Yesterday, in the bustling marketplace, he had nearly sold out of his stock. An elf, with a face as stern as winter, had almost bought everything before a minor altercation disrupted the deal. Bastian scratched his head, still confused. Elves, after all, were known to possess magic that others could only dream of.
Rumors swirled that even in the frozen northern lands, elven villages bloomed in perpetual spring, untouched by the icy grasp of winter. And Bastian knew these weren't just idle tales. He had seen it with his own eyes. Yet, every time an elf came to his stall, they eagerly purchased his simple, soul-bound objects without so much as haggling over the price.
"They buy them every time," he muttered to himself, "but why? They have magic far beyond what these little tricks can offer."
Shaking his head, Bastian pushed the thought from his mind. It wasn't important why the elves wanted his creations. His connection to them had been severed the moment he was exiled from their village. He was no longer one of them, and their mysteries no longer concerned him.
His mind drifted back to that fateful winter when the giants had found him, half-dead in the snow. If not for them, he would have perished in the icy wilderness. Since then, the affairs of the elves had become irrelevant. What mattered now was survival, completing the commission they were on, earning enough to ensure a comfortable winter for his village.
"Drax, any luck on your end?" Bastian called out, turning his attention back to the hunt.
Drax, the towering figure beside him, shook his head, dislodging a pile of snow from the ancient pine tree above. The weight of the snow fell with a soft thud, blending seamlessly into the thick, frozen blanket covering the ground.
"Nothing," Drax grumbled. "Ice and snow have buried everything. Even the best hunters would struggle to find tracks in this weather, especially after the sleet this morning. The snow has wiped clean any signs that might've been here days ago."
Bastian nodded. The frost and sleet made tracking nearly impossible. Even if something had passed through recently, the fresh snow had hidden all traces. Finding anything in these conditions was a test of patience, skill, and a little bit of luck.
"Maybe my tracking skills aren't up to par with Uncle Charles's," Drax admitted with a sigh, glancing down at the snow-covered ground. "If he were here…"
His voice trailed off, a hint of helplessness creeping in. They both knew it was an impossible "if." Uncle Charles, or rather, Mad Lion, the frost giant, was one of the tribe's most formidable warriors and a masterful hunter. But Mad Lion was gone, off on some distant quest of his own. There would be no help from him today.
Bastian placed a hand on Drax's shoulder, offering silent encouragement. They would find what they were searching for, but they would have to rely on their own skills to do it. And in this unforgiving wilderness, there was no room for doubt. Every moment was precious, and the biting cold was always waiting, ready to claim anyone who faltered.
If it weren't for the tragedy that had befallen Charles' child, it would be him and his pack of winter wolves leading this search. By now, they might've already found their quarry.
"We can't ask Uncle Charles to join us this time," Bastian said, shaking his head, a frown tugging at the corner of his mouth. "He's been through enough."
Bastian had long learned that no matter how strong someone was, even they couldn't control everything. The Frost Giants had sent out four search parties, totaling only ten hunters. Most groups were led by an experienced veteran, each paired with a younger, less seasoned hunter. The dwindling number of fresh hunters was becoming painfully obvious, there were more elders than newcomers, a sign that the tribe was running out of strong hands. Everyone had to band together to make sure they stayed safe and effective, but the lack of young hunters spoke volumes about the tribe's future.
Bastian's own team was unique, two seasoned hunters without the leadership of someone like Charles, the veteran tamer who knew how to command beasts in the wild. Without his expertise, their search was slower, but Bastian was confident they could compensate. They had no other choice.
"Let's see what you've got for us, Wolf," Bastian murmured, pulling out a small, intricately carved wooden wolf's head. As soon as it touched his hand, the carving glowed with a soft, eerie black light. Moments later, a shadowy wolf spirit emerged, visible only to Bastian's clairvoyant eyes.
The wolf spirit, though ethereal, began its work immediately, prowling across the snowy ground in search of a trail. Bastian had little faith in the spirit's tracking ability, though. The eagle spirit had shown its limitations already. Neither spirit was a true soul, after all, but rather a vessel Bastian had crafted, a host for a virtual spirit he had conjured from the essence of the air around them.
These little tricks were born of his family's fragmented magical knowledge, combined with the shamanistic belief that "everything has a spirit." It was a gift unique to clairvoyants like him, summoning spirits tied to objects, whether it be a bird for the skies or a wolf for the ground. They could mimic the abilities of these creatures, but only for a short time. The wolf spirit before him was no exception.
The spirit could track, but not in the way a living wolf might. It had no real nose, no true sense of smell. Instead, Bastian suspected it tracked something else entirely, something invisible to most. Perhaps it followed the faint traces of life or scattered remnants of souls that lingered in the air. It wasn't nearly as reliable as a real hound, but it was better than nothing.
As the wolf spirit sniffed around, Bastian's skepticism grew. But then, suddenly, it stopped, its head snapping in one direction, a flicker of excitement sparking in its glowing eyes.
"What's this? Did you find something?" Bastian asked, surprised. "Did you track those twisted monsters?"
He was caught off guard. Had the wolf spirit really found something so quickly? It was strange. The creature had never outperformed real wolves or hunting dogs before. In fact, during their last hunt, the seasoned hunters with their trained beasts had failed to find a single sign of their prey.
"I guess we'll find out soon enough," Bastian muttered, gripping his gear tighter as he and Drax followed the spirit's lead.
The wolf spirit guided them to a frozen lake, its surface shimmering under the pale light of the winter sky. And there, lurking near the icy shore, they saw them, the creatures they had been hunting. Deformed, pitiful things, just as the elves had described. But something about them felt off. Even from a distance, Bastian could feel it.
His eyes narrowed, the cold wind biting at his face as he took in the sight. The creatures were wrong in ways that went beyond their twisted, grotesque forms.
"There's something wrong with their souls," Bastian whispered, his voice tinged with unease.
This wasn't just a hunt for beasts, it was something far more sinister.
***
A cold, biting wind swept down from the sky, and the once mirror-like lake had transformed into a solid sheet of ice. A starving polar bear, desperate for food, clawed at the frozen surface, hoping to find fish beneath it, but it wasn't long before it became prey itself, its life taken by something far more dangerous than the cold.
On the icy lake, beside the gutted body of the white bear, Bastain stood silently, surveying the grotesque scene. He had found his prey.
Before him was a strange and unsettling group, a band of misfits that defied all logic and reason. There were giants, dwarves, elves, and even a dragon among them. In a world where races lived in separate, clearly defined territories, this sight was nothing short of madness.
Were they elves? Dwarves? Giants? Bastian couldn't be sure. The silhouettes were familiar, yet utterly foreign.
Hidden behind a rocky outcrop, Bastian watched them intently, unable to decide whether the figures before him were living beings or something else entirely. Their forms were distorted, and even from a distance, he could sense the wrongness about them.
"How can a normal elf have four arms?" Bastian whispered to himself, his mind struggling to process what he saw. "And what's with that... that second head? It's like a tumor, grotesque and unnatural."
The more he looked, the more disturbing the details became. Some had extra limbs sprouting from odd angles, while others appeared unnaturally bloated in some areas, with limbs that seemed frail or stretched impossibly thin.
But it wasn't just their twisted appearances that unsettled Bastian, it was their behavior.
They stood motionless in the snow, as still as corpses, yet some would twitch suddenly, their malformed heads swaying back and forth like they were arguing silently. Every so often, one of them would snarl, a low, guttural sound, and another would respond, almost as if they were communicating. But the most unsettling ones moved like animals, on all fours, lowering their heads to gnaw at scraps of flesh scattered across the ice.
Though they wore the remnants of clothes, shredded and worn thin, they no longer resembled sentient beings. Their actions were animalistic, primal, as though whatever humanity they once had was long gone.
Just then, Bastian's heart froze in his chest. He realized his mistake.
"Beasts," he had thought. But these things were far worse than mere beasts.
No animal, no matter how savage, would tear open its own wounds, gnaw at its own flesh, and savor the taste as though it was a delicacy. He watched in horror as one creature did just that, its misshapen mouth biting into its arm, chewing with a twisted, sick smile.
Their limbs, warped and malformed, resembled those of intelligent life, but their behavior was like something out of a nightmare. They moved and acted like the walking dead, but for Bastain, the true horror wasn't in what he could see.
It was what he could feel.
For most people, these creatures were disturbing to look at. But for Bastain, who possessed the gift of soul sight, what he witnessed was far more terrifying. These beings couldn't even be considered alive in the traditional sense.