The Long Strand

Hector stopped. He wasn't making much noise beforehand, and now none. Crouching, he listened; the forest about him had been becoming quieter, the small creatures of the forest being the last to peter out. He could smell it more clearly now, the smell of a recent kill, and not a clean kill. This kill smelled of blood and intestine; it was not subtle, and it was the stench of death that had caused the silence.

He knew where he was, the estate lands surrounding the old tower, once a manicured garden fallen into ruin, as had the tower. He'd heard rumours, that's what had brought him here. Rumours of smoke rising from the tower, lights at night, of someone taking up residence.

This, though, did not sit well with him; the stench of violence assailed his senses. He crouched and moved forward, scanning the ground and the foliage for clues, none immediately about him, which was good; it meant he was approaching from outside, entering.

Spotting the shape of a clearing before him, he crouched more slowly and pulled his shortsword from its sheath, holding it before him as much as a shield as a ready foil if anything was to pounce on him. Stopping at the edge of the fern line, he looked to the centre.

There in the middle of the clearing, the late afternoon sun streaking to the forest floor lit up what remained of a stag, seen in parts, sliced by the shadows of the trees falling across it. As he'd sensed, it was not a clean kill; from his vantage point, he could clearly see it had been torn open by something large, gouges down the thick of its rump, its stomach torn open and emptied. Talons and teeth. Large.

Melding backwards, the shadows lengthening gave him good cover as he started to circle the area, not worrying or trying to discern anything more from the dead creature at the centre, but scanning the brush he was passing through, again looking for signs of anything at all.

Then he saw it, a single long orange hair. Then snapped branches, crushed twigs and leaves. Heavy. Putting his free hand over a large depression in the ground, splaying his fingers wide. Tip to tip, thumb to little finger, the indent was an inch wider. Nine inches across; turning his hand ninety degrees, the same. He grabbed a twig, measured rim to lip of the depression: one inch.

Lifting the long strand of orange from where it lay, he twisted it in his fingers, coarse, thicker than hair or fur, more like the hair of a horse's mane, thick, strong. He smelt it, tasted it. Sulphur. He slipped it into his herb pouch.

Staying low, he waited a few minutes, listening. Nothing. Silence.

It was a fast ten minutes to retrace his steps, back to the brook, deftly crossing it rock to rock, the noise of the forest gathering around him again. He turned back momentarily, crouching to the water's edge, watching from where he'd come.

He cupped the water and drank in the hope of washing the sulphur from his mouth; it was cold, fresh. Then he was running, silently, not a noise, not a crack of a branch breaking as he passed, twigs and sticks beneath his feet trodden on lightly. There would be no trace, no sound. He was a long strider.

He needed to move at a pace; he knew what it was, and he was certain of it. He needed to get to his kin to confirm. Therese had mentioned encountering such a creature before. A Barl-goo-ra. A Barlgura. They would need to return with numbers if they were to hunt and rid the forest of the demon spawn.