I Am Myth

Prolouge

A simple breeze wafted across the clearing, dancing the snow into swirls around Brian's feet. He tugged his coat tighter and shivered. Not at the cold winter night, or the snow dampening his poorly protected feet, but at something colder still. Dolan's heavy gaze.

"You worthless boy! You call yourself a hunter? Look what you did!"

Brian quickly turned his gaze to the camp, for the mess was easier to look on then Dolan's disproving figure. The camp was a mess of pure destruction. The remnants of the tents were charred and floated down multiple streams formed by the melted snow. The freezing water made a soft bubbling sound as it flowed over burnt logs that were, just the day before, tall, proud-standing trees. The hunters were busy scavenging what could be still of use to them and catching the horses, which whinnied, frightened by what they had just witnessed. Few hunters looked his way, but none glared. None seemed to blame him for the mess with as pure a hatred as Dolan had.

"Look at me, boy!" Dolan commanded and Brian turned his eyes back to the leader of the hunters. "You have one chance to make this right or I'm cutting you off, boy." The last word he let slither off his tongue like an insult. And it was. To become a hunter one needed bold bravery and skill, one needed to, as Dolan put it, 'grow up.' But Dolan didn't see it in Brian no matter how hard Brian tried, and probably never would.

Dolan stalked into the night leaving Brian silently cowering from his gaze.

"He really let you have it, didn't he?" Cohen stepped out of the shadows and scruffed Brian's hair. Although they were the same age, Cohen was a foot taller and had a slight beard growing, one that Brian envied openly.

"Don't see why he blames you for it," Abe came up beside the two, "I mean, sure it was your job to shoot the dragon, but he gave you an impossible mission, there was no way even he could shoot it from that position and leave a mark!"

"Yeah," Brian sighed unhappily, "but I think I messed up pretty bad. The camps a mess." He said it so depressingly that his only two friends looked at each other with dismay.

"Well," Cohen started, but no words of comfort would come to him, "I guess we should go help out."

He and Abe left, leaving Brian with only the softly falling snow for companionship.

"I have to make this right." Brian voiced his thoughts aloud. He turned to the forest and ran into it, determined to find, if not the very beast that attacked them, some mythics to kill. Then maybe Dolan would accept him.

His light feet left no mark, no tracks to follow. It was best that way, Brian decided, he didn't want any mythics finding his tracks, and no one at camp would miss him anyways so there was no point in leaving them.

The slight rustle as his feet skilfully navigated around the forest floor echoed through the quiet night. Every howl of the wind made Brian turn, hoping, and in some way dreading, that he would see something worth reporting.

What he could not hear or see was an opponent equally skilled in the underbrush, keen ears picking up the soft rustle and vicious yellow eyes darting to every movement the boy made.