After a second the throbbing subsided, and I took a moment to examine the window seal. Just as I thought, it was made of nearly pure iron and blessed with rose water increasing its potency. Well now I’ve probably alerted the occupants, but it also wasn’t like I was trying very hard to conceal myself so they may have already known of my presence. I peeked through the cracks of the wooden shudders and found the building was a bit modest on the inside with only a few furnishings. Despite the window seal, I could detect no other pieces of pure iron, so it was more than likely purely defensive. I jumped to the second floor and two people sitting cross-legged staring intently at me.

One was a large scarred man covered in tribal tattoos while the other was the girl that was related to the wolf. I gave them an award-winning smile along with a friendly wave before jumping off into the night. I was careless I admit and even worse, impolite, but I wanted to alert them to my presence within the forest, and I guess that’s what I did. I continued to scout out the town before jumping over the wall once more and disappearing into the forest. My curiosity was satisfied for now I turned to decoration and maintenance

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My father watched gravely as the mysterious creature seemed to be pulled back on invisible threads, and just as quickly as it appeared it was gone. I allowed myself to sigh in relief, but my guard was still up in case it came back. I turned to my father to see if he knew anything but to my disappointment, I only saw confusion. I gathered up my courage to ask him what he thought it was but before the question came out, he started to speak,

“There are things in this world that should not be talked about, let this be a lesson.”

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After a long night of crafting day was breaking once again but this time it was of no concern to me, the forest was just as dark as the dead of night thanks to my control. Talking about the forest, I could feel an intruder. I dropped what I was doing and prepared for combat before kicking myself for being stupid, I wasn’t at war and it probably wasn’t an attack. I was curious now though, who would be this deep into the woods in this kind of cold, and from what I could tell they were alone. I quickly closed the distance and took to the trees to inspect the intruder so I can plan my next course of action.

To my surprise the intruder was very different from what I was expecting, it was a large creature dressed in a bulky robe with hood up. It moved in a shuffle and its body twitched erratically with every step, but that wasn’t the weird part, a deathly miasmic mass circled the creature closely. It was artificial, made of a mass of flesh with two souls fighting for the captain’s seat. I was a bit pissed now, creations like this, if not made or maintained properly, will infect the surrounding land and creatures with death and slowly kill them off. I need to cleanse the creation and perform a purifying procedure immediately. I was about to drop down from above to tear it to shreds when I noticed something interesting amongst the death aura, It was a shred of the bloody, dark, and familiar aura I have been feeling within the spirit realm.

I paused and started to extract that small bit of it, the pieces floating around the other realm were weak and fragile which fell apart when I try to grab it. Soon I was pulling out a long crimson thread of what looked like a cylinder of smoke, with it freed I compressed it into a vile I had specifically made for this kind of purpose. With that done I went for the kill, I dropped down upon the creature and first sought to immobilize it since these things are notoriously known for releasing a massive amount of poisonous miasma upon death. I kicked it hard in the chest and it went flying along with the sound of dull cracking. An inhuman screech echoed out, but not from pain, but from the excitement of seeing supposed prey. Getting up like nothing happened it pounced to shred with claws at the ready, but they would never meet their mark. Its clumsy attacks were without technique and since it put too much power into the attack it was put off balance.

I sunk my claws into its shoulder and latched onto its shoulder bone before kicking out its three legs and ripping the bone out. And with powerful strikes, I brought the bone down repeatedly into its other arms until they were only hanging on by some threads. With its arms effectively disabled I went for the legs by ripping one of the arms off and swinging it with a bit of force into its hip, causing both objects to break into bone shards and flying pieces of flesh. There we go, it's probably not moving anywhere now, I grabbed it by the neck and tugged it back to my shack. Now that I think about it, I had some use for this creature, an evil smile cracked upon my face, it's only right to return the favor since they tried to corrupt my forest.

I quickly dug a pit some distance away from any type of civilization and tossed the body in after strapping it to a large wheel and freeing the trapped souls. I gave a sinister cackle before carefully placing a nondescript pot and rapidly burying everything. It's been a while since I’ve done this old trick and I was excited to do it again. To prevent accidental outbreaks, I put the surrounding space on lockdown and latterly broke it off into the spirit world. Despite that countermeasure I still put up several wards and warnings, you can’t be too careful in case some idiot thinks it’s a secret treasure or something. It happened before and took years to clean up so no taking chances.