He was within reach, so he had to run faster. A small figure with wrists bound, stumbled through the forest in the dead of night. Chains clinked with every frantic step. His lungs burned, but he dared not stop, until a guttural roar cracked the silence.
"You brat! Come out now while I'm still being nice!"
Lemeric quickly hid.
Dee was a brute—broad as a butcher, filthy as a gutter rat. His tattered coat reeked of grease, a blood-dark cudgel in hand, his scarred grin crooked as a tombstone.
"Dee," hissed his companion, "the Marquis said deliver the Duke's grandson, not drag him back in pieces."
Ikz was everything Dee was not—thin, hollow-eyed, all jutting elbows and twitchy fingers. His threadbare coat rattled with knives sharper than his courage, and his nose hooked like a bird's beak.
Dee spat. "Ikz, don't be daft. You saw that hair. Silver. Boy could be a dungeon dweller for all we know."
"A dungeon dweller who reads in the Duke's library? And you say I'm daft"
"Oh, and you're some noble expert now, eh? You don't know squat!" Dee barked.
"Squat, yes. But I do know you've no idea where he's gone."
"I've no idea? If you'd kept watch instead of snoring like a hog—"
"Why is it always me on first watch, you ox?!"
Their snarls tangled in the night air, and Lemeric Montclair did not wait to hear the rest. He ran.
The chains bit his wrists as he shoved through brambles, every breath a ragged rasp. Just last night, he had been in the quiet library of Montclair Castle—the only place he could find peace from his so-called family. Now he was hunted, bound, swallowed by a forest that reeked of rot and shadow.
The trees themselves told him he was far from home. Gone were the proud, straight-backed giants of the western regions. Here, clustered trunks rose tall and hollow, groaning at every stir of wind, while others sprawled wide and gnarled, their roots knotted like sleeping beasts. Bark peeled away in pale strips, and black moss hung in funeral veils from their branches.
The air was heavy, foul—each breath thick with miasma that clawed his lungs until he doubled over, coughing copper into the leaves. He was somewhere east, near the Borderlands. Too close to the edge of the world, where even adventurers feared to tread.
So he ran—not just from the miasma, not just from the Borderlands, but from the two idiots who thought kidnapping him was a good idea.
Because what he truly couldn't understand was why those knuckleheads had dragged him all the way here in the first place. If they were the same assassins that would often visit him in the dead of the night they'd probably pick a forest closer and do the deed.
If the objective was not to kill him but to kidnap him to get a leverage on his Grandfather, wouldn't his older brother be a better target. Afterall his older brother was the heir to the dukedom of Montclair and his older brother's maternal grandfather was a ducal household. Unlike him, he was practically a nobody - a second son, a spare - rumored to be a bastard.
His grandfather had plenty of enemies. The trick wasn't figuring out if a Marquis orchestrated this kidnapping, but which one.
And judging by the pair of clowns sent after him, this had to be someone's first time dabbling in shady business. Dee and Ikz were amateurs—the kind that let their prize slip away on the very first night. Yet their employer was either insanely rich or had connections. Those idiots had somehow gotten their hands on an untraceable portal, and that sort of thing didn't come cheap.
Still, this wasn't new to Lemeric. He had grown almost used to being kidnapped, assassinated, and blackmailed. Identifying the mastermind had become a pastime—like solving riddles—while he waited for rescue... or rescued himself.
These musings, however, ended as his boot caught a root and he went sprawling.
"Damn it!" he hissed trying to get himself upright again.
But he was dangled up in the air confronted by a snake-like creature - a Skroothling. He has never seen an animal more uglier.
The Skroothling hissed, its iguana-like torso blistered and cracked, glowing faintly with molten light beneath charred skin. Its serpent-like body coiled across the ground, while grotesque antennae jutted from its skull—each tipped with twitching, unblinking eyes.
"Ugh!" Lemeric squirmed, trying to get himself free.
Lemeric scanned his surrounding looking for something to fight it off - stick, rock, divine intervention - anything would do at this point.
The Skroothling was about to swallow him when out of nowhere, a white blur struck it with enough force to shake the ground. It lost hold of Lemeric as it shrieked and was pinned beneath something massive.
Lemeric blinked.
A Lupinara.
The creature snarled and bit over the massive Skroothling. Its body was like that of a great wolf, broad-shouldered and deadly graceful, its paws pressed into the earth like a tiger, its ears pointed up to make itself look bigger, and it made a low rumble to intimidate the Skroothling. Nine tails fanned out behind it, each one pointed at the Skroothling like a sharp weapon. Its coat shimmered like fresh snow beneath moonlight.
Lemeric gawked, "Where did you come from?"
The Lupinara was a creature of legend in ancient tomes and there it stood before him. Lupinaras were intelligent, proud, and solitary. They didn't approach humans. They certainly didn't attack another predator just to save a human. And yet, here it was, challenging the Skroothling twice its size, into battle.
The mother Lupinara gave out a primal roar and the Skroothling charged forward. Lemeric dove for a nearby tree - he was not stupid enough to get in between two fighting giants.
The nine tails of the Lupinara was striking the Skroothling out pure fury. The monster retaliated, forcing her back. Everything moved so fast, claws and fangs were exchanged leaving both creatures sprawling and bloodied.
The mother Lupinara was glaring at the Skroothling's protruding belly. It looked like the Skroothling just ate a big lunch.
Seeing this realization dawned on Lemeric "That thing ate her cub" no wonder the mother Lupinara came to his rescue, it wasn't him she was trying to rescue it was her cub.
The Skroothling was preparing to strike the Lupinara, but before he could move, a smaller Lupinara peered from the bushes. Only one tail twitched behind it—clearly a cub. It bared its tiny teeth at the Skroothling, snapping at its scaled tail. The Skroothling screeched in surprise and flicked the pup aside like a ragdoll, sending it tumbling into a tree with a pitiful whine.
In that moment the mother Lupinara attacked in a more frantic state, slashing faster with her claws. The large skroothling creature managed to thwart her away - blood oozed out from the Lupinara's claw marks.
The Lupinara landed on pointed rock and it yelped in pain. The cub scrambled to its mother's side, its tail coiled and pointed like a dagger, imitating her mother, ready to strike the opponent before him. The Skroothling dared approach. The cub was small, barely a fourth the size of the massive predator, yet every instinct screamed to stand his ground.
Lemeric froze, guilt twisting in his chest. He could run, he could leave—but his body would not move.
"Run," he muttered, more to the cub than himself, wishing desperately it could survive this battle.
"Run" the little lupinara lunged and snarled as the skroothling circled him securing its prey. He use his tail, striked the armored hide of the skroothling. The monster barely flinched, opening its mouth to devour the brave pup.
"Run! Damn it!" Lemeric finally acted, snapping a branch, with his magic he sharpened it in a second. Then he imbued every ounce of his mana and hurled it like a harpoon straight through the Skroothling's eye. The creature did not even have a moment to shriek in pain because in a split second it was now lifeless on the forest floor.
Almost at the same moment Lemeric's makeshift spear struck the monster, he stumbled back, heart pounding against his ribs, and spat blood into the dirt. His vision tunneled, edges darkening, his mind slipping. The last thing he thought he saw:
The mother Lupinara—bloodied but still standing—clawing at the Skroothling's carcass.
Its belly split open, her muzzle buried deep until she dragged out the limp body of her cub.
Beside her, the younger one yapped furiously, trying to wake his littermate.
Then came the sound—the kind that cleaves through marrow. A howl, long and broken, mourning and rage stitched into one.
The mother staggered toward Lemeric, step by step. Carrying her cub with all her strength, her nine tails dragging like weighted banners. Her strength failed, and she collapsed before him.
Lemeric wanted to move—just to lift a hand, just to do something—but his body refused. Mana gone. Muscles dead. The world chilled, and then - darkness.
He was no longer in the forest. The stone walls felt familiar, shadows dancing across a narrow, familiar corridor. He knew this place. The hidden passages of Montclair Castle.
As a boy, he had crept here often, slipping through the cold to one forbidden chamber: his Father's private room. And there she was again, waiting.
His mother - her portrait hung over the crackling fire.
Silver hair framed a face too radiant for the life she had been forced into. Her eyes, violet and bright even on canvas, met his as if the portrait remembered him.
The door groaned. He darted into the shadows just as it opened. His father entered. Duke Maelric Montclair —once sharp as steel, now dulled, shoulders heavy, a glass of whiskey dangling like dead weight in his hand. His eyes were pits, lifeless and black. Then the Duke broke, sobbing before her portrait.
"Impossible..." Lemeric whispered, the word escaping him now as it had then.
But the dream didn't end. It shifted. Montclair Manor's doors swung open, sunlight spilling over polished marble. A woman clung to his father's arm, glittering with the smug satisfaction of conquest—the new Duchess to be, Duke Morneth's only daughter Lady Mirelle.
Behind her, a boy walked with chin high, smug smile carved into his face. Barely a month older than Lemeric, yet paraded as the Duke's heir. His "older brother."
Three days. His father had remarried three days after the funeral.
Lemeric remembered standing at the stairwell, frozen, as servants bustled with forced cheer. The duchess simpered. The boy smirked like he already owned the stones beneath their feet.
Then—another flash. His father's hand. A decanter of liquor hurled. Shattered glass. Flames crawling up tapestries, heat licking at the gallery walls.
It felt like a memory. But it wasn't one he consciously recalled. Why did it feel so real?
His father's voice, ragged, desperate, screaming toward him— "My son! You shouldn't be here! Run!"
The fire roared, the heat blistered—he swore he could feel it even now.
Lemeric jolted awake.
Daylight. Forest trees above. His chest heaved as though the flames still chased him.
The battlefield from the night before lay still—the skroothling's corpse sprawled like some grotesque ruin, its blackened scales split and leaking smoke, the earth around it gouged with claw marks and torn roots.
Beside him, warmth. The smaller Lupinara had curled against him sometime in the night, its single tail draped across his arm as though claiming him. And on the other side... he realized why he had not frozen through the night. The mother Lupinara's body had shielded him from the cold, her massive frame bent like a wall.
Lemeric's hand trembled as he reached out, brushing his fingers across her fur. White, radiant even in the pale morning, soft as clouds—he had never imagined he'd be this close to a creature sung of only in legends.
But the awe cracked when he looked closer. Her breaths were shallow, ragged. Her flanks no longer rose with strength but with effort. Blood matted on the other side where the Skroothling's claws had torn deep. She was slipping.
"No, no, no—don't you dare," Lemeric muttered, panic flickering under his dry tone. He pressed his palms to her wounds, grasping at fragments of healing spells half-remembered from books. "Just hang on—I can—"
The Lupinara stirred, her nine tails twitching weakly. And then her eyes—those clear, luminous eyes—fixed on his. She pressed her great forehead to his own. The contact stole his breath.
Something surged, unseen but undeniable. A warmth, a pulse that shivered through his veins like fire and storm. Her gaze told him everything: stop.
And she turned to the cub she was clinging to, a cub that was already gone. This was her choice, he realized.
The pup whimpered, pressing its head to its mother's. But with what little strength remained, the great beast nudged her cub forward—toward Lemeric. The gesture was clumsy, trembling, but unmistakable. She was entrusting the last of her line to him.
He clenched his fist at the sight - a familiar pain of losing ones mother but still wanting to cling to her.
The Lupinara gave one final exhale, long and quiet. Her glow dimmed, her tails fell still.
Gone.
Lemeric's throat ached. All he could do was close her eyes with a shaking hand, granting her a sliver of dignity in death.
The silence shattered with a cry—the pup lifted its head to the sky and howled. A raw, aching sound that cut through the morning air.