Hunter Fur Hire (p)

To say that Solmar felt great would be to greatly undercut exactly what he felt as he wandered through the large forested regions of Sakuramori and made his way over to the Beanstalk village. It was there that he wanted to check for any new jobs, get himself cleaned up and go out and have dinner that he hadn't made by himself for a change. Because he had the money to make it happen these days, he no longer needed to live as savagely as he used to, though that by no means meant that he was going to become just another citizen of some city, village or town. He was not cut out for such things, to lead an unremarkable life the same as that of everyone around him, the thing that had been inside of him for so long would have never allowed it. And now that he was certain, or at least close to certain that the magic that he had assimilated into his very being had burned it away, the remnants of its influence still remained.

For so long, he had been afraid that he would do unto others what he had done unto his family when he was still but a young boy. Having had no control over his actions, the fact that he had been born during an eclipse had made many believe that he had been a cursed child from the start. And he had proved them right, and his parents wrong. They had never even once considered the fact that their child, their little boy, could be something dark and twisted like the stories of the eclipse children prophesized. What had been a seven year old boy had been a monstrous figure, white as the full moon with eyes as dark as the very eclipse under which he had been born. Ripping his own parents to shreds with his claws and fangs, he had eaten its fill and wandered over to the neighbors. There, he had killed the fisherman and his three children aged six, eight and twelve, taking but only a few bites out of their carcasses as they had not even been killed for sustenance, just sport.

After that, the white monstrosity had gone around maiming at least a dozen others, leaving them to die from their wounds or survive to live in fear of him ever returning. Had it not been for a local mage that had nearly charred him to death, chances were that he would have gone all over his home town for as long as it was in control of Solmar's body. That night, the entity called Vetis had first shown the inhabitants of the town what it meant to be a child of the eclipse, and what a demon was truly capable of. Ever since that night, Solmar had always been having bad dreams about it. Often waking up in a cold sweat when he was still a youngster, what he had to go through in order to overcome his fear had allowed him to at the very least sleep through it. That, and the fact that he now possessed a magical demon-killing flame that had apparently burned Vetis out of existence gave him a bit of extra incentive towards living a somewhat more carefree life. Luckily, ever since he had returned from the shadow isle, his Exceed companion no longer seemed to fear sleeping in the same room as him.

Ever since the feline had learned of what Solmar was when the demon inside of him burst out when the two were being hunted down by a monstrous bear, it had been sleeping high up in the trees. Believing that the creature had a far less hard time breaking free when Solmar was asleep, it did not want to be around when Vetis emerged. But with the demon burned out of him, there was no longer any need to fear the boy that acted as its vessel. Still, the things he had done while under the influence of the demon lingered, staying with him whenever he passed through small villages and towns that resembled the one he grew up in. Though he knew that it was not far from where he had always been roaming, he could not recall exactly where he grew up, and that was probably a good thing. Had he known, he would have forever avoided it, being ashamed and angry with himself for not having been able to keep the demon inside from being unleashed.

Though he knew full well that there was nothing that he could have done about it at the time, considering the fact that he was still just a child struggling against a full fledged demon nobody wanted to acknowledge was a problem, or even existed in the first place, that did not make it any better. By helping out creatures like the Kappa, he felt like he was somehow making up for the lives he had stolen against his will. Luckily, he had only been a child at the time. Had he been at the point in his life that he was now, it stands to reason that the demon would have been far more powerful as it had an adult body to possess. It was enough to make him ponder on how many people he would have murdered if it had come to pass on a day such as these. Luckily, he no longer needed to worry about it, as the demon was no longer around due to his gifted magic from the shadow isles. The magic that was supposed to be his tool to slay demons with, but seemed difficult to control properly.

While it had indeed come through for him at times when he truly needed it, which had been exactly twice up until this point, Solmar still experienced trouble making it come out when he wanted it to. Aside from that, his constant travels and taking on different jobs and tasks for other people kept him from actually getting to train his abilities properly. Now that he had arrived at his destination, he figured that it would be at least a couple more days before he would actually get to train his magic as work seemed to be found quite easily in these parts of the worlds. A place like Beanstalk village, which wasn't overly crowded, usually had a need for people to take on temporary tasks as a farmhand or jobs similar to it. All it came down to was helping one of the inhabitants with menial tasks which they either could not do alone or would struggle with when unaided. At least that was what he had expected to find on the notice board, though it seemed that this was not going to be the main case he was going to be dealing with today.

Upon entering the unremarkable village, he could tell that the people were in a bit of a fit for some reason, what with there being people on just about every corner talking to one another in a hushed tone. Though he tried not to listen in on people on purpose, his heightened hearing made it hard not to pick up on certain words and partial sentences. When he heard a few specific words, he tried not to look in the direction of the woman who spoke them, though he knew that she was refering to him. From what he could make out just by walking past her and the people next to her, she seemed to think that he was here to fix some kind of issue for them, based on the fact that he was an outsider that seemed relatively strong. While he had indeed come here looking for work, he had not been sent here by anyone, so she was most likely mistaken about it. Still, it did pique his interests as to what it was that they might be needing his help with. Continuing to move along towards the notice, he started browsing the contents without really taking anything.

Coming across something that seemed more like a task for a hunter than a mage, he took off the paper containing the information anyway. Reading it through, it seemed that there was some kind of dangerous animal roaming the area along the main road from the Beanstalk village and up to Cedar and Hosenka. Being an important route for traders and merchants, as well as hunters, fishermen and farmers looking to sell their stuff in more crowded places, the main road being unsafe posed a threat to a lot of people that relied on it. Wondering why the authorities were not doing something about such a problem, he realized that he really did not know a single thing about the authorities in Fiore, having never ran into trouble and primarily staying away from any human settlements. Deciding to take the piece of paper into town and asking some more people about it, it seemed that it was a touchy subject.

(1512)

From the moment he brought it up, people either started crying and walking away, got angry and inquisitive as to why he even wanted to talk about such things, or told him to go to the person who had posted the job in the first place. Finding most people to be surprisingly unhelpful for a township that was struggling to have an actual income now that they could not do any trading, some were actually willing to speak to him about the matter. Telling him that some beast or monster was roaming the main road and stole merchandize and sometimes killed those that stood between it and their goods, he was not altogether worried about that. It was however not until another civilian told him that things were perhaps worse than people realized, though it would likely not remain that way for long. Wondering what he meant by this, he took Solmar with him, heading away from the village and into the forest's edge. There, Solmar was amazed at the amount of gravestones littering the place.

All of them were named, and from what he could tell in just a glance without proper counting, it seemed like there were well over fifty of them. Apparently, they had all been made by the man overseeing the graveyard, stones he had prepared for those that had gone missing in the woods but had not yet been retrieved. And when he said retrieved, he was speaking about the bodies, knowing full well that people that went missing for such a long period of time did not come back alive. Without the rest of the village worrying, the stones had been stored here so as to not trigger any emotional or otherwise violent reactions. Solmar understood this well, he knew that when people held out hope for a loved one returning, the last one they wanted was to be confronted with the fact that they were never coming back. And that really was the hardest thing about it, coming to terms with the fact that they would never get to look their loved one in the eyes again, to hear their voice or to feel their warmth.

Solmar had gone through the same thing shortly after he had been taken over by the demon, Vetis. When the mage that came to protect the village from him nearly incinerated him, the demon had gone into regression in order to reconstitute itself and heal the body of the host it had bonded with. After he had recuperated and woke up from his temporary come, the boy, who at this point was mostly nude due to the transformation, wanted nothing more than to return to the village. Still, it was as if his instincts were telling him not to do so, something he later in his life came to figure out was likely the best decision. Had he returned, the remaining townsfolk would likely have murdered him in some ritualistic fashion in order to expel the demon along with him.

Truly, the things people did to make them feel safe were ridiculous, a thing that was especially true for those who lacked any kind of power themselves. But as a young Solmar started wandering the world alone, he was faced with the fact that his parents were gone every single day as there was no one there to look after him. Needless to say, the way in which he grew up had been incredibly humbling, not to mention that it more or less left him without a childhood. In the next five years after that, he had gradually progressed through all of the stages of grief, though he had felt stuck in the stage of acceptance for most of his teenage years. One could never truly accept the fact that one's parents were gone, even less so when one had to come to terms with the fact that their very own hands had done the deed. The strange thing about possession was that while one did not have control over their body, they felt everything, experienced everything, and saw everything through their own eyes.

Shaking his head to return himself to the present, he thanked the man that had helped him by sharing this much and showing him that the problem with the wandering beast was far more dire than people were willing to give it credit for. Returning to the village with the man, they both went their separate way as Solmar headed for the local inn. There, he asked for directions to the man that had posted the job regarding the kill warrant on the murderous predator that people had come to call the Main Road Mangler. To Solmar, this seemed like a silly name as no one really retrieved any of the bodies, so no one was to know whether or not they had actually been mangled or not. He did however understand the need people had for naming things, as naming things took away some of the power posed by the whole mystery surrounding it. Soon, he was going to remove the veil of mystery entirely with his own hands, showing all the people that lived in insecurity what had truly happened to their loved ones so they too could go on living.

Knowing that he could never do such a thing for those that survived the massacre of his home town because he was too much of a coward to return to the place of his birth and face judgement, the least he could do was help out these people. And so, as soon as he had gone about visiting the man responsible for posting the notice, he took whatever information he could get with regards to the killings and started heading towards the main road leading through Sakuramori. With his exceed Fellis flying overhead as a kind of scout, Solmar really just wanted the cat to stay out of reach of whatever it was that might try to come for their lives. If he did by some means underestimate the situation, the last thing he wanted was for Fellis to fall victim to the beast because of it. The way he saw it, as long as he just strolled down the main road and kept heading towards Hosenka, he would most likely run into the creature eventually.

Whether it would come for him or not, chances were that if it was nearby, either he or Fellis would find it before it would get the drop on them, or so he hoped. Several hours went by before they got to a place that seemed so far removed from society that it almost felt like home to Solmar. After all, the abandoned bear den he had turned into a home for himself was also incredibly deep inside of the forest, which was why he was not altogether worried about facing this predator. Whatever it was, chances were that he had already faced off against one of its kind before. As he pondered on what it might be, his nose suddenly caught a whiff of something gross. Doing his best to follow his nose without having to constantly smell it, the young man followed the nauseating scent to a place where barrels had been smashed, crates had been destroyed, and clothing had been torn to ribbons. Noticing several dried up puddles of blood here and there, he was incapable of actually finding any bodies.

To Solmar, the fact that there was nothing around here that seemed to imply that the people that got attacked here had also been devoured here seemed incredibly odd. Most creatures that had so many kills on their name eventually got sloppy, while many creatures only took some of the carcass with them while dining on it at the scene of the murder. Closer inspection showed that there were indeed a bunch of drag marks headed deeper into the forest before they eventually disappeared. While it proved that this was the place where the attacks had been happening, it did not settle the matter of where the bodies had gone and why the killer even took them to begin with. It was quite notable to anyone who might be around, such as Fellis, to see that Solmar was actually quite puzzled with this turn of events. Figuring the best he could do now would be to follow the drag marks deeper into the forest, he was stopped from doing so.

Picking up a strange sound that seemed to originate from some sort of animal, there was something about it that seemed strange. The same could be said about the strange scent that traveled along with it. The closer it got to him, the more the strange sound started bugging him while the scent of decay got stronger and stronger. Mere moments later, Solmar stood face to face with a large dire wolf, though not in a shape he had ever seen before. All over its body, fur had started falling off while even pieces of flesh had seemingly left it behind, showing the organs inside and the ribs surrounding them.


(1520)

Solmar would lie if he said that he had ever seen something like this before, because to put it simply, he hadn't. One of the things he noticed from this creature was that he heard no heartbeat, nor did he see or hear it breathing, all things that were starting to point towards something born of myth. In the village of his birth, people had always been going hard on such stories, stories like the one about the children born at the time of an eclipse being tainted by evil. In his case, one such story had turned out to be true, as he had been inhabited by the soul of a demon that had made him do things too horrible to speak of. For that same reason, Solmar was starting to believe that maybe this myth was based on truth too, the myth of the undead. While the story went that those that dabbled in the dark magical arts could be revived as the unholy dead that were meant to wander the earth forever, it made sense to him that this could happen to a truly black-hearted human being.

This however was not a human being, it wasn't even sentient in the same way a human was, having no understanding of what was right or what was wrong. Still, he could not deny that this creature had stopped actually being alive some time ago, though that did not stop it from raving through the woodlands and actually killing and eating people roaming along the main road. Trying to think about what it might be, the beast had apparently had enough of staring right through the young man, moving at a speed that seemed impossible for the average wolf. Barely evading the initial charge, he could see how the tendons in the creature's legs were on the verge of ripping because of all the strain it put on it. Figuring that death had taken away any sense of self, as well as any restrictions the brain placed on the body to keep one from overdoing things and hurting themselves, it was most likely that which made the creature faster, and undoubtedly stronger.

Aside from that, the fact that it was dead most likely gave it a lot of determination as it had no reason to back down. Deciding to put this to the test, Solmar reached for his sword and waited for the next time to beast came around to hurt him again. Finding that he had actually grown considerably stronger and faster due to the time he had spent living in the forest, hunting animals for food and having to provide for himself and his feline friend, his senses had also grown to be a whole lot sharper. Being able to follow the creatures high paced movement with his eyes, ears and nose working in unison, his feet moved as if entirely by instinct, getting him out of harm's way and leaving a small window through which he could strike at the wolf with his sword.

(512)

Ripping into the wolf, a small patch of rotting flesh remained on the tip of the blade along with a tuft of grey hair, though the creature itself showed no signs of stopping at all. With a flick of his wrist, he tossed the bit of decay off of his blade and unto the ground, waiting for the next time it came around for a potential debilitating or killing blow. Coming by several more times, Solmar managed to evade the rather linear charges while at the same time inflicting various blows, though the wolf did not seem to show any signs of slowing down at all. Though he was still fine and unharmed at this point, there would come a point where he got tired or somehow slipped off at some point. Before that time came, he had to find a way to put an end to the fight as he still had more to do after this. Just winning and surviving wasn't all there was on the list of to-do things, finding the bodies and letting the villagers know where to find them was equally as important to him.

Though it might have sounded odd, Solmar did not really value his life all that much, only caring about what might happen to Fellis when he was no longer around to protect him. But with the exceed flying above the treeline, he wasn't worried about him getting caught up in the fighting one bit. Holding his sword tightly, he did his best to keep up with the animal, locking on to it with his eyes as he started charging at the beast. Rushing headlong into one another, Solmar decided to drop to his knees mid-sprint, allowing the wolf to move over him. Almost biting his throat out, the young mage managed to spin just far enough as he got close to the ground to move his blade in. When suddenly a white flame clad the blade of his sword, the added momentum of the spin caused the thing to carve straight through the head of the beast and cleave through it as if there were no resistance at all. Falling onto his back, the large body of the dire wolf dropped not far from him, but at least not on him.

As the white flames remained on the outline of where the blade had cut, it seemed as though the legs were still trying to move, making it seem like the body was still struggling to get back into the fight. When Solmar got back up and walked closer to the head though, it seemed that the white flame had successfully devoured that which kept the body "alive". The moment it did, the body stopped moving too, meaning that whatever had caused the creature to get up from the grave had ceased to function, just like the white flame had done to his own demonic parasite. Taking a deep breath, he brushed off most of the dirt that had come to attach itself to his clothing before moving on. Kneeling down next to the head of the wolf, he inhaled deeply, trying to get a good sense of the unique scent it had in order to aid him in finding the bodies. Picking up something shortly after, he set out to find them, all of them, and bring some solace to the people of the Beanstalk Village.

(567)
-End of Job-