Act 10

The beast flailed wildly attempting to claw Xavier away from it, Lily came to her senses when Xavier yelled at her to run. Like a soldier following orders, she bolted into the tree line and took cover in the bush. The beast roared at Xavier and he returned it with a howl of his own while they clashed furiously. The Wendigo grabbed him and attempted to pummel him into the ground. As he hit the rocks, he scattered into several shadowy fragments and the Wendigo bellowed a howl of triumph. Lily saw this and she thought he was dead, tears started to drip from her eyes as she looked that Xavier’s remains. While she cried softly in the bush, she noticed that the beast was sniffing around the place attempt to location her sent. When the it looked that her direction, she felt an overwhelming dread, she counted it slow strides towards her. 1, 2, 3, 4 and just when it was about to land it 5th step, it stopped and once again was reaching something on its back. Lily strained her eyes to see several dark strips of Xavier was creeping around the monster’s body. Its scratched and clawed attempting to remove them from its body, it roared and simultaneously the strips when inside its mouth. Its chocked and whizzed for a few seconds before several long tendrils burst out of its stomach and grabbed it arms and legs and proceeded to pull them out their joints. Once again, the Wendigo cried in pain and Lily watched it all unfold then a few moments later a loud snap echoed through the woods as Xavier ripped the monster into pieces, tearing flesh from flesh, dislocating bone from bone and spraying blood on the rocks surrounding him. Lily was frozen from shock as she saw Xavier bloodied and still grabbing on the severed limbs of the monster nevertheless, she snapped back into reality and slowly stood up and approached him cautiously. As she went closer, she started to notice something different about him. When she was a few feet away she could finally point out the changes, he was taller and bigger than before and he now had deer like horns. His head was slumped down and he was clearly in shock, Lily crept closer and just as she placed her 3rd step Xavier’s slowly went up and looked at her direction. This made Lily halt her steps and she didn’t move she only returned his gaze. There was a brief silence before Xavier turned away as if he was a shamed of what he did and letting her watch the gruesome scene. “I am sorry you had to witness all of that, my instincts got the better of me.” he said softly and continued, “I am a monster.” Lily approached and sat beside him “A monster would have left me for dead” she said reassuringly. He slowly met her gaze as she continued, “A monster wouldn’t save me from that creature. You are not a monster Xavier; you’re a hero, my hero.” she said. Xavier chuckled and slowly to stand up, “Thank you.” then he materialized an arm and held it up to Lily, she gladly accepted the gesture and she also proceeded to stand up and they started to slowly stride into the woods. “By the way, how did you get so big and why do you have horns on your head.” Lily ask curiously. Xavier manifested two arms and touched each on his two newly grown horns, “I do not know, I didn’t notice it until now.” he said. “Maybe it’s from the Wendigo you killed, and you absorbed it somehow. That is so cool, have you also noticed that you also gained height.” she said in amazement. Xavier proceeded to examine his shadowy body and agreed that he was taller than usual. As he examined his body, he noticed something under his cloak of shadow. He bent down and pick the object raising it so he and Lily could see it clearly. It was the circular flat rock that they were looking for, Lily quickly grabbed it from Xavier’s arm jumped in excitement. “Yes, finally we have the stone, all we need it to carve your family symbol on it. Xavier pondered for the few seconds before taking the stone from Lily then we went to one of the rocks that were stained by the blood of the Wendigo, he bent down and proceeded to fiddle with it. Lily jogged to towards him to see what he was doing, and sure enough she saw that Xavier was carving the symbol on the rock using the blood. A couple of strokes later he presented it to Lily, she smiled and started to blow on the rock so the blood would dry quick. They soon started to walk to the tree line. A few meters away, Xavier started to hear something in the distance, Lily took notice of it and they both started to tense up again. “What is it Xavier, is it another Wendigo?” she asked nervously. “No, something worse.” he replied. Then he picked up Lily and quickly glided towards the tree line, they hid in one of the trees surrounded by bushes as they waited for that “something” to show itself. Lily started to her to hear a faint noise 10 feet away from where they were. A couple of minutes later something worse did came out of the tree line, Mat was blindly walking out the rocky hill as he was conversing with someone on his phone. Lily let out a sigh of relief and agreed with Xavier that it was worse than the Wendigo. They watched him intently, hoping that he wouldn’t see them. Surely enough, Mat was fixed on the person he was talking on the phone. Lily strained her ears trying to understand what they were talking about. She could only hear Mat but it was enough to make a picture of the whole conversation. “I know, I know I’m trying to close to my ex-fiancé so I could get her to tell me about the legend surrounding the abandoned mansion in the woods. But she keeps on avoiding me since the day I got here.” Mat said frustrated. Lily smirked as she heard it and quietly said “Serves you right.” Mat was continued but abruptly stopped dead on his tracks, Lily could see that he sprinted a few feet in front of him, he took a picture of something and was franticly waving and shouting on his phone. She knew what he saw and strained her ears again and carefully listened, “Oh my god, George I got a scoop for yah, I’ll send you the pic.” There was brief pause before he continued. “I know right, this could get us back in the business. What? Its looks fake? You want me to take the corpse for proof. Sure, it’s right he-” he was cut off when the corpse of the Wendigo went a blaze and dissolved into ashes in front of him.