Shades of Grey

HUNTER’S UNDERGROUND— MAY 1844

I awoke the next morning to find Forma sitting dejectedly against the boulder where Ryder had been last night. She looked up at me, heartbreak written in her bloodshot eyes.

“What happened?” I asked. “Where’s Ryder?”

She shook her head, clutching a small leaf in her hands. I then understood and sat next to her consolingly. Ryder was gone.

“I’m sorry, Forma,” I replied, stroking her hair.

Forma took a shaky breath inward, trying to compose herself. She quietly handed me the leaf with frantic script written across it.

I’m sorry, Forma, but this has to be done.

I love you.

She looked at me with a defeated smile as I handed the leaf back to her. She held it tenderly.

“We swore we’d never say it…because it would be that much harder when we had to part again…”

She stared at the leaf, her brow furrowing as her voice cracked, overcome with weary sorrow. I was suddenly taken aback by how mature Forma seemed. There was wisdom and a quiet strength hidden in her sallow, exhausted face that I hadn’t noticed before. I ran my fingers through my loose hair, cursing the fact that it was my fault she was constantly in pain.

I wrapped my arm around her shoulder. She didn’t brush me away, but she didn’t embrace my gesture either. She merely stared at the dead fire, limp with grief.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” I asked, sensing that there was something else other than Ryder’s abrupt disappearance bothering her.

She lifted her head and looked at me with heavy, jaundiced eyes: the transformation was just beginning to take hold. Despite this, however, she found the strength to glare with sudden wolfish rage.

“I just spent nearly two months in the dungeons of a mad wizard being subjected to his particular brand of torture and mind games after going through a total of six days as a psychotic wolf by myself and now I find that the Maisling I love has run off to get magically separated from his bastard Hunter forever, diminishing his powers! NO GREY, I’M NOT ALRIGHT!”

She stood and took several unsteady steps to the other side of the cave and leaned against another boulder, staring at me furiously.

“I’m sorry,” I tried.

“Don’t,” she snapped recalcitrantly. “You’ve already apologised enough.”

“Well what else do you want me to do?! You know Ryder can’t come with us until he severs his bond with Liam! You know that!”

“I know bloody well! It’s just…I’m just tired of this!”

“Of what? Of travelling?!”

“No! Of being captured!”

“Well, I’m sorry but I went through hell to try and get you out! That’ll teach you to be grateful!”

The moment I’d spoken the words I regretted them, but it was too late to apologise. Forma turned to me, fury rising out of her small body. She then changed into a lion and gave me a seethingly loud roar.

“WHAT?! You rescue me and you expect me to kiss the ground you walk on?!”

“NO! But some acknowledgement would be appreciated!” I countered, too stubborn to take back what I had said.

“A Hunter who needs acknowledgement is not a true Hunter!” she vituperated, seething with wrath after she shifted back. I continued to shout, still unwilling to apologise.

“YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’VE BEEN THROUGH TO LIBERATE YOU!”

“Really?!” she snapped snidely. “Verrilius sends you to a far away land where you have to eliminate some sort of mysterious problem and you have to fight all the obstacles on your own without your Maisling to take all of the blows and you are upset because for once you had to think for yourself out in the real world? Was it really so terrible?”

Real frustration coursed through me.

“OF COURSE IT WAS! It was awful! I didn’t sleep at all because you kept linking me to your senses and giving me nightmares! I was beaten, starved and imprisoned. I watched a fellow Hunter die right before I fought an insane wizard and watched a Maisling lose her power because her Hunter had just died in front of me and there was nothing I could do to stop it!”

“And yet I am still cursed, aren’t I?” Forma said in a quiet huff.

I exhaled irately and hung my head in frustrated shame. She was right. I had gone through Hell to rescue her twice now and she was still cursed. I had failed her.

I collapsed next to her and we both sat in the collective silence of remorse, both of us regretting our hateful words.

“I’m sorry. I really did try,” I assured her. “I did.”

“I know. You always do, it’s just…”

“What?”

Forma’s jaundiced face contorted as she tried to find the right words.

“Grey, for once I would like to be the one to rescue you!”

I gaped at her in confusion as she cried quietly in frustration.

“Forma, you’ve rescued me countless times!”

“In battle against creatures twenty times your size! And that’s my job: I’m supposed to do that! What I mean is that I’m tired of being bait!”

I looked at her.

“Bait?”

“Yes! I’m tired of being kidnapped in order to get to you! Just once, I would like to save you from captivity. Just once…”

Forma covered her face and sighed as her tears lessened in strength.

“I’m sorry,” I offered.

“Oh shut it, it’s a stupid wish. Wanting my Hunter to be captured so I can save her…”

“No it isn’t. It’s perfectly understandable. And I must say that I’m tired of rescuing you, so you could say we’re even.”

Forma laughed and I felt the tension of the conversation wane.

“Wait a minute,” she said suddenly. “You said you were linked to my senses?”

“Yes. Mostly just spits here and there, but enough to keep me up most nights,” I replied, recalling my horrific nightmares as our collectively weary minds had connected.

“But I never linked you to any of my senses,” she said in confusion. “I was a bit preoccupied managing my own.”

I looked at her as we both tried to reach a conclusion for such a phenomenon.

“You never did it purposefully?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“Perhaps in your fear, your unconscious mind called to me?”

“I have no idea…” Forma replied in a bewildered whisper. It was then that her breathing began to grow slower and more laborious.

“Are you alright?” I asked, noting that her eyes had grown steadily more bloodshot as her skin began to grow more yellow. It was time.

“Go!” she cried, her voice rising somewhere between a scream of pain and a wolfish roar of hunger.

“I can’t just leave you!” I shouted, determined to not have her go through another transformation alone.

“GO!” she cried, her voice now more wolf than Maisling. Without warning, she suddenly knocked me back with a backhanded blow to my gut, sending me out of the cave and into the opposite side of the river bed, watching as the same blinding light began to rip through her skin before her pained screams shook the forest.

I closed my eyes, listening as her screams turned into twisted roars of hunger and before long, there she was: the same frightening wolf that I had witnessed before in Verrilius’s castle, looking at the world with the same ruthless hunger.

I watched her carefully, witnessing her powerful wolfish form for the first time in person. I kept very still as she looked around wildly, keeping her nose up as she searched for prey. I jumped as she suddenly tensed and took off to her right, having caught an appetising scent.

She ran for a long while and I followed her to the best of my ability. It was difficult: she was fast and I was still exhausted from over two months of captivity. Eventually, I had to forgo the idea of catching up to her and focus only on tracking her, which was almost just as hard as matching pace with her. She was remarkably light-footed for such a large wolf.

After what felt like far too long of tracking her footprints and traces of fur, a string of tribal yelps and guttural battle cries suddenly broke through the crisp air, halting my concentration. I abandoned my methodical focus and ran as fast as I could towards the sound, increasing my speed when I heard Forma’s ravenous predatory snarl rise above the battle cries. I ran even faster: someone had captured her, someone who had no idea what kind of raw power they had just ensnared.

I ran for several more minutes before I arrived at a large clearing full of argent skinned people with harsh gray eyes and bodies covered in fierce warpaint, each bearing a Longsword, a halberd or a bow and arrow. Staying in the shadows, I saw that they were all aiming their weapons at Forma. She did not appear fazed at all and let out a hungry roar: she would enjoy this.

One of the larger warriors then let out an ear-shattering battle cry in response to her and they began slashing her thick skin with their halberds and firing their arrows into her flesh. Forma fought with an unearthly strength and for a while I thought she would prevail, but there were too many of them and within a fraction of a second they had woven a web of thick rope across Forma’s hulking body, forcing her to a state of near prostration. She howled in confusion and rage.

The flurry of battle immediately died and two of the larger warriors strode forward to Forma’s great head, raising their Longswords with a callous ease. I set my jaw and prepared to enter the clearing, knowing instantly what they planned to do.

“Stop!”

I leapt from my branch and landed easily on a particularly large upturned root, quickly withdrawing and igniting my Flamesword.

The warriors did not move. They simply stared at me with awed reverence. I ignored my confusion and continued to speak with authority.

“Please, release her,” I said coolly, “She is no threat, she is very sick...”

They interjected suddenly with a brutal series of shrill tribal yells and catcalls, thrusting their spears and weaponry threateningly as I became the centre of their harsh attentions.

“Please,” I urged calmly. “Let us pass.”

They only gave more tribal cries and began laughing, flashing their sharp, sparkling white teeth at me.

“Please release us,” I asked in a calm voice. “We are travelling to—”

“ANGCHINE!”

All sound and movement stopped at the sound of the sudden voice, which had come from the forest behind me. I saw the warriors in front of me lower their swords and step backwards into the crowd in a sudden display of submission. I turned around slowly and looked upon the native that had generated such a reaction from the others while trying to ignore the knot that had suddenly formed in my stomach.

From the reaction he had generated, I took this to be their chief: a particularly wrinkled, older native with especially dark war paint and a thick animal skin draped around his shoulders. He stepped toward me, holding a hand-made knife to my neck while he studied my masked eyes with a fierce clarity. He then pulled down my uniform collar and revealed my Hunter’s mark, smiling in elation.

The chief then shouted something to the crowd in their sibilant native tongue. The eyes of the warriors then grew wide with surprise and they began whispering to themselves, staring at me with odd admiration.

The chief then turned to me and smiled darkly.

“Singang me chunyah goor ang Echo!”