VII:
The werewolf prowled in the bushes, It had just woken up and the wounds inflicted on him the other day still hurt like hell. He growled at the thought that he lost to mere humans, at the fact his sister was back and hunting him down. He held the ankle and let the rage boil up inside him as he saw his missing foot.
He took the scent of the man who cut his foot off from his memory and tried to remember it as best he could. Of course, the loss of his limb and eye could be fixed, he just had to find some animal to eat. After chomping down and mauling on a deer he sat down next to a tree and brooded.
Clearly, the king has found out more than he should and is now ready for whatever would be thrown at him. But his thoughts were interrupted.
The scent.
The scent of the man with the two swords. It was a distinct scent, separate from the one of the well-bathed king (who smelt like cherries strangely enough) or the two soldiers who were obviously a lower class due to their slight scent of mud and such.
But that man, the foreign man who not only had a scent unlike anyone else from Fjorde but despite being very much alive; there was a faint smell similar to that of a rotting corpse. And there it was, the scent of a rotting foreigner. And just a mile away at that.
The werewolf jumped up and bounded off, determined to make this foreign man know what it was like to lose a leg this time.
There he was. It looked almost too easy, but the werewolf didn't care. The foreign man with the rotting scent was sitting there on the ground. His legs crisscrossed and his hands on his knees. The werewolf grinned and crept forward silently. He raised his claws and could hardly contain his eagerness to strike.
But before he could, Altan opened his eyes, reached behind his back, and in the blink of an eye the Werewolf was staring down the barrel of a flintlock pistol (Oh yeah this is 1542). Altan pulled the trigger and the Werewolf felt a stinging pain in his chest.
He stumbled back, holding his wound. He had never seen such a weapon and was completely kerfuffled at the sight of it. The Werewolf looked back up just in time to see Altan swinging his sword down upon him. He jumped back, dodging the attack, and stumbled away into the woods.
How could he have let this happen? Fooled by mere men! What dishonor... These thoughts were distracting him as he ran and he wasn't able to smell the two soldiers from the other night; who jumped out from behind some trees and thrust their spears into his sides. He howled (screeched more like it) in pain and swatted the two aside.
He could no longer think straight as he stumbled about the woods. Eventually, he found a bed of moss he could lie down in to collect his bearings and rest. Laying down in it, he felt that he was in danger again but pushed the feeling away, thinking it was just adrenaline.
But yet again he was wrong; As King Beckett himself, with the steel longsword that belonged to his father, thrust his blade into the beast's back. This time instead of howling in pain, the Werewolf screamed in pain much like a man would and desperately tried crawling away from his attacker (with the sword and spears still in his back and sides respectively).
Eventually, he was able to stumble back up to his feet and shuffle a few steps more through the woods but he was brought down to his knees when Shani shot an arrow clean through his neck from the branches of a tree. He held his neck, desperately trying to breathe but it was for naught.
The Werewolf sat on his knees, waiting for death. And it surely came, just in the form of Altan's saber splitting his skull in two.
Werewolves can resurrect after death no matter what wounds were inflicted on them, just as long as their corpse is left on the dirt of the earth they can be resurrected from the nutrients and shit in the earth. Honestly, I got no clue dude, Altan's the one that knows all this shit, not me.
Shani and Beckett ordered Altan and the guardsmen to find kindling to start a fire that they'll burn the corpse of the werewolf with. Once they gathered the twigs, dead leaves, and dry moss all together they sat Shani's brother's body onto them.
"Shit," Altan said, "All I have is some flint but no cloth to make a torch with". Immediately, Beckett took his sword and cut off a long strip of his tunic, grabbed a branch, and wrapped the cloth around the tip of it. Altan handed him the flint and Beckett used said flint and his sword to create a torch.
"Shani, I believe the honors are yours," Beckett told Shani, handing the torch to her. She nodded and took the torch. Shani stood next to the corpse of her brother and silently thought up a prayer in hopes of sending him to a good afterlife to be forgiven. He was her younger brother after all, despite being a monster.
Shani tossed the torch onto the pyre and stood between Beckett and Altan as they watched the flames dance on the burning corpse of Shani's brother.
