SSS: The First Legendary Beast Master

Silver arrows punched through the smoky forest. Bran's feet hit stone. Then root. Then ash. Blood leaked between his toes. Hours of this had numbed his mind to the pain. The smoke burned his throat raw. His legs trembled with each stride. Even his wolf senses had gone dull.

Behind him, Ariana's breathing had long turned into irregular heaves broken by sporadic bloody coughs. Her white-tipped tail visible in brief flashes wagged and wove between burning trees, blackened in soot. Bran gripped Ariana's wrist. He carefully avoided the rope-scarred flesh where Meera had bound her last moon for sharing food with the younger pack members. All he ever wanted was to see her free. Now, she was going to die and it was all his fault.

"Keep up!" he shouted in beast-tongue. The words came out as a snarl. He should've been kinder but this wasn't the time for kindness. Please survive, he mouthed to himself.

Two hunter dragons banked overhead. Their wing-beats filled Bran's ears. Heat flashed across his back as another blast of dragonfire ignited the trees behind them. The crack of burning wood filled the air.

More packbonds snapped in his mind. Sharp pains. Felt like claws raking his skull. Six left alive. No, five now. Another packmate gone.

"You said we'd be safe!" Kira's feet slapped against dirt and stone. She and the older male, Mace joined the duo. The young she-wolf hadn't mastered running in half-form yet and stumbled against roots. Her shoulders jerked with each awkward stride. "You promised if we left Meera—"

"Run faster," Bran growled. Tears finally cut tracks through the soot on his face. They'd have plenty of time to blame him once they were safe. Sweat and ash stung his eyes. They were getting slower but couldn't risk taking full wolf-form. The hunters would track their prints. Half-form left smaller tracks, human tracks. Harder to follow.

"Just keep running. We're almost far enough. We'll regroup with the others." The lie tasted bitter on his tongue. There were no others left to regroup with – he could feel the last pack bonds in his mind snapping one by one like worn string rubbed against rock. Just the four of them left. Kira was still too young to attune that deeply to the packbond. Atleast he hoped she was.

Mace, the older male running beside Kira, snarled. "There is no pack left to—"

Kira ran forward, visibly angry. An arrow whizzing past took her in the throat. Her scream cut off in a desperate wet gurgle. The sound of her body, now back to full wolf form, hitting the ground was lost under Mace's howl. Three left now. Bran's head pounded with each broken bond.

Fire rained down. The canopy ahead exploded into flames. Burning branches crashed around them. Bran yanked Ariana sideways. Her bones shifted under his grip. Too thin. Too weak. He'd waited too long to get them out. Now, they might not make it at all.

They broke through the smoke-wall. Bodies littered the ground. Black blood soaked into ash. The stench of burned fur filled Bran's nose. His pack. The ones who'd trusted him. Dead.

And now the dragons were diving again. Wings beat in rhythm. The rhythm of death.

The dragons' shadows swept across the ground. Mace shoved Bran aside. The fireball scorched the earth where they'd stood. Heat blistered Bran's skin.

Another burst of flame turned night to day behind him. When he looked, an arrow had struck Mace's thigh. Silver tip punched through muscle. He stumbled, leg buckling and burning. His eyes met Bran's. No words. Just a nod. Then Mace burst into wolf-form, fur exploding outward, bones cracking as they shifted. He charged the hunters' position, buying Bran and Ariana precious seconds.

They ran again. The trio now cut down to two.Bran with his feet half burned and digging into dirt and stone. And Ariana in his grip, flailing about half dead.

Each step jarred his bones, speed cut down to a crawl now. Ariana's grip weakened on his arm. Her breath came in sparce gutteral sounds.The smoke filled his nose with death-scent. Burning fur. Burning flesh. His mind reached for the Beast King's presence. Found only emptiness. No help would come for pack-traitors.

Something whistled past his ear. Too close. Ariana yelped. Blood ran down her arm where the arrow had grazed her. Still running. Still alive. For now.

The trees thinned. Water-scent cut through the smoke. Bran's stomach clenched. A trap. They'd been herded toward the river.

They burst from the treeline onto rocky ground. The river churned below. Black water rushed over rocks. Too wide to jump. Too fast to swim. Bran spun, pushing Ariana behind him as shadows detached themselves from the burning forest. Two hunters emerged, crossbows raised. The fires cast them in an ominous silhouette.

Their words were in human-tongue. Meaningless sounds to Bran's ears. They were clearly surprised at the half form. In half form they looked almost human, if not for the tail, claws and ears. Not many humans had seen this form.The intent was clear enough from the weapons.

Bran backed up, feet scraping on loose stones. His mind raced. Maybe if he turned full wolf and charged, created an opening, Ariana could–

One of the hunters fell to his knees, hands on his own throat as he gurgled on the blood soaking his coat.A shadow moved behind the second hunter who noticed the movement too late. Silver flashed in moonlight – once, twice. He dropped without a sound, throat opened to the night air. A figure in black, stood in the aftermath like a bodiless shadow. No crossbow. No visible weapons. Just presence, heavy as storm clouds. The figure stood still, black cloak and black mask with its strange intertwined triangle and circle symbol in its center.

The black-clad figure said something. Voice neither male nor female. More human words.

Bran didn't understand the words. Something in that voice made his fur stand on end. Wrong. Everything about this was wrong.

The hunter moved. Faster than any human should move. Pain exploded in Bran's shoulder. A silver blade pinned him to the ground. The metal burned like fire in his flesh. Blessed silver.

Ariana snarled and leaped, but the Hunter in Black swatted her aside with casual brutality. She hit the ground hard, skidding on the rocks, bleeding from the side of her head.

She looked closer to death than before. She struggled to rise. Whined like scared prey. Her eyes were set on Bran. Another silver blade appeared in the hunter's hand.

More human words.

The hunter pulled something from beneath black robes. A vial, contents swirling with unnatural green light. Bran tried to resist. Thick fingers , hard as iron, gripped his jaw. Forced it open. He half transformed. His fangs, strong enough to bite through bone couldn't penetrate the hunter's gloves. Liquid burned down his throat. Metal taste. Rot taste.

Strange words filled the air. Not human. Not beast-tongue. Something that made the air shimmer like heat waves in the summer sun. The hunter's free hand traced symbols in the air that left burning afterimages .

Through it all, Ariana watched with wide eyes. She could run now, while the hunter was occupied. Save herself. But she wouldn't. Bran knew she wouldn't. That's why he'd wanted her safe in the first place.

The chanting reached a crescendo. The hunter's blade withdrew from Bran's shoulder, but he still couldn't move. The hunter turned to Ariana.

More human words. Steel flashed. Struck down. Through her back. Through her heart. No sound from her. Just golden eyes fixed on Bran as her life blood spilled onto stone. The hunter caught the flow in cupped hands and flung it across Bran's face.

His world exploded.

Pain exploded through every nerve. His body jerked into wolf-form. Not by choice. A forced turn, the kind that only the Beast King should be able to force but stronger. Next, his bones liquified, reforming with excruciating slowness. His spine cracked vertebra by vertebra, forcing him to arch backward until he thought his back would snap.

Fur didn't retreat like a normal transformation back to the half form. It burned. Left his skin raw. Exposed. His skull collapsed inward. Muzzle crumpled. Claws tore free from fingers that felt like they were being pulled from bone. His tail ripped away. Organs twisted. Some withered. Others swelled to fill new spaces.

Colors dulled. Scents faded. Sounds muffled. His howl came out wrong. Human scream.

But worse than the physical agony was the mental severing. The pack bonds, already weakened by death, snapped completely. The Beast King's constant presence in his mind vanished like a star going dark. The hollow emptiness that replaced them was deafening – a silence so profound it felt like going deaf and blind at once. Was this how humans lived? This terrible isolation, this disconnection from everything and everyone? The loneliness crashed over him like a physical weight, threatening to drive him mad. In the pain, the hunter spoke. Bran strangely understood, "The price must be paid."

When the agony finally ebbed away, Bran found himself on hands and knees – human hands, human knees – in the ruins of what had once been a small shrine or temple on the riverbank. He hadn't even noticed it before. The Hunter in Black was gone.

His first breath with human lungs felt like drowning. Too shallow. Too weak.

Everything was wrong – smells reduced to almost nothing. Sounds muffled as if his head were wrapped in wool. The night around him had gone from sharp clarity to a murky soup of shadows. Even the air on his bare skin felt wrong. Too sensitive without fur to buffer it.

"Ariana!" The word came out in human tongue. Wrong and clumsy on his new lips. He crawled to her body. Still warm but empty of life. She'd turned back to wolf. His reflection in a pool of blood stopped him cold – a human face stared back. He still looked like himself in the half form but now there were no wolf ears, no tail, nothing of what he had been. He tried to shift. Tried to call upon the complete wolf form that had been as natural as breathing. Nothing happened. His body remained stubbornly, horrifyingly human.

Voices approached – human hunters, their boots crunching on stone. The sound was barely audible with his useless new human ears. Bran looked up with new eyes. They emerged from the smoke.

"Seven confirmed kills," one was saying. "Not counting the ones that went into the river."

He...he understood them. The meaningless sounds had become words. Crystal clear now in his changed mind.

"Eight," he corrected. "Found another by the ridge. Young female. Clean shot through the throat."

Kira. They were talking about Kira.

"Hells, what happened here?" A second voice, noticing the blood-stained rocks. "And who's this?"

"Boy in the forest? Never seen him in town." A female voice this time, maybe teenage, maybe younger.

"Could be from out of town. Got lost in forest. Lucky we found him."

"Jil and Osop are dead though. Must've been the dead wolf girl over there. At least they took care of her before kicking the bucket."

Bran wanted to laugh. Or scream. Or tear their throats out with teeth that were now too dull for the job.

"Can you stand, lad? The guild's not far. We'll get you sorted." The big one with a scar said.

Bran rose on shaking legs, and immediately vomited. The hunters took it as shock at his "rescue." They couldn't see him staring at Ariana's cooling body in the shadows of the shrine. Tremors wracked his frame from the effort of not killing them all.

"Easy there. What's your name, boy?"

Bran opened his new mouth, tested his new tongue. "Bran," he said, the human word feeling like wet mud on his lips. His second word with a human voice.

One of them draped a cloak around his shoulders. Covered his nakedness. The female, red hair. Red as Meera's. Another offered a waterskin. They spoke of safety, of shelter, of the guild's protection. Bran let them lead him away from the river. Away from the shrine. Away from everything he'd once been.

Behind them, the forest burned. Along with it, the last traces of his old life. But the Hunter in Black's words echoed in his mind, clear now in his new understanding: "The price must be paid."

It had been. In blood. In bone. In betrayal. But as Bran walked on human legs toward human shelter, he made a silent vow. A vow he couldn't say in the wolf language anymore. This was only the beginning of the payment. And when accounts were finally settled, there would be nothing left to pay with. 

The smoke rose higher. Somewhere in the darkness, dragons circled like vultures. They hunted for survivors that no longer existed.