Hideaway Strath enumero

The moon slid shocked eyes across a scene of violence that night. A bobcat, not quite a cub, but not quite an adolescent, had either starved enough to attempt its first hunt upon Aquillius, or had become too bold to live.

Ribs hung in the air like grasping fingers, quartered like a cow. Blood drenched the soft grasses, smeared across their surface, across the trees, dripping into pools, rivulets that ran down his face, down his chest, twining through the furs of his legs. He adjusted the idle grip he had on the thing’s skull, one ear twitching at the voice that rang through the newly tranquil valley. Aquillius sat the skull on a rock, leaving it to dry in the scorch of the sun before winter grasped the land.

He would mount a cat skull. To show no witch, no familiar, no darkling creature would be allowed here.

His.

No, theirs.

And it took you long enough. A playful jibe falling short in Aquillius’s deathly maw, smeared crimson as he stood like a wraith, enveloped in shadow.