I could feel the rumble rise up in the wolf's throat as I leaned on him for support. The red-stained knives for teeth revealed themselves.

"You feeling up to another fight, kid?" the wolf's voice whispered inside my head.

"No, but not like we have much choice."

The two monsters were still as death. They stood in shallow water, each on six legs. The rain trickled down their bodies, confirming my idea that they were more armor than flesh. How the hell would we even fight things like this?

The young girl threw out her arm in our direction and, one way or another, we were about to find out.

"Sick them, Baldur!"

The black monster's back split open at her command. A great hum, like the motor to some mighty know-nothing vehicle, split through the light rain as the creature lifted from the air. It was flying. It had wings and could move faster then I could run as it shot across the water towards us, looking to splatter us against the Hunter's cabin with its horned head.

"Hold on!"

The wolf pulled me in close and leapt to the side. He barely made it out of there in time. Not a moment later, 'Baldur' made contact with the cabin and crashed through it like it was nothing but brittle splinters.

"Liebling!"

The witch had anticipated our move, she and her white mount waiting for us as we were still in the middle of avoiding her previous monster's attack. The sickle hands came down and I was thrown away from my companion as one cut a gash down my side while the other sunk into the wolf's shoulder.

I rolled through murky green water, but got my footing right away. My hand instinctually went to my ribs. The cut was deep, there was a lot of blood pushing through my fingers. I thought maybe I could see bone.

"Piece of shit witch! I'll kill you! I'll tear your pets apart!"

One of the white monster's sickles was still buried in the wolf's body. It kept him pinned into the water as he thrashed helplessly. The girl was standing on the back of her alien mount, her attention on me while 'Liebling' kept its unsettlingly large eyes on its prey.

"I'll make this simple, fox," the witch said. "I know you worked with the fire bitch who killed my friend. Tell me where she is."

The hum filled the air again before I could speak. Without turning around, I dove to the side, narrowly avoiding being crushed by the black monster as it propelled past me. I was still knocked around by the gale of wind and waves it kicked up in its wake.

"Baldur! Enough!" the witch shouted at her pet as it flew by her. Baldur landed a few feet back, and a new noise escaped it as it did. A series of chittering and clacking that made me subconsciously clench my jaw.

The witch winched and pressed a hand to her forehead. "You will listen to me. I said—"

Someone suddenly launched themselves from a nearby gathering of reeds. They raced through the water almost as fast as Baldur could fly and jumped, tackling the witch off her mount before she could finish her sentence. The two fell into the water and disappeared within its shallow depths.

A piercing, inhuman screech erupted from the white creature. It removed itself from the wolf and made to go after its master. The wolf caught one of its six legs with his claw-hand before it could.

"Where do you think you're going? I haven't paid you back yet!"

With a snarl that made the waters around him and the white beast ripple, the wolf yanked the latter back. He turned with the pull, swinging Liebling around and held on to the leg tight enough for it to be torn out from the monster's body as it was thrown backwards. More of those ear splitting screeches and clicks came from the monster's mouth as it tumbled through the marsh.

I was up and moving as the hum joined the rest of the unnerving noises. I threw myself into the unprepared wolf, dragging us into the water just as Baldur flew through. The knock back had us propelled out and back onto the small island where the Hunter's cabin once stood.

We only managed to get to our feet when new, more human, screams filled the air. The witch and her attacker had resurfaced. The former calling for her monsters while the latter continued to scream and claw at his face.

"Mutt!" I cried, not fully believing what I was seeing. But it had to be him. No one else could be the perfect combination of brave and reckless. My body was racing towards him before I even got out his name the second time.

"Kid, wait! This isn't the kind of fight you can just run into blindly!"

Liebling was cutting through the water in the direction of Mutt and its master. It was doing so minus one leg, making its movements awkward and jerky, but Baldur had turned around and was blowing a path right at me. It would hit me before I could reach Mutt. I could dodge it, but the blow back I couldn't avoid. That would give its partner all the time it needed to get to my friend first.

I had to be grateful that I had more than one friend there. More than one familiar brave and reckless enough to leap in front of the monster and catch it's attack before it could reach me.

With some unknown strength, the wolf held Boldur in place as it continued to fly and hum. With just his one deformed arm, he kept it there, his other three legs bracing into the mud beneath the water. That was all I caught as I ran past them, without the time to even thank him as I went.

The white monster's large, yellow eyes abruptly honed in on me as we both grew closer to our respective partners. It's jaws opened, saliva pouring out as it clacked and chattered. The sounds it made grated inside my head, tearing at the shreds of my sanity.

I had to shut it up. If I didn't, I would lose myself.

It's blood drenched scythes swiped through the air, looking to cut me to pieces. But it was swinging too wide, caught off balance by its lack of a leg. I was able to narrowly avoid two of its swings before I was under it.

Mutt's shouts of pain were intermixing with the horrid clicks of the creature. I couldn't waste any time.

There were only three legs left that Liebling was using as it tried to maneuver out from above me. My ripped side was beginning to become a hinderance and I grabbed on to one of the white stalks to keep from falling over. It also seemed effective in keeping the monster from moving it any longer.

Just how strong was I? This was one way of finding out.

My screams unintentionally joined those of Mutt and Liebling as I pulled at the pale limb. My side had to have been splitting open ever further, with how it tore into me, but I endured it as I strained. There was a crunching noise. The leg had to be tearing off. I was using all my strength. It had to be—

I swallowed a mouthful of green water as I fell face first into it. The cries of Liebling reached a sort of crescendo that made me release its limb in favor of holding my ears even as I remained underwater.

When I surfaced, the white monster was in the middle of thrashing wildly on its back. As I had hoped, two legs weren't enough to keep it upright. It swung its arms and twisted its body to no avail. The sounds it was now producing were near unbearable.

I also couldn't feel the right side of my body, but you had to take the good with the bad.

I thought about trying to finish what I started with the monster, but there was a good chance that all the flailing it was doing would spell an accidental end to me if I got just a little unlucky. Mutt, on the other hand, was now very still and quiet as he knelt over the shallow, green waters.

"Mutt? Can you hear me?" I called, walking and falling towards him. The numbness had reached my leg. "Hey! You alright?!"

Mutt shook his head. Blood was dripping from his face and into the water he leaned over. When I was close enough, I could see a few holes dotting his cheek and forehead. Like the holes from a bullet, but much smaller.

"Did she attack you?"

The witch had yet to get very far from where they had reemerged. She was short, the water reaching up to her mid thigh, and her walking was interrupted by the occasional stumble as she gripped her head. The strange cloak she was wearing also didn't seem to be helping as it was dragged through the marsh.

"I have to concentrate or they will get into my brain."

Mutt didn't move or look at me. He had his arms wrapped around himself and appeared to be biting the inside of his cheek. I started to ask him what he meant, but then I saw it. Movement right below his brown skin. Like something squirming just beneath the surface. It snaked across his temple and down into his neck before disappearing.

"Holy shit, Mutt—"

"Kill her and it'll be over," Mutt said, glancing up at me. Several more things moved just beneath his eyelid.

I held in what I wanted to say and simply nodded. Just like with Minerva's poison. It didn't matter how bad it looked, if the witch died, so did her Knowledge.

"Don't let her touch you," Mutt called as I stumbled after the witch. "She has lots more of them inside her."

"Shit, you gonna kill me, Foxy?" the witch asked, cursing again when she nearly fell as she looked back at me. "You gonna kill another little girl?"

Different. This was different.

"Your 'friend' killed my friend. I'm just trying to make her death mean something!"

Lies. It was all lies.

Another high pitched whistle from Liebling made me cover my ears. The witch screamed in pain as well, throwing her arms up around her head and falling into the water. She resurfaced a moment later, spitting, coughing, and cursing.

"Useless! All of you!" She tried to run, kicking up her legs as high as they would go, but she only managed to stumble and fall forwards after only few steps. She broke the water screaming and crying, "I hate you all!"

There were several trees that somehow grew out of the brackish water, their roots completely hidden beneath the surface. They weren't like the trees from a forest or mountain. No leaves on the limbs, the tree itself hardly bigger than a person. It was one of these trees that the witch collapsed against, breathing heavy and groaning in pain as her pet continued to screech.

I might as well have been half a familiar, with how much my right side was helping, but I felt far from stopping. Not as long as Mutt was suffering. Not as long as the witch still drew breath.

"Is there anything I can say that will keep you from killing me?" she asked. The witch kept one hand braced against the tree while the other dug deep into her thick, blonde hair. There were wet streaks on her face, but I didn't pay much attention to them. They were just more lies.

I wasn't far from her. My body wasn't fully responding to me, but once I got close enough I could use the last of my strength to jump her and snap her neck before she even knew what was happening. After what she did to my friends, it was a mercy.

"Then how about this?" the witch reached into her cloak.

I flinched. The distance was still too far. But I had to go for it, before she could stop me.

I launched myself off the single foot, landing in the water just a few feet from her. From there, I was close enough to simply stumble into her and finish her.

From there, I was close enough to see what she held out to me.

Some gold, metallic object with a picture in it. Like the one the Hunter had. Only this one had just one person in it. Someone with bright blue eyes and red hair.

"Your daddy works for us."

She smiled, cruel and wicked as a great hum filled all I could hear. Someone shouted a warning, but it was only a moment before the force of the world collided with my back. The pain was instant, insane, then gone. I didn't even feel it when my body then crashed through the tree the witch had been resting against, splintering it completely in two.

I was lucky I landed in the water face up. In the absence of pain, there was nothing. I could not move a single thing. I could only watch the faraway, black image of the monster as it circled back around to finish the job.

Another, closer, black image slowly crawled into my field of view.

"Sorry, I would kill the witch if I could," the wolf said, his voice tired and strained, "but this is all I can do."

With a howl of pain, the wolf pushed himself upright. The arm that didn't fit with his body was twisted several ways around.

Baldur was getting closer, the hum growing louder. The water around us rippled and was pushed back at the force of his approach. The wolf moved until he was directly in front of me, right in the path of the great, black monster.

"Baldur! Stop!" the witch shouted. She was now half collapsed against the destroyed tree, fresh tears spilling down her face. "If you kill them, I won't get what I want!"

"What are you doing?" I managed to ask the wolf as he tried and failed to push off the ground with his one remaining front paw.

"What's it look like? Repaying my debt."

"I'm finished," I said, chocking as the words tore at my lungs. I could feel the blood dripping out the corners of my mouth. "I think he broke everything. You're throwing your life away for nothing."

"You walked away from a knife in your back. I think you can walk away from this."

The drone of Baldur's wings was all I could hear at that point. It scared away the lapping of the water near my ears and the low whistle of the wind on my face. His armored body and horned head were right there, ready to crush what remained of us.

Mutt was somewhere out there still. Maybe he was watching me die. Or maybe he had lost, too.

"Besides, you still got people to fight for, yeah?"

I looked back to the wolf, made to say something, but he had said that right before the great, black creature hit him. The wolf had managed to push off the ground right before the impact, and he took Bladur's flattened horn right in the chest. No matter how tough he was, there had to been something broken. All of his ribs had to have broken. The mere crashing of their bodies propelled my own limp form backwards until I had washed up on the Hunter's island a good few meters away.

From there, I had a perfect view of it all. The witch screaming and crying against her tree, Liebling resting motionless on its stomach in the water, Mutt still kneeling where I had left him.

And the shattered and mangled wolf holding his ground as his fellow black beast continued to apply pressure as it hovered in the air. The wolf's mangled arm hung uselessly against his side, but his paw still braced against the onyx armor. His hind legs still dug deep beneath the water.

He still managed to open his jaws wide, and clamp them down on the wide 'plate' that made up the back of Baldur's head.

The creature's reaction was immediate. Baldur hit the water, the hum of it's wings dying instantly as they tucked back into its back. It then tried swinging its massive head from side to side, in a desperate attempt to shake the wolf loose, but to no avail.

And that was because the paw that was pressed up against him was no longer a paw. Instead, long pointed fingers dug somewhere beneath the armored plating of the creature, somewhere that made Baldur release low, almost mournful hisses and clicks.

"No!" the witch screamed. "You're hurting him!"

"I'm going to do more than hurt him!" the wolf shouted back. I wasn't sure if he knew she couldn't hear him, but it definitely sent a shiver down my spine.

The feeling was nothing compared to what I felt when his other, mangled arm caught my eye. As the wolf bit and clawed into Baldur, it moved. It twisted—No, it spun back. Rapidly, like releasing the tension off of something forcibly kept the wrong direction. In a matter of seconds, it was back the way it had been originally, and the wolf wasted no time using it to dig into the other side of Baldur's neck.

"You're going to watch..." the wolf whispered inside my head, his voice making me desperately hope he was still trying to talk to the witch, "...as I rip off it's fucking head!"

Then, with a heavy growl muffled by the grip he still had on the monster's head plate, the wolf twisted with both arms and his mouth. He met with resistance for maybe a second or two before Baldur's head came with it.

The beast's back opened again and the drone of its wings returned as it attempted to take off into the air, it's head still twisted to the side. But the wolf did not let go. He was lifted until only the back of his legs still sank into the water before yanking down in a single, jerking motion. That was all it took for Baldur's head to be ripped clean out of it's body.

The body hovered a bit higher into the air for a moment before careening back down. The hum died as soon as it crashed into the water and the headless body thrashed its legs a few moments before falling still.

"Liebling! Fly!"

A softer, higher-pitched hum replaced Baldur's as the white monster suddenly took to the air on a pair of it's own wings. But instead of attacking, it flew past Mutt and towards the witch. It's master jumped and clung onto one of its few remaining legs before being carried off into the sky. In a matter of moments, they were nothing but a pale dot retreating into the light of the sun.

"Shit."

A second splash tore my attention away from the fleeing witch as Baldur's plated head fell into the water. The wolf remained where he was standing.

Standing. There was something covered in black fur with a wolf's face, but it had the arms and hands in the shape of a man, and it was standing.

"You're still alive, right, kid?"

The wolf walked over to me. Walked. It was limping, really more of a gait, but it only used its hind legs. It moved like something in between a man and a beast. But not a familiar. No, this creature was something else. Something different than a human, familiar, or witch. Something I had never seen before.

"Who are you?" I asked as this new being stood over me.

It grinned, razor teeth stained with strange, green gunk. "What do I look like?"

A monster.

"A wolf," I said.

"That's as good a name as any," it said, reaching down one massively clawed hand. "Call me Wolf. And you?"

"Foxy." Even though I knew I couldn't, I tried to bring up my hand to grab his.

And, to my not so complete surprise, it did.

"Just Foxy."