Glacia landed face-first in the snow after being thrown by the Wendigo.
She pushed herself up, brushing the frost off her pants, when she suddenly heard a low, relaxing, feminine voice call out to her.
“Glacia?
Is that you, my dear?”
Glacia snapped her head toward the sound.
Her eyes widened.
Standing in the clearing was a woman with long, flowing brown hair.
Tears instantly welled in Glacia’s eyes as she slowly walked toward her.
“Is it really you…?”
Glacia threw herself into the brown-haired woman’s arms, the tears freely flowing down her cheeks.
“I’ve been searching for you for decades.”
The brown-haired woman smiled gently, petting Glacia’s head.
“My dear, I’m fine.
I just got lost in the taiga.”
Glacia wiped the tears from her face and looked up.
But as she stared into the woman’s face, a sudden wave of confusion hit her.
“Why do your eyes look so weird?”
The woman’s eyes stared back with an uncanny, lifeless glaze.
It didn’t look human.
In fact, it looked like a predator waiting for the perfect moment to bite Glacia’s head off.
Glacia glared down at the woman’s neck.
“Where is the locket I gave you?
The one with our picture inside.
You always wear it…
Why are you acting so strange?”
Glacia glanced down further and her blood ran cold.
In the woman’s hand was a sharp bone knife, poised and ready to stab her in the chest.
Reacting instantly, Glacia dashed backward, breaking the embrace.
“What is wrong with you?!”
Before the woman could answer, her skin began to bubble and melt away, revealing the twisted face of Merrian, the skinwalker boy.
He smirked.
“Looks like the skinwalker tricked you.”
Glacia’s heartbreak instantly hardened into pure, blinding rage.
She aggressively rolled up her sleeves and clenched her fists so hard her knuckles popped.
“You dare to trick me using the face of my love?
It looks like only one of us is leaving these woods alive today.”
Glacia rushed forward like a hurricane, unleashing a brutal punch that landed squarely on the boy’s nose.
The skinwalker fell backward into the snow, blood spraying from his face.
Gripping his bone dagger tightly, he snarled, “Did you know my knife was carved from my own finger?
That means it changes shape on my command!”
The skinwalker boy lunged forward.
As he did, the bone blade rapidly extended, growing longer and curved as it rotated into a massive, jagged scythe.
He swung it in a lethal arc.
Glacia ducked just in time.
The razor-sharp edge of the scythe whizzed past, cutting a few strands of her hair.
Capitalizing on his overextended swing, Glacia drove her fist straight into the boy’s stomach.
Before he could recover, she grabbed him by the back of the head, yanked him down, and delivered a devastating knee strike right into his face.
The skinwalker boy stumbled backward, coughing up blood.
Seizing the moment, Glacia began to chant.
“Twelve axes.”
A line of spectral axes plummeted from the sky, embedding themselves in the snow between them, their metal rings aligning perfectly.
“One hundred and eight suitors.
One King of Ithaca!”
A massive wooden bow materialized in Glacia’s grip.
She pulled the string back, aligning the rings of the axes perfectly with the boy’s head.
She took a deep breath and let go.
The arrow roared through the air, breaking the sound barrier as it zipped through the rings.
At the very last microsecond, the skinwalker boy broke free from his panic and shattered his human form, transforming into a crow.
The arrow whistled through the final ring, missing him by an inch.
Glacia stared in shock as her summoned bow and axes faded into mist.
Suddenly, the crow turned mid-air and flew straight at her face.
It shifted back into human form, black feathers exploding everywhere.
The skinwalker boy raised his bone scythe, ready to cleave her in two.
But Glacia was faster.
She reached out, grabbed him by the throat, and slammed him violently against a massive pine tree.
“I’m done playing games with you,” Glacia growled, her voice trembling with hatred.
“You never should have used her face.”
She punched him squarely in the jaw.
Blood splattered across the snow.
As the boy weakly tried to raise his weapon to fight back, Glacia yanked the bone scythe from his grip.
With a fierce yell, she drove the weapon forward, impaling the skinwalker boy through the chest and pinning his body deep into the pine tree.
A heavy gasp of blood escaped the boy’s mouth as his eyes went blank.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the clearing, Fokusar’s battle raged on.
The blue semicircle glowed under his right eye as he delivered a heavy kick to the Wendigo’s fractured leg right after it had hurled Glacia away.
“I’m in a bit of a hurry,” Fokusar said, aiming his weapon.
“So you better hand over the stone.”
The Wendigo let out a guttural laugh, pointing a clawed finger at its own chest.
“The Blaze Stone?
I knew you insects were coming for it.
That’s why I swallowed it!”
Fokusar looked down at the beast’s stomach, then settled back into his fighting stance.
“Then it looks like one of us is dying today.”
Fokusar dashed forward, plunging the bayonet blade of his custom revolver deep into the Wendigo’s leg.
The monster roared and brought its massive fist crashing down.
Fokusar tried to dodge, but he was too slow—the blue ring beneath his eye faded, dragging him back into normal, real-time speed.
He was just an ordinary human again.
Trapped beneath the descending fist, Fokusar braced himself and shoved his hands upward, barely holding the creature’s massive weight back.
Thinking fast, he yanked his bladed revolver out of the beast’s leg and slid out from underneath the shadow of its fist, rolling around to the Wendigo’s back.
Thinking it had crushed its prey, the Wendigo began to laugh in victory—completely unaware that Fokusar was already scaling its spine.
Fokusar drove a hard punch right into the Wendigo’s remaining good eye.
The monster shrieked, thrashing wildly to shake him off.
Fokusar held on for dear life, wrapping his hands tightly around its jagged antlers.
Desperate, the Wendigo galloped forward, ramming its back forcefully into a thick tree trunk.
The impact knocked the wind out of Fokusar, sending him tumbling into the snow.
But as he hit the ground, he rolled over and raised his revolver, pointing it directly at the beast’s chest.
“You cannot kill me with normal means, human!” the Wendigo mocked.
Fokusar pulled back the hammer of his revolver with a cold click.
“I know the fairy tales.”
He locked his sights onto the center of the monster’s torso, where an eerie, bright orange-yellow heart was pulsing through its ribs.
“But that glowing heart looks like a pretty big weak spot.”
As the end neared, a sudden flood of stolen memories flashed through the mind of Werrian, the Wendigo.
He saw a memory of two twins and an old traveler.
The twins had spent their entire lives hunting for cryptids, eventually walking the dark, isolated trails of the Appalachian Mountains.
They had hiked through the dense, suffocating forests for days.
When the sun went down, they set up camp.
Late that night, a vicious argument broke out over their dwindling food supplies.
The twins exchanged a dark, silent look.
One of them pulled out a Swiss Army knife and plunged it deep into the traveler’s heart.
Once the man stopped breathing, they butchered him, greedily devouring the forbidden meat to survive.
But their horrific meal was interrupted by the sound of heavy footsteps outside the tent.
It was pouring rain.
They shone a flashlight out into the dark, only to see two piercing, glowing eyes.
A tall, emaciated monster with a deer skull and sweeping antlers lunged into the tent, slaughtering the cannibalistic twins.
In their dying moments, the curse took hold, transforming the twins into the very monsters that consumed them.
Werrian snapped back to the present.
Fokusar’s finger squeezed the trigger.
BANG!
The 9mm round tore through the center of the glowing heart.
The light shattered.
The Wendigo’s eyes slowly faded into a dull, empty void, and the massive beast collapsed lifelessly into the snow.
Fokusar let out a breath, turning his head to the side.
A few yards away, Glacia stood breathing heavily in front of the dead skinwalker pinned to the tree.
An hour later, Fokusar and Glacia walked back toward the train tracks.
Both of them were completely drenched in blood.
Glacia held the pulsing, warm Blaze Stone tightly in her hand, while Fokusar carried the massive, heavy deer skull of the Wendigo slung over his shoulder.
They stepped into the train car, where Shory was quietly sipping his coffee.
The moment Shory saw the gruesome deer skull on Fokusar’s shoulder, he choked, nearly puking his coffee back into the cup.
Without a word, Glacia tossed the glowing Blaze Stone through the air.
Shory caught it mid-flight, staring in awe as Glacia and Fokusar walked past him, heading straight back to their room to rest.
— WENDIGO SAGA: END —