Chapter Text
High flames were heading towards the sky. The smoke was covering everything and many were running away, escaping from their own homes. Long, familiar screeching sounds were spreading terror everywhere.
The old man cursed under his breath, while his eyes darted around, looking into the first thing in his field of view he could use as a weapon. He saw an axe, stuck near a chopping wood table. It wasn’t ideal, but he had to make do with less in the past. He grabbed it without hesitation.
“Monsters! Monsters are attacking the village!” a man screamed, trying to make his way out of the nearby house on fire.
“Someone! God! Help us, please!” a young woman was crying while limping away, with blood on her ankle and her child between her arms.
These were the loud, piercing cries that he heard while he was heading to the village, ready to sell the goods from the mountains where he lived. He left livelihood behind and his body, still used to this even after such a long time, bolted towards the first people he saw, who were trying to defend themselves from a monster.
They were astonished when they saw the infamous old hunter coming towards them. For such a man to be here, charging to their rescue with an axe in hand, they were nothing short of shocked.
He dealt a strong blow to the creature’s throat, and soon the monster’s head fell on his feet, in a pool of blood. Relief instantly appeared on the faces of the villagers standing in front of him.
“You’re here!”
“This is a miracle!”
“Please, save us!” begged a man, his trembling hands holding the folds of the hero’s pants.
He has never been a person with a noble soul, nor was he known as something even close to a hero. He was known to have killed for money in the past, and the victims weren’t just monsters. The same people that didn’t want him living inside the village, calling him “murderer”, were the same ones who were now asking for his help.
‘I know how humans are, my long life has shown me how unabashed their hypocrisy is, but I can't help but feel surprised when I see it every time. I guess hypocrisy is part of human nature, after all’ he shifted his gaze from the humans to the monsters, wanting to ignore them.
He kicked the blood-covered remains of the monster he just stabbed aside and started slaying all the ones standing in his way one after the other. If only he hadn’t thrown all of his weapons away after retirement, now he wouldn’t be using a stupid, rusty axe. Luckily, those monsters didn’t have armored skin but their fur was made of fire. Taking a step back from the monsters, although their shape was chimera, they looked somehow like monkeys. As he tried to figure out the best approach to get close without getting scorched, he merely dodged a surprise attack from one of their scorpion tails, probably containing venom, that he hadn’t noticed before. Taking a step back from the monsters, although their shape was chimera, they looked somehow like monkeys.
As soon as he’d killed the second one, all of them decided to target him, seeing him as the main threat for their pack. Everyone else screamed and ran away, while he faced seven of them alone.
One of the monsters tried to bite off his arm, but the man split its head in half before it could do any damage. Another one tried to stab the back of his head with its venomous tail, just to be roughly grabbed by the head and torn off from the rest of its body as the man dealt it a powerful kick. The man could feel their boiling blood run down his skin, and immediately started feeling nauseous.
He’d never wanted to become a hunter in the first place. Yet, his body was trained to kill, despite his mind still trying to escape the terrible punishment that had tormented him all his life. He couldn’t remember the last time he slept well, without nightmares of the creature he had slayed. Even with these monsters now, he couldn’t help but feel a sharp pain inside his chest every time he heard their last cry.
“He’s gonna die! We’re all gonna die!” a woman’s call of desperation rose from the crowd “We’re all gonna die and it’s all that- that baby’s fault!”
‘A baby?’
One of the monsters was able to tear open the tender flesh near his stomach. He let down a low groan, pressing a hand firmly on his abdomen while trying to dodge another attack and coughing up blood.
Then, he heard it.
The long, desperate sound of a baby crying. It couldn’t have been very far from him.
That’s when he sensed a vibration in the air around them: the ground suddenly caved under the monsters’ feet and water streamed down from seemingly nowhere. Monstrous guttural howls left their throats, while the flames on their fur died out and they ended up buried under the ground. Everything happened in the blink of an eye.
‘What… Just happened?’
The same woman from before screamed once again.
“Demon! The real monster is still alive! They came for him! He’ll bring us all to hell!”
The old man looked in the direction the woman was desperately pointing to, and saw a house completely engulfed by the flames. Suddenly, he couldn’t think about anything else. With his now bloody hand still pressed on his abdomen, his body moved. Realizing his intentions, one of the villagers tried to stop him, but he dodged without breaking a sweat and threw himself in the raging inferno.
The echoing sound of a cry, the strong smell of smoke and the unbearable heat of the rising flames were numbing his senses.
A strong cough shaked his whole body, but he managed to tire down the big remains of a wooden wardrobe that were in the way. Tears were starting to well up in his eyes. There was dust everywhere and he could feel more and more blood gushing from his wound, but he couldn’t stop there, not yet.
‘I will not die here, not after killing again.’
He needed to find that baby.
Another cry caught his attention and he tore off his shirt, now ripped to shreds, shoving it in his mouth and biting down hard while moving forward again, desperately looking for the source of the pitiful lament.
Painful blisters were starting to form on his skin, the heat was just too much. He could feel he was mere seconds away from losing consciousness.
Then, he found it.
A small child was crying his eyes out, curled up inside an invisible circle the fire couldn’t enter. He couldn’t be more than two years old, and had fair, pale skin and shiny, dark eyes. His fluffy black hair couldn’t manage to hide his little, pointy ears, as well as a pair of tiny antennae on top of his head. From his back, long purple wings shone in the blinding light of the flames. They were fluttering desperately, in a physical manifestation of the child’s distress.
‘It’s… a fairy?’
Three corpses lay near the child. A man and a woman, both humans, covered in deep wounds in a pool of their own blood. Next to them, a dead monkey monster was impaled, pierced by a spike that had come out from the ground.
The old man’s shock immediately came to a halt when he saw the child stretching his little arms out to him. The little one was trying to stand on his own, but his legs couldn’t stop shaking. His desperate cries showed no sign of stopping.
The hunter coughed again, feeling the cold, metallic taste of blood well up in his mouth. A crack that suddenly appeared on the ceiling above their heads made him bolt forward as fast as he could, swiftly enveloping the child in his arms. He shielded him with his own body, ready to die.
‘This… is a heroic death, at least’ He thought. After all this time, perhaps, he could have atoned for his sins.
But death didn’t come.
He waited a few seconds, then opened his eyes and looked up. The ceiling had completely collapsed, yet they were unharmed. A warm purple light was covering their bodies.
He was inside a protective barrier.
His gaze shifted to the child in his arms. His cheeks were red from fatigue, and he was covered in sweat. He was still crying on the man’s chest, not even aware of what was happening. His little hands tightly squeezed whatever remained of the hunter’s shirt.
The old man pressed his hand down on the child’s fluffy hair and started running without hesitation, determined to make it out of that hell. The sheer adrenaline running through his veins even made him forget about his own wounds.
‘I’m still alive. We’re alive. This child… saved me.’
As soon as they got out, he heard the blaring sound of the house collapsing to the ground. He took in a deep breath, with the child still loudly crying in his arms. He was about to fall on his knees, when a horrified scream stopped him in his tracks.
“The demon! He took the monster with him!” The same woman from before widened her eyes in terror, petrified in fear. “We need to kill him or more monsters will come! He’s a cursed child!”
“What the hell are you talking about? Did the smoke get to your head or something?” The old hunter’s tone was sharp and cold as he replied. “This is just a baby. All the damage was caused by the monkey monsters.”
Only women and children surrounded the two: the men were all trying to extinguish the remaining flames with water gathered from a nearby river. A second woman put her hand on the other’s shoulder, in an attempt to calm her down. Her eyes remained fixed on the little one in the old man’s arms.
“You have eyes, you can see his wings too.” The woman couldn’t hide her aversion, accentuated by her poisonous tone.
“So what? Never seen a fairy in your life?” The irritation in his tone grew stronger and stronger by the second. “Just because this is a human village, it doesn’t make other creatures demons. What about our Elf King?”
She hesitated for a moment, before letting out a sigh. The woman on her side was muttering in distress, saying something along the lines of “We’re all going to die, we will never be free.”
“Put that thing down and let me tend to your wounds while we talk. After all, you saved us.”
“It wasn’t just me. This fairy that scares you all so much also saved you. Saved… me.” He looked down into the boy’s dark eyes. His breathing was still irregular and he looked exhausted, but his tears had stopped flowing down his cheeks and he had gone silent.
“Don’t let your eyes betray you. Can’t you see the mark on his right hand?” The old man looked down at the little fist that still gripped his shirt tightly. A little, star-like shape was covering the back of the little boy’s hand.
“That symbol marks it as a changeling, a fairy that took the place of a human child in another family. It’s said that they do this so that the fairy’s parents can eat precious, newborn human flesh and their offspring can grow as a parasite in another family. It will consume all of their money, food and energy until the humans that tend to it die. If they survive all the monsters coming to eat them, they become even more powerful than other fairies. Just because of his presence, part of the village was destroyed, and if you hadn’t come down here, many people would have died. We were just lucky.”
The old man remained silent. The child, sensing the tense atmosphere and, noticing everyone’s eyes on his hand, tried to hide it.
“The married couple in the house was already dead, wasn’t it? Monster or not, if the child is able to use magic, it’s because it absorbed the energy of those reckless people. We tried to warn them, but they didn’t listen. They wanted to believe that it was their real child, and that it was blessed or something. Maybe it was all part of its spell.” She sighed once again, and her eyes hardened. “So, if you want to be part of this village, we need you to let us kill the child. Or else, you shall take it away with you and never come here again. Your choice.”
The little wings on the child’s back fluttered in agitation, while his antennae started to curl up. The old hunter looked at him for what felt like eternity, wondering what to do. His head was spinning so much.
He knew what he saw. The couple had died because of the monster. But what about the child’s powers? How could such a small creature have absorbed their life energy? If he’d decided to keep it, would he have faced the same death too? And would he have had to fight monster after monster? Alone, without any support whatsoever from the nearby village?
Every thought made it clear that it was a terrible idea. He was already too old for all of this.
But for once, he decided to follow his heart.
“Screw you! All of you!” His booming voice echoed in every corner of the village. Everyone looked at him in shock.
“You’re all just a bunch of ungrateful pieces of shit! And you call yourselves the good guys here?! Hah!” He started laughing, mocking them, until he found himself coughing up blood again. But that didn’t stop him. “I’ll be damned! If nurturing this little one will bring misfortune to you all, then so be it!”
All the people in the village looked at his back, now completely covered in blood, as he climbed up the mountain while limping and growling in pain. Just above his shoulder, the face of the little child, once again covered in tears, was the last thing they saw. No one had the courage to halter his steps.
“He’s been enchanted as well…”
“We’re all going to die…”
The old man left everything behind. His body was aching from the pain, but he never lost hope. He decided to try talking to the child, all he could do to try and stay conscious.
“You’ll need a name. I don’t think ‘demon’ or ‘monster’ suit you at all.”
The child, for the first time since they had met, decided to talk.
“Yudr…” He tried to say. His voice was so feeble.
“Yudr? That sounds strange. Is that your name?” The old hunter was surprised, then a smile bloomed on his lips. “What about Yuder? It has a nice ring to it. Can I call you that?”
The child was silent for a while, and then gave a little nod.
“Well Yuder, you can call me Grandpa.”
“Ga-Pa?”
“Yeah.” He sighed and let out a little laugh. “Life will not be gentle to you, Yuder, but I'll try to prepare you for it as much as I can. Be proud of who you are, and someday, others too will be able to recognize your worth.”
He wasn’t sure if the child could understand what he was saying, but he felt his little body relax and his head lean on his shoulder.
The old man felt his own heart thumping in his ears. For the first time in his life, he’d made a choice for himself.
For the first time in his life, he had found a purpose.
18 years later
Wind played with his hair and antennae. Long, dark bangs covered his eyes as his sleek, purple dragonfly wings fluttered on his exposed, pale back.
He focused his eyes, now shining gold, to admire the view. A city carved into giant trees was right beneath him, full of creatures roaming around the main path. With his pointy ears, he could hear laughter and voices, while his antennae sensed many powers who all overlapped with each other.
Looking down from his elevated point of view, he could see every single path unfurling between the giant plants. They all converged at the center of the village, where the most magnificent, majestic tree of the whole Great Sarain Forest stood tall. Only the Elf King and other members of the Royal Family were allowed to live there.
Yuder took a deep breath, absentmindedly letting his slender fingers lightly brush onto the exposed mark on his right hand. He knew he would soon face many others ready to hate him, judge him and curse him, but his Grandpa’s last words kept repeating in his mind.
‘Be proud of who you are, and someday, others too will be able to recognize your worth.’
─── ⋅ ∙ ∘ ☽ ༓ ☾ ∘ ⋅ ⋅ ───
