The night forest breathed. It was the heavy, raspy breathing of a creature simply waiting for the moment to snap its jaws shut.
Camp was set on a hill, beneath the crown of a massive oak split by lightning. The spot was chosen well: on one side, a steep drop to a stream; on the other, an open clearing that prevented a stealthy approach. Hans, despite his wounds, knew his business. The old soldier organized the defense with an efficiency born of years of border service.
The carts were linked in a circle, creating an improvised barricade. In the center, a fire burned hotly—the only island of light in an ocean of gloom.
Izayoi sat slightly apart, leaning his back against a cart wheel. In his hands, he held a wooden bowl containing something the locals called stew. It tasted like hot water in which an old boot had been bathed and a dried turnip had been dipped a couple of times.
"Haute cuisine," he muttered, poking at the murky slurry with his spoon. "Michelin is weeping tears of blood."
He brought the spoon to his mouth, grimaced, but swallowed. Where he came from, food was art, entertainment. Here, food was fuel. And fuel is necessary, even if it tastes disgusting.
Silence reigned around the fire, broken only by the crackle of branches and quiet whispers. People were afraid to speak loudly. The forest around them was full of sounds: a distant howl, the crunch of twigs, a strange hooting that sent shivers down the spine. Every rustle made the women flinch and clutch their children tighter.
They had survived the massacre, but the horror still sat beneath their skin.
Hans approached Izayoi. The knight limped more heavily than during the day, but held himself upright. He offered the youth a flask.
"Spirit infused with bitter herbs," he explained, sitting down nearby with a grunt. "It's rare filth, but it warms the bones and dulls the pain."
Izayoi took the flask, unscrewed the cap, and sniffed. The smell was enough to poison cockroaches.
"I'll risk my health," he took a sip without even grimacing and returned the flask. "Thanks, Pops. How are the people?"
"Holding on," Hans took a large swig and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. "Thanks to you. They look at you like a messenger of the Goddess. You know, some are already whispering that you are one of those mentioned in the prophecies."
"Tell them to cut it out," Izayoi snorted, throwing his hands behind his head. "I'm no saint and definitely no messenger. I'm just a guy who ended up in the right place at the right time."
"Maybe so," Hans looked at him with a long, studying gaze. "But you are too calm for 'just a guy.' Do you know what's in these forests?"
"Wolves? Bears?" Izayoi yawned. "Demons with an inferiority complex?"
"Worse," Hans's voice became quiet. "This is the territory of the 'Wanderers.' Monsters mutated by the influence of mana. They feel no pain, know no fear. Ordinary weapons barely scratch them. My boys..." he stumbled, and his face twisted in a grimace of pain, "...my boys died trying to hold back just three of those creatures a week ago. And now we are walking straight through their hunting grounds."
Izayoi shifted his gaze to the darkness beyond the circle of light. His eyes, accustomed to seeing the essence of things, discerned what was hidden from the knight.
He saw movement. Shadows glided between the trees, silent, fluid. There were many of them. Ten? Fifteen?
"Don't worry, Captain," Izayoi stretched lazily, cracking his joints. "If they come, we'll ask them to leave. Politely."
"Politely?" Hans chuckled bitterly. "You're either a madman or..."
"Or I know something you don't," Izayoi finished for him.
At that moment, a little girl approached them. The same one he had pulled out of the cellar first. In her hands, she clutched some gnarled object woven from dry grass.
She stopped a step away from Izayoi, hesitating to come closer. Hans was about to send her back to her mother, but Izayoi stopped him with a gesture.
"What do you want, kid?" he asked, trying to make his voice sound not too rough.
"Th-this..." she held out the grass figure to him. It was an attempt to depict a little person. Crooked, askew, but diligently made. "It's a charm. Mom taught me. So the evil spirits won't come near."
Izayoi looked at the bundle of grass in his hand.
"A charm, huh?" he twirled it in his fingers. "Think a piece of hay will save me from fangs?"
The girl lowered her eyes fearfully, ready to cry.
"No... but... it helps to believe," she whispered. "The priest in the church said that the Goddess's magic is faith. If you believe sincerely, the protection will work."
Izayoi froze. The girl's words strangely echoed what the ghostly mage had explained to him in the ruins not long ago. "Visualization."
"Faith, you say?" he smirked with the corner of his mouth. "You know, kid, your mom and the priest weren't so far from the truth. Imagining the result so clearly that it becomes reality... There's sense in that."
He carefully, so as not to break it, tucked the straw doll into the breast pocket of his blazer, right next to his heart.
"Your faith is accepted. But faith alone isn't enough. You also need to know how to stand up for yourself."
He flicked the girl on the forehead. Not painfully, but noticeably.
"Go to sleep. I accepted your charm. Now it's my turn to earn it."
The girl beamed a smile that was missing a front tooth and ran back to the fire.
Hans shook his head.
"You're strange, Izayoi. You're rude, you're scary, and then..."
"I'm not a nanny," Izayoi cut him off, rising sharply to his feet. His relaxation vanished instantly. "Hans, put out the fire. Fast."
"What?" the knight was taken aback. "But the people... The darkness..."
"Put out. The damn. Fire." Steel rang in Izayoi's voice. "We have guests. And they don't like light, but they love targets that glow in the night like a Christmas tree."
Hans didn't argue. He saw the youth's gaze—a gaze directed into the darkness of the forest. Where an ordinary person saw only blackness, Izayoi saw dozens of yellow lights igniting in the bushes.
The knight shouted an order. The people, accustomed to obeying in moments of danger, began to shovel dirt onto the fire. Darkness fell upon the camp like a heavy blanket. The crying of children was immediately stifled by mothers' hands.
Dead silence reigned.
"How many?" Hans asked in a whisper, drawing his sword. The blade trembled in his hand.
"Twenty-four," Izayoi answered calmly. He stood at full height, not hiding. "Direwolves. Or whatever you call them. Big mutts with bone growths."
A low, vibrating growl came from the darkness. It came from all sides. The ring was tightening.
"They're surrounding us..." Hans rasped. "We're finished. In the dark, we won't even see them."
"You don't need to see them," Izayoi shoved his hands into his pockets and stepped beyond the circle of carts. "Sit tight. And don't stick your heads out until I say so."
"Where are you going?!" Hans hissed. "Get back behind the barricade!"
"A barricade is for defense," Izayoi's voice sounded from somewhere in the darkness. "I am attacking."
He walked out into the open space. The moon, hidden by clouds, provided only ghostly light, but for Izayoi, the night was as clear as day.
He saw them. Huge, the size of bulls, wolves with spikes on their spines. Their saliva dripped onto the ground, sizzling like acid. They moved in unison, like a single organism driven by collective hunger.
The pack leader, a giant with a white stripe on his muzzle, stepped forward. He saw the lone figure of a human separating from the herd. Easy prey. An appetizer before the main course.
The leader jumped. No warning, no howl. Just a gray projectile flying with lethal speed.
Izayoi didn't move from his spot. He simply took his right hand out of his pocket.
In his fingers was a small, round pebble. Ordinary gravel he had picked up by the stream during the break.
"Know the principle of conservation of momentum, doggy?" he asked affectionately.
A snap of fingers.
It sounded like a shot from a high-caliber sniper rifle.
The movement of Izayoi's finger gave the stone an acceleration exceeding the speed of sound. The air around his hand exploded with a miniature crack, leaving a white contrail.
The pebble met the leader's head in mid-flight.
The monster's skull simply vanished. The stone punched through it, maintained inertia, pierced a tree behind the wolf, and went deep into the forest, mowing down bushes.
The leader's headless carcass flew another meter by inertia and collapsed at Izayoi's feet like a rag doll.
The rest of the pack froze. Their primitive brains couldn't process the information. The leader was the strongest. He died before he even touched the victim.
"One," Izayoi said in the silence.
He bent down and, without taking his eyes off the pack, scooped up a handful of gravel.
"Who's next for a game of fetch?"
The wolves snarled, but now uncertainty could be heard in their growl. Hunger fought with fear. Hunger won.
Three wolves charged simultaneously—from the left, right, and head-on. A tactic that always worked against single targets.
Izayoi tossed the handful of stones into the air.
"Buckshot strike," he commented boredly.
His hand turned into a blur. Three fast, sharp movements. Three cracks merging into one.
BANG-BANG-BANG!
Three wolves crashed to the ground in mid-air. Each had a neat hole the size of a coin gaping in its forehead.
"Four," Izayoi continued the count.
The remaining twenty beasts realized: this was not prey. This was a predator they couldn't even scratch. But the instinct of killers demanded blood. They decided to overwhelm him with mass. The entire pack broke loose, an avalanche advancing on the lone figure.
Izayoi smirked. In that smile was the very "fun" he had been looking for.
"That's it!" he shouted, his voice drowning out the pack's snarling. "Come at me all at once! Don't make me run after you!"
He dashed to meet them.
In the center of the camp, behind the carts, the people heard only the sounds of impacts. Dull, wet sounds of breaking bones and tearing flesh. Whimpering turning into a death rattle. The whistle of sliced air.
It didn't last long, and then everything went quiet.
Hans, gripping his sword so hard his fingers went numb, risked peeking through a crack between the boards.
Izayoi stood in the middle of the clearing. He was dusting off his hands as if he had just finished some dusty work. Around him, carpeting the ground in black, lay bodies. They were already beginning to disintegrate, turning into that same black ash characteristic of creatures of darkness.
Not a single drop of blood on his clothes. Not a single wrinkle out of place on his blazer.
Izayoi turned to the camp and, noticing the peeking knight, put a finger to his lips.
"Shh," he nodded at the carts where the children slept. "Don't wake the little ones."
He returned to the extinguished fire, sat in his spot, and, reaching into his pocket, felt the straw figure.
"It works," he chuckled, looking at the starry sky peeking through the clouds. "Visualization, huh? Well, let's assume."
Hans slid down the cart wheel, feeling his heart, which had been pounding somewhere in his throat, slowly return to his chest. He looked at the youth's back. In that moment, the old knight realized one simple truth: Fate itself, or the Goddess, or whoever runs this crazy world, had sent them a monster to protect them from other monsters.
Izayoi closed his eyes, pretending to doze. There were still a couple of hours until dawn, and he planned to spend them in silence, enjoying the aftertaste of a short but invigorating warm-up.