moon for sharing food with the younger pack members. All he ever wanted was to see her free, and now, she was going to die and it was all his fault.

Please survive, Bran desperately mouthed but his own lungs were baked inside out, burning as he ran, each breath dryer than the last, each tear evaporated on his cheek.

"You said we would be safe!" Kira's voice cracked behind them, the young she-wolf stumbling over roots as she ran. Running on two legs was slow. They would have been faster if they turned completely wolf, but then the hunters would track their prints and so, this half form would do.

 "You promised if we left Meera—"

"I know," Bran choked out, tears finally cutting tracks through the soot on his face. They were finally outrunning tge dragons that circled overhead . "Just keep running. We're almost far enough. We'll regroup with the others." The lie tasted bitter on his tongue. There were no others left to regroup with – he could feel the pack bonds in his mind snapping one by one like worn string rubbed against rock. The pack was dying and each death felt like his own. Kira was still too young to attune that deeply to the packbond. Atleast he hoped she was.

Mace, the older male running beside Kira, snarled. "There is no pack left to—"

A scream pierced the night – high and primal, cutting off in a wet gurgle. After a sudden thud, Kira's packbond vanished in his mind too. Bran didn't dare look back, but Mace's howl of grief told him enough. The blessed silver had claimed another.

Above them, the hunters' dragons drew closer, giant wings beating against the smoke-stained sky in a rhythmic pattern. The rhythm of death. Their fiery breath ignited new fires in the canopy. The forest was crying in pain and burning branches crashed down around them, forcing Bran to leap sideways, dragging Ariana with him. Her bones felt too delicate under his grip. He couldn't tell if he was protecting her or crushing her.

"Keep moving," he growled, the words coming out in their guttural beast-tongue. The human hunters would hear only animal sounds, but Ariana and Mace would understand the fear beneath them. It was just the three of them again like always - Mace, Ariana and Bran. Maybe, he should never have involved anyone else. Did he think he was some kind of hero? Did he think he could really make a difference? Save them from Meera and her constant abuse of the pack? What a joke.

By the time they broke through the wall of smoke into momentary clarity, their legs had almost given out and they had slowed to a limping jog. Moonlight painted the ground silver, and for one heartbeat, Bran saw the full scope of their disaster behind them. Bodies lay scattered through the burning underbrush – beastkin, their blood black in the darkness. Some faces he recognized. Most he didn't. The ones from his pack were dead because he'd convinced them that freedom from their alpha was worth the risk. The rest were dead because that's what humans do.

A dragon's roar shattered the moment. Heat bloomed overhead as another burst of flame turned night to day. Before Bran could think, Mace had already pushed him and Ariana out of the way. Mace stumbled, silver arrow sprouting from his half burned left thigh. Bran hesitated, torn between helping and keeping Ariana safe. Mace met his eyes and nodded once, understanding. Then he turned, bursting into full wolf form in an explosion of fur and charged at the hunters with his last breath, buying them precious seconds.

They ran again, the trio now cut down to two.Bran's with his feet digging into dirt and stone, and Ariana in his grip, flailing about half dead. The smoke was thick again, filling his sensitive nose with the stench of burning fur and flesh. Through the chaos his mind instinctively called to the Beast King for help. But when he felt the distant gaze of the Beast King in his mind, a looming awareness struck : the king would offer no aid to rebels who had defied their pack alpha.

Something whistled past his ear – another arrow, too close. Then Ariana cried out. He spun, heart stopping. She was still running. Just grazed. The silver hadn't taken her. Not yet.

The trees thinned ahead, and Bran's stomach dropped. Water scent cut through the smoke. A river. They'd been herded and he'd realized too late. Driven exactly where the hunters wanted them.

They burst from the treeline onto a rocky shore. The river rushed past, too wide to leap, too fast to swim. Bran whirled, pushing Ariana behind him as shadows detached themselves from the burning forest. Two hunters emerged, crossbows raised, the fires behind them casting them in an ominous silhouette.

"No escape now, beasts," one called out in their human tongue – meaningless sounds to Bran's ears, but the intent was clear enough from the silver-tipped bolt aimed at his heart.

Bran backed up, feet scraping on loose stones. His mind raced. Maybe if he turned full wolf and charged, created an opening, Ariana could–

One of the hunters fell to his knees, hands on his own throat as he gurgled on the blood soaking his coat.A shadow moved behind the second hunter who noticed the movement too late. Silver flashed in moonlight – once, twice. He dropped without a sound, throat opened to the night air. A figure in black, stood in the aftermath like a bodiless shadow. No crossbow. No visible weapons. Just presence, heavy as storm clouds. The figure stood still, black cloak and black mask with its strange intertwined triangle and circle symbol in its center.

"You'll do nicely," the black-clad figure said, voice neither male nor female.

Bran didn't understand the words, but something in that voice made his fur stand on end. Wrong. Everything about this was wrong.

The figure moved with impossible speed. Silver flashed again. Pain shot out of Bran's shoulder, and suddenly he couldn't move. Blessed silver. The blade pinned him to yhe ground like paper and needle, its touch burning through muscle and bone.

Ariana snarled and leaped, but the Hunter in Black swatted her aside with casual brutality. She hit the ground hard, skidding on the rocks, bleeding from the side of her head. She looked closer to death than before.When she tried to rise, another silver blade appeared in the hunter's hand.

"Stay down, little one," the figure said. "Your part comes later."

The hunter pulled something from beneath black robes. A vial, contents swirling with unnatural green light. Bran tried to resist, but fingers like iron gripped his jaw, forced his mouth open. His fangs, strong enough to bite through bone couldn't penetrate the hunter's gloves. Liquid burned down his throat, tasting of metal and something rotten.

Words filled the air – not human speech, not beast-tongue, but something older. Something that made the air shimmer like heat waves in the summer sun. The hunter's free hand traced symbols in the air that left burning afterimages .

Through it all, Ariana watched with wide eyes. She could run now, while the hunter was occupied. Save herself. But she wouldn't. Bran knew she wouldn't. That's why he'd wanted her safe in the first place.

The chanting reached a crescendo. The hunter's blade withdrew from Bran's shoulder, but he still couldn't move. The figure turned to Ariana.

"The price must be paid," the hunter said, and the blade plunged down with a crunch. Precisely through her back and into her heart.

Ariana didn't cry out. Didn't whimper. Just stared at Bran with those golden eyes as her lifeblood poured out onto the stones. The hunter caught the flow in cupped hands and flung it across Bran's face.

The world exploded.

First he turned full wolf. Not by choice- a forced turn, the kind that only the Beast King should be able to force. Next, his bones liquified, reforming with excruciating slowness. Each vertebra in his spine cracked and reshaped itself, forcing him to arch backward until he thought his back would snap. Fur didn't retreat like a normal transformation back to the half form– it burned away like paper in flame, leaving his skin raw and exposed. His skull collapsed inward, reshaping itself as his muzzle crumpled and reformed. Claws tore free from fingers that felt like they were being pulled from bone. His tail ripped away as if yanked by an invisible hand. Organs shifted and twisted, some withering away, others expanding to fill new spaces. Even his eyes changed, the world's colors dulling and darkening as his wolf's vision died. He tried to howl but the sound was weak, like a human scream.

But worse than the physical agony was the mental severing. The pack bonds, already weakened by death, snapped completely. The Beast King's constant presence in his mind vanished like a star going dark. The hollow emptiness that replaced them was deafening – a silence so profound it felt like going deaf and blind at once. Was this how humans lived? This terrible isolation, this disconnection from everything and everyone? The loneliness crashed over him like a physical weight, threatening to drive him mad.

When the agony finally ebbed away, Bran found himself on hands and knees – human hands, human knees – in the ruins of what had once been a small shrine or temple on the riverbank. He hadn't even noticed it before. The Hunter in Black was gone.

His first breath with human lungs felt like drowning. Too shallow. Too weak. Everything was wrong – smells reduced to almost nothing, sounds muffled as if his head were wrapped in wool. The night around him had gone from sharp clarity to a murky soup of shadows. Even the air on his bare skin felt wrong, too sensitive without fur to buffer it.

"Ariana!" The word came out in human tongue, wrong and clumsy on his new lips. He crawled to her body, still warm but empty of life. His reflection in a pool of blood stopped him cold – a human face stared back. He still looked like himself in the half form but now there were no wolf ears, no tail, nothing of what he had been. He tried to shift, to call upon the complete wolf form that had been as natural as breathing. Nothing happened. His body remained stubbornly, horrifyingly human.

Voices approached – human hunters, their boots crunching on stone. The sound was barely audible with his useless new human ears. Bran looked up with new eyes as they emerged from the smoke.

"Seven confirmed kills," one was saying. "Not counting the ones that went into the river."

He...he understood them. The meaningless sounds had become words, crystal clear in his transformed mind.

"Eight," another corrected. "Found another by the ridge. Young female. Clean shot through the throat." Kira. They were talking about Kira.

"Hells, what happened here?" A third voice, noticing the blood-stained rocks. "And who's this?"

"Boy in the forest? Never seen him in town."

"Could be from out of town. Got lost in forest. Lucky we found him."

"Jim and Oscar are dead though. Must've been the dead wolf girl over there. At least they took care of her before kicking the bucket."

Bran wanted to laugh. Or scream. Or tear their throats out with teeth that were now too dull for the job.

"Can you stand, lad? The guild's not far. We'll get you sorted."

Bran rose on shaking legs, and immediately vomited. The hunters took it as shock at his "rescue." They couldn't see him staring at Ariana's cooling body in the shadows of the shrine. Couldn't know that the tremors wracking his frame weren't from fear but from the effort of not killing them all.

"Easy there. What's your name, boy?"

Bran opened his new mouth, tested his new tongue. "Bran," he said, the human word feeling like wet mud on his lips. His second word with a human voice.

One of the hunters draped a cloak around his shoulders, covering his nakedness. Another offered a waterskin. They spoke of safety, of shelter, of the guild's protection. Bran let them lead him away from the river, away from the shrine, away from everything he'd been.

Behind them, the forest burned, and with it, the last traces of his old life. But the Hunter in Black's words echoed in his mind, clear now in his new understanding: "The price must be paid."

It had been. In blood and bone and betrayal. But as Bran walked on human legs toward human shelter, he made a silent vow in the language of wolves that he could no longer speak: this was only the beginning of the payment. And when accounts were finally settled, there would be nothing left to pay with. 

The smoke rose higher, and somewhere in the darkness, dragons circled like vultures, hunting for survivors that no longer existed.