It was nighttime in the woods. Ran was surrounded by nothing but weirdly shaped trees and pure darkness, except for the light of the campfire and some improvised torches they had set up to light a perimeter around them.

Still, he felt strangely calm; it was a scene that would normally make everyone scared.

He too would be scared out of his wits were the circumstances different, but they weren’t, so there was nothing to fear. Alden said so.

They had spent all day in that forest and it was empty, no life in it, that was the most unnatural thing about the place, it looked like a normal forest from the outside, but once you entered, it would soon become one of the calmest and most tranquil places you have ever been to. If only there weren’t so many deadly killer trees, it would be a nice place to explore.

Maybe the reason he was so relaxed was the presence of his older brother and father, the two most powerful people he knew, his unbeatable brother Lucius and his otherworldly strong father Alden. Even if he liked to joke around and play pranks on him with Lan, he knew how strong he was, he respected that about his forebear.

“I’m going to take a piss, kids, don’t get in too much trouble, be back in a jiffy,”

Alden stood up and left, disappearing into the darkness. He had taken his axes with him.

The two brothers were left in silence. They didn’t talk, the mood got heavy, to an almost unbearable degree, so it was Edwin, the one who broke first.

“So… brother,”

“Don’t call me that,”

“Okey, so, am, yeah,”

“If you have something to say, just say it,”

“Is there anything you like to do? Besides sword training?” Edwin realized that despite living with him all his life, he barely knew anything about his older brother, there was a wall set between them, he didn’t know who built it, but it had always been there, an unsurmountable height that eclipsed everything that there was to be found on the other side.

“Yes, but it’s none of your business. If it doesn’t have anything to do with what we came here for, you can keep it to yourself”

Why is it always like this? What did I do to him? I must have done something for him to hate me this much. But I can’t remember.

Ran couldn’t take it anymore, he wanted to know, even if he didn’t get an answer, he still wanted to ask.

“Why are you like this to me?!”

“What?” Lucius looked at him as if a fairy had gone by in front of him, totally shocked that his little brother raised his voice at him.

“You’re always mean to me and I’ve never done anything to you? Why? Did I help Lan with a prank you didn’t like? I’m sorry…”

“Shut up, you didn’t do anything,” he stopped for a second “… you were born… you’re a second wife son, your mother almost broke our family, I can’t even stand to look at you”

“But my mom is nice to you, and I never did anything bad to you,"

“doesn’t matter,”

Edwin wanted to say something, but Lucius rapidly stood up, sword in hand, already out of its sheet.

“Shut up, there’s something here,”

How does he know that? Are those trained senses or something? And don’t shut me up, you dummy.

But as soon as he thought that, he was able to feel it as well.

A deep sense of danger. His skin crawled with a sense of anticipation as if now, a thousand eyes were watching him from the shadows, seizing him up, waiting for a moment to strike.

There IS something here, or I’m going crazy. Maybe Luc is just playing a prank on me, but I can’t speak or move. I feel that something bad will happen if I do.

The sense of foreboding got stronger and stronger, to the point Edwin breathing came hard to him. It must have gotten to Luc as well since he was pointing his sword forward, moving in a circle searching for the presence.

Then, they heard that same sound of branches breaking, of leaves crushing beneath a greater weight. One sound they had heard so much before.

It showed itself before them, from behind the trees thirty meters away. As it got close, the light of the torches illuminated the strange shape, slowly moving towards them.

It walked on four freakishly long and thin legs, all of its features looked painfully elongated, it gave the impression of a malnourished animal, the body was completely covered in pitch-black short hair, where the head should be, there was instead a long thin but muscular neck ending on a white skull that seemed to be covering the real face of the beast, a pair of big antlers were protruding from the sides.

It slowly circled around them; they could see the monster had a long tail made of pure vertebrae connected by nerves that moved in a calm enchanting pattern.

It had stopped its advance, no longer getting close to them, seemingly content with drawing circles around them, observing all their actions, as if torturing them was the point.

Lucius held his sword straight towards the Lehwen but it was obvious at a glance he was not in control of his emotions.

Edwin could tell it by his face, it had gone stiff and his skin grew several shades paler than usual.

He wanted to think, but his mind was blank, a pure white. He could neither move nor scream.

“Do-Don… Don’t come any closer!”

He snapped back at hearing those words. At some point Lucius had recovered from the shock and moved in front of him, still holding the sword.

The Lehwen’s body convulsed and shook in strange patterns, he seemed to laugh at the bare face attempt at intimidation made by the elf.

But yet, it didn’t come closer. In fact, it stopped moving at all. It centered onto them, yellow eyes beaming in the dark.

The creature opened its maw. A disgustingly long red tongue fell to the ground, then it sprang back to life, twirling uncontrollably in unnatural directions.

It stopped.

The Lehwen let out an ear-piercing shriek that shook Edwin back to action yet again. Before he knew it, he was chanting.

“Stranger from below, hallowed be thy name, grant me sweet strength and swift waters to let my enemies wash away [water ball]”

For the first time since he started to practice, the spell worked wonderfully.

A water sphere materialized in front of him. It swirled around as it formed. Once it became the size of a rock, it was shot to the beast, hitting it on the head.

Barely making a difference… the water splashed against the fur of the beast and, apart from making it angrier and wetter, it didn’t do anything else.

Ran fell on his knees exhausted, entirely drained of energy. It had taken all of him to cast that spell, now it took all he had plus tons of adrenaline to stay awake. His heart never worked so fast. If he could pay attention to it, he may hear it beating like a drum.

“Stupid! Look at what you did with your splashy magic!” Lucius berated him

Now, infuriated, the Lehwen leaped at them at great speed.

Just before he got too close to them a lump of iron came crashing at its feet, almost ripping them off entirely, the Lehwen jumped backward, barely avoiding the attack.

“Sorry for the wait, kids! seems I let you two get too scared…”

Alden appeared from behind them, walking slowly and menacingly, wielding one of his battle axes on his right hand. The closer he got to the children the more the Lehwen backed off. The monster seemed on edge, almost scared in the face of a superior beast, but nonetheless refused to leave its prey now that his presence had been compromised.

“Yeah, I’m indeed a bit too big for you, uh? Not to a Lehwen’s taste?” He said that while glaring at the monster, he redirected his viewpoint to Lucius and Ed who were now on his left “I’m sorry kid’s, he’s been unto us for a while now, but wouldn’t get close, it’s sort prefer children’s taste,”

Lucius's eyes flared with a realization. He glared at Alden and then at the monster. He only said one thing, if you would ask him to who he said those words, Lucius probably wouldn’t be able to answer.

“Kill him”

“As you wish kid, you don’t even need to tell me,” Alden replied with a grim smile.

The beast growled and stood up on two legs for a few seconds. It stood at what seemed more than 3 meters, the shape of the Lehwen almost fusing with the forest as just another fucked up looking tree.

After another menacing low pitch screech, the creature went back to its previous four-legged bestial posture and lunged at Alden.

He wasn’t caught by the attack, deftly evading to the left, positioning himself no more than a meter away from the monster’s side, and swung the ax he had been holding all this time.

In a flash, one of the legs went flying upwards in an arc motion. They all hear the sound of it hitting the branches as it fell back to the floor.

A painful scream flew from the Lehwen’s snout, it tried to jump into a safer position but lost balance mid-flight and stumbled back to the ground.

Clearly scared of the figure in front of him, the Lehwen shrieked, as if pleading, begging for his life.

Alden grabbed the astral chain of his left battle ax that was still stuck on the ground. The chain materialized and with a strong thug, the weapon returned to its master’s hold.

The adventurer marched onto the creature’s side and embedded both battle axes on its side. All movement ended; the shrieks of pain stopped.

Both blood and strange viscera flowed out from the wounds as Alden removed the axes.

“You used us as bait!” Lucius screamed at him, anger visible on his face.

“Yes, but it was the only way for him to stop hiding,”

“You knew we were being followed?”

“He started sometime after we got into the woods, I didn’t know where he was, and he wasn’t going to attack as long as I was there, and if he did attack us, I would be at a disadvantage since my attacks would be hindered by the trees, that’s why we tried to find a clear open space like this,”

“We could have been killed!”

“No!” he didn’t scream but his tone was stern, Lucius went silent almost instantly, it wasn’t often that his father would get like this “If I thought that you would get hurt or killed, I wouldn’t have brought you here”

“Why didn’t you tell us, dad...” The one who spoke was Edwin, his voice tired, barely louder than a whisper.

“I didn’t want you to get scared thinking there was a monster out to kill you and your brother. This Lehwen was starved, and pretty small. His movements were slow and predictable. It was nothing but a ravenous animal,"

“And if he was such a small-time thing, why did we even come here?”

“The Lehwen prefers to eat children, they are small pray, easy for them to catch and run, they often attack settlements close to the woods, there haven’t been sightings of them in a long while, but this one attacked the small town close to the village… I didn’t tell before, but the one who got killed was a baby,”

Lucius and Edwin fell silent.

“They wanted revenge, that’s why they asked us to go into the woods and kill it, I want you to understand that I couldn’t possibly just wait for it to appear in our village and kill it then,” He stopped talking, took a long breath “What’s the closest house to the woods?”

It’s ours, right on the edge of the forest. I play there all the time. Lan goes into the woods to pick up bugs. Mom likes to read in the backyard. I and Freesia fell asleep there. If that thing was close, we both could have gotten killed in our sleep.

Not waiting for an answer, he continued, since he knew both of them got the point “That’s why I decided to go on the offensive, hope you two can understand, this was training, you may have to decide in the future between attacking or backing off to try another approach and this isn’t just for combat, but for everything in life… and I already told you, as long as I’m here, nothing will hurt you”

Alden looked up at the starry sky.

“But I’m not going to be here for a while now, I will return but even then, one day I won’t be here anymore, you need to be stronger Lucius, I know you have the courage to stand up against fear, you proved it now, and Ran, you were able to act, even if for a second, but you’re still a kid, so keep practicing even if the path you were put on is not one that requires strength, men have to be strong,” he laughed.

Edwin passed out.