They aren't shooting to kill, after the first bolt. Maybe it had been a fluke. Shooting to wound, to give themselves something to track. Tawny skin and dark hair slither beneath the tangled limbs of a half-fallen tree, writhing to claw the bow from his back awkwardly. Arrows lie scattered in the snow beyond, but not all of them. The bow's already strung, and seems undamaged by the rough landing despite a splintered gash where the bolt still piercing his neck and shoulder had struck the limb on the other side.

The mage gathers bloody snow, collecting materials. He certainly seems surprised when a broad-bladed arrow carves, horizontal, through throat. Spells to bring out the beast in a creature, to flush the animal and set it fleeing, don't work nearly as well on something that isn't animal at all. Shuttered eyes shift, dispassionately empty and efficient, to the next figure as he nocks another arrow on the short bow, drawing and loosing in a single motion. Can't hold the shot with a damaged neck and shoulder, even if he needed to. They were still in the light, he in darkness.

Two down, one fled. Spells don't cast well with a severed trachea, and it's hard to run with an shaft through your lungs and heart. For the moment, injuries are dismissed from immediate awareness. Blood slides hot and liquid down skin, chilling rapidly, as he listens to the third member of the party blunder off into the woods. He'd been expecting them, waited to see what they wanted, and he'd still let curiosity get him wounded.

A few minutes later, one of the bodies lies on the other side of the fence, roughly dressed out and packed with snow. With the bolt removed from his flesh and passing wounds sealed, if not healed, he tests himself with a stretch. The half-breed mage is covered with snow, to freeze and keep until he can be disposed of. Limping, he retreats into the darkness beneath tangled branches. Tonight, transport would require something other than his own back. Let the last go for now. He still had to take care of at least one carcass before he could crawl into hot water, soak his skin clean, and get some sleep. All over something as petty as a wizard's convenience or a sport hunter's unusual ornament. The next group might give him a better idea of why he's being hunted - or maybe tonight was the end of the matter.

Peculiar prints circle snow bloodied and torn, narrow bone and stark claw lost in the greater muddle. A hiss spills through the darkness as the creature crouches among scattered droplets already frozen. Dead flesh under ice doesn't interest it, but the hot fear of the one still alive in the night, that does. Tireless, the pantherghast pads into the forest, along the city's edge. Another would take down prey that night, as well, with better skill than sport hunters.

Time unweaves itself across a tapestry of snow, spruce, frozen earth and moonlit night. Blood blackens once-pristine white. Tracks churn once-smooth clearings. Somewhere, the wailing whine of a canine lingers, gradually fading into final silence. Flesh and bone lie shredded beneath the witness of sleeping boughs. A disk glides, serene, above the tattered mess, trailing behind a figure that trots loose-jointed, not with relaxation but with exhaustion, toward a damaged section of fencing.

One by one, dogs and what few of their masters he'd taken down are collected, gallows fruit for the trees beyond the break. The survivors had already fled that route. Silk clings, as much frozen to flesh as congealed, a rag-tag motley sealing a variety of fresh bites. A limp lingers from an unexpected slash of curved claws across the back of his leg. She'd been trying to hamstring him, and nearly had.

Another set of new strands melded in place with the edges of the gap. The ward is returned to its function there, as seamlessly as ever. Mishka holds no hope that the strands will be able to bond securely before they are broken again. Another set of traps, though one had nearly gotten him this time. Too tired to be searching for tricks. They'd placed snares further inside the perimeter than before. Retreating deep into one of the grottoes the property holds secret, he doesn't rest. By the light of fire and lamp, Mishka proceeds with the inspection of shaft and bow that is starting to become a daily routine, discarding those that had been recovered damaged, and restocking from Sisali's supplies.

Outside, the first silver light of false dawn fades, gradually giving way to the pink and amber of true dawn. Another day. Tea steeps its way to coolness nearby, bitter and pungent, but a smaller container waits to wash the taste away. The tea should actually make the healing aid taste decent. Later he'd sleep, if he didn't have company before then. And at some point, he'd have to find time to contemplate the night's discovery; the presence of ivory and gold, summer moonlight in midwinter. Mikhirian would have to be informed of Mikhirias'....demise.

Light fades. Starlight, moonlight, city light fading into the quiet of the predawn hush. Twin beacons of honey-gold catch the last glimmers, reflecting them back at Rhy'din. Stone and torn earth greet the whisper of bare feet as he turns away, slow steps taking him downward into an ever-raw gash. Darkness, breathless black, heavy and sweltering in the heat of summer night. One step, two, three, and the air opens again upon a different place. Exit calm, enter hell. In the eyes of those who watch, if not in the rules of mankind.

Gold and green, brown and blue and black, feral and fearful. Eyes, tracking a meal on two legs. Eyes, watching, waiting. Jaws pant, claws grate against stone and metal. There a kirre, spiked tail dragging broken behind it. There the grizzled bulk of a basilisk, blinded. Mad eyes, hungry eyes. A were, caught eternally halfway between beast and man, snarls over the leg of its latest opponent and slinks back protectively. Blood and fear, death and pain and vicious glee.

Bare feet pause before a door, nails clicking on the bars. Golden, those eyes, staring back with patient indifference. Not beast-gold, but summer-gold, a liquid sheen of condensed fury. The wolf stands, pacing slowly to the end of clinking iron, unblinking. Quiet words whisper into the night, and furred ears prick to receive them. A bargain struck, a price to pay. Nimble, humanoid fingers work the catch of a gate. Only one. Claws prick and pry at a collar fingers perilously close to jaws that have never not known hunger. A canine tongue snakes out, scraping deliberately along a tawny arm. I taste you, I see you. I know you.

The cage of a fine chain linger deep within rough fur as the collar clicks shut, sealing around tawny and auburn. An exchange. You for me. The Phaelan's mane tries to bristle, caught beneath iron as heat sears through a fastened lock, fusing it. Crouched in gloom, honey eyes follow the slinking motion of essential Wolf. One stays, one walks loose for the first time in years. One a hunter, one Hunter.

Gold and green, brown and blue and black, fearful and wary. Eyes, turning aside from the creature that stalks the sunken aisles between cages. That circles pits soaked in the blood of the dead, in the blood of the living that feeds upon them. That weaves a path of golden hunger around a peaceful house amidst a sea of restless discord. Whine and howl, hiss and snarl, fur and feather and scale stir in eddies around the Hunter's wake.

A black muzzle slips past the edge of a doorway, massive paws sinking into the soft soil of a death-fed garden. Ivory flashes, scream cut short into a gurgle that lasts no longer. Seams blaze, fur crisping from within as the hide peels back from steam and crumbling ash. A wolf skin crumbles, rotting with unnatural speed as tufts of black tug free and tumble across a tidy lawn. Step for step, tracks in freshly turned soil reverse their course, and death walks through an open door. Blood washes polished wood.

Honey waits, tawny gold dark-mottled with auburn aureoles. Caged and bound, he waits the payment he'd purchased with another's freedom. He doesn't feel the first. Nor the second, a fragile form whose flesh mixes with the tattered shreds of a teddy bear whose fur once graced that of a real bear. But the night hears a Phaelan scream when the scent of torn bowel brings the child's mother.

Gossamer veil, a Phaelan soul bound to that of a beast-linked witch. A Hunter's jaws shred both, but not quickly. Slash and rip, blood washing papered walls. Snap and crackle of bones crushed by canine jaws. The third to die is felt only in the agony of the woman, the second child's death prolonged in the Hunter's memory of past offenses. Iron rips at tawny fur, crushing the tissues beneath as the madness of need drowns any vestige of reason.

The sun creeps, a slinking, sullen thing of wounded red. Wet jaws rip through the fourth throat finally, leaving another body to steep in the sea of blood lapping across floors of hardwood. Another body writhes in that death, imperfect link dragging at the wreck of a body bound by metal and earth. Dawn claws at torn earth, strangles on the gleam of light against the hiss and slither of metal.

Summer sears through the ruin of broken honey. A price as yet incompletely paid, soon to be done. Yours for mine. Bare feet track a path of dark mud, freshly turned soil churned to soup by blood, passing between stone gates. From one realm into another, leaving behind inferno. The scream of dying beasts, the wail of creatures never quite man finding freedom as the earth burns. Scarred bodies creep from flame into shadow, slinking into the hollows of a city of predators. Oily smoke bleeds across the rising sun, washing it scarlet in the ash of flesh, the steam of living tissue.

Dawn dies, and the day begins.