Chapter 1: Ambushed

There is a grace and beauty to be found in the hunting of beasts. A certain poise is necessary to keep one's cool under the immense pressure of life and death. One needs a strong will and a stronger stomach, of course, to keep one's lunch down upon the sight and stench of a life ending. Mortals do shit themselves when they die, after all, and it can be somewhat overwhelming to the uninitiated.

Emrys is not the uninitiated. This is far from his first hunt. Born and raised to it, he finds something akin to peace in the pounding of his feet on the path and in the sinking of his blade into the flesh of an adversary.

For a price, he or one of his family members will exterminate that which bothers you. Not human people, mind, though they could be convinced should the person in question be particularly heinous. No, the Symmonet Clan is renowned for their skill in hunting monsters.

Monsters such as the ones Emrys and his two most immediate younger brothers, Terryn and Aryn, are stalking now. The three of them move near-silent in the woods. Moving swiftly through the underbrush, the brothers fan out.

His bow drawn taut with a poison-tipped arrow gleaming greenly in the dim dawnlight, Emrys has all of his senses sharpened to a perfect point. They've been pursuing this pack of ghouls for a few days now, and they've finally caught up. The shambling, half-dead things have left a wide and obvious trail. The muddy grooves from their dragging feet would be evidence enough, but the broken brambles slick with sloughed off gore and streaks of foul-smelling ooze that's congealed into those same grooves is proof of their proximity.

Up ahead, a prolonged, breathy groan breaks through the trees.

Emrys catches his brothers' attention, one at a time, and makes a series of pointed gestures. They slow as a unit. As eldest and leader, Emrys creeps forward first to get a vantage point on their target.

A small clearing opens up. This part of the forest is densely packed and damp year-round, no matter the weather elsewhere. Emrys's feet sink into the soft earth as he peers into the clearing from behind a thick oak.

There, at the middle of the clearing, is a standard-issue ghoul. Middle height, hair that might've once been light brown or even blond now turned to a hideous off-gray, skin the color of rotting parchment, vacant eyes without iris or pupil. The clothes it wears are little more than sodden rags hanging off its sharp joints where the bones jut out of the sallow skin. It may have been the groom at a particularly grisly wedding, if the tattered, molding silk stuck to its barely-there lapel can be construed as a flower. The ghoul is now standing perfectly still save for a slight sway as it stares upwards into the early morning gray.

Emrys glances about. There's no sign of more of the creatures. Based on the markings on the ground, he guesses they've moved on without this one straggler. This does confirm, once more, that the three brothers are exceptionally close to the rest of the pack.

With careful, purposeful aim, Emrys levels his bow at the ghoul. The arrow whistles loose, blooming rather suddenly from the dessicated forehead of the monster not thirty feet away. As it thuds home, Emrys and his brothers all straighten from their hiding places and step into the clearing.

"Well, it's not a pack," Aryn says as softly as he's able to. With his deep timbre, it's a difficult feat to maintain for long. He's a big man, well over six feet tall, and broad with it. Ari carries himself like a man who knows precisely how handsome and deadly he looks. He casts a dark-eyed, wind-swept, wry look toward his next-oldest brother.

Terryn, not quite so tall or broad, holds a sterner sort of demeanor. He pushes his cloak's hood back to reveal hair that's lighter and curlier than Aryn's, but it lends him precisely no softness. Sharp-eyed and sharp-jawed, Terryn glares at the dead ghoul.

"No, not a pack," Terryn mutters back. He looks around the clearing. "Though they were certainly here."

"Recently, by my measure," Emrys says, crouching to touch one of the gouges in the soft earth. He peers upwards at his younger brothers, squinting against the dawn glow. "This one was a straggler. But why was it just standing here staring like that?"

"Who cares?" Aryn grunts. He adjusts his hold on his broadsword, nearly as long as his legs. Despite its heft, he's no more out of breath from their rush through the woods than his brothers. He snorts. "The things's brainless. It probably thought there was something to eat. A bird, maybe."

Emrys and Terryn frown at each other, unconvinced. Emrys stands and surveys the direction the pack is most likely to have headed. Shortest of the three, though not by much where Terryn is concerned, Emrys holds himself straightest, proudest. His hood hides short brown hair not unlike Aryn's, and his deep brown eyes hold a hard, alert intelligence to them.

The forest around them is silent. It ought to be alive with early-season birdsong and leaves rustling in the wind if nothing else. This is a busy time of year for creatures of all sorts as the earth reawakens from its long, icy slumber. The eerie nothing settles cold in the pit of Emrys's stomach.

"Let's keep moving," says Emrys.

The brothers direct their attention to the path ahead. At the moment before they set foot into the brush at the base of the trees, a deafening shriek goes up from all sides. They have barely a second to ready themselves as a mob of shambling, half-dead creatures burst into the clearing.

With a yelp, Aryn swings his broadsword and decapitates two of the things in one swoop. At Emrys's other side, Terryn's twin swords flash in the light as he slices the arms off of another in front of him.

A bow is no good this close in range. Emrys drops it, ignoring the pang of regret in his chest, and draws his short sword. He hacks and slashes with just as much grace, taking his time and striking with precision.

The brothers move and fight as a single unit. They spin and thrust and duck and roll through the clearing as though part of a coordinated dance. The stench of the ghouls' blood is rancid, hanging sour in the air. Belatedly, Emrys realizes that this pack is much, much larger than they expected. When one is cut down, another two appear to take its place.

Eventually, the three find themselves panting, aching, and bleeding from various scratches and bites from the monsters, fighting back to back to back at the center of the clearing with nowhere to go. Stupid they may be, but ghouls can be fast when they put their brainless minds to it.

And they have numbers on their sides. The three men are entirely surrounded. There seems to be no end to the ghouls pouring from the trees almost faster than they can cut the things down.

"We need help!" Aryn cries as a ghoul breaks through his guard to slash with yellowed claws at his shoulder. He grunts and takes the thing's arm clean off before shoving it back into the crowd, but another swiftly replaces it.

Neither Emrys nor Terryn reply. They share a brief, grim look. The next closest group of hunters is over five miles from here.

There is no backup coming.

This is their final stand.

The ghouls press the brothers back the way they came, staggering back toward the treeline. Backed up against the trees and wounded, the brothers make their peace.

Emrys swiftly decides that if he's going to die, he'd better make it worthwhile. Surveying the situation in a single moment's reprieve, he finds an opening. It isn't much of one, but it's enough to get his brothers out of here.

"When I say so, you run for it," Emrys commands, unconcerned about the ghouls understanding. Their comprehension of the common tongue is middling at best. The only commands they typically understand are the ones given by their master.

Unlike the ghouls, both Emrys's brothers give him an incredulous look.

"What?" Terryn demands.

Emrys doesn't reply. He pulls a dagger drenched in the same poison as his arrows from his belt and, swinging both wildly with an attention-grabbing battle cry, charges into the mob.

"You idiot!"

"Rys, no!"

"Run!" Emrys roars over the sound of hissing, seething ghouls.

Sure enough, sensing the easier target, the mob descends on Emrys. He kills as many as he can, his blade sinking deeply into their bellies and chests and necks, but skilled as he is, even he can't fight off twenty of the things by himself. A bright, gleaming pain erupts from his side, and Emrys staggers sideways. Another blooms at his shoulder, then at his opposite wrist, and he drops his sword.

Emrys's vision blurs, but he swings anyways, blindly.

The dagger sinks into the chest of a ghoul and sticks there firmly enough that he can't pull it out before the thing is shoved aside by another.

Unarmed, all Emrys has are his fists and the leather armor beneath his cloak. It's not much. He's no knight. He's dressed for mobility, not to withstand a concentrated attack from all sides. Distantly, Emrys hears shouts and fighting as his brothers try to rescue him from the mob.

They won't reach him. He tries to shout again for them to run, but a pair of ghouls wrap shockingly strong hands around his neck and injured arm, and he hits the ground with a wheeze instead. The world turns dark as his head strikes the freezing cold dirt.

Dimly, he sees a flash of light. The sun emerging at last, likely. There's a series of shouts, of grunts, and of wet slashing sounds, and then silence. Someone shouts his name. There are hands that touch his arms, his chest, the weakening pulse at his throat. A hushed conversation he can't make out washes over him.

Then, a feeling like being lifted into someone's arms, as though he's a child fallen asleep in the carriage on the way home from a festival.

Falling, then deafening wind.

Then nothing at all.