Entry 3
Encounter With A Skinwalker
Journal Of The Hexer: Bartholomew of Aldersport
Fifth of The First Seed, 16**
[An entry out of an old and forgotten journal, from a past age, recording the toils of past hunters.]
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In order to kill a monster without fear, you must first know it. From head to toe, you must study every stain and splotch, ogle every ridge and bump, and measure every fang and claw. You must turn it inside out, spill its innards, and carve out its eyes, if only to see what lies underneath it all. It is only then, when the beast has been shaven to the bone with all of its secrets scattered around it and made into pulp, its likeness humiliated and erased, when you finally know it. You know its age, what it eats - even what it thinks. But most importantly, you know that despite all of the power it dominated with in life, it ended up slaughtered, shamed - made to die in the mud like a common pig.
And you don't fear pigs.
But there are some beings out there whose hide you can't study. Whose guts you can't empty on the floor and pick at. Whose eyes you can't rip out and shove into jars. Beings who render the legs of even the toughest warrior into jelly. Beings who you can't be brave against, no matter how damned hard you steel yourself, because they eat courage, and feast on fear.
Skinwalkers number among those beings. And of course, it was just my luck that they were to be one of the first monsters I ever encountered.
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I had just joined the Manticore Initiative. Vicelin figured I should learn my way around the land, so he sent me and Alfred to scout the Oakshade ruins. You could already sense back then how there was something wrong in the air. How the nature that had taken over the dilapidated houses and its streets had done so cruelly - possessively.
We made it to the church without trouble, naturally only to find it waiting for us there in the form of a Quotpede. Crawler slipped in and out of the broken walls as I fought with spell and sword, and Alfred with those enchanted gauntlets of his. I think Avenel fashioned them for him - nifty things, but they render you a little too close and personal with your opponent, which typically does not suit the purposes of the Marked. Something that the beast proved when it swallowed Alfred by the arm.
He made it out in one piece, but it didn't take long for the venom to set in. Poor man began to puff and swell up like a prick in a brothel, skin turning purple and blistered, so getting an antidote became a priority. Alium, pine resin and mistletoe, harvested at midnight. To our luck, Oakshade was as ripe as any forest, and we were already late into the evening. Things would be fine.
Or so we thought, as we stumbled out of the building, and into the dark.
It took us a while before we realized we were being followed. I'm not sure we ever would have, were it not for that intuitive feeling you sometimes get when you're being watched. There was this cat. Mangy and sallow, it pawed after us, mouth agape, glaring us over with broad eyes, and needle-thin pupils, stopping whenever we stopped, walking whenever we walked. I brushed it off at first as a stray left behind after the abandonment of the village, but then the night began to turn.
Out of nowhere, the song of the crickets died, and the wind stopped its rustle of the trees. Only the mew of the cat pierced the silence.
I looked behind us. It was no longer a cat that sat there.
We ran.
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A Skinwalker's most precious weapon is fear. It is the inspiration from which they weave their illusions. The roots of the branches that twist around your mind and dig into your sense of reality. The longer it looks at you, the harder that invisible hand around your throat squeezes, demanding that you puke out every last bit of resolve left churning in your soul, before bloating your belly with black terror.
It got a good, long look at me and Alfred, as it chased us through the living nightmare.
I don't know how we made it to the house, but as soon as the door shut behind us, the frights died down. Its claws had caught me on the shoulder, and Alfred across the leg. He was in bad shape - all of the panting hadn't exactly helped the spread of the venom, and while the man was as tough as nails, if he didn't get the antidote soon, it would be it. We were missing the mistletoe. I had to go out there again.
And so I did, with every nerve in my body screaming out in protest.
I managed. Snuck out to the edge the ruins and plucked the mistletoe, before hefty snow swept in, and the mewing of a cat sounded out in the distance. I collapsed into the grass, summoned enough heat to keep me warm, and shut my eyes.
I could hear it walk through the snow, and then move on.
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In the morning, we shambled back to the keep, spent and disheveled, if not counting that clump of steel fixed above Alfred's mouth that he calls a moustache.
We have since killed the Skinwalker, and its master. But those are stories for other pages. Back then, we were unprepared, naive, and I was all but untested. Today I know better. Today I bear the brand. And I will never let them get in my head again.
Marked Men are the hunters. Not the hunted.