Viktor Beyond Evil

1

Your breath steams. You have run for hours. You don't feel tired. You haven't really felt tired since the Change.

Snow swirls, bitterly cold lake effect snow that stings your eyes. The sky and ground are white, the trees across the empty meadow black where frost doesn't hang from their branches. Only one thing moves, leaving a winding trail through the trees: your prey. You're downwind of it—though not for long, as unpredictable gusts send snow-devils racing across the open terrain—and you can smell the acrid reek of steel and plastic.

Your prey is close, and you know you have to prove yourself this time.

Your last chance.

You shake the thought away. You uncovered this threat, after all. You found what eluded the others, and they permitted you to lead the hunt. Like your spiritual ancestors ages ago, whose battles against the demons of the earth became the legends of Beowulf, Herakles, Saint Martha, you turned all your knowledge and skill to tracking down this monster, this unclean spirit…this Bane.

[First, go to options.]
I hunted the wild places for weeks, criss-crossing the winter landscape, focusing all my endurance and survival skills on tracking the Bane to its lair.
I'm no Iron Age warrior. I turned my computer training and technical savvy to building models that predicted the Bane's path based on its trail of destruction.
This Bane is not a lone monster. It had mortal contacts. I found those people, and explained what I'd do to them if they didn't talk. I've always been good at making threats.
A Bane's mortal allies are craven and greedy. I manipulated them into giving me the information I needed to investigate this monster's habits.
Gaia's warriors have kept records since before the ancient Sumerians scratched lines into clay. I consulted the old records to learn about this Bane, its habits, and its weaknesses.
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