Endure. Endure, Helva spoke to herself. The words echoed and ricocheted off the corners of her mind as she tightened the straps of her satchel on her horse’s saddle. Whenever her mantra slipped through her fingers, hushed whispers would overshadow all else. No matter how hard the others tried to mind their business, Helva was all her peers could discuss, as of late.
“Helva,” the toneless, familiar voice hit her ears yet she refused to turn, choosing to anchor her dagger to her belt instead. Footsteps approached her with purpose, and yet, despite having been taught to respect the Guild's hierarchy , Helva was far less concerned with whatever Koral had to say to her than she was with preparing for the mission ahead. “Just because you ignore me does not mean I will leave without having heard your voice,” the old man insisted, his tone as levelled as always.
“And now that you have, I wish to be left alone,” Helva curtly responded, trying not to lose her patience when the guard of her dagger got caught on her sleeve.
“Do not turn away from me, child. I have shown you far more leniency than I care for,” Koral chastised, his voice low so as not to attract even more attention from the others. Slowly, and with clear irritation, Helva turned to face the man she called her mentor. She had once hoped to become even half the person he was. As strong-willed as the tide. As calm as a lake. As powerful as thunder itself. As time went on, however, it became painfully clear that Helva’s role in the Guild would be vastly different. Never insignificant but… different in a way that almost disrespected the woman she wished she could become.
Everything had changed. Farmhands had found mangled bodies in the woods, and now people were afraid. When the blood had reached people’s doorsteps, the contract to find whatever monster had been destroying the very foundations of their communities was given to her. Not to her peers, or to the Guild Master themself - but to her.
She had been so close last winter. The trails of blood all led to the same place, almost as though everything had been deliberately left behind for her to find, but the second she was certain she’d finish her contract, the trail went cold. It was almost unthinkable, in a way. Part of her appreciated the push and pull of it all - hunting was what she was made for. The other half of her, however, felt her patience wearing thin. It was humiliating to walk the same halls as her comrades, knowing that whilst they progressed with their missions, she was stuck chasing after a beast that refused to make itself known.
There was something almost agonising about the whole ordeal. Her failure meant more people would die. She could not, would not, have that much blood on her hands. There were whispers among all the self-important aristocrats and their peers - they did not appreciate being the sole target of a monster’s wrath. For once, their blue blood had placed them at a disadvantage.
“We’ve buried too many people,” uttering those words felt like pulling teeth, “One was enough. We cannot keep…” Helva trailed off. She had grown weary of speaking about her contract as though she wouldn’t be able to bring an end to the killings. With her role as an Oathbound , there was no room to be violently at odds with one’s own mind. Oathbound must push forward. Endure.
“The others have noticed your absence from the dining halls and the training grounds. You isolate yourself. It is unlike you,” the man spoke calmly, making the effort to sound reassuring as his eyes bore into Helva’s own, “We move as one, child. You must keep well.” Helva bit the inside of her cheek, doing her damnedest to keep her composure as Koral observed her with a keen eye.
“Once the contract is closed and our people no longer fear the coming of winter, I shall nurse the dreams of going back to what once was,” Helva said with a sense of guilt, her hands balling up into fists at her sides. The statement earned her a look of disappointment, which was too much to bear. Swiftly turning her back on the old man, Helva led her horse by the reins toward the main gates. All eyes were on her but quickly diverted when Koral grasped her forearm, forcing her to turn and face him.
The pair were silent for a while. An eternal unfolding of their emotions seemed to wordlessly sing between them. Koral did not forbid her from walking away, but her pain was his own.
Releasing the woman’s arm, The Eyes squared his shoulders and held his head high. A beat. Helva mirrored his posture, ignoring how her bottom lip trembled as the man’s kind eyes watched her. Koral then extended his right arm toward his mentee, his movements slow and deliberate. Matching his pace, Helva grasped his arm, her fingers digging into his flesh when he did the same.
“May Sela ’s wind only ever move you forward. May Viharg ’s thunder keep you strong. The Guild shall await you. Today and tomorrow.” With his final words, Koral tipped his head forward, a movement Helva mirrored, and rested his forehead against his mentee’s.
Shutting her eyes briefly, Helva followed in her mentor’s footsteps, the unsayable looming above them as a constant reminder that there was no coming back from the road Helva was on. There was a crackling tension dancing in the air they breathed– hazardous bliss before the hunt, perhaps. Koral knew her better than anyone but the path she walked was one of many twists and turns and, in a way, ever-changing. Something told him she would change, too.
They took a deep breath in unison and only after did the woman withdraw, finding it increasingly hard to lock eyes with her comrades as she got on her mare and urged her to spur forward.
She held the reins tighter than was necessary, but never looked back.
This was her mission. This was her purpose. Levent had decided.
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It was not easy. The task people had entrusted her with was not easy. The killings were brutal and yet the beast did not strike without purpose. It tested her. Toyed with her. Almost dared her. It was in control.
Gripping the reins a bit tighter, Helva took a deep, calming breath as she made her way through the village, just outside the town’s main gate. As she passed, some folk bowed their heads in greeting - familiar with the woman’s role and, perhaps, sympathetic toward her struggle. It made her feel deeply inadequate, truth be told, though her shame quickly shapeshifted into barely disguised anger. She could not keep failing at her task.
“Helva! You’re back!” the child cheerfully approached her, “It is time, then? The beast is hunting again?” he asked, his tone a bit too casual.
“Keep your voice down. You’ll disturb your mother,” Helva half-heartedly chastised, nodding towards the child’s guardian, a street vendor whose days were far busier than Helva’s. Perhaps even bloodier, as she was not the type of person you’d wish to cross. Up to that point, the woman had been hurriedly arranging the vegetables at her stall, clearly arguing with herself in her head. Standing off to the side with their arms crossed and lips pursed was the woman’s eldest, who, when made aware of Helva’s presence, curtly brought it to the guardian’s attention with an unreadable look on their face.
“Mother said you’d go to the festival later, is that true?” the child queried, stepping to the side so Helva could hitch her horse at the nearby tavern. The village was busy and bursting at the seams with workers moving up and down the streets to prepare for the evening markets. There were shouts ricochetting off the walls, horses struggling to pull heavy carriages and exasperated tavern goers screaming surprisingly coherent strings of profanities whenever someone inevitably bumped into them.
“If I do,” Helva began, kneeling so she’d be at eye-level with the child, “I promise I’ll come say hello. But you best behave, yes? Your mother is hard at work for you to have your fun later. Be good,” she said, her voice softer than usual. As if on cue, the child’s guardian called out to him then, greeting Helva simultaneously but too busy to give too much of a damn.
Before parting, the child surged forward, wrapping his little arms around Helva’s neck to hug her as goodbye. Helva absentmindedly returned the gesture with a small smile tugging at her lips.
On the days when Helva found herself lacking the patience needed to hold a conversation, small moments such as these returned to her the humanity she could feel herself losing on the hunt. They were almost as important as the mission she set out to accomplish.
“You the Guild Member? Bulwark ?” asked the innkeeper, pulling Helva from her thoughts as they crossed their arms over their midriff with a disinterested look on their face.They looked tired, their attire stained with ale and their apron hanging almost loosely around their hips.
“Yes,” Helva quickly replied, regaining her composure as she made to equip her daggers on her belt, “How much for a room?”
“Tonight’s on me, just make sure you kill the poor bastard,” the innkeep told her in a matter of fact way, their eyebrows pulling together whenever the shouting became particularly unpleasant for them, “All these killin’s… bad for business. We’re getting less of them nobles down at the markets. It’ll be worse next Winter,” they said, rather irritably. Almost as though the concept of losing good coin vexed them more than blood upon the snow. Helva’s nose wrinkled.
“You’d think they’d stop coming after the second body showed up. What a mess that was, eh?” a passerby interjected, studying Helva in hopes that she would say something. They all knew who she was, and not just because she had a memorable face. Every Bulwark member had the Guild’s emblem on their cloaks– a reminder of who they were and what they were meant to stand for. It weighed heavily on her shoulders, as of late. Pity. Unlike some of her comrades, Helva had been the one to sew it on her clothes herself. She had been very proud that day. She still was. Either way, people knew her well and Helva… Helva remembered the second body, her second failure, as though it had happened yesterday.
An uncomfortable silence fell between them as Helva’s eyes grew distant and the innkeep cleared their throat.
“ Hava ’s Festival is tonight. They’ll be rowdy. The nobles, I mean,” said the innkeep - their voice had an edge to it. Helva knew exactly what they meant.
When the killings began, Helva thought the contract had been given to her as punishment. Nobles found dead in the woods with no beast to be found - it was a case any of her comrades could solve, but Helva was green. Experienced enough to sense a threat, but green enough to be given a pity contract. Or so she thought.
The first body she found was that of a woman. A noble, like the rest. There had been no signs of a struggle. No chase. Nothing. And, yet, there was a body. Gaping wounds; twisted limbs; clumps of hair in the victim’s hands. Human hair. Her own. No death could be mistaken for the last. The methods were different. The desperation with which the beast attacked never remained the same. Sometimes it simply lacked the patience to play with its food.
The most morbidly engrossing part of it all was that the whole thing was rather… human. And when Helva would see herself in either predator or prey, her evening prayers would last a little longer.
The second body was different. An inebriated nobleman. Unceremoniously tossed in a ditch with his legs broken and his tongue ripped out. That time, the beast had left him alive for the wolves to eat. Easy pickings. All Helva could remember were his gurgled screams as he unintelligibly cried out for help and how silent the woods got when the wolves sank their teeth in his throat.
Every victim had been callous, distracted enough to be easily picked off or lured in to fall to their own demise. Part of Helva’s mission was to watch them as if they were her own offspring. They had been warned of the dangers of wandering off into the woods, of course, but it was in their nature to underestimate any and everything. There was an innate disregard for their own safety whenever they joined the commoners during the Winter Solstice festivities. Politicking all year-round does that to a person. Still, that meant Helva would have her work cut out for her. As per usual.
“We value your work, Bulwark,” the passerby made it a point to remind her, noticing her squared, broad shoulders and cold stare. Helva’s lips twitched, not quite turning into a smile even if her face softened almost imperceptibly.
“I know,” Helva curtly responded and made to walk off, tossing her hood up over her head and removing herself from the conversation, leaving behind townsfolk who had been clearly on edge.
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Hava’s Festival was not exclusive to the markets on the periphery of town. The nobility had its own meaningless rituals, ostentatiously hiding away from the rest of society whilst drinking themselves into a stupor. Plotting, politics and socialising under false pretenses were more common than not, even if the rift between the son of a noble and a farmer’s offspring wasn’t as wide to the Valandi as it was elsewhere. Still, a noble’s gilded cage provided some safety. Enough for some not to mingle with the commonfolk at all. This idea, however, was not as widespread as one would think. The party, the real party, was not in their castles or mansions. It was down there with the people whose struggles they couldn't quite understand.
Their coin was good enough to satisfy the majority of the populace, especially when it came to Valandi celebrations. See, the nobles were severely lacking in self-awareness for the most part, especially those of the older houses. They were unjustifiably greedy and made a mess whenever they joined the festivals but their pockets were deep enough to put food on many a table, even if the commoners' work increased tenfold. It was not something most could afford to refuse. With the arrival of the beast, however, their escapades came with an added layer of danger. Interestingly enough, this attracted a different kind of noble to the markets. The kind that was simply not afraid to die.
They were a liability, so much so that Helva’s experience, or lack thereof, had come into question after she had returned to the Guild empty-handed for a second time. Most of it was new territory, not just to her, but to the ones several steps above her. It was not every day one would meet a beast that could easily reinvent itself and how it hunted. This led Koral, of all people, to propose a joint contract, giving Helva a partner on the path she was on. Unfortunately for him, he was made aware of her opinion on the matter quite quickly.
“This is my hunt. My contract,” she had all but choked out, “I will see it through,” and there wasn’t much room for argument in the way she had spat out the words, even if the remaining Guild members standing in Main Hall exchanged uncertain glances for reasons unknown to Helva.
Her failure… part of Helva was glad the monster had no interest in killing those less fortunate. They had suffered enough.
This was the first night of the beast’s usual hunt. It had renewed its energy and learned new ways to sate its thirst. Helva would sacrifice her own life if it meant killing her Chaos Bringer. There was only one end to this tale, and she would make it a point to see it through.
Kneeling near the fire in her camp, Helva removed both her daggers from her belt and deliberately placed them on the ground, one on each side of her body. She took off her gloves and shoulder armour, wearing only her cloak, her cuirass and leather greaves. Her hands trembled. She found the added layers of armour and fabric a bit too tight everywhere. It was ill-advised to take some of it off, but reason was lost to her whenever she felt like she could not breathe. Even so, she stretched her calloused palms before resting them atop her lap and did her best to ignore how her heart nearly beat its way out of her chest– how her top lip was littered with sweat. There was something in the air that night. Despite being positively on edge, she shut her eyes and listened, focusing on her training.
Having placed some distance between herself and the markets, it was easier to drown out the chatter, shouts and music when in the woods. It wasn’t simple, per se. Her training had taught her to cut off all distractions to heighten her senses. If one listens to the land, the land will listen back. Soon, all the noise was merely a quiet buzz.
Helva focused on the birds, on the swaying and shifting of branches, the cracking of wood, the biting cold hitting her cheeks. Turning her palms skyward, Helva began to pray. This was her path and no one else’s, for she was the one meant to succeed. Each sign of danger was proof she had been on the right track. Levent had decided.
“... revered Keeper of Storms, I call upon you–” snap!
As quick as lightning, Helva rose to her feet with her daggers in hand, gripping them with such force her knuckles turned white. She had heard the twig break only a few meters away from her camp and it had been as clear as day. The hairs on her neck stood on end as she braced for whatever had been stalking her.
It was then that she noticed the woods had grown disturbingly silent - a contrast between the lively celebrations in the village. There was no chirping, no flapping of wings or scurrying of foxes. Acutely aware of this deafening quietness, it was hard to dismiss the thought that the beast was circling for a kill.
Helva twirled her daggers, attuning herself with her surroundings as she kicked some dirt mixed with snow into the fire, hoping the lack of light would play in her favour. Wishful thinking, really. She had been outplayed by the beast at every turn. If push came to shove, however, she’d be more than ready for a fight.
There was shuffling to her right. Too much movement for a small creature. Helva turned her head in the general direction of the noise only to hear something off to the far left of her. There were no distinct, crunching sounds of snow being stepped on, but the branches of the surrounding trees shuffled as though something had been watching her from above. Either she was being toyed with or her senses were playing tricks on her.
As if on cue, and as the festivities reached their climax, Helva watched, in utter silence, as pyrotechnics lit up the sky, brighter than lightning itself and just as loud. It was dauntingly beautiful is what Helva would have thought were she anyone else. It seemed to tear open the sky just the same, but without as much ceremony as Viharg’s barely contained anger.
An unpleasant memory tried to grip her heart then and a grimace twisted her face. Instinctively, she meekly cast her gaze downwards, wondering if she had done something wrong. Stupid thought. This was not what she had been taught. Get yourself together. Another bang. Time seemed to come to a screeching halt as Helva covered her eyes, shielding them from the blinding light. All her confidence shriveled and died in her chest.
The sky could be terribly volatile at times. In another life, Helva had attempted to make sense of it all. Questioning herself why one’s hopes and dreams could end in one fell swoop. When no answer reached her ears, she turned her gaze skyward instead.
Thunder. If there was one thing which could not be contained, it would be thunder. Helva knew this well. She had the scars to prove it.
Flinching when sparks filled up the evening sky once more, followed by another loud boom, Helva tried her damnedest not to falter. Endure.
The shadows danced as the light shifted all around her, dimming once the sparks died out. In the corner of her eye, Helva could’ve sworn she caught a dark figure heading deeper into the woods. She stared at the spot where she believed she had seen it last, attempting to reconstruct the vision from memory, but flickering shadows in the opposite direction stood directly in front of the edge of the tree line instead. She felt her hands tremble, almost overwhelmingly so.
Once another crash drowned all her senses and the sky filled with light, Helva’s ears started to ring.
Heart nearly bursting out of her chest, Helva felt beads of sweat coating her forehead and upper lip as she squinted her eyes, muscles spasming when the shadows surrounding her came together to form strange shapes. Some big, some small. But all staring directly at her.
Raising her daggers at shoulder level, she readied herself and shouted, “Fucking get it over with then!”. Her voice sounded brittle. She was in no position to defend herself or others. She was on edge, exposed and vulnerable. At the thought of losing control, her mind began to slip even further.
At first, it was but a light tingling. A faint, prickling sensation running up and down her arms as her feet buried deeper into the snow, firmly planted on the earth. Then, it turned into something more.
“Viharg–” Helva choked out, fighting back the urge to claw at her throat.
It was so loud. There were so many dead.
O, revered Guardian of Tempests…!
With eyes still shut, Helva invoked the strength needed to anchor her mind, body and soul. The pins and needles biting into her fingers and hands a constant reminder of her own lack of control over her surroundings. Suddenly, even the music in the nearby village was much too loud. The bagpipes and the shouts that accompanied the melody drowned all of Helva’s senses. So much so that she did not hear the screaming.
The… screaming.
All but shaking herself awake, Helva looked all around her in hopes that she had mistaken shouts of bliss for cries for help. Throwing her cloak off her shoulders for more mobility, she pushed past the discomfort coursing through her veins and the blood thrumming in her ears, chastising herself for falling prey to past happenings. Her hands were sweating, her daggers almost slipping from her grasp, but before she could lead her ship onto the rocks, she began to run.
Her training taught her a great deal. Never falter. If there is a way to maintain the land’s balance, one must see the mission through. No matter what it may cost. One must never let the past haunt one’s body. There is nothing worse than failure.
Helva ran. When she heard another high-pitched scream she ran even faster, her cuirass biting into her underarms most uncomfortably as she sprinted her way through the woods. The blood drumming in her ears indicative of the fact that, were she to find her beast, she’d at least put up a good fight. She pushed herself further without much and sprinted faster, gritting her teeth in anticipation.
Suddenly, the screaming came to a haunting halt. Knowing what that meant, Helva paused, her chest heaving, the morbid absence of any signs of life taking root in the back of her throat, making it hard for her to breathe. At that moment, she began to believe the beast had been keeping her alive out of sheer cruelty. Luring her into horrible, wretched places so she’d grow accustomed to running after what she would never grasp. Most damning of all, however, is that Helva would never forsake it.
Then, in the distance, as faint as ever, Helva heard a commotion. A door slamming, perhaps? She followed the sound to its source, almost as quickly as it had faded into the night. Making it a point to take cover behind the trees whenever possible, Helva recalled her training and regulated her breathing. Her hair stuck to her forehead and her legs burned with exertion. Still, she persisted.
From the shadows, Helva finally understood what had caused all that noise. Fully open stable gates – well, fully broken into, rather. Helva’s eyes scanned her surroundings before landing on the ground; there was only one set of footprints in the snow, too small to belong to one of the farmhands, as their boots were generally large. No, these were different. More… refined. Helva gathered the victim had come from Hava’s Festival and had gotten turned around, perhaps. To Helva’s surprise, however, near the stable gate there was a forgotten wine bottle and two cups thrown haphazardly on the floor. A noble and their paramour? It would explain heading into the woods all by themself, making them an easy target. There was a dry path leading up to the stables - a road the farmhands tended to, no doubt. Helva would not put it past the beast to have exploited this to conceal its pathing.
Moving carefully so as not to alert whatever was still in the stables, Helva held one dagger with a forward grip and the other with a reverse grip, preparing herself for any possible outcome.
It was only when she approached the broken gate that her posture slackened slightly. Horses. Frightened ones, at that. Three horses, roaring and pawing at the ground, frustrated at the fact that they could not flee from their stalls. Then, despite her training, Helva turned her gaze away from where she knew the body was.
She was beyond the point where there was no return. Every body found had her digging her own grave even deeper. What would Koral and the others say? It was hard to keep one’s head on one’s shoulders when there was barely any light.
The beast had taken another victim and made it a point to kill her all whilst sparing perfectly healthy horses with nowhere to run to. The beast had prioritised the thrill of the hunt. It had prioritised smaller prey.
It was no longer about hunger. This had happened for far more nefarious reasons.
Helva locked eyes with the mare. The white in her eyes indicative of the fact that if Helva got any closer to her, she’d end up with an embarrassing bruise she would not care to explain to her peers. All three horses were untouched. Everything Helva thought she knew about the beast had been rendered useless. All in a matter of seconds.
Turning her head to face the victim felt like pulling teeth and with good reason. There, in the relatively snow-free paddock, with her back pressed against a leafless tree and illuminated by moonlight, was a woman, with her hunter nowhere to be found.
Sheathing her daggers, Helva moved toward the body with clear uncertainty. The closer she got, the more details she could make out. It was no pretty sight. Less brutal than the others, perhaps, which was odd, but nothing she hadn’t seen before.
Stopping at the victim’s feet, Helva couldn’t help but be stuck in a trance as she stared into the woman’s not yet glassy eyes. Her pupils were dilated. Her mouth agape, stuck in a scream she never got to let out. Her clothes, sewn by commonfolk in hopes they would serve as a disguise, a small effort that did not hide her uncalloused hands and skin unkissed by the sun. There was a gaping wound on her neck, the blood coating the fur of her cloak. Her tunic was ripped open near the neckline, but Helva’s eyes caught no other bruises or wounds other than the one on the side of her neck.
The blood was fresh and still gushing out of the woman’s neck, yet the most disturbing part of it all was the way the body was almost theatrically positioned - Helva hesitated to think of it as an arranged scene. sitting with her back pressed up against the tree, the noblewoman’s hands were clasped on her lap and her eyes were turned heavenward. There was a supplicating look on her face, almost as though she had been slain halfway through her prayer.
A shiver ran up Helva’s spine then. There were no gods present in that paddock, only a monster and a body to show for it, and, now, she had to return to the village with another dead body thrown over her shoulder.
Kneeling to the woman’s right, Helva moved the noble’s cloak to the side, revealing an intricately designed coin pouch. She fought back the urge to roll her eyes, then. It was full, almost obnoxiously so, and clearly indicative of the fact that she was, like the rest, not a commoner.
Almost everything about this killing seemed human, yet Helva found no other footprints but the noble’s own, right outside of the stables. The wound itself seemed to mirror some of the others she had found, though it was hard to look for any significant teeth marks - almost as though the flesh had been torn straight off her neck.
As the woman’s blood soaked her clothes and the earth itself, it took all of Helva’s strength to halfheartedly close the noble’s eyes. She did not wish to look at the body for a second longer. There was no point in staring. The coroner would draw her own conclusions and, hopefully, dispel the doubt clouding Helva’s mind.
Viharg, revered Keeper of Storms, guide my sail over the Eastern breeze. Shield me from gales unruly–