บท 28: We Hunt In Pack

Chapter 28: We Hunt In Pack

It truly felt like everything was over.

Michael was down.

Maleva was also.

The situation was pretty dire as the shadow werewolf covered in dead Autumn leaves stepped right between the two hunters. It towered over them. Triumphant.

"Mal… Run…" the desperate man begged her to run away and to save her own life while he tried to do something to keep the beast occupied while she escaped.

"No way… No way that I'm leaving you behind…" she replied.

"What are you doing? Are you nuts? I'm no one and you're one of the Moonlit Sins. You're far more important than I am. Far more important than I'll ever be, in fact," he argued with her.

"Don't say things like that…" Maleva never thought of herself as too important either, to begin with, but she felt awful for her childhood friend who personally thought his life was worthless. She didn't think it was the case, at all…

"Michael…"

"As much as I feel horrible to interrupt your final moment, I won't kill you right this second, there's something I need to show the both of you first," the shadow werewolf declared to them.

"What? What are you talking about? Take me and let her go," Michael shouted at the creature.

"No… Let him go…" Maleva insisted.

"Shut up the two of you!" the rogue werewolf snarled as he violently picked the two of them up and blinked out of existence! Ran so fast across the water of the lake that it felt like it was teleporting!

Boom!

The shadow werewolf dropped the two hunters on the ground. They were now on that small island at the center of the lake. They had been taken away from the beach where they were a second ago. As soon as their bodies were dumped on the ground, Michael and Maleva were shown a bunch of rocks at the center of the island. No. They were not only rocks. They were sculptures made of stone. Altars. Michael and Maleva were both shocked to discover that there were eight sculptures in total.

All of them were altars of wolves.

Each one of them was sculpted slightly differently and all of them had different colour variations ranging from golden, bronze, silver, copper, and more… However, seven of the altars surrounded one of them in particular. One that was onyx and that showed a wolf man who reassembled Michael a lot with his longer hair, which covered half his face.

"What is all of this?" Redheart asked.

"It's us…" Maleva admitted.

"Oh, so you know what these altars are after all?" the dead leaves-covered werewolf taunted her.

"It's us? What do you mean?" Michael couldn't understand at first. But then…

Wait! Seven wolves are surrounding this dude? This has to be representing the seven Moonlit Deadly Sins, but who's that in the middle? It looks like a half-man, half-beast…

"Let me guess. It's all the Moonlit Sins, right?" Michael suspected before she could even explain this to her.

"That's right… It's all of us…" Maleva confirmed.

"Do you know why I wished to show you all of this, Micahel?" the shadow werewolf interrogated him.

"I don't know. Is it because you want to share your love and passion for rock sculpting or something?" Michael still found a way to make a joke out of this horrible and deadly situation.

"You had to see this because I wished to demonstrate to you that you'll never become the beast master that you could have been—you'll never become the Moonlit Master you should have been. You can already forget about uniting the seven deadly sins because I am going to be the one to do it instead of you. Starting with Maleva right here," the dead leaves-covered nemesis carefully explained to him.

"I am not going to let you do this!" Michael was furious to hear that their plan was still to take Maleva for themselves, as well as the rest of the sins. Even though, no one knew who they were at the moment.

"It's too late now. It's time for you to die, Michael!"

"Noooo!" Maleva never wanted her friend to be killed, but she couldn't move. Her body was aching too much. She still tried moving to save him, but she was too slow.

The shadow werewolf was right about to stomp on the man's skull and violently murder him when all of a sudden…

The water surrounding the small island at the center of the lake began getting frozen. Bit by bit, the water turned icy almost as if the wind was changing and that it was suddenly turning Winter all of a sudden. Snow started to slowly fall in the sky. Everything around them became of a solstice white and blue color temperature and it all turned chilly.

"Hum…?" Michael was shocked he was still alive after the shadow werewolf abruptly stopped right before he could finish stomping on his head.

"What is all this ice?" Maleva asked herself.

"This can't…" the dead leaves-covered beast could be heard, uttering to themselves.

Soon enough, the entire lake turned to ice.

"Thought we were hunting as a pack?" Then, her voice was heard on the other side of the lake. Aurora's voice.

Aurora showed up!

Still in her arctic werewolf form, she rushed at the dead leaves-covered werewolf. Icy spikes came with her and were thrown by her right at the face of the shadow werewolf.

The ice spikes violently hit their enemy in the chest, which was not enough to defeat it, but was indeed more than enough to distract it. This distracted him well enough, so Maleva could sneak up behind it.

"Yah!" Maleva, the huntress slashed its back, hurting him even more.

"My turn!" Then, the last ingredient needed to make this some killer teamwork, Michael came into the picture, as well. He jumped back to his feet, grabbed one of the ice spikes that Aurora had brought on land, and used it like a sword! Slashing his way and cutting the enemy's chest in one frosty swing! It was still snowing all over them as this battle raged on. The three pack members stood all around the shadow werewolf, Michael and Maleva barely standing but still standing.

The monster finally and slowly came down to its knees.

They had defeated it.

"We did it…" Maleva murmured.

"I can't believe we won…" Michael tiredly mentioned.

"Glad I found you two again before it was too late…" Aurora was happy these two were still alive to tell the tale.

"Um… Right… Thanks for that, Aurora… I mean, ma'am…" Michael scratched the back of his head.

"Now that we vanquished it, it should transform back into a human anytime now…" Maleva theorized…

However, that didn't happen. Instead, the seemingly deceased body slowly faded and turned into stone after it had been defeated. It turned into the same type of stone that all the sculptures on the tiny island were made of.

"You were saying?" Michael asked her, shocked by what he had just witnessed.

"... Or its body is going to turn into stone. I've never seen that before. Grandma! Have you ever seen that before?" She quickly sought Aurora for help.

"Um…"

Aurora squinted her eyes.