Season 11

This game is now over.

Host

 * DanerSpyre, a werewolf from the previous season, is the one hosting this game.

Players

 * 1) Kattata
 * 2) Kichou Soodo (Eaten)
 * 3) kristconroy (Eaten)
 * 4) MariaShade (Eaten)
 * 5) Scrios (Eaten)
 * 6) Nemo (Eaten)
 * 7) Thendra (Eaten)
 * 8) Aerrow (Eaten)
 * 9) Whitemagewolf (Lynched)
 * 10) Tinaza (Lynched)
 * 11) TwoThousand (Eaten)
 * 12) Tigergal2012 (Eaten)
 * 13) Saphirae (Eaten)
 * 14) fostecl (Lynched)
 * 15) TimeWarper (Eaten)
 * 16) umbreon241 (Lynched)
 * 17) JessHesch (Eaten)
 * 18) ay4u (Lynched)
 * 19) shunn6653 (Lynched)
 * 20) Pokemonmaster345 (Eaten)
 * 21) Brandonallism (Assassinated)
 * 22) Neko13
 * 23) Spectrospecs (Lynched)
 * 24) Utahthief (Lynched)
 * 25) wolfpack5554 (Eaten)
 * 26) SilverSun (Eaten)
 * 27) Ktanaqui (Assassinated)
 * 28) Mew101 (Eaten)
 * 29) DracoSpectrum (Eaten)
 * 30) Mockingbird (Lynched)

Starting Round
Spring has finally come. The winter was long and cruel, and many lives were lost -- animal and villager alike -- but at last, the ice has thawed, the snow melted, and the first shoots of green color the fields and hills beyond the village, the gardens and window boxes within.

Nestled at the foot of the mountains, the spring thaw brings melting snow rushing down through the neighboring river; the snows were particularly heavy this year, and the one lonely bridge connecting this little village to the outside world has been quite thoroughly destroyed: little more than a few weather-beaten, waterlogged boards remain on either side, and those will not last much longer. Though it is a blow to the people, their stores from winter have lasted them this long; a few weeks more of careful rationing until the flood waters calm and the bridge can be repaired will be unwelcome, but endurable.

Although it is too early for the few remaining cows to breed, there are a few chicks sleeping beneath their mothers' feathers in the coop where the rooster now crows his first strident greeting to the sun, spreading pink and lilac watercolors through the grey sky. It is enough to rouse the lighter sleepers of the village; the brightening sunlight and the insistence of the rooster's complaints pull the rest from their warm, comfortable beds and out into the brisk morning.

By noon, the village of thirty-one is bustling, friends and siblings and neighbors greeting one another in the warming air: Mew and Time visit Brandon's milk bar to share in the daily gossip (because nothing stays secret in a little town for long); Maria tends to her little garden, still clinging to life after the harsh winter and filled with fragrant herbs and flowers; Utah and his hawk Mercury prepare for an afternoon hunt to shore up the flagging meat stores; and the resident cats, Neko and Kattata, patrol the village with their vulpine friend Kichou, ensuring as always that business runs as smoothly as usual.

But something is amiss this day -- as the little band of animals passes one particular house, Kat notices something strange: a few trickles of reddish brown on the step. She calls to her companions, creeping closer, recognizing the familiar reek of copper and the stench of something else…

The top of the step is coated in dried blood. A faint trace of brilliant red is still visible beneath the door.

The trio rushes back into town, tails raised and fluffed to bottlebrushes as they sound their terrible alarm. It takes only a few minutes more for a troop of villagers to come rushing behind to the house they recognize as DanerSpyre's, the quiet woman of little presence who has lived in their village as long as anyone cares to remember. ay4u and Brandon try to break through the door, rushing it again and again until their shoulders ache, but the door hardly budges.

It is the owl Spectrospecs that notices the broken window first, fluttering and hooting to draw the crowd. Nemo takes the plunge into the dark house, crawling carefully through the broken glass and suffering only a few minor scratches to her arms and back in the process -- and it is her scream that tears through the village, shaking what villagers had not come to investigate this emergency.

One by one, the other townsfolk make their way inside through the window, though they may well regret it. For there, barring the door, is Daner, her fingers clawing into the wood, so deeply that the fingernails have splintered and cracked and blood trickles down from her hands. Her neck has been broken and her throat torn out, leaving her head to loll back -- they can see her bloodless face, staring at the window with wide, milky eyes, her mouth open in a scream she never made. But worse still -- worse even still, perhaps, are her legs -- a clean femur by the fireplace, a partially chewed calf in her favorite chair, a stump peeking out from under the little coffee table. And everywhere, everywhere there is blood…as though her legs were torn from her while she was still alive.

There are bloody paw prints tracked throughout the room, huge, larger even than the wolves they know prowl beyond the village.

And there is one word now on everyone's lips, as the sun beats down on what is now a dark, cold day:

Werewolf.

Round Two
Throughout the day, villagers whispered quietly amongst themselves about the horrors now threatening their quiet little village. They had thought it safe. They had thought that weathering the winter would bring better times, easier times. But life -- oh, it can be so cruel, and as soon as one hardship is lifted another comes crashing into their midst, leaving the wreckage of peace in its bloody wake.

Daner’s body -- once they were able to pry her nails from the wood of her door -- was buried in the little cemetery near the edge of town, a simple wooden cross marking the site and hung with wolfsbane, in the hopes that the gesture would, somehow, ward off this new, terrible curse.

As the day wears on toward sunset, residents take solace in one another’s company -- Brandon’s milk bar bustles with familiar faces, shaken to the core by the attacks, while newcomers to the village reach out to those that have been long settled, trying to make sense of the grim situation.

And always, there are the votes. A scattering here and there of accusations, whispered softly among close friends, muttered coldly to the empty air, all finding their way eventually to the notice board in the village square, where a list of all the residents’ names has been tacked over postings for firewood and the need for someone to repair a broken shutter.

In the end, it is a newcomer to the village, fostecl, who earns the most distrust -- she came partway through the winter, kept mostly to herself, never really got to know anyone…and now that the village is blocked from the rest of the world and she can’t go to other towns for her nightly murder, she’s shown her true colors to her neighbors. fostecl stands in her own defense -- no one expects any less -- but the villagers have settled on their wolf, and they refuse to be moved.

She turns to run -- but the guardians of the village, Kattata and Neko and Kichou and their new bodyguard Jace loom from one direction, ay4u and Brandon and krist (valiantly defying her impending illness) approaching from another, spreading into a swiftly narrowing ring. She is trapped -- she is trapped, and she must escape, for the sake of her life…

There! Over the heads of the small village guardians, fostecl tries to break through, leaping up -- but to no avail, as krist’s arrows pierce her back. She falls hard, struggling to breathe, a curious wheezing on the air as she crawls away from the animals worrying at her ankles, holding her back. No one wishes to take a life, but it is for the sake of their village, to save all their lives…in the spirit of mercy to one of their own, wolf or no, krist stands over fostecl and fires an arrow down, piercing her heart through her ribs.

Deeply shaken by the life she has been forced to take, krist needs her wolfdog’s support to return home. The rest of the village follow her example, sealing themselves within their homes and sure that tonight, their sleep will be undisturbed.

The rooster announces the coming of dawn with a stern alarm, drawing most all the villagers from their beds -- few slept well, sure that they heard howls close to their windows, or heavy pawsteps in the streets, or claws scraping down their doors. They come swiftly to the town square, to where fostecl’s body lies stiff in a pool of blood long dried and clotted, to count their assembled number, to seek out friends and family not seen through the long, chill night. Time and Mew cling to one another in the weak spring sunlight, while Spectrospecs and Pokemon peer together from their places in the great old oak tree. Kat, Neko, and Kichou, together with Jace and the shivering krist, look through the collected faces, relief flickering through their eyes with each neighbor recognized, replaced in the next instant by fear for another friend remembered but not yet seen.

It is by this slapdash process of elimination that Neko finally realizes: where is Jess? The townsfolk look to one another, seeking their missing neighbor…and with growing fear make their way to Jess’ home.

There is something clearly wrong when the villagers arrive at her home. Utah reaches for the handle to pull it open -- and is forced to jump back as the door falls forward off its broken hinges. A wave of foul air assaults the villagers, the tang of copper biting at the backs of their throats as they pass over the threshold and into the dim room beyond.

They do not need to search to find JessHesch’s body. It is waiting for them when they arrive, looking toward the door -- or, at least, it would have been, had the eyes still rested within the skull. Instead they dangle by their optic nerves, looking down at the wreckage of the woman’s body: skin, fat, flesh, sinew, muscle, all cut down to the bone in paper-thin slices. There is no place left untouched: around her arms, legs, chest, face, she has been cut to the thinnest of ribbons, and never once able to scream: her voice box has been crushed, a ragged, gaping hole in her neck torn open to allow her to breathe while she watched the devastation to her own body…and even this, now, has been plugged by a gore-coated silver bauble.

The residents of the town flee, some losing their meager breakfasts into the bushes outside, into the street. Those that dared not enter know without needing to see for themselves.

It is then that Mew speaks up, holding her sister’s hand tight: they haven’t seen their neighbor DracoSpectrum yet this morning. It is with heavy, wary hearts that the villagers make the trek across town, mounting the stairs and testing the door handle.

The door is open, and does not fall. This gives them hope: perhaps he simply didn’t hear the rooster’s crowing, or is a particularly heavy sleeper -- no one knows him terribly well, he is as new to the village as fostecl was --

Such hope dies as soon as ay4u steps into the house. What should be waiting for him but DracoSpectrum -- hanging from the ceiling by a hook driven through the soft flesh beneath his jaw, eyes wide and blank and not yet milky with the film of death. But for his head, hands, and feet, his skin is missing, leaving only the red, still-seeping muscle, clothed in sparse feathers and great warped shards of glass, painting the floor in wandering rainbows as the sun slants through the windows.

From the side of the room, Jace yelps and backs away, tail between his legs. As the residents turn, the gorge rises in their throats -- for there is DracoSpectrum’s skin, stretched taut before the window, ready to be tanned.

Round Three
By afternoon, a steady rain slips over the town, washing away the blood from the recently buried fostecl’s lynching and cleaning the steps before Daner’s now forever closed front door…but it cannot wash away the fear that has settled over the residents. They try to go about their lives as if nothing is wrong, but for all intents and purposes, the village has come to an utter standstill in the face of this rain and the horrors that will come when the last light fades.

Many of the residents gather again at Brandon’s milk bar to discuss the deaths, warmed and comforted however briefly by the light and company. It gives them courage, and courage is what they need more than anything in this dark day. Courage is what they need to face the night; courage is what they need to fight back fear; and courage is what they needed to target another of their neighbors, whispering with increasing conviction the name of she who must, for all their sakes, be the wolf: Spectrospecs.

As what little light had managed to filter through the clouds faded away toward darkness, the residents gathered at the base of the oak tree where fox and owl had made their home. She was waiting for them, sitting upon her branch as though height alone might deter the villagers, allow her some chance to escape, while they tried to scale the tree…

But no. Out of the steady rain, a silvery shadow darts, dragging Spectrospecs from her branch. She flaps wildly to right herself in the air, to fly out of reach of the arrows or stones the villagers might throw…but no, that is not what struck her: as she banks away from her congregated neighbors, the shape flies past from above, clipping through her wing and sending her tumbling toward the nearest roof. She sees it, briefly, as it skims the ground and begins to climb again: a peregrine falcon, wheeling back, intent on taking her out of the air.

The other residents of the village struggle to keep up, to keep their eye on the two birds wheeling and raking at one another in the air, the conflict blurred by the steady, shielding rain. Utah, closest to the fight, swears that he feels the occasional drop of something hotter than rain…

…and finally, something falls to the ground, wings spread in the puddled water, talons curled and trembling against a heaving, feathered breast. The villagers crowd and press around the body, trying to identify it through the faded light…but it is only as Mercury settles again to perch on Utah’s shoulder, bedraggled and bleeding but otherwise intact, that they can be sure they’ve caught their mark.

Spectrospecs is still alive, staring into the rain with half-lidded eyes. Krist cannot bear to see her in such agony; she draws back a bolt in her bow, and lets it fly into the owl’s heart.

The residents return to their homes, locking and dead-bolting the door, leaving Pokemon to return her sister’s body to the tree they once shared. Utah takes the time to treat Mercury’s wounds, and ay4u ensures that the village’s dear guardians have a warm fire to curl before…but soon, the lights of the village go out, and the rain lulls all to sleep.

The rain continues throughout the night and into the next day, turning the sunrise a cold, slate grey. The rooster’s crow does not come until very late in the morning, though all the villagers are long awake by the time he rouses enough to greet the day. It is only with that sound, though, that clear call of day that they dare to creep from their homes into the rain-washed streets, assured that the night is truly over, and the horrors of night can no longer reach them.

They regroup in the shelter of Brandon’s milk bar, counting their number over and over, friends and family huddled together at the little tables, others slumped against the bar to watch with hollow eyes. It takes no time, though, for ay4u to ask a nervous question: has anyone seen Kat this morning?

That is more than enough to rouse them from the warm comfort of the milk bar and send them again into the rain. As they pass through the town center, the strangest sight greets them: a body, slumped by the village notice board. Nemo moves forward, pokes the figure in the shoulder, watches it slump into a puddle without any trace of resistance.

She turns curious eyes to the other residents: it’s Ktanaqui. But as they look the body over, they can see that this has none of the signs of a werewolf attack: the only wound is a narrow slit in the back of her neck, a thinner one in her throat. Her carotid artery has been severed cleanly; she must have bled out in the night.

But still, no sign of Kat. The villagers turn again to the streets, rushing off in groups of two and three to search the alleyways, the houses…and that is how Thendra and Mockingbird, shuffling along together in silence, find the open doorway.

It is Thendra’s call that draws the other residents to Saphirae’s home. By the time they arrive, Mocking has already begun to hop awkwardly around the body spread-eagled on the blood-drenched rug in the middle of the tiny living room. The body has been slit neatly from throat to navel, the skin and muscle peeled back to reveal the cold red organs, undisturbed…but for the small intestine, cut just above the colon and dragged out in long dry coils before ending back in the corpse’s mouth, shoved down her distended throat.

As Time and Mew rush out of the house, clutching one another and trembling from the chilling fear, a slight motion catches Time’s eye. A twitch of a tiny white paw, under the doorstep across the street. Mew creeps forward to investigate…and shrieks, a sound loud and piercing as thunder, for Maria.

As Maria comes rushing toward the two girls, Mew turns: she holds Kattata’s tiny body in her arms, covered in seeping lacerations, one eye sealed shut by the dried blood from a deep head wound. One frantic thought spins through Maria’s head as she takes the little white cat into her arms and rushes for her home, for the supplies she needs to save the little cat’s life.

Kattata is lucky to be alive.

Round Four
The rain that had poured down since early the day before finally gentled by midday, and had thinned to a fine, hazy mist by the time the sun should have set. With Kat under Maria’s care, many of the villagers ventured out into the chill rain to visit, but otherwise remained closed within their houses -- even Brandon closed the milk bar, keeping to himself but for whatever visitors might venture in, not as customers, but as friends.

Even through the rain, though, the votes came ticking by on the town’s notice board, the old notices tattered and forgotten beneath the list of residents’ names. One by one, the tally grew, until sunset came through the soft rain, and the villagers came together in the village square, looking toward Thendra’s house, where Mockingbird slept on the porch under the old woman’s shawl.

They advanced together, spreading themselves into a tight line, for fear that their target would escape…but she did not try. She could have been asleep, but for the murky, yellowed eyes that stared out from under the edge of Thendra’s shawl. She did not move as the villagers closed in around her, roused her roughly from her perch on the stair. Hearing the commotion, Thendra came creaking to the door, yelling for her neighbors, her friends, to stop, to stop this, dear Mocking couldn’t be the wolf…but they did not listen. TimeWarper and Mew held her gently, led her back into her house as she yelled in her creaking voice for them not to do this…but then the door closed, and the villagers departed, spurring the shambling woman along, and her protests were soon lost to the sound of the gentle rain.

They led Mocking to the edge of the forest, and then deeper, to where the trees began to thicken and the lights of their homes grew dim and faint. Mocking looked up at them, opening her mouth and making a rasping, croaking sound, like a question -- asking when they would begin. Utah, Nemo, Krist, and ay4u looked at one another: they would never be ready for this task. No one was ever truly ready for it -- though, perhaps, they were steeled for it better than they might have been: after all, this could be the wolf that harmed their village guardian. That thought hardened them, emboldened them, as they took hold of her arms and pulled.

At first, it seemed that nothing happened: they simply pulled her arms up, like an old, tattered scarecrow. But then they saw blood and pus blister from the stitches at her shoulders, soaking through the thin dress she had worn since the first day she stumbled into the thin sunlight of the village. A moment later, they heard the stitches tear with a wet, ragged sound, and one arm detached completely from her body, sending everyone careening backwards, ay4u into a tree and Utah to the ground, Mocking collapsing on top of him and trying, it seemed, to use an arm that was no longer there. Nemo picked the corpse up, Utah gagging at the reek of death on her even as he held tight to her other arm, and pulled until the stitches tore again, Mocking and Nemo falling back together onto the wet, cold mud.

Utah and ay4u picked themselves up, throwing the twitching arms aside and taking hold of Mocking’s legs, pulling back until the stitches tore out and sent them stumbling. And all the while, Mocking watched with interest, smiling to herself and gurgling like an infant at play.

Nemo, seeming more or less immune to the stench of decay and blood, lay the limbless woman gently on the ground, smiling sympathetically into the milky eyes. “It’ll be over soon,” she promised as the mud began to glisten in the thin, weak remnants of daylight. Utah and ay4u gave the body wide berth as they made their way back toward the village; Nemo spent a moment or two trying to close Mocking’s eyes, though the woman seemed quite intent on seeing whatever came to scavenge her rotting body, and eventually gave up and followed in her neighbors’ footsteps.

Krist was last, holding her breath as she fired a single arrow into Mocking’s forehead, to keep her suffering brief. Eyes closed, blood seeped slowly from the wound to trickle into her hair…and then the forest grew still and quiet. Hugging her bow to her chest, Krist turned her back on the eerie stillness and followed after her neighbors.

As she walked away, Mocking’s eyes blinked open again. Smiling into the coming night, she began to hum an old village folksong to the howling of the wolves in the forest.

With morning came an end to the rain, though the fears of the village residents remained as strong as ever. By the time the rooster crowed, many of the residents were already clustered around Maria’s door, trying to catch a glimpse of the little white cat that had been under the healer’s care since her discovery the day before, wounded and bedraggled and barely alive. Clustering around the window, they could vaguely make her out, sleeping in ay4u’s lap. Assured of her safety, some of the residents made their way to Brandon’s milk bar, others moving respectfully away to talk amongst themselves, still others waiting anxiously by the healer’s door for official word from Maria herself.

It was not long in coming. As light touched her windows, Maria emerged, followed closely by her overnight guests. Kat smiled tiredly at the well-wishers that clustered around ay4u to see her, stroking her head and under her chin, all talking at once in what amounted to a muddled jumble of sound. But still, the little feline smiled as she sank down into ay4u’s arms, listening contentedly to their chatter as they moved together to Brandon’s bar, reminded by the warmth in her tiny chest of why each night she patrolled these streets.

By the time they arrived, it seemed that their missing members had already been counted out; with the entourage’s entry, the count of absent villagers swiftly dwindled down to two. As ay4u settled in at the bar, laying Kat on the counter while Brandon prepared a special treat for the little village hero, Neko and Kichou leapt up to join her, nuzzling her face and grooming around her ears. But there were still two missing that needed to be found: putting on their bravest faces, the two remaining guardians reluctantly left their leader behind, striding out onto the still damp streets and going their separate ways to find what they could only hope were late risers. The remaining villagers split themselves unevenly between the fox and feline, following down the empty streets, the only sound that of their own footsteps splashing in the puddles left from two days of rain.

Neko and her party had little trouble locating wolfpack5554’s house, so close to the square. The door had been closed and the curtains drawn, which was not unusual. No one had thought anything might be amiss until she did not arrive at Maria’s or Brandon’s milk bar. And even as she knocked cheerfully on the door, Tiger had confidence that she was only sleeping too soundly to have heard the rooster crow. But with each minute that she heard no sound from inside, her smile faded, and her confidence began to waver. She lifted her hand to knock again, only to have Aerrow shove past her and try the knob.

It twisted too easily, and came away in his hand as he drew back. Aerrow glanced at Tig, still standing with raised fist, before shouldering the wooden slab. It came open with a hoarse, groaning creak, stuttering across the floor on a single unbroken hinge.

Even with the curtains drawn against the morning light, there was no doubt that something terrible had transpired during the darkest hours of the night. The thin light filtering through the shades showed the black streaks smeared across the walls, the floor, thick and erratic; the sudden flood of light that fell through the open door fell on chunks of gristle and gore, sunken in pools of dried, curdled blood.

There was no sign of Wolfy -- or, really, no sign that she was still alive. The evidence of a terrible murder was all around them as they crept hesitantly into the house, Aerrow first, the raven on his shoulder cawing hoarsely into the somber silence; then Neko, nose raised and wrinkled in disgust; then Tig, still stunned, stumbling over the uneven floorboards.

The smell of burnt flesh filled the room. Neko sneezed, rubbing her nose vigorously with one paw as though to try and clear the smell even as she approached the fireplace. A large, blackened log lay half on the hearth, half in the still smoking embers. She sniffed at it for a moment, lips pulling back from pale teeth…

And with a howl the little calico tumbled back, claws scrabbling at the rough wooden floor as she bristled at what could only be the remains of Wolfy’s body. The arms and legs had been ripped from the corpse -- the blood spattered and streaked across the hearth made it all too clear that she had still been alive, perhaps seeking refuge in the flames even as they tore her apart.

Rook fluttered down from Aerrow’s shoulder, hopping across the blackened ribs to peck at what must have been the head. After a moment, she gave a disappointed croak and hopped back, beak clattering in the corpse’s ribcage as though seeking out what few organs might have been left in the hollow of her chest. Aerrow crouched down, giving the empty eye sockets a long, hard look.

“She doesn’t have a face,” he announced.

Tig gave a tiny moan. Nearby, Jace whined, nudging a single bloody hand out from under the table. As Krist turned it with the tip of her bow, everyone clearly saw the clump of black hair caught tight in its fisted grip.

Rook gave another loud call as she took off for the rafters. Aerrow glanced at her flight, then turned back to the corpse’s chest, the ribs undamaged but for the char. It seemed like just the stomach and the liver were missing…

…and with a wet, slick sound, the raven’s newfound prize slipped from the eave where she had been worrying at it and fell onto Tiger’s shoulder. The girl screamed as the pinkish-grey organ oozed a slurry of half-digested food -- what could only have been Wolfy’s last meal, before the werewolves had met her in the night.

Still shrieking, Tig swatted the stomach from her shirt and rushed to the side of the room, reaching for a water basin standing on a narrow, blood-stained dresser. Her hands touched the water only briefly before she crumpled to the floor, sobbing wretchedly into her soiled sleeves.

Neko jumped up and peeked inside.

Wolfy’s face stared back at her, the eyes only barely keeping her twisted death mask afloat.

Across the village, as Kichou’s group made their way toward the outskirts of the little town, something cracked beneath the fox’s paw. Somewhere behind, Mew yelped and began to whine softly as something on the hard-packed dirt squelched beneath her boot. As one, they looked at TwoThousand’s home…and whatever hope they might have had dimmed and died like starlight in the face of the storm. The windows, warped and gritty as the glass was, were completely obscured by something brown and viscous on the inside. As they made their way up the steps, swarms of flies buzzed up into their faces, revealing however briefly the tiny bones and chunks of flesh scattered across the porch.

The door was unlocked, but refused to budge as Utah rattled the knob. In the end, he was forced to kick the door in, to the clattering laughter of dozens of bones scattering across the hardwood floor.

Even though they had chosen to follow along, Mew and Time refused to venture inside the house -- and perhaps for the best, considering the sight that awaited the brave few that dared venture past the doorway. Bones -- long bones, small bones, tiny delicate bones that crunched beneath their feet no matter how carefully they watched where they stepped -- were strewn about the floor, the largest clean of any trace of blood and clearly worried by enormous fangs. Scattered about the windowsills, the furniture, the mantle, the hearth, even strewn across the charred logs in the fireplace, were thin bands of something frayed and covered in tiny scraps of flesh.

Nemo ventured further into the tiny home as Utah warily tried to identify the stringy material in the weak light that struggled through the blood-fogged windows -- in the kitchen, arranged in a neat row of pickling jars, were the assorted organs of what could only be the house’s lone occupant: brain, stomach, liver, intestines, all squeezed into their own little glass jars. And all around was the strangest smell, like fresh stewed meat -- a rare commodity after so long a winter, and still rare so early in spring. Nemo’s stomach grumbled an unwitting complaint -- thank heavens she was alone, what would the other residents have thought of her hunger in the face of this gristly array of decaying organs?

A cooking pot hanging over the long-dead cooking fire caught her eye. Looking around to ensure that she truly was alone, Nemo crept forward, unhooking the ladle from the side and lifting it to see just what poor TwoThousand had been cooking before his untimely death --

The sound of something heavy and metallic crashing to the floor made everyone in the main room jump. Utah rushed forward even as Nemo backed up into him, hands by her sides, staring at the chunks of flesh floating across the wooden floorboards.

Though puckered and darkened from their time in the stew, the sparse hairs made it clear that it was human flesh.

From the heavy pot yawning at them from the ashes, a skull grinned out at them, eyeballs still intact, grossly swollen in their sockets.

Round Five
Though the sky remained clear through the morning, by noon thin trails of clouds had begun to creep across the sun, pooling and building around the mountains that protected the little village. A storm was brewing, and darkness would settle sooner still across their homes: it seemed that there was never enough time in a day -- not enough time to recover, to bury their newly dead, not enough time to live -- there were precious few hours that they could spend without fearing the wolves that hid among them wearing human skin, and not one of them could ever entirely quell that terror of the night that would inevitably come.

And it was this very fear that drove them, one after another, to the tattered, water-warped notice board in the village center, to leave their tallies next to the names of neighbors and friends alike. The saddest truth of all was that no one could be trusted anymore.

The villagers assembled as the sunset painted the crowns of their homes in reddish gold. There was no question who would die this night: all heads turned toward Tinaza, already backing away from the sudden bloodlust in the eyes of her fellow residents. They advanced, a slow step at a time, and she swore she could see the wolves in the crowd, fangs dripping blood as their claws reached out for her throat --

With a scream, Tinaza turned and ran, the village close behind. Utah whistled, throwing his arm up to launch the peregrine falcon into the sky. Mercury dove, raking at the fleeing woman’s head and neck, leaving long, bloody gashes in his wake as he wheeled and dove again, tearing away a lock of hair that gleamed gold in the fading light.

Fear drove her on toward the edge of the village and beyond, her feet hardly seeming to touch the ground as her neighbors struggled to catch up, tripping and stumbling over the uneven ground even as Tinaza rushed farther and farther ahead, toward the river and the one route that led to safety --

The one route that had led to safety. The woman’s arms pinwheeled as she reached the end of the bridge, suspended over the turbulent flood waters. The other side of the broken bridge was too far to reach, the gap too wide to jump, and the flood too swift to swim to the other shore.

Tinaza turned back, wild-eyed, seeking another path, another escape, as the villagers grew closer and closer --

Mercury fell silently out of the sun, talons raking again at the woman’s hair; startled, she tried to escape the bird, stepping back --

Off the end of the bridge.

Krist saw the splash and rushed forward, drawing her bow as she approached the river’s edge. She nocked an arrow, eyes roving over the swirling flow. Could she do this, she wondered? If she did see Tinaza break the surface, could she shoot her before the current dragged her under again? With the current moving so fast, would she be able to hit her at all? At her side, Jace sniffed at the high bank, whining at the stress he could smell on Krist…

ay4u shouted. Krist whipped around as Tinaza’s head appeared out of the water, her eyes bulging as she gasped for breath -- the arrow whipped past her ear, the faintest speck of blood coloring the waters. Krist scrambled for another arrow, fumbling to pull her bow back, praying that the woman would not be swept under again -- drowning was not a death she would wish on anyone, if she could spare her that, friend or no…

Something else broke the water’s surface.

Krist’s shot flew wide, landing on the far shore as the pale, webbed fin shot through the flow. Tinaza never saw it: in an instant, she was gone, the water’s surface foaming as something thrashed just out of sight…

…and a plume of crimson bloomed briefly on the frothing water, dissolving away into the flood.

The villagers were quiet as they returned to their homes, shutting their doors and windows and shutters against the coming storm…but even as darkness fell over their little hamlet, they knew that no barricades could protect them from the beasts that lurked in the dark.

The cock did not crow the next morning, tricked by the thick mask of clouds obscuring the sun. That hardly mattered to the villagers, though: most had long been awake, huddled before the fire, taking some small comfort in the heat and light that washed over them, though it could not fight off the ever present chill of fear. As the first rumble of thunder growled in the skies overhead, the remaining residents opened their doors and hurried along to Brandon’s milk bar. Only Tiger was late, coming in with windblown hair from feeding Wolfy’s cats…and troubled, for she could only find Ylla, cowering beneath the porch stairs.

It was warm inside, with everyone gathered together, but it was clear how far their number had dwindled; at their former strength, it would have been nearly impossible to move in the bar. And with so few of them left, it was clear at a glance who was not among them: Aerrow and Scrios.

Atop the bar, the village guardians conferred, their furry heads close together. Whatever they spoke of was a mystery to the other nervous villagers who tried to eavesdrop; only meows and purrs, whines and chirruping barks came from the two cats, the fox, and their apprentice wolf with just his chin on the counter.

But soon enough, it seemed that they reached a consensus of some sort -- the three guardians leapt from the bar, Kat leading the way as they moved out into the dark morning. The clouds loomed and threatened, webs of light streaking across their bellies, but no rain fell just yet; still, the animals made haste in seeking out Scrios’ house, bodies low to the dry ground as though expecting something to attack from the black shadows coiled between houses. The morning had never been so dark before; who knows if the wolves might still be lurking, given some small extra measure of freedom by the impending storm.

As they neared the house, Kichou’s ears flicked forward, then back against her skull. Kat and Neko paused to look at her, then pricked their own ears, creeping closer still to the low wooden structure. As they approached, the other villagers strained their ears, trying to detect what was making the guardians’ hackles bristle, their tails turn to bottlebrushes and rise into the air…

And then they heard the scream.

Like a shot, the two cats bolted for the porch, claws extended and raking at the hard dirt path. Jace, though, was the first to reach the porch and leap at the door, scrabbling at it with his front paws -- and with his weight, the door swung open on eerily silent hinges…perhaps for the worse, as there was no noise to interrupt the strangled, sobbing laughter coming from deeper within the house.

The residents split into two groups -- Kat and Jace leading villagers along a narrow hallway, pressed close against the wall and peering around open doorways; Kichou and Neko dispersing their followers throughout the rest of the small house, through the sitting room and kitchen. For once, the home seemed undisturbed: but for a scattering of blood drops leading from the front door to the back of the house, there was no sign that anything at all was amiss at first glance.

But perhaps that trail was the key: if they followed it from the house, perhaps it could lead them to where at least one of the wolves lived. Tail held high, Kichou made her way out of the house, nose low to the ground to keep close track of the blood trace.

Inside the house, though, as Utah crossed the room, something thick dripped into his hair. Lifting a hand, he looked up at the crossbeams holding the roof up…

…and found himself staring at what had once been a small black cat, tied by its tail to the beam. Its head was missing.

Deeper in the house, Kat and Jace paused, ears pricked. Behind them, ay4u and Tiger held their breaths, listening to the horse, croaking sounds within the room. Something was still in there --

“GET AWAY!!”

Jace tumbled forward, claws scrabbling on the wooden floor; Kat, ay4u, and Tiger dove forward, drawing whatever weapon happened to be at hand --

And there they found Aerrow, hunched over the narrow bed, grabbing for the raven perched on the footboard and looking with interest at the body under Aerrow’s watch. By height alone, it could only be Scrios…but that was the only sign they had to identify him: his head was missing, chopped from his neck, leaving only crushed vertebrae and torn skin behind. His hands, too, were missing, arms ending in bloody stumps that still seemed to seep into the blankets.

As they watched, Rook took wing, flying so close to Kat that her wingtips brushed just over the guardian’s ear before she wheeled and landed at the headboard. Aerrow seemed to have forgotten the raven for at least a moment, sobbing hoarsely over the corpse. Rook took the opportunity to duck her head and snap at the ragged flesh still attached to the stump of Scrios’ neck.

“GET AWAY FROM HIM!!” Aerrow lunged for the bird, only to have her fly once more out of reach. But in that brief moment away from his post, Tig’s hands flew to her mouth to keep back the wave of sickness that suddenly overtook her.

Scrios’ chest had been cut open, the skin pulled back, ribs broken and sternum cracked. His heart was gone: in its place sat Shadow’s head, frozen lips curled back in fear of something beyond her prison of bone.

Kat’s small party made their way back to deliver the news. Tig collapsed sobbing on Time’s shoulder, desperate for the comfort of friends; even Jace seemed unsettled, pressing himself with a low whine against Krist’s legs, his tail curled between his legs. But Nemo, looking back down the hall where Aerrow remained, made a very good point: “If Aerrow’s still here…then we finally got one of the wolves?”

A sudden surge of hope coursed through the people clustered in Scrios’ home. Even Tig looked up, the tears trailing down her cheeks trailing over the first traces of a smile. They’d done it -- they’d finally done it, they’d killed a wolf, and only one more remai--

Kichou slunk into the house, body and tail held low to the ground, and just as swiftly as they’d risen, every spirit sank again.

The fox led them out of the house, following the blood trail into the grass where it was so swiftly lost. Around the house, through the unkempt brush, the somber procession pushed its way toward the window that Kat knew looked into Scrios’ room, where Aerrow doubtless still screamed and sobbed…

…and there beneath it was the second body. It, too, was headless and handless, but neither Utah nor ay4u could see any way of identifying the body as they approached, fanning out to either side as a few other brave residents crowded closer…

“It’s SilverSun.”

All eyes turned to Krist, her eyes beginning to water as she pressed her one hand to her mouth. Fingers trembling, she pointed to his chest: just like Scrios, the chest had been cut precisely from throat to navel, the skin pulled back, sternum cracked ribs broken to open the chest and remove the heart…

…but where Shadow’s head had replaced Scrios’ heart, the corpse of a large yellow spider, legs curled to its abdomen, its pale hair matted with its keeper’s blood.

Round Six
Throughout the day, the clouds continued to build and darken, thunder rumbling and the occasional flicker of light mocking them from the rumpled darkness. But no rain -- not yet, even as the storm stretched off beyond the horizon. But it would come -- as inevitably as sunset, it would come.

As inevitably as the werewolves that stalked their streets, the rain would come.

The votes came in as residents scrambled from their homes to visit the milk bar, their neighbors, their friends, always trying to stay ahead of the rain that never came. A few tics here, a few more there, smudges of charcoal erased and rewritten time and again and again as votes changed.

But as the wind moaned over the rooftops, the village’s choice was decided by two dark marks.

Unlike some of his neighbors who had gone before, Utahthief would not try to run from his fate. He had been very vocal about his feelings toward the village guardian, still recovering from the horrors that had met her not so many nights before. Those that knew the little cat would not allow such slander to go unpunished -- and in their minds, whoever had harmed her might well be trying to get the village to do his dirty work, after the first attempt failed.

They did not need to corner him: instead, he met them in the village square, Mercury on his shoulder. The bird’s breast feathers fluffed out, settling slowly back to his chest as he watched their neighbors approach. For his part, Utah looked straight ahead at the village notice board, staring down the marks that sealed his fate. He was afraid -- as so many of them had been come sunset and their time to die, he was afraid…but he had made his choice: to die with his head held high.

The village, though, seemed unwilling to allow this. Someone shoved him from behind: he stumbled, but did not fall, catching his balance as Mercury’s talons dug into the leather padding. The push came again even as he tried to turn to see his attacker. His balance thrown, Utah fell to his knees, held there by the boot planted squarely between his shoulder blades and pushing him down. Mercury’s wings beat hard as he flew from his disturbed perch to land on the notice board, watching with a keen wary eye.

“So. Thought you could just get away with everything?” The other villagers backed away as Utah craned his neck, trying to see who held him down…but really, there was no need. The voice, light and just barely verging on a cackle, was recognizeable immediately, even if only out of one of Nemo’s half-remembered dreams. “Thought you could just…kill ‘im, and nobody’d care? Hmm?”

A rough flurry of wingbeats and Rook joined Mercury on the notice board, croaking hoarsely into the silence. Aerrow did not look up at her, his attention focused on the man beneath his heel.

“Say what you want,” he giggled. “Say whateeeeever you want. But you’re gonna diiie~ Utah.” Aerrow’s fists tightened, one around the silver bauble, the other around a twisted knife that he raised to tap against his brow, the tip drawing blood even at the lightest touch to trickle down over his unblinking eye.

Utah took a deep breath, ready to speak again in his defense, to try one last plea --

That was all Aerrow needed.

The knife plunged down into Utah’s neck, severing an artery and sending a brilliant spray of blood up into Aerrow’s face and beyond, spurting high into the air and falling across the crowd. Utah’s lips moved as he gasped for air, trying to make out words even as the knife stabbed down again, cutting into his windpipe. Wild eyes scanned the crowd as blood continued to pulse in a bright, bloody fountain out over the assembled masses.

The last thing he saw were his neighbors, their faces streaked with his blood, their faces ghostly in the darkness.

And then his eyes began to dim, his limbs to slacken, the violent sprays of blood from his neck turning sluggish even as Aerrow’s stabs continued, accompanied by his terrible, broken laughter. On and on and on he continued, hacking through Utah’s neck, the blade chipping and sparking on the exposed vertebrae…but finally, the head fell to the dusty street. Aerrow stooped and grinned, his teeth stained with blood as his fingers snared in the dead man’s hair, lifting the severed head to stare into the dull, glazed eyes.

Mercury gave a loud, sharp cry as he took off into the air. Aerrow did not notice, though the rest of the villagers ducked, fearing that the falcon would dive and strike…but he had only one target in mind, and as he pinpointed the white ball of fur near the edge of the ring, he folded his wings and plummeted.

Kat was ready, though. Even as the peregrine righted himself, talons outstretched, she darted to the side, claws out and raking into his wing. The falcon gave a startled shriek as the feathers mussed, just enough to send him spinning into the ground.

He righted himself, hissing at the feline crouched defensively a few feet away. What are you doing, Mercury? she asked, her voice low in warning. The bird hissed again, wings beating dust into the little white cat’s face. You don’t have to do this! she said. Join the guardians, help us root out the wolves, help us to stop all this --

Mercury screamed, head low and wings outstretched, trembling in the wind. He would not be patronized by a cat -- he would head the village guardians, and hunt the wolves to ground. He would lead or give no quarter: the defiance in his eye spoke it all.

I don’t want to fight you, Kat said. They stared at one another, her hackles raised, his wings spread, trying to make themselves look as large and threatening as possible. I don’t want to hurt you, Mercury. The hawk gave another abrasive hiss, refusing to back down to Kat’s intimidation. Don’t do this, Mercury, Kat said slowly. The hawk gave a light, almost laughing shrill. What could she do? She was wounded -- Mercury was not.

The distance between them was narrow -- the bird struck, his beak raking for Kat’s face…but she was experienced, and ready for such an attack. The little cat ducked aside, attacking Mercury’s wings again as he snapped at her lashing tail, his talons trying to grab for a paw, a leg, raking awkwardly from his place on the ground…

But his overconfidence was his undoing. Ungainly on the ground, the falcon’s flapping useless against the determined little cat, it took little time for her to work her way around him, dancing and darting and distracting him with the flurry of white limbs before finally lunging for his throat, cutting off his breath and breaking his spine in the same sudden movement. The bird went limp, still trying to breathe even as his eyes became glassy and dull.

I’m sorry, Kat said quietly as she released her grip.

The fight was over. Utah and Mercury were dead.

As the residents hurried home, the rain began to fall in earnest, washing away the blood from the shattered bodies on the street. And in the comfort of her own home, Krist sobbed into Jace’s fur: she could not spare anyone from the pain of their death.

Thunder crashed overhead throughout the night, rousing the residents from their beds in a panic. Had werewolves broken into their home? Were they in danger? But no -- the worst they found when they crept from their bedrooms were the village guardians, soaked to the skin through their fur, coming to ensure the safety of their neighbors.

It did not help anyone to sleep, though.

Though the violence of the thunder and lightning abated by morning, the rain continued to fall as swiftly as it had the night before. The bedraggled cock did not crow tonight, huddled together with his hens in the leaking henhouse…but that did not stop the villagers from emerging, as though at some silent signal, from their homes, protecting themselves as best they could beneath oilskins or cloaks or, in one case, a particularly unfortunate book, as they proceeded to the milk bar for their morning meeting.

But the milk bar was dark when they arrived. Confused, ay4u tested the door: it was unlocked, and fell open easily at his touch.

Fear rocked through the residents as they burst into the bar, eyes straining through the darkness until Maria could find a candle to light…

…but there was nothing to see. The bar was empty, as neat as Brandon had left it the night before.

Restless and unconvinced, ay4u and Nemo moved through the dim light, checking the dark corners, beneath the tables, under chairs…but there was nothing to see. Neko and Kichou leapt onto the counter and behind, to explore the milk stores in the back…

…but as they landed on something soft and yielding, they knew they needed to search no further.

Brandonallison lay dead in his bar, the only sign of trauma a thin wound at the base of his throat, nearly hidden beneath his collar and the blood that stained his clothes.

Time and Mew sat down at one of the shadowed tables, holding one another’s hands. The rest of the villagers seemed to be in a similar state of shock: they had lost a figurehead in their village, a beacon that kept them sane and strong through these troubled times. Without Brandon, what would become of the milk bar? And what would they do without it as a meeting place, as a haven of peace and companionship and comfort?

ay4u straightened and squared his shoulders. “Give me a hand,” he said, moving around the counter and lifting Brandon’s legs. Nemo shrugged and grabbed his arms, and together they heaved the man’s body up and out the door, toward the rapidly filling graveyard to be buried. When he returned, all eyes were turned to the floor in silent mourning. Taking a deep, sharp breath, ay4u strode across the bar and back behind the counter, lifting one of the clean glasses from the hooks at the back of the bar. “Can I get you something?” he asked Maria, carefully keeping his voice as friendly as possible.

She mustered her best smile. “Hot chocolate,” she said. “As sweet as you can make it.”

It would not be easy to fill Brandon’s shoes…but ay4u was certainly willing to try. And his strength seemed to buoy the spirits of the others gathered in the bar: soon enough, hot drinks were sliding up and down the bar, spills collecting in thick white rings as the residents clustered together, trying to steel themselves for the horrors they knew waited out there in the rain.

As Kat lapped at her milk, ay4u scritching just behind her ears, Time and Mew approached the bar. Her bright eyes looked up at them as they clung to one another, Time biting her lip, Mew her thumbnail. “W-we haven’t seen Tiger yet,” Time said. “We’re…we’re worried.”

Kat’s head came up slowly, milk beading on her whiskers and chin. The air suddenly felt stuffy and still within the bar; under the pretense of letting in more air, Thendra shuffled over to the door and opened it onto the rainy morning.

The mass exodus was the last thing she expected, and with her creaking joints, she was unwilling to follow them back out into the downpour. Instead, she sat down at her table again, picking up the book that someone must have forgotten the day before.

They knew even as they arrived that there was no hope: the door was missing entirely from her house, one hinge broken and twisted, the other missing entirely, replaced by a bristle of splintered wood. Jace growled, lips pulling back from pale teeth and hackles rising as he crept toward the open doorway…

…but there was no reason to be protective, and even he was well aware of it. The wolves were long gone, leaving only the wreckage and the carnage of their midnight hunt. With Kat, Kichou, and Neko close behind, the village guardians crept into the house, scanning the room for their friend…

…and there she was, in plain sight, her feet barely visible beyond the doorway into the hall. Ears perked, Jace moved forward, nose wrinkling to catch any scents, familiar or unfamiliar, that might give him a clue for who was here…

…but all that any of them could smell was death and blood as they peered into the corridor. There was Tigergal2012, stretched out on the ground. Her neck was broken and torn by enormous teeth: though she lay on her stomach, her frozen, terrified face still stared up at the ceiling. Perhaps she had seen the wolves as they attacked…but that knowledge was lost now -- her eye sockets were empty, blood caked around the ragged edges and trickling down into her hair.

Nemo frowned as she approached, striding into the hallway heedless of any potential danger to flip Tiger onto her back, ready her remains for transport --

Krist sobbed and turned away, striding back to the front of the house and out into the rain. Maria stepped forward into her place, frowning as she stared down at the ragged, gaping hole left in Tig’s chest: even from here, she could see that the girl’s liver and heart both were missing. Her arms, stiff now from rigor mortis, held the broken body of her dear cat Bengal, his face unrecognizable and eye sockets empty…but the hands that held him tight were missing their fingertips, leaving only her thumbs intact.

But worst, perhaps, was the fact that her head turned, as well, lolling on the ragged, crushed neck…and revealing that the hair and scalp alike had been ripped away from the back of her head, revealing gleaming bone dulled by the dry, caked blood, whole and untouched…

…except for two small holes cracked in her skull, the eyes of a cat fitted into the uneven cracks and staring at the ceiling out the back of her head.

Round Seven
Nightfall was perhaps what the village dreaded most. Of course, they feared the werewolves that stalked their streets…but daylight kept them at bay. Even on days like this, where the rain -- or in this case, snow, as the rain had turned around mid-morning to a thick, wet blanket of white -- fell from dawn to dusk, the sun hidden somewhere behind the clouds was enough to keep the monsters at bay -- but with the setting of the sun and the dawning of the moon, there was nothing that could save them. No weapons, no barricades, no locks -- come nightfall, all they could do was pray to see the morning.

Whatever gods watched over their village did not seem intent upon listening.

As the fickle half-light of the storm began to fade, the village assembled at the notice board in the village center. Already it was too dark to see what was written on the water-logged list of residents; ay4u pushed his way to the front of the crowd, lifting a glass lantern toward the parchment. A dozen pairs of eyes scoured the page, squinting at the faded streaks of charcoal staining the list.

It took some time to puzzle through the wash of grey. After a moment, all eyes turned to seek out WhiteMageWolf in the crowd.

…but she was not there. They searched again, men and women in rain cloaks pulling back their hoods and scrambling into a more or less even file to better identify those among them…but there was no sign of her.

“Maybe she’s at home?” Time suggested weakly, shielding both herself and her sister beneath a single cloak.

“Most likely,” Nemo said. “Maybe she saw the votes before we did and wants to make a break for it.”

Could there be any clearer sign of a werewolf? With ay4u’s lantern held high to light the way and the village guardians traveling close in his wake, paws muddy and fur slicked against their skin, the procession made their way through the narrow streets to WhiteMageWolf’s house.

Nemo knocked politely at the door before trying the handle. It was locked.

“Stay away!!” a voice inside cried. “Leave me alone!”

“The windows are boarded up,” shunn called, tapping on the dark glass. “Probably the door, too.”

That could be a problem…or, it could only be a minor inconvenience, as Aerrow skulked forward, blade in hand, and drove the hilt once, twice, thrice into the warped, imperfect glass. The first blow cracked the pane; the second sent spiderwebs of cracks through every corner; the third shattered it entirely, glass raining down onto the ground beneath the sill. Ignoring the glass still sticking obstinately to the window frame, Aerrow gripped the edges, hoisted himself up, and kicked at the boards blocking the opening. His foot cracked easily through, leaving an opening just barely wide enough for such a thin body to pass.

Aerrow disappeared through it. A shrill scream pierced the coming night, muffled by the snow around them as the rest of the villagers crowded around, trying to find some safe way inside. With so few slender enough to make it through the hole, and apparently little time to waste knocking shards of glass from the frame before Aerrow took care of the job of exterminating the werewolf, they did the only thing they could: Nemo pushed Krist toward the window, while ay4u crouched and cupped his hands. Steeling herself, Krist stepped on ay4u’s cupped hands and vaulted herself neatly through the opening, Jace barking madly at her heels as he tried unsuccessfully to follow.

Krist gagged as she rolled to her feet. Looking around, it seemed that the young woman had been going progressively more insane as the days passed and the attacks grew worse and worse. She had clearly not been out of her house in days, even to relieve herself: the small, cramped house reeked of human waste, rotten food, and the unwashed body in filthy clothes huddled in the corner, as far from Aerrow as possible. Her eyes were wild as she tried to press herself through the wall to escape -- but there was no escape, not from the prison she had made for herself.

“Stay back!” she shrieked again. Aerrow made a strange, quavering sound in the back of his throat as a thin, crazed smile bled across his face. He advanced another step, watched as she tried to climb up the walls and into the rafters. He advanced another step as Krist rushed forward, trying to navigate the confusion of broken, overturned furniture that had quite evidently been used to construct part of the barricade.

Aerrow struck long before she could make her way through the mess. It was a swift, sure, dirty attack, the blade that not long before had helped to break the window tearing down into her throat -- and loosing a spray of blood violent enough to paint the ceiling in spattered streaks of red. Aerrow stepped back, a hand to his chin, admiring his own work and apparently quite pleased with himself as Krist vaulted over the last of the obstacles in her way.

She reached for her bow, only to find that she did not have it: in order to fit through the window, she’d had to leave her weapons behind.

WhiteMageWolf stared up at her with wild, vacant eyes, clawing at her own throat and cutting her fingers on the blade still lodged in her neck. Krist looked around, seeing nothing else in the room that could possibly help…and with a strangled sob, grabbed the hilt of the blade and tore it from the woman’s body.

Blood arced from the wound, spattering Krist’s face as she dropped to her knees before her neighbor. She had no words, nor any time for them: gripping the knife in both trembling hands, she lifted it over her head and plunged it down into WhiteMageWolf’s chest.

The woman choked, clutching first at her neck, then at her chest. Krist’s strike had glanced off a rib; with another muffled cry she tore it out again, lifted the blade, and attacked once more.

This strike was true. The light faded swiftly from the woman’s eyes, the blood from her neck suddenly pulsing only weakly, and then coming as only the faintest trickle before ceasing entirely. Her body went limp in the bloody corner as Krist staggered back, retching into the rubble.

“Spoil sport,” Aerrow sniffed, plucking the knife from WhiteMageWolf’s corpse and wiping it off on his already blood-stained shirt. “She would have died anyway, if you’d just waited a minute or two.” With nothing further to occupy his attention, he walked to the door, pushing away the furniture and undoing the lock before sauntering outside into the dark.

Few were willing to venture into the house. Thendra hobbled inside just long enough to guide krist out, still sobbing and retching with every few steps, Jace once more at her side, but no one else had any interest in pressing any further that night. The remaining villagers made their way home through the unseasonable weather, locking their doors though they knew it would not help. It made them feel safer. It helped them sleep.

And sleep they did, as best they could, until the sunrise -- or as near to it as they could determine through the heavy clouds still hanging over their little hamlet. And what few did manage to sleep to that hour were woken by a high, piercing, animal shriek tearing through the streets. In an instant the villagers were out of their beds and rushing through their doors to find the source of the sound.

They did not have to search for long -- soon enough, the source found them, skidding to a halt among them, its high-pitched cry still wavering on the air.

It was Jace, covered in blood, shivering and howling with his tail between his legs. But as Maria reached for him, he jumped out of reach, rushing back the way he had come and leading the last remaining villagers back to his own home. The door lay broken in the street, the splintered pieces streaked with blood.

Kat, Kichou, and Neko crept through the open door, hackles raised and ears slicked back as they followed their guardian in training. There was no need for a search, though: the body was in plain sight, hanging on the wall where ordinarily a deerskin from a recent hunt might be drying. kristconroy's hands and feet had been cut off; her body skinned, leaving only muscle behind; and even her hair and the scalp beneath stripped down to the bloody bone. Her chest had been cut open, the ribs broken and the organs removed…though where they were now, no one could tell. Beyond the blood covering the body, the floor, and Jace, still crying at his master’s side, there was no sign of any disturbance. Perhaps the wolf had killed her quickly.

They could only hope she’d been so lucky.

As the village guardians crept from the house, heads down, leading the still crying Jace in their wake, a fretfully frowning cluster of villagers met them. But it was not fear of what they could guess in their faces.

“Mew and Time aren’t here,” Nemo said, twisting her hair between her hands.

“They’re not at the milk bar,” ay4u added. “I went to check when they didn’t show. Not even footprints.”

The fear that gripped their remaining friends flared into the village guardians as they trotted down the steps and through the streets to the house that Mew and Time shared. The door was closed, but yielded without so much as a creak of protest under Nemo’s hand.

The men and women and animals clustered before the door fell silent in the face of a young woman’s tears. Mew sat curled on the floor, the broken body of her sister Timewarperdrawn into her bloody lap. It seemed that every bone in her body had been broken and folded back on itself, until the bloody splinters of bone shredded through what had, not even half a day before, been warm skin. Legs drawn up and folded around her chest, arms encircling herself in a horrible parody of a hug, the compact, broken corpse stared at them with milky eyes where they stood in mute horror upon the porch. Her neck had been twisted so that she saw all that lay behind her -- and so that they could see her face, and that final cutting jab written in her twisted, screaming face:

Nothing can save you now.

Round Eight
Perhaps it was only in their imaginations, but it seemed that they days had finally begun to stretch, the sun to rise sooner and set later -- a precious gift of added moments, free of the fear that hunted them in the dark.

And yet, as their number dwindled, the fear that stalked them by night seemed to grow bolder, haunting their hearts by day, as well: Mew, barely functional after the murder of her sister, would allow none to touch her but Maria, and even she for only the briefest of moments before she skittered away again, wide-eyed as a frightened animal. When she would not accept any food come midday, the village’s healer was forced to leave the simple sweetened gruel in the corner of the spare room she’d been given in Maria’s little home. As she left, Maria heard the girl mewling beyond the closed door, a kitten lost without her sibling.

As the shadows stretched toward the east under the touch of the setting sun, the villagers began to assemble in the square. The list of their few remaining names was all that remained on the notice board; long gone were the requests for help mending a roof, or knit scarves for sale or trade: the men and women that had written them were mostly gone by now, by either the claws of the wolves or the far harsher hand of their neighbors.

But even as the earliest comers arrived -- Aerrow first, eagerly bouncing on the balls of his feet, hand tightening compulsively on the hilt of his knife; followed soon after by Nemo, hiding Snuffles in her scarf where his whiskers tickled her neck -- someone was waiting for them, leaning contentedly against the sturdy wooden frame. shun6653 smiled as each member of the village arrived, his friends gathering one by one to bid him farewell.

As Maria and ay4u brought together the last of the able-bodied villagers, shunn shifted, stretched his hands high over his head, and looked at each remaining member of the tiny hamlet. They knew each other well, and had for longer than any of them could remember. Time somehow seemed to blur around these few, shifting into memories of nightmares half-remembered, a sickening sense of déjà vu that overwhelmed him as he looked back on their time together. It felt like this was not the first time he was facing death.

Perhaps that was why shunn seemed unafraid as he stepped forward, arms open to meet his fellows. “Well?” he asked. “What’ll it be? You know, call me crazy, but if you could make it quick, I’d really -- ”

His words choked off in a strangled cry as he fell to his knees, blood soaking through his trousers at the knee. Aerrow rolled his eyes toward the dimming sky, drumming his fingers on the grip of the blade. “You people just never stop talking,” he hissed. “Yap yap yap like a bunch of mutts at the butcher’s door.” He kicked shunn hard in the small of the back, sending him lurching toward the hard-packed dirt; he caught himself just in time, flinging both arms out to arrest the fall.

Aerrow planted his foot on shunn’s back and leaned down, wrenching one arm up and back. Hopelessly off-balance, shunn fell hard, face in the dirt as Aerrow twisted his wrist until the bones began to snap. “Just die already,” he giggled, taking his knife and sawing slowly through shunn’s thumb. The screams must have been like music to him, for how he smiled as he worked. “Just die already, if you hate it so much.”

shunn’s thumb fell in a wash of blood onto Aerrow’s boot, bouncing to the ground to roll at the edge of the crowd. Maria stepped forward, hands held placating outward as Aerrow began to cut off shunn’s index finger, humming through the young man’s sobs and screams while the rest of the village looked on in mute, unmoving horror.

Three steps to the gruesome scene, Aerrow fixed his bright, frigid gaze on the village healer and turned the knife on her, blood dripping down onto the hard-packed road. “No,” he said in a low, stiff voice. “Not this time. Not again. You’re always taking my fun away, always, but this one’s MINE you HEAR!?”

Maria stepped back into the retreating crowd. Aerrow scanned them all again before turning his attention back to the hot blood drenching his other hand, and the grin slowly cut across his features again.

As shunn struggled, Aerrow cut off the rest of his fingers, letting them fall where they would. Rook swooped down from her perch atop the notice board to tease at one experimentally, but seemed to find it too fresh to serve as more than an idle plaything. Once the distraction of shunn’s hands was out of the way, Aerrow knelt on his fellow villager’s back, grinding his knee into shunn’s spine and dragging his head up by the hair. shunn, unfortunately, was still very much alive, whimpering and sobbing pleas for help as Aerrow cheerfully began to slice the features from his head -- first the ears, gushing blood and falling with a soft, wet splat into the pooling blood around them; then his nose, leaving a bleeding darkness on his face as he gasped for tiny breaths through a slack-jawed gape.

It was only as Aerrow pulled shunn’s lower lip out straight and pierced through it with the knife that the villagers finally turned and ran, some alone, some in small clusters, all seeking nothing less than escape. Some were violently ill, losing all that they had eaten through the day to the horrors of a madman’s joy; others did not stop until they reached home and lit all the candles and lamps they owned, pulling them together in a single room to keep the dark at bay…but all locked their doors and barred them tight as shunn’s thin sobs finally trailed into a silence, broken only by Aerrow’s wandering giggle in the final moments of dusk.

Only the village guardians dared to take one last circuit of the village, giving wide berth to shunn’s desecrated, decapitated remains. When all were certain the village was secure, Jace, Kichou, and neko returned to ay4u’s home to rest as best they could. But it was Maria who saw the little white cat in her window, and opened it to allow the leader of the village guardians inside.

I came to check on Mew, she explained worriedly, ears flicking toward the guest room where tiny mewling cries still rose intermittently. …how is she?

“Not…not well,” Maria admitted, opening the door. The girl was curled in the far corner, her midday meal cold and untouched on the far side of the room, whimpering into her knees. Her bloody nightgown had been replaced by one of Maria’s simple, dark gowns, too long for the girl but serviceable enough. Kat crept across the room, her whiskers brushing Mew’s wrist; the girl bolted upright, very nearly climbing toward the ceiling…but as she saw her guest, she slipped weakly back to the floor, curling up once more. Frowning her little feline frown, Kat squirmed her way into Mew’s lap, warm and purring against the girl’s chest. Mew gave another little cry as she put her head down on her knees, neither accepting nor rejecting the caring comfort.

Maria closed the door and left them together.

It was almost a blessing that morning seemed to come earlier, the cock’s crow a grateful end to sleepless nights. At that signal, every able body as one emerged from their homes and made the silent, scurrying trek from house to milk bar, welcoming the tiny chime of the bell over the door as they entered. Somehow, that tiny sound promised that they had lived another night, without remind them that another was coming fast upon its heels, a knowledge all too soon forgotten in the eternal fear of attack.

Unfortunately, it was not hard to find their missing member. The villagers sitting at and on the bar twitched nervously, some banging their heels on the wooden panel supporting the counter; others did the same to the leg of their old stools, until umbry broke a slat and nearly spilled to the floor. Then the waiting was only tense, the resignation that dawned upon them grudging and sad.

But they still took heart, even if only faintly, at the fact that only one was missing from their normal morning number: perhaps shunn had been the wolf after all, perhaps they had finally, finally rid the village of half their nocturnal problem…

But one remained: and come morning, it was Nemo absent from the familiar gathering.

It was a somber little procession that made its way single file through the narrow streets, led as always by the village’s protectors. Even they were not immune from the suggestion of the dark: none of them looked like they had slept the night before, and Jace’s head jerked up from its hangdog low every few minutes to look around with a paranoid’s certainty of being watched before hanging down again.

Nemo’s door was slightly ajar as they came to the door. Jace pushed it open with his head, allowing the senior guardians to enter before their junior member set foot on what already smelled, even to the underpowered nose, of blood and death enough to glut a cemetery.

And indeed, they were right: there was Nemo, sitting slumped in her chair, staring down at…the better half of her on the floor. For the Nemo sprawled barely upright in the padded seat was little more than a bloody skeleton, held together by tendons alone, some smaller bones scattered like pebbles across the floor. The rest of her appeared to have been turned…quite literally and nauseatingly inside-out: from the intact skin stretched and distorted by the effort of turning the pale flesh inward and exposing the bloody underside; to the muscle, bound and twisted into its proper place by locks of Nemo’s own hair, yanked out in bloody clumps at the roots that now dangled from their new knots; to her internal organs, stuck in place by small bones sharpened by a swift break and stabbed through soft tissue to hold them in their anatomically proper locations, it was like seeing the entire internal structure of a human body. Perhaps she would have been impressed, if she knew what had happened to herself in death: as it was, Nemo’s blind, glazed eyes stared out of her skull at her own remains, appreciating nothing.

Hearts were heavy as the increasingly small procession finally retreated from Nemo’s house, closing the door behind them: they would clean up the remains later, but for now they could at least keep Rook and the other scavengers at bay. The path from Nemo’s house back to the milk bar took them on a different route: it was Kichou, that first caught the scent of blood and earth and fear on the morning breeze. Taking the lead, much to neko’s confusion, the procession followed warily in the little black fox’s wake, until they arrived at the old tree beyond Scrio’s house that had once been shared by Spectrospecs and her sister.

But now, there was blood splashed across the ground at the mouth of Pokemonmaster345’s burrow.

The passage through the roots was large but narrow: it offered enough room for a small person to pass through with relative ease; unfortunately, their smallest remained asleep where Maria and Kat had left her, curled in the corner of her new room. With little choice remaining, their assembled villagers too broad at the shoulder or long in the spine to make it through the curved passage, the four village guardians slipped down through the tunnel toward the deep burrow, eyes wide and pupils dilated to catch the dimming light from the world above.

They wished they hadn’t as the passage widened into Pokemon’s modest burrow: what features of home she had set about her little den were smashed to splinters and worse, along with what was left of her body…and there was very little left to prove that the remains had been Pokemon at one point: only a fox’s brush, lying limp and forgotten and remarkably unscathed against the curve of a wall, loaned any credit to the notion that the fragments of bone and lumps of flesh and gore and fur spattered across floor and walls and ceiling had once had any more coherent shape than a blob of flesh and organs.

The four crept from the burrow thoroughly shaken, their paws tracking bloody prints alongside the thick smears leading up to the surface. As they passed back toward the light, their eyes caught sight of the writing on the tunnel walls, gouged by immense bloody claws into the earth, deeply canted as though written from beyond the tunnel’s mouth:

Smile while you still have a chance

Round Nine
The sun seemed to mock them now. The village was quiet and subdued now, with only nine remaining of their number, and the sun never seemed to linger in the sky long enough, though spring was so heavy in the green-scented air, in the flooded river, in the songs of birds and the incessant chatter of their new chicks from the trees. Clouds scudded across the silent sky, casting the village in deep, intermittent shadow, that made Mew cry as though night had returned too soon, leaving all of them unprepared.

The residents spent their day at the milk bar, their every request tended by ay4u with a pleasant smile and a kind word that somehow made the shadows seem lighter, gentler, to all but little Mew, hiding under the bar behind one of the tall stools, breathing into mug after cooling mug of cocoa, until Maria managed to coax it from her grip and offered it back to ay4u with a weak apology.

Only one thing drew them from the safe confines of the milk bar, and that only as sunset painted the sky with blood -- a shade that Maria prayed heralded the death of a wolf, rather than the deaths of her neighbors. But one death was unavoidable: the name marked on the village notice board.

The nightly sacrifice, for the good of the village.

Aerrow met them, grinning from his perch on one of the sturdy posts supporting the board. “Is it time? It’s time, isn’t it?” He cackled giddily as he twisted in his place, leaning over to see the night’s victim. “Who is it? Who is it who is it tonight who who who?”

Despite himself, ay4u couldn’t help but wonder if Aerrow hadn’t skewed the voting while no one was watching. It certainly wouldn’t have been hard, with everyone huddled in the milk bar, unable to see just what he did…after all, when was the last time that the votes had piled so overwhelmingly behind a single name? But like it or not -- legitimate or not -- it didn’t seem like they had much other choice this time.

“It’s umbreon241,” ay4u said at last. Aerrow’s face split into a wicked grin, sharper than the knife in his belt, as he slithered to the ground, eyes fixed on the treehouse visible near the edge of town. Should they try to stop him? Should they try to contain him, incapacitate him, keep him from doing what no one else truly wanted to do because he enjoyed it so much?

No one moved to stop Aerrow as he slunk away, whistling tunelessly in time with his wandering steps. The few of them that remained huddled together for a moment -- the village guardians pressed comfortingly against the shins of their dwindling charges -- before, like so much smoke, they dispersed, the guardians escorting their charges to their scattered homes.

Aerrow needed no escort, though -- he was perfectly safe in the remaining daylight, perfectly at home on these empty streets. He fingered the wicked blade, imagining the smooth red lines it would make as he put it to the use it was designed for, the bright color that would paint the steel, the striking patterns he would fling across the walls and floor and ceiling as the knife danced through the air -- he could picture it all as he scaled the tree with ease born of many lifetimes of climbing, flying, perching.

There was no door to the treehouse -- not that it would have mattered even if there was. He did not announce himself, looking instead to the low rafters, around the simple wooden furniture, the hand-crafted silver ornaments decorating the scattered shelves. Umbreon looked up from her crafting table, frowning deeply as she put down the brooch she’d been working on.

“I didn’t invite you in. Please leave.” Her voice was airy and flippant, but underscored by irritation. Aerrow smiled and pulled the naked dagger from his belt, running his thumb along the finely honed edge -- he’d spent all day whetting the blade with a rock, so that even that light touch sliced open the joint of his finger. He lifted his hand, watched the entrancing red trail that licked around the heel of his palm, down his arm, and into his sleeve, spreading fiber by fiber through the weave.

By the time he looked up again, Umbreon was armed with a crossbow, her aim steady despite the flicker of fear he could see in her eyes. “Please leave,” she repeated as he sucked at the cut on his joint. It tasted tangy. He took a step forward.

Umbreon fired.

The shot whizzed past Aerrow’s ear. He took another step forward as she fumbled for another bolt, and another as she dropped them all. He stepped onto the scattered projectiles as she reached for them, and grinned down into her wide eyes as she stared back up at him.

“Y’know what the difference between us is?” he asked pleasantly. She crouched frozen before him as he knelt to her level, sweeping the flat of the blade across his trouser leg. Her mouth hung silently open as he lifted the dagger to her cheek, tapped the blade to her skin, drawing a flash of blood.

“You don’t want to hurt me.”

The heads of all four village guardians came up at the scream that twisted into the sunset. Hackles bristling and skin quivering beneath raised fur, they began their sweeping patrol of the empty streets, trying to ignore the screams and sobs rising into the darkening sky…and trying to put it all from their minds as the night went utterly, terribly silent.

Morning had brought them no real peace in far too long. This morning was no different -- the sun rose, and with it the trembling villagers, creeping from their homes like so many frightened rabbits from their warren. At their doors, they found the village guardians waiting with comforting, anxious smiles to escort them through what now felt, even in daylight, like a dangerous place.

Aerrow was perched again on the notice board, his clothes and face and hands caked in blood, the blade at his side pristine. He grinned at his neighbors, sizing them up as though imagining just what he could do with it on each of them. Jace, hackles raised, moved himself protectively between the assembling group and the lunatic that had so giddily taken over the nightly task of sacrificing one of their own.

Thendra smiled faintly at ay4u, leaning heavily against her cane. “It’ll be all right, dear,” she said. “Today will be better. The floods won’t last forever. We’ll see these beasts routed and then rebuild -- we’ve rebuilt in the past, from storms and floods and blizzards…it makes us stronger, you’ll see.”

ay4u had just opened his mouth to reply when Kichou came rushing up to the group, low to the ground, fur bristling. Kattata jumped down from her perch on ay4u’s shoulders to meet the glassy-eyed fox.

What’s wrong? Where are Maria and Mew? she asked the trembling vixen. Kichou made no reply but to look back over her shoulder, back the way she’d come. Back toward MariaShade’s home.

Even Thendra’s quiet optimism failed her as they made their way back down the street to Maria’s home. The exterior looked undisturbed; ay4u tried the door, and found it firmly locked and barred. The windows were unbroken, the door showed no signs of scratches, the hinges were intact…Neko, Jace, and Kattata all looked questioningly at Kichou. In reply, the fox led them around to the garden gate.

The way into the garden was held only by a simple latch on a low swinging gate; how often had the villagers come this way and seen her out in her garden amid all the healing herbs and roots, tending them in that bright floral scarf and heavy gloves? The gate, too, remained closed…but now there was a very definite smell in the air: copper and mud, a heavy, oppressive odor that made the animals wrinkle their noses.

ay4u unlatched the gate. It swung carelessly open, allowing them entrance to what once had been a garden.

It was not a garden any longer. The plants, all so carefully tended, nurtured until they flourished, had been dug up, shredded, and left to decay in the warming air. Though there were pieces scattered throughout the entirety of the garden, most of the destruction seemed focused on one particular corner of the enclosure…where a great mound of dirt had been piled, as though to hide something buried.

No one moved for a long time.

“Maria’s got a spade inside,” Aerrow sang from his perch atop the garden wall. “Don’cha wanna see what’s in there?”

Jace growled again at Aerrow even as Thendra cleared her throat. “He’s right. There’s no point in beating around the bush. We’ll have to find out sooner or later -- best make it sooner.” But her voice trembled as badly as her hands, and when she tried to move forward her cane was all that kept her upright. But together all of them made it to the little covered porch leading into Maria’s tidy home.

And that was where they saw the blood, smeared and spattered across the boards, and the door hanging haphazardly from the frame by its lower hinge alone.

They stood staring into the darkness of Maria’s home. No one moved.

“Come oooon,” Aerrow whined. “I’m booooored.”

Still, no one moved. With a grumbling sigh, Aerrow shoved past ay4u, stepped over Kattata and Kichou, and made his way across the threshold, leaving no prints in the long dried blood. Step by painful step, the rest followed.

The light from the windows was strangely gentle, turning the horror to sepia. The blood on the floor and the walls, the bits of hair and flesh in what must once have been pools of red…on the table where Maria had once made her medicines, a pile of bloody bones lay heaped as though waiting to be ground to medicinal powder. Still more bones stuck at odd angles from a cookpot over the dead fire, where the healer had brewed her tea and her broths alike, trails of sinew dangling down to stick on the blackened rim.

Aerrow giggled, poking something hanging from the ceiling. ay4u and Kattata hesitantly made their way over to him, glancing at the rafters overhead to see the dried plants Maria had spent so much time preparing, for the day that someone might be in need of them.

What had Aerrow’s attention, though, was not a plant. Long, dark hair, knotted tight to the beams overhead, dangled down to nearly chest height, weighed down by scraps of bloody skin. Aerrow poked it again, making the whole mess swing sluggishly back and forth.

ay4u scrambled back for the door. Kichou, waiting outside, ducked out of his way as he careened off the porch and into the dirt.

As Kat leapt to follow, her paws splashed.

She looked down at the pool of blood, so thick it had yet to dry. Her bright, wide eyes, pupils dilated, searched for the source of it -- could there really be so much blood just from Maria, with all the rest smeared about --

“Oh, dear lord,” Thendra breathed. Kat’s ears slicked back against her head, her body going low to the ground and smearing her soft white breast with blood as a desolate mewl rose from her tiny mouth.

Mew101’s body, curled into a tiny fetal ball, huddled in the corner. The little white cat crept to the girl’s corpse, nudging a stiff arm with her head as Thendra approached. Her body was brutally mangled, arms and legs at odd angles, clearly broken in multiple places to keep her from escaping…but the worst was her open throat, a horrible, gaping hole just above her collarbones -- and yet, there was no sign that any major artery had been cut. How long had she lived, slowly bleeding out while the wolves watched her?

Thendra shook her head slowly, reaching out to close the wide, dry eyes with a pass of her bony hand --

The old woman recoiled as she touched Mew’s face. Kat looked up at her, fear rising in her chest as she stood supported by Mew’s arm, looking hard at the pale, bloodless face.

A long, deep cut, stenciled in red, ran along Mew’s eye sockets. She must have seen everything -- she must have seen Maria’s murder, must have seen it all, watched everything the wolves did before she died of her own wounds.

They’d cut away her eyelids to keep her from missing a moment.

Round Ten
As the sun always rises, so the sun must always set. And with the setting of the sun, the villagers have learned -- with the loss of light from their world -- death stalks their narrow streets, silent as the breath of those few souls that remain.

And so they assemble, the paltry half-dozen of them that still walk, and breathe, and tremble -- ay4u, Aerrow, Kichou, Jace, Kattata, Neko, and Thendra -- converge upon the village square, eyes scouring the notice board and the charcoal-streaked list that has remained, through storms and sunshine, since the wolves first made their presence known.

“It’s a tie,” ay4u said.

“NO!” Aerrow cried, falling from his perch atop the board. “No no no nooooooooo…” Jace growled uncertainly, taking a step back from the young man rolling miserably about on the ground. “I gotta kill somebody -- I gotta, I gotta, I gotta -- “

The knife flashed in the fading light. The village guardians leapt back, fur bristling. Thendra made a small noise and fluttered her hands to her chest.

But the sun, it seemed, cast its protection upon them in its final, fickle rays. ay4u leapt for the knife even as Aerrow lunged for the wolf before him: as Jace and Kichou barked and Neko and Kat hissed and bristled, ay4u and Aerrow battled for the blade, rolling on the hard-packed dirt of the square.

For just an instant, blood stood on the ground where they rolled, before seeping into the dry dirt.

And then they sprang apart, ay4u scrabbling to his feet, blade in hand, as Aerrow scuttled away across the ground, a low feral growl rising on the air around him, his lips curled back in a menacing snarl.

In the next instant, Aerrow was on his feet, racing up the nearest tree and staring down at them from a low branch. Rook cawed in agitation, ruffling her feathers and rocking back and forth with raised wings.

Are you all right? Kat mewed, rubbing against ay4u’s ankle. Blood seeped through his fingers, tight and trembling on the hilt of his stolen blade. He smiled down at her, reaching down to scoop her up with his uninjured hand.

“I’m fine. Really, I am. I swear,” he said consolingly. The little white cat made a small, worried noise as she settled against his chest, looking at her friends and fellow guardians. “Might as well hole up for the night. Be careful, everyone…stay safe.”

As they parted ways, Jace, Neko, and Kat with ay4u, Kichou with Thendra, Aerrow set again to moaning about the injustice of his now two-fold theft. It was not until their doors closed, locked, and barred against the night that the sound finally ceased.

The villagers rose as the sun touched the window panes. They dressed and groomed and left their homes in small, wary steps, sticking close together, to meet at the village notice board, with its wrinkled, faded list, so often written upon, so often washed clean.

It was with terrible, sinking hearts that Kat, Neko, Jace, and ay4u met only Aerrow at the board. For once, Aerrow did not complain as they waited helplessly for Kichou and Thendra: his focus was on ay4u, seeking his knife with anxious eyes darting around the man as Jace growled and raised his hackles defensively. But waiting did not bring the two missing members to their fold, even as the sun rose toward mid-morning.

And so they went, one by one, along the too familiar route to Thendra’s home. The door was undisturbed. The windows, apparently, had allowed the wolves their entry into Thendra’s home: both were broken, glass shards still hanging around the frame. Jace and ay4u were too large and clumsy to jump through, too heavy to be lifted safely; Neko and Kat were too small to jump safely through alone, but lacked the height and dexterity to unbar the door if safely lifted through.

All eyes turned to Aerrow, who stared balefully at the remaining assortment of residents. “Only if you give my knife back,” he blurted out.

“Fine,” ay4u said. “Just get us in.”

Suddenly whistling, Aerrow sauntered over to one of the broken windows, crouched, and leapt through the gaping hole, flesh and fabric both shredding in the wake of shattered glass. The others waited, listening to the tromping and banging from inside, wandering far from the door before coming back; the scrape of wood on wood, the crash of something heavy on the ground; the clink of metal; and the door opened on a beaming Aerrow, holding his hands expectantly out.

“When we’re done,” ay4u said forcefully. Aerrow’s smile dimmed, but not entirely.

“You’re not gonna like it~” he sang, turning back into the house. Slowly the others followed his lead.

The scene was in the bedroom. The smell hit them first, the coppery tang clinging to the back of their throats, choking them until they coughed and gagged on it. Second was the blood, seeping along the cracks between the floorboards, still bright against the dark wood. And third was the scene itself, in all its gruesome horror.

Thendra was the most obvious victim, her body lying on its back, hanging half out the broken bedroom window. The attack was clearly brutal: her arms had been wrenched from their sockets, the broken limbs twisted and discarded, one in a corner, the other under the blood-drenched mattress. The nightgown she had worn hung in strips and tatters on her withered frame, mirroring the deep lacerations on her flesh. The jagged glass that remained of the shattered window was caked with blood and dried gore from where the old woman had seemingly been thrown through and dragged back inside once, and again, and perhaps still again. Worst, though, was perhaps her head: her face was no longer recognizable, barely seeming human at all, the nose a bloody lump in the middle of her face, her eyes gouged from the sockets, clumps of hair and flesh torn from her skull to expose bloody, glistening bone.

But Thendra was not the only victim. A miserable howl rose from beside the bed, joined by two moaning meows, before the three remaining village guardians gently pulled their fourth member from beneath the bed. Kichou Soodo’s body had gone almost unnoticed in the dark with her black fur, stuck to her frame and stiff with blood. Her back had been broken in three places, the highest leaving her body utterly immobilized. But the final blow must have been the breaking of her neck: shards of bone were visible through the matted fur of her blood-soaked ruff. Her wide eyes stared out at nothing, now, though her lips still curled into a frozen snarl of anger, and fear, and pain.

ay4u clenched his bandaged hand as the remaining three guardians raised a low, mournful cry for their fallen. The wolves grow bolder now, attacking the very heart of the village.

And night once more draws ever nearer…

Round Eleven
The village is silent as the sun drifts down toward the horizon. Ay4u, ever cheerful, has spent the day lifting the few spirits that remain with his confections, speaking as much as any rational person can speak with the puzzle that is Aerrow, and keeping the last remaining village guardians from spiraling into the black depression that hovers so close over all that remains of their once bustling, happy little hamlet.

Already the homes where the first victims lived have begun to fall into disrepair, noticeable only because of the utter lack of presence and energy and life within them. Without their former residents, shutters seem to tilt, porches to sag, railings to weather far before their time. As the sunlight sends shadows spinning ever outward, darkening the narrowest streets and farthest homes, the world seems to shrink, encompassing only what is graced by light.

As the milk bar’s awnings fall victim to the dark, the door opens, and the last villagers emerge. It is a small procession, and silent, Aerrow and ay4u walking a pace apart, the village guardians between them. The main road leading to the village square remains well lit, even as the red disc begins to dip beneath the distant horizon.

The procession stops at the village notice board. Five sets of eyes stare up at the crumpled, water-stained papers. Charcoal streaks march down the page -- far more than may be accounted for by the five breathing bodies standing before it. A hush falls over the square, as another presence presses down upon them, the tension of a held breath straining through them as the spirits crowd to see for themselves.

Aerrow reaches across to tap ay4u on the shoulder, his tight grin never fading. “You nefer gafe beck my nife,” he grits out. The bartender looks down at his hip, where the blade had been hastily shoved into his belt.

“Oh,” he says dully. “Yeah. Forgot about that.” His hand is heavy as it lifts the knife, passing it across the gap between them. Neko and Kat bristle, Jace’s ears slicking back and lips lifting nervously from pale fangs, as Aerrow slowly turns the blade in his hands, watching the entrancing play of light across the carefully honed metal.

A flash of gold eyes. A flicker of silver light.

And then ay4u staggers back, the blade buried halfway to the hilt in his chest. He stares down at it without seeming to register the pain, a strange gasping hiss accompanying every breath.

Kat and Neko rush to ay4u’s sides, paws tracking through the fresh blood spattering from the pommel of the knife. Jace snarls, hackles rising as he moves aggressively between the two men. “Oh, shut it,” Aerrow grumbles, stalking forward. Dodging around the half-wolf, he grabs for the blade, yanking it from ay4u’s chest; as the man falls back, Aerrow’s grin flashes in the dying sun, the wide arc of his dagger slicing across the barman’s neck.

Darkness falls.

A sudden cry sounds behind Aerrow. He takes no notice, dropping to one knee and raising his blade to drive home into ay4u’s heart.

Fangs sink into his wrist, jaws crushing the fragile bones there.

Aerrow snarls, whirling to drive his dagger into Jace’s eye --

But it is not Jace that holds him.

The face is feline, familiar, distorted by the sudden shift in size. Thick white fur bristles as the growing shape looms over Aerrow, green eyes burning with a cold, sharp ferocity. For an instant, it is a panther, white as moonlight but for the crimson stain around its jaws.

And then it is more than a panther, the toes of its forelimbs lengthening, the dewclaw shifting downward to form hands and a rudimentary thumb. Its shift of balance goes unnoticed until Aerrow is suddenly lifted off the ground as the werewolf -- werepanther -- rises onto its hind limbs, shaking him once so violently that the arm in its mouth breaks, leaving him hanging at an unnatural angle.

Aerrow cannot speak. Fear tightens his grip on the dagger as he tries to lift it, to drive it home into the beast, to save himself --

A second grip catches his arm and yanks, tearing his shoulder from its socket. The knife falls to the road with barely a sound, promptly forgotten.

The second beast, too, is less wolf and more panther, its coat a calico mottle of brown and black and white in the muted afterglow of day. Its lips curl back from vicious fangs in a strange sort of smile before it yanks against the white beast’s grip, trying to drag Aerrow away. The first werepanther grins, a terrible expression on such a bloody face, before dropping to all fours, dragging at Aerrow’s still-living body as though he were a macabre toy for their amusement.

Which, in their minds, he is.

The grisly tug-of-war does not end when Aerrow’s joints pull apart, flesh shredding to bloody ribbons beneath their fangs. It does not end even when he finally ceases to scream. It ends only when the white beast tears his arm fully from the body, leaving the other creature tumbling with what remains and dragging it away to feast in peace. But this creature has no apparent interest in its small prize; it flings the arm away into the dark, pink nostrils flaring as it inhales the scents of twilight.

Jace is long gone, escaped in the turmoil. By some miracle -- or perhaps some curse -- ay4u yet lives, wet breaths huffing as he tries weakly to drag himself away from the werepanther that remains. But there is no point; it circles around him, lowering its face to his.

His dying eyes look up into the face of his village’s tormentor.

He knows those eyes…

“Kat…?” His hand stretches out to his dear little friend, caressing one ear. A rumbling growl of a purr rises from her throat in response.

ay4u’s hand falls to the hard-packed dirt. Kattata huffs, sneezes, and opens her jaws, lips sheathing her wicked fangs as she takes ay4u’s neck in her mouth and lifts him from the ground, as tenderly as any mother panther would her cub. Turning toward the forest beyond the village edge, she lopes away from the wreckage and remains of the town, bright eyes on the blood moon dawning in the sky.

The Points
Kattata - 32 Kichou Soodo - 36 kristconroy - 26 MariaShade - 34 Scrios - 12 Nemo - 26 Thendra - 32 Aerrow - 36 Whitemagewolf - 18 Tinaza - 8 TwoThousand - 10 Tigergal2012 - 22 Saphirae - 6 fostecl - 0 TimeWarper - 24 umbreon241 - 32 JessHesch - 2 ay4u - 28 shunn6653 - 24 Pokemonmaster345 - 32 Brandonallison - 12 Neko13 - 40 Spectrospecs - 8 Utahthief - 32 wolfpack5554 - 12 SilverSun - 14 Ktanaqui - 6 Mew101 - 38 DracoSpectrum - 2 Mockingbird - 6

Roles (Spoiler)
The werewolves consisted of Kattata and Neko13. The Seers were Utahtheif and Pokemonmaster345 while Thendra was the healer.

Trivia

 * Due to the game running through Christmas, Kattata had an (approved) Christmas intervention where everyone that had died came back to life "for as long as the Christmas magic lasts". Many took advantage of this.
 * The Healer role, which had been implemented during Season 10, was changed, updated, and reenforced during this season.