Chapter 18: Campfire Story
[What do you think of the new cover image?]
Lying on his bed, Landon was liying down, his head resting against the pillow.
He had his hand raised, small blue flames were coming from his outstretched finger, the azure fire transforming into a little butterfly, flying into the air and joining the other unreal figures that roamed the room.
An ethereal blue bird was perched on the desk, a flaming spider hung from the ceiling on a web made of a thin golden flame thread, and an otter was swimming through the air, gaining height before diving, jumping acrobatically, the azure animal leaving behind thin golden blue lights that evaporated as it played.
It was around 3 a.m., and Landon appeared to be playing with his flames on his bed, not sleeping.
The boy with curly brown hair was quietly in his room, which fortunately had no camera, and he was waiting...
The blue bird jumped from the desk, spread its wings, and opened its beak, chirping loudly, but no sound came out; after all, it was just a construction made of flames.
The flaming creature quickly flew toward Landon, arriving in front of him before landing its flaming talons on his pinky finger, settling down quietly.
The boy's gray-green eyes paid no attention to it; he was lost in thought, reflecting on the evening and especially focusing on the little call he was receiving in his mind, a connection he felt clearly but which was becoming weaker and weaker.
The flaming animals continued to roam around the room, illuminating it with their colors, aided by the bedside lamp.
They played for another 10 minutes before the boy's eyes lit up, emerging from his dreams.
'I felt it moving a lot, constantly shifting, and it finally stopped about 10 minutes ago...' He smiled and closed his fist, and all the flaming creatures evaporated.
Landon got up and opened the window of his room, climbed on it, and bent his legs; he wasn't planning to take the car. He contemplated for a moment the calm night that had taken over Beacon Hills, closing his eyes and feeling the cold air on his face, allowing himself to be immersed for a few seconds.
He opened his emerald eyes and, with a leap of about ten meters, he landed silently on one of the distant houses. He wasted no time and propelled himself again, moving discreetly from building to building through Beacon Hills, getting closer to what was calling him.
After 8 minutes of rapid running, he arrived at the edge of the woods four times faster than he would have done by car.
He entered without hesitation, this time continuing his path on the forest floor, and five minutes later, he arrived in a clearing.
In front of him, there was a body lying on the ground, surrounded by small bags emitting a strong smell, bait...
'A few minutes later, and it would have started being devoured; at least they didn't cut it into pieces...' Landon thought it could have been much worse, but he still felt the predators approaching around the area.
He approached the body, a large human body battered with wounds; it was the werewolf he had knocked out earlier. It seemed he was dead, but that wasn't really the case...
He arrived in front of the werewolf and squatted down, looking at his body before opening the palm of his hand. The chest of the man on the ground lit up with a small blue-golden light, and a spider made of flames emerged from his chest, the insect now only half of its original size jumping onto the boy's hand, sinking into his palm.
The spider's sole role was to keep the werewolf alive, just at the edge...
The fire fueled the boy's heart so it would beat once a minute, preserving the organs from issues due to the lack of oxygen.
The spider had barely left his body when Landon felt with his haki that life was quickly escaping from him. Landon sprang into action.
Without wasting any time, the werewolf's body illuminated with blue and gold.
'Hmmm..., the damage is too significant, and even if he is healed...' thought Landon, he intensified his fire, increasing its purity and quality.
Landon continued this way for 5 minutes, with no predator daring to approach what was happening here.
He finally stopped and sighed, the flames evaporating and leaving the body of the man who was healed from all wounds.
The boy with curly brown hair was still squatting, observing the man lying in front of him.
'He is massive...' Landon thought, the werewolf he had just saved at the last moment was, at the very least, enormous.
At about 1.95 meters and around 115 kilos, all in muscle.
'A real beast, but that's not what stop the bullets...' Landon smiled at this thought.
The man blinked, regaining his senses; he opened his eyes a bit, but all he saw was blurry. He tried to sit up, but he felt weak.
And this headache, he felt as if his brain was pierced by thousands of cold needles.
"Arghh..." The man had never felt so diminished in his life...
Landon looked at him; he hadn't noticed before, but he seemed to be around 30 years old, with short blonde hair and black eyes.
'I should have maybe thought to bring water and food...' the boy thought and continued to wait calmly.
The werewolf was still disoriented, but was gradually calming down; his horrible migraine was starting to ease, and after 5 minutes, he fully opened his eyes, looked around, and saw that he was surrounded by trees, he also realizing he was not alone.
"Good evening, do you feel better?" the boy said quietly.
The man looked at the teenager squatting next to him.
"Uh... yes..." The man's deep voice replied, sounding confused.
'Not naturally hostile...' in this brief interaction, Landon immediately knew he had made the right decision by following his intuition.
"But where am I...?" asked the disoriented blonde werewolf, looking lost.
"Beacon Hills Woods," Landon simply replied.
The man turned his large shoulders and his unreasonably muscular neck, looking around, his eyes scanning the trees and rocks, his ears picking up the buzzing of hornets and the growls of nocturnal animals.
"The Woods... What is... who are you?" the man asked, looking through Landon eyes.
Landon froze for a second.
"Me..."
"I'm just a guy..." murmured the teenager with green eyes, his gaze dimming for a brief moment.
Landon quickly regained his composure, not giving the werewolf time to continue.
"What's your name?" Landon asked.
The werewolf took a moment to think and finally replied, "Sam Vinny," in his deep voice.
Landon looked at this lost man.
"Hmmm Vinny, you see, I saved your life, so to speak," the boy said, drawing the attention of the massive werewolf.
Vinny was about to speak, but Landon continued.
"And I would like to hear your story."
The werewolf, who bore numerous scars and wounds, notably one on his cheek, began to replay everything that had happened to him...
Landon gave him a moment, but he continued to urge him to speak.
"All of the story, Vinny; I'm aware of the supernatural, so tell me everything..." insisted the boy.
The man trembled as he ear his words, turning to look at the teenager, seeing green-gray eyes staring right into his.
The boy saw the werewolf, this human beast who was build like a titan, a titan who have his hands trembling slightly with an uncontrollable shake.
"Listen... Take your time, we have the night ahead of us, but first tell me what your favorite animal is?" Landon asked softly.
Vinny looked at him, not understanding what the boy was playing at, but he saw in his eyes that he was serious in his question...
"I don't know..., the wolf..." Vinny murmured, diving back into his thoughts without paying much attention to the teenager.
Landon smiled.
"Of course..." murmured the boy, extending the palm of his hand, and his fire appeared, illuminating the dark forest with a soft blue hue.
"What the..." began a panicked voice.
Landon paid no attention, continuing his task; quickly, the flames transformed into two rising paws and then the head of a wolf, as if an ethereal beast was emerging from the boy's palms.
Finally, in less than two seconds, a glowing blue wolf appeared; it was tiny, barely a few centimeters, but Landon continued to feed it with his flames, and in no time, it grew to 30 centimeters.
Vinny watched the whole process; he saw a wolf made of azure flames, looking at him with golden eyes, the wolf moving its paws and sitting beside him like a companion puppy.
The black eyes of the werewolf strangely regarded this puppy before suddenly turning and observing his surroundings.
"Am I in limbo?" asked the blonde giant.
Landon froze, caught off guard by what the werewolf was saying.
Vinny took the boy's reaction as confirmation of his deductions.
"I'm dead, right?" Vinny said in a grave tone...
"Ultimately, I couldn't go all the way..." he murmured softly.
He looked around, not finding it too different.
'Although it's probably always still night here...' thought the werewolf.
Landon saw no issue in letting the man who was staring at the sky continue in his delirium.
"Tell me your story; how did you end up here?"
Vinny lowered his head, a few emotions crossing his gaze.
"It's... complicated," he finally said, almost in a whisper.
Landon said nothing, just watching him.
Minutes passed in silence, the two men sitting next to each other, accompanied by a glowing blue puppy.
Vinny finally spoke again.
"Do you know what osteogenesis imperfecta is?"
A weary sigh escaped his lips.
"A disease also known as 'glass bones,' a genetic disorder characterized by fragile bones, making them as brittle as glass; multiple fractures almost daily await those afflicted by this condition..." the blond man continued softly, barely whispering.
"I was born with this torment..." His voice dropped even lower; he wouldn't have been easily audible if it weren't for his deep voice.
Vinny sighed, his shoulders slumping despite their absurdly large stature. He looked up, staring at the sky.
"Fate is a blind will that takes everything you possess, leaving you face to face with yourself..."
Vinny continued to gaze at the sky, taking a moment of grace for himself.
And after a few seconds,
"Without going into details, after a life of weakness, impotent frustration, and hatred toward the world and those who inhabit it, I've experienced many trials and adventures; ultimately, the supernatural opened its doors to me... I surpassed my torment, making it disappear forever." The massive werewolf resumed his story.
"I joined a pack in Santa Barbara Valley, made up of world nomads, vagabonds, the abandoned, a sort of second-chance group..." Vinny said with a chuckle.
"You know, seeing other broken people too, witnessing the misfortune that befalls others, sometimes even more cruelly than it has befallen you... is comforting." A light shone in his black eyes as he continued.
Landon remained silent, watching the scarred man as he continued speaking.
"The human is strange... but knowing that fate doesn't only target you, that the world seeks to break others beyond yourself, is sometimes just what you need to feel better... The world doesn't specifically aim at you; you're not its scapegoat; you're not special..." Vinny said softly, without a trace of bitterness.
"Yes, human is bizarre... and you realize you're just part of the unlucky group ones, and it's an oddly supportive group, united by their unjust misfortune..." The werewolf smiled, his lips curling up, distorting the scar on his cheek as he reminisced about his memories.
"But never too far away, fate often enjoys destroying what will has built..."
"Our alpha fell in love with a woman, pretty, beautiful, sweet; a non-supernatural human, but that posed no problem for anyone, neither for the alpha nor for the girl. Everyone knew at least a minimum of control within the pack." Vinny's face was now firm, his voice more grave, even the cold night air adding to the sudden atmosphere.
"A human who didn't only see the beast buried within us nor the troubled past we learned to live with as best we could; almost too good to be true, and it was..."
Curiously, Vinny wore a big smile. He turned to Landon, whom he hadn't looked at since he began to speak, and continued his story.
"But you see, when you go through trials more cruel than the previous ones, you end up learning something. Fate strikes where it wants, and no matter our efforts to avoid it... so you eventually learn how to prepare for it; none of us had let our guard down..." He smiled, seemingly challenging fate to try to break him.
"We ended up understanding the girl's game; we warned the alpha about her, but he was already aware; the girl he had fallen in love with was a werewolf hunter. He had discovered it long ago and even understood that her intentions were not pure... but..." Vinny said, not finishing his sentence, Landon concluded for him.
"But he had fallen in love..., right?" The gray-green eyes of the boy watched the werewolf nod slowly his head.
"I remember he looked me in the eyes and said (Love is a sweet poison: it makes you taste ecstasy before burning your heart) a quote from William Shakespeare that he told me, and then he added (No matter the falsehood of her affection, it had been a long time since my heart had burned...)" Vinny lowered his gaze to the ground, his eyes following the little wolf cub that was silently playing around them.
"He gave us the address of another pack of one of his friends who was marginal like us. He leave the pack and made his choice..." The colossus smiled bitterly.
"And unsurprisingly, two weeks later, he was found dead, cut in half in the valley woods, sliced into two pieces from the waist down... we entered the morgue, recovered... what there was to recover, and gave him a funeral at the site of our pack, burying him in the same spot..." Vinny finished softly.
A few seconds passed in silence, the two men watching the ethereal blue flame puppy trying unsuccessfully to climb a tree in the distance. Minutes continued like this until Vinny spoke again.
"The pack, now without an alpha, prepared to leave, and I accompanied them. The story should have ended there, but I went into town to pay my debt to a creditor in the city's shallows, and on my way back, I passed by a warehouse where I caught a familiar scent..."
The little wolf cub had given up the task and was now chasing its own tail, spinning around itself.
"It was the woman, unsurprisingly, with her group of hunters. They were sitting calmly, laughing, as if celebrating something..." Vinny said.
"I suppose they were right; after all, they had won. I began to distance myself from the place and the unpleasant jokes made by the hunters, but the huntress came out as well; she hadn't seen me and was just stepping out to answer a call..." Vinny smiled bitterly.
"I moved away, but my keen senses picked up the conversation; it was brief and summed up to congratulations from her superior, but I stopped in my tracks..." The giant's face was set, his features frozen in a marble-like expression.
"For the good reason that her superior asked her how the test had gone, and she replied that she hadn't experienced it as a training but more like a vacation given the simplicity of the task..." Vinny continued impassively.
« You know… i don't blame her for what she did… » said Vinny looking to landon
« After all, we are enemies, destined to kill each other... but I blame her for not seeing us as enemies, but as training and a game..." The goliath of wolves showed no further emotion.
"If I were to leave after that, I would never stop running... » he simply said
« I went back to the pack, and I told no one what i ear; I wasn't going to involve them. What I was going to do, I was going to do it alone, but I couldn't just leave the group and go. Whatever I will do to the hunters, they were vicious and would have hunted my former pack out of resentment..."
The teenager listened, his wavy hair moving with the wind.
"So what did you do?" Landon asked.
Vinny looked back at the sky, letting out a breath.
"I pretended to become an enemy of my own pack; I feigned losing my sanity and attacked my pack , seriously injuring many members in the process, nothing they couldn't heal but enough to be unforgivable... breaking bones of some women and children in the pack..." Vinny said, his voice remaining constant and measured.
"I then rushed deeper into the valley, to a camp run by a notorious gang in the city that was growing cannabis... I killed and dismembered the seven people who were there..."
Vinny continued calmly recounting his story, his voice who never fluctuate.
"I went to the warehouse and fought as best I could; with the advantage of surprise, I managed to eliminate two hunters and one huntress, but the girl wasn't there; she had been called to the chief and had left the day before..." Vinny was now looking at the little blue wolf cub, which was resting on the ground, sleeping comfortably, thin shard of blue light escape from his sleeping body.
"Injured, I went into the forest, but they caught up with me and captured me, not wanting to kill me like that; I had a few flashes, and here I am, finally here."
The two men remained there, sitting silently lulled by the soft blue light.
[Author Note: I worked a lot on this text, giving it a real substance and emotion, and I would like your opinion. Did you find that this chapter was a filler chapter ?]
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