(∆∆∆)
walking into the wilderness

She hides a yawn behind the palm of her right hand as she and her brothers wander through the woods. As they were taught to, they are barely hearable, softly stepping on the humid moss. Their three silhouettes evolve slowly, discretely, almost gracefully. All of them in black, you needed great senses to actually notice them and the weapons they were carrying – even greater than the wolves’ senses. More worried than he ever was about his sister, Audric cannot help but turn around and check on how she was going. She rolls her eyes, exaggerating her exasperation. “I’m fine.” It’s been a month since she started stating this nonstop, after she came back from the last night of a full moon, with almost no blood left, scarcely enough to stay alive. So he raises his brows, because her I’m fine sounds too robotic, automatic to be truthful. And Azilis rolls her eyes again – this time because her brother’s worries really, honestly, deeply pisses her off. “She says she’s fine, Audric.” She glances at the oldest of her brothers, whose she could only see the back. He would always go first; he would never look elsewhere than straight in front of him. She silently thanks him, because thanking him aloud would hit her pride so much that she would probably collapse. They don’t actually need the torch lamps that they took with them, the light of the white aster showing them the lane to follow. Where were they going? They didn’t really know. They were led by their feet and their poor, insignificant human instincts. “Let’s put one here”, Artor says, and the two others nod in agreement. It was the very first time they were hunting all together. They probably would have done it more often if their father didn’t die at Azilis’ first hunt. But it was ok. Though she loved one of her brother and tolerated the other one, being at home and being in the woods were two different things. Ariana used to say that her cousin was actually two different women hiding in one single body; that the gentle, smiling, slightly funny Azi that everyone knew was killed every full moon so that the cold, heartless, cruel huntress could wake up and do her job. And to her hears, it sounded a lot like being a creature of the night herself. A shapeshifter – a soulshifter. Artor makes his bag fall on the ground, opens it, and the sound of the unzipping echoes in the darkness. He takes a huge, thick net out of it, and both of Alaric Harkwood’s sons start to climb in the tree they stopped by and knot the net around its branches. Soon the trap was ready, and the oldest brother looked very satisfied about it. “We should do that more often.” They both knitted their brows, not very sure about what he was on about. And as usual, neither Audric nor Azilis had to speak a word for Artor to understand them. “Hang out, the three of us.” She deadens a sarcastic laughter. “How cool, hanging out in the forest at ten in the evening. Like, exactly the kind of quality time we need.” Audric smiles, doing his best not to laugh, and Artor sighs at his sister’s scorn. And off they go again, in the same order than before. They go on walking for a few minutes before a feminine scream pierces the night. The three of them turn their heads in perfect synchronisation, and in their three heads, the same deductions: it was obviously not a wolf – even a female would have roared a little after being trapped in a net. It was either a sorceress or a human, but in both cases, someone had to go and check it out. “I’ll get it.” She said that on the same tone she would use if the phone had just rang, or if someone had just knocked at their door. Her brothers nod, tell her to be careful, and she rolls her eyes again. She was done with people caring about her, after all; though she knew she couldn’t take care of herself. Not anymore, by the look of it. She turns away, heading back to the net the Harkwoods left behind them. All alone in the woods again. Her heart couldn’t help but beating faster at the very moment she realized it. She made it to the trap, and saw this silhouette trying to get out of it. She just needed to take a couple more steps ahead to see her face and recognize it. “Clarissa.” A smile touched her lips, and she crossed her arms, looking straight into her eyes where the moonlight reflected. “Need a hand? Or do the Killingworths teach you how to be real hunters?”.

(∆∆∆)
walking into the wilderness

She had no idea where this bitter, sarcastic tone was coming from. She was just in this kind of mood which made her careless of anything. Whatever if her brothers were worried sick about her and that she made absolutely no effort to reassure them. Whatever if she was wandering alone in the woods, which she never did before, on the night of a full moon on the top of that. Whatever if she just hit Clarissa’s pride, in the way she talked about her family. The thing is, though she only met two of them so far, she hated them – she loathed them. There was really no reason to – probably because the first preview of the House of Killingworth was the bloodthirsty creature her best friend turned out to be. So yes, she was careful. Yes, she was, mistrustful. But was she that wrong? She didn’t know shit about the brunette tangled in the trap Audric and Artor had set up. She just knew her name, a name that she could not help but despise. “Jesus Christ. What the fuck.”  That first sample of her voice made her giggle. Not in a silly way – this kind of a giggle which you can’t hold back, that doesn’t mean you’re amused but confused. “What the fuck me? What the fuck you! How on earth did you get in there?”  She was young, she knew that. She was sad, she knew that too. She just had to talk to her a little at that party to know that she got as many demons as Azilis, hiding behind her sweet face. However she was a huntress and a huntress didn’t get trapped in a goddamn net. “Oh Azilis, what a nice surprise!” She did notice the sarcasm in the voice of the girl, and she just answered by rolling her eyes, her arms still crossed under her chest. She had stopped moving by now, just casually hanging three feet above the ground, as if she couldn’t have been in a more normal situation. “Nooo, don’t worry, I’m peachy. I just like hanging upside down. Y’know. It’s my favorite thing to do in forests, especially when it’s cold.” The redhead cannot prevent a smile from appearing on the tip of her lips – a genuine smile. She had this little something which made the Harkwood unable to actually be as scornful as she wanted to. “Yeah well. You’re still ruining my goddamn trap.” And Azilis is so pissed off at everything that she doesn’t wait until Clarissa manages to get out of the mess she got herself into. She just wants to hunt like she always had, without having to swear to her brothers that she’s fine and deal with the other huntress. She was a killer, not a childminder – at night, at least. And so she goes, crossing the few steps between her and the other. She wants to say something, she want to annoy her. Voracious, unconscious need to make her pay for everything Thaddeus did to her. She had nothing to do with all this, the poor little thing. But she couldn’t explain why she automatically bounded the siblings, putting them in the same box – without even trying to get to know the young woman in front of her. Yet, it wasn’t who she was. Azilis may become this coldblooded person when the moonlight embraces the whole town and forest, but there was no way for her to get rid of the mother spirit that clearly defined her, to the eyes of her family and friends. She cared about people; most of the time, way too much, and she didn’t have to know someone for years to want the best for them. That’s why seeing Clarissa in such a situation, though she knew scarcely more than her name and occupation, made here willing to help her. She just couldn’t walk away, like ok then good luck, because it wasn’t ok. “Try to get, like, upside up. You don’t wanna land on your head, do you?” And she starts climbing. Artor always wanted things to be super-duper-well-made, and that implied hanging nets extremely high in the trees, so that you couldn’t really unset it. He did choose a very special spot, almost impossible to find if you didn’t know him well. But Azilis knew how he worked, and in a few seconds she found the knot. She first tried to take it off with her bare hands, but of course he had to tie it as hard as if it had to resist an earth quake and a tsunami. She swore. “Ok, this might hurt more than expected.” Because if she could have untied it with her fingers, she could have made it go down slowly, like a kind of lift. But the thing was, she couldn’t. She takes one of her daggers out of her belt, and gets started. In a few minutes, Clarissa will be free. Hurt, most likely, but free. “So. Huntin’ alone?” She’s been taught that lonely hunts could be dangerous – because there were no one to get your back if something went wrong. How many times would have the redhead died if it wasn’t for Ariana, or Audric, or even Adam once or twice? She didn’t know why she really cared about her – as said before, she barely knew the girl. But she couldn’t help but worry ; not surprisingly at all.

(∆∆∆)
walking into the wilderness

“It’s yours, heh?”  Even though she knew she couldn’t have seen any of it, she shrugs. “It’s my brothers’.” You souldn’t climb with us, Azilis. What if you fell? Who knows, maybe your ankle is not really ok yet. And your injuries, are you sure you completely healed? To their eyes, she was still the little Azilis who came hunting with them for the first time, six years ago. Did the boys notice that she grew up, that she was, indeed, able to take care of herself without necessarily having to have her two brothers on her back? Probably not. “At least now you know if it works or not.”  She didn’t know how to take the tone she just used, so she just remains silent. Before she deadens a small, almost quiet laugh and shrugs one more time. “Of course it worked. It’s my brothers’.” She leaned forward as she repeated that last fragment. She couldn’t help but proudly smile at this statement. Her brothers, they were good hunters. Very good ones. Now closer to Clarissa, she stared at how unconsciously desperate she looked, trapped in there, seeming so not about to get out. So she climbs, grinning at the thought of what Artor and Audric would have said, seeing her like this. You should get down, it’s dangerous. Yeah, well, they could piss off with their words of warning and wisdom. She was a woman. She was a huntress. Her conscience could not just let the Killingworth stuck in this mess. She swears at her oldest brother’s talent at setting a net when she realizes how tight it was, and that her bare hands would not be enough to unset it. If only he could be rubbish at everything, maybe she could have hated him as much as she wished she could. But no. He had to be the best of Alaric’s children.

She decides to change the subject, because she loathes silence – especially when it’s that heavy, pushing on her shoulders as someone would do to make her drown. The darkness around them and the moonlight make it even more unbearable. And, as she realized a few minutes ago, she didn’t know anything about the young lady down there. Her true nature was suddenly stronger than the cold Azilis of the woods, and she got weirdly interested in her. She was still sawing the thick string while waiting for the brunette to say something in response, and she glanced at her, unable not to check if she was ok. “ Yes, well my hunting partner is not available at the moment.” She pinches her lips as the answer strikes her. She definitely knows what she means. She knows what it’s like, to end up alone because the creatures of the night ruined your duo, trio. Lys remembers the body of her father collapsing on the ground, the skin of Ariana being damaged by the sharp teeth of that wolf they goinf were after. “Sorry I asked.” Because, oh how she knows of how such a question could hurt. Whatever if it was friends or family, a hunting partner becomes more than a partner, even when you just started hunting like Clarissa probably did. Young hunters did not go in the woods with a stranger, at the beginning of their ‘carrier’. As she’s been repeated, over and over, when she was still an apprentice, the Order was so much more than an organization, but a true family ; its members linked by something less important, yet so much more powerful, than blood. “And you? Where is your sidekick? Aren’t they afraid to let you go on your own, since you hum...” She stops sawing, closes he eyes, and releases a strong sigh from her lungs and heart. So now, even people she didn’t know looked at her like a fragile little bird, not strong enough to go out in the woods without her brothers or someone to look after her? She couldn’t stand it – she couldn’t get it. Maybe she was weak, after all. “Go ahead.” She knew what’s happened to the ginger the last full moon. And above all, she knew who did it to her. So, what was holding her? She spotted her moving, and so she looked back at her, both of their sights meeting from afar. She was the one looking like the lost little girl they all saw in Azilis. “…You kinda have this thing with being stabbed by ensorcelled daggers, now and then?” She would have smiled. Really. If that wasn’t coming right from the mouth of his sister. She was inexplicably confused, didn’t know how to respond or how to act after what Clarissa just told her. She stays still, trying not to get completely crazy about all this. She wishes she could explode – she wishes her body was not able to put up with all the things she hears and undergoes. She wishes everything could blow out of her and make her lose her temper, once and for all, so that she could finally be peaceful.  “That wasn’t…” “Oh, please, shu…” Neither of them get the chance to go on with their sentences, interrupted by a noise ; noise that Azilis doesn’t need to analyse to recognize. It was way too familiar to her hears for her to doubt any second about what it was – and what made it. “Fuck. Can you hurry up? Please?” She rolls her eyes, hopefully without being seen – but does hurry up. Her knives goes faster, however not deeper. She frowns and sighs, so not ok with struggling. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. Okay. Listen, if it’s just an animal..” “Can you just stop swearing, for the love of God?” “..Then we’re good. But if it’s something more up our alley… I’ll appreciate if you could undo the damn trap as fast as you can.” “And I would appreciate it if you could stop teaching me how to do my job.” She did shout the last bit ; because that was it, she couldn’t deal with this situation anymore. In her words, she wanted the younger to understand that she was so, so new at all this. She was probably not that much. But there was this bizarre feeling, deep in her chest, of being the oldest, being the responsible one, being the one supposed to protect her. “Meanwhile, do you have a gun? I don’t use one often and I don’t think a dagger will do much from up here.” She sighs. Again. She doesn’t answer, gives up and jumps from the tree, landing on her two feet. She turns back, grabs one of the swords stuck in her back and hands it to the brunette. “Here, get sorted with the net.” Artor is gonna kill me, she thinks, when I’ll give him back a ruined net. But they don’t have much time. Now that Clarissa is armed, she can throw at the wolf up there a cocktail of her own – a mixture of powdered wolfsbane and hormones. Just to gain a few seconds before fleeing. There was no way of taking care of this beast, no. fucking. way. When the Kilingworth is finally standing on the floor, Azilis just takes her hand. “We gotta go. And hear me out : you make one move to go on your own and I swear I’ll come and find you and kill you. I’ll even call your brother to help me out if I have to.” She just wants her safe, as crazy as it seems.

(∆∆∆)
walking into the wilderness

“ Wow, that’s really smart, Azilis. Make them know exactly where we are. Really, is that the way the Harkwood teach you how to be real hunters?” Lys, she cannot help but swear, letting the entire disregard she had for this young lady escape from between her teeth. “I’ve been taught they have high senses, idiot. They hear everything, the smell everything. Don’t worry, I didn’t need to shout for them to know where we were. So now, shut. the hell. up. Jesus.” How did she get so unlucky? She should have told Artor to go and check who got stuck in the trap he and Audric settled, and she should have gone on with her brother to do what she wanted to : observe, listen, follow, capture. Because that was what she did, that was in her blood ; blood which didn’t tell her to help little foolish girls to get out of the mess they got into by their fucking selves. No, that was far beyond blood and education. That was character. Oh, how pissed off she was. She could literally feel anger and scorn running through her veins. Her brows were frowned, and she didn’t even notice. This was not how it was supposed to go. Why did everything have to go wrong every time she went into the woods, these days? Why did every full moon night she spent have to suck? She thinks about her first one. About the massacre it was. About her father and boyfriend’s corpses lying next to her ; about the number of hours she had to wait until her brothers and Ariana came to find her. Maybe because this particular night was a disaster, all the following ones had to be the same. She sighs, gets down, and sacrifices one of her favourite weapon to give it to the unarmed little soul next to her. Once the beast troubled by what Azilis just threw at their face and Clarissa out of the net, she doesn’t take the time to make sure that she was ok. She doesn’t pay attention to her twitchy breathing and her dizziness. She doesn’t really care, actually. All she wants is to go away. Go away from all this. They had no way to take this one down. Whoever that was, they were an Omega, and according to the way they stood, the way they ran, the way they roared, they clearly had no clue about what they were doing. They are the most dangerous. The Alphas, they know a lot about controlling themselves and not letting the beast take over their conscience. The Betas, they have their Alpha to help out when they’re losing their shit. But the Omegas, they are alone, just responding to the wild instincts and urges, only acting under their influence. Azilis does not listen to what she’s jabbering about behind her, only focusing on her feet and the way to take. She knows the woods perfectly. Often she feels like she spent more time between all those trees than anywhere else on this earth. It’s false, but that’s just how she feels. It doesn’t feel like home, though. Just a place she knows as both peaceful and unfriendly. Clarissa suddenly stops talking, and the ginger turns her head to check out on her. Their fingers were still bounded, but there was something in the way she ran that told her that if it wasn’t for this tie, she would probably have fallen a few meters back. She slows down a bit, giving her time and chance to get back to running in a proper way, and then goes back to the initial speed. And, for a reason that will remain unknown for the rest of her life, she listens to her, both focusing on behind and ahead of her. “We can’t let the beast go and attack people, Azilis.” “For now, they’re after us. The people they wanna attack, that’s us. Just run.” “It already probably killed tonight. Innocents. We're not supposed to run. This, this is what we do.” She doesn’t respond. She knows, what they do. They hunt. They kill. How many years had passed since the day the Harkwood killed for the last time? She takes down, but then her brothers or cousins do the job. Because though she hates those creatures, deeply, she always remembers that somewhere beneath their skins, beyond the horrible things they do – both wolves and sorcerers – they were humans. Maybe not by nature, but at least by culture. She had a glimpse of both of them. She loved both of them. She just can’t pretend not caring about the lives they take every time her and the rest of her family go back to the forest, every month. She knew they had to be stopped – and that meant, they had to die. But she could never kill herself. “We have to stop it.” “We can’t. As you said earlier, a dagger won’t do much, and neither will swords and knives. We’re just the two of us, with no one around apart from an savage, unexperienced Omega. We need guns, we need arrows. We. Can’t.” She recalls, Azilis, the last time she went after a wolf with her knives, her cousin and her bow and arrows – it did not go well. At all. Her cousin was bitten and forced to die. She got her knee broken and had to stay at home for three months. There was not a day where she didn’t let herself drown into a pool of what if’s and should have’s. What if Audric and Adam came with them? What if the two women had not been stupid and stubborn? They should have thought about it more. They shouldn’t have been that reckless. And maybe Ariana would still be alive. She glances at behind her, making sure Clarissa was still on her two feet. But because her eyes are looking away, they cannot see the hole in which her left foot gets stucked. She doesn’t have time to think about it that she’s already lying upon the mossy floor, her hands grazed, her forehead bleeding because of the roots which scraped it. She could feel the pain spreading in her foot and ankle. She swears, she screams a bit, because she’s done with this night. She wanted it over, as quick as possible. But the wolf would probably not agree with it. She manages to stand up, and as a good old friend, the wound on her stomach wakes up, violently saying hi. As if it was missed. “Ok. I’m over this.” She swears again, both at the cut and at Thaddeus, wipes the dust on her clothes and melted her eyes in Clarissa’s. “Let’s take the son of a bitch down.” The second sword is soon between her fingers, and she stares at the one the brunette is holding. “D’you know how to use this? Don’t take it the wrong way, just making sure you’re not gonna stab yourself.”