Frozen dried pine needles smacked them as their free hands clasped each other, and right on their tail was the wolf, easily keeping the distance.

  They both stopped in front of the river as Aaron was about to slip over, but grabbed a nearby branch to steady himself. He looked over at the frozen, hazy gray. "Father, you go first." Aaron held his spear tighter as he turned around to the wolf, which in turn approached slower than it did before. His father nodded without saying anything. He took his first steps light. No cracks. Then a few more, till he effortlessly passed it. Aaron took a step back, not daring to take his eye off this beast.

  Crack.

  As soon as he had taken a step on the frozen lake, it cracked easily. Aaron looked back at the lake. The ice sheet was thin and deceptively cloudy like glass. Aaron turned to his father. "How. How did you cross it!?" Aaron yelled, but his father didn't say anything back as Aaron tried to take another step. "Dad—"

  His foot sank under, and as it did, his whole body leaned forward like a building moments before it collapses.

  But he stopped, just teetering over the edge, and he felt something at his arm. It was the wolf. It had bitten hard enough to break through the skin, and it was the only thing holding him from his watery grave.

  If it let him go, he'd die.

  It wrenched him backwards onto the forest floor, causing Aaron to drop his spear and the contents of his satchel to scatter, including Artemis. Then the wolf jumped on top of him and jutted its jaw towards his neck.

  But it found an obstacle in its way — Aaron's left arm, which he pushed deeper into its mouth as he reached behind him for his knife with his other bleeding arm. The wolf, seeing this, retaliated promptly, pushing him harder against the ground and biting harder and harder into his arm till they both could hear a crack. Yet Aaron didn't yell despite the searing pain. He kept trying to unsheathe the knife on his back without much success.

  A sharp flurry of wings erupted as Artemis finally came to his senses. He flew towards the wolf's eye and clawed at it. But it refused to let go of Aaron. It refused to hit him back. Even if the crow was scratching his eye off, the wolf just bit harder, pulling Aaron to try and drag him away, but when he resisted it slammed its claws into his chest. Aaron tried lifting its paws off him with his right arm as it dug deeper, but it was hopeless.

  And as they both continued this bloody stalemate, Aaron could feel vibrations going through the ground beneath his head. Quick, heavy thuds — the same ones from before, but now they were coming towards them.

  Aaron tried to push the wolf off him, but it kept pushing harder.

  Thud. Thud.

  He tried to crawl back away from the wolf, but it put its weight on his body.

  THUD. THUD.

  Aaron tried to punch the wolf, claw at it, at whatever part of the wolf he could. "Artemis, go! Fly away!" he yelled, but Artemis instead kept trying to peck at the wolf's other eye, mirroring Aaron's urgency.

  The wolf's ears flattened, and it tried to drag Aaron somewhere else.

  But it was too late.

  The wolf was violently pulled off Aaron by a metallic claw on its head that wrenched it backwards before another came to its neck, nearly slicing the wolf's head off and leaving three claw marks. It let go of the wolf, letting the body fall onto Aaron's lap as thick, molasses-like blood seeped out.

  The creature pressed its heavy claw on the wolf's head, as if it wouldn't come back from death for revenge.

  Aaron looked up to finally see the creature that did this. It was a metallic beast, one with a build similar to a leopard, albeit a bit bigger. Its head had no mouth, no nose, and no ears — just one big glowing green dot for an eye in the middle, surrounded by metal flaps that closed and opened, mimicking the simple action of blinking. It sported a long tail, with what looked like a club at the end of it.

  It didn't pay attention to Aaron as it slowly scanned the wolf from head to toe with a green-colored laser.

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  It made a high-pitched noise that was alien to Aaron before releasing a cogwheel-like sound that came from its tail. The club tip opened, revealing a big needle and multiple glass vials at its base, and it inserted that needle into the wolf and began extracting its blood.

  Finally, it acknowledged Aaron once it was done and began scanning him from head to toe. It stopped at his injured arms momentarily, glowing yellow before continuing, and once it was done, it just turned around and walked away.

  Aaron let out a breath he didn't know he was holding before kicking the wolf's body off his lap.

  He looked across the lake towards where his father was standing, but he wasn't anywhere to be seen.

  "He's probably run off to find a way across the river, isn't that right, Artemis?" Aaron said as Artemis mimicked the noise of the metallic creature. "Right, let's not get too enthusiastic about your mimicking abilities. You almost got us killed with it once." He breathed a sigh of relief, petting Artemis with his less injured arm before he got up to collect his scattered stuff off the floor with one arm.

  He put everything back into the satchel before tearing off parts of the clothes under the cloak and wrapping them around his arms, flinching as he did so. "That should stop the bleeding." He paused. "Hopefully."

  Right after he took a few steps alongside the river, he staggered, his body hunched over. He felt nauseous as the pain in his arms flared with each little micro-movement. Artemis, seeing this, nudged into the side of his face. "I… I'm fine. I'm just tired, that's all." He took slow, deep breaths, looking up. "We can't rest. We've got to move while the sun is still with us."

  He stopped and looked across the river, waiting for something. There was nothing.

  Taking a deep breath, he pulled his broken arm against his chest and continued his stride beside the river.

  At sunset, Aaron had finally found the throat of the river. Thankfully, it looked like it was frozen.

  "All right, Artemis, wait for me over there." Aaron pointed across the river with his spear.

  Artemis waited a second before he flew across the river and landed on the snow.

  Aaron whistled. "I didn't think you'd listen. You're smarter than I thought, boy."

  He tapped the ice a few times with the spear butt. "Safe," Aaron muttered to himself before taking a step, then he tapped in front of him as he slowly walked across.

  As he finally crossed the river, he felt a shiver on his back. Looking behind, there was nothing. "Glad to finally have crossed that. We should leave my father a message in case he comes here, what do you say?" Artemis shifted on his shoulder. "Thought you'd say so." He put his spear against a tree before painfully and slowly reaching for his knife behind his back.

  Finally pulling it out, he began carving an arrow pointing deeper into the forest.

  After Aaron was done, he adjusted his scabbard to be on his right hip instead before sheathing his knife.

  "There. Here's hoping he knows how to read signs, though I doubt it with his old age." He chuckled as Artemis flew onto his shoulder while he walked.

  "You know what my mom used to tell me, Artemis?" Artemis tilted his head curiously. "She told me one time, when they were young, a lot of girls used to flirt with him, but he was so oblivious that he didn't understand it. She herself tried — you know what she did?" He waited a moment. "She made a poem. A bird poem. So he'd finally get the hint." Aaron snickered at the image.

  "She was quite smart—" Aaron paused as he noticed something carved on a tree. It was an arrow pointing in the same direction as where Aaron was going. "That's…" He looked behind at another tree. It also had an arrow, and the tree next to it.

  He looked around, and every tree around them had arrows pointing in the same direction. Aaron's grip on his spear tightened as he trudged once more while looking around him.

  "Why are… all these signs pointing in the same direction?" He couldn't wrap his head around it. "This… this doesn't feel right." He pulled the hood of his cloak onto his head. "Let's just go, Artemis."

  Midnight had arrived. Aaron had just sat down after finally lighting a fire. It took longer than it normally did, as he was using his good arm and his foot to hold down the sticks.

  Looking at his gloved hand, the leather was beginning to wear off.

  "I should really replace those," he said with a sigh as he got closer to the fire. "You fine there, Arti?" He opened his cloak to see Artemis, who was sitting in his lap, but he promptly stood up, then grabbed the edges of the cloak with his beak and pulled it around the both of them, causing Aaron to chuckle. "All right, all right, I won't rob your warmth." The crow pecked his leg. "Ow… I guess I deserved that." He pulled his cloak hood on as he stared at the fire.

  Near the river, where the blood had frozen into the snow, the wolf's body was still there. The glow of its pure white eyes became more obvious under the shade of night.

  A violent exhale broke through the silence.

  And the wolf began moving. It slowly stood up and tried to walk, but instead it shambled from side to side. Its head hung loosely, as pools and pools of blood spurted from the deep gouges, leaving behind a trail.

  As it made a hissing noise from the windpipe, its lungs still trying to suck in air, slowly muscles emerged from the nape, moving like silk, as they began to connect to the head, tightening as they slowly pulled it up from where it hung.

  Its ears began moving to something it heard.

  And it tried to move its jaw, but it hung loose, and it tried to howl, but only a wet gurgling came through. Before its head fully reattached, it stopped momentarily and began throwing up blood in the snow, creating even bigger puddles under it, before it began stumbling once again.

  Its steps became more steady and more purposeful, as it went from walking to trotting, and as the head fully reattached, it sprinted through the woods.

  A while later, it slowed down in front of a rock. It whined, ears going flat, as it took a few steps closer, looking up at the figure sitting on it before lying down before it.

  A hand reached, grazing the wolf's head before it began caressing it, and as the figure did, the wolf's whines grew louder.