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Thomas groaned as two of his precious vials fizzled harmlessly on the ground. He held the last two vials in his palm, sighed, and put everything in his spatial rings. To compensate he drew his last resort, his pistol. \'Why did it have to come to plan b,\' he thought. \'It\'s not much of a plan either… I only have one shot at this. After a few more moments, I should be able to stand safely.\'

Shay, who had been writhing on the ground, abruptly flipped to his feet. He faltered but managed to catch himself. He had won against the toxins by sheer strength alone, leaving him with a measly quarter of his life essence left.

Shay bared his fangs at the tricky little noble, who reluctantly stood back up. As he stepped towards Thomas however, he felt a warm, viscous liquid under his paw; blood. He followed the trail with his eyes past the bridge, snaking around shards of stained-glass, and ending at the source: Mr. Fisher himself.

Mr. Fisher had bled into unconsciousness, forcing his teary-eyed children to drag his large body along the slick stone. If not for both the tourniquet wound around his shoulder and the snow, which Junior held to the base of his stumpy limb, he would have died.

Shay smiled.

Thomas\'s chest tightened. "Shay, this fight is between you and me," he urged. He took a step towards the lycanthrope, seeking to close the ten foot gap between them. \'I should have maneuvered himself closer to the back of the garden when I had the chance.\'

Shay laughed. "Not one step closer, Thomas. You might be faster than me but not by much, not with my lead."

Thomas stopped. His shaking finger held firm against the trigger but he couldn\'t fire, not yet. The edges of his lips twitched. \'Don\'t let it show,\' he thought. Through sheer force of will he kept his mouth shut.

Shay took Thomas\'s tense silence as reluctant submission but he was still tense as he relayed, "It was always between myself and the town. You only just arrived." A few of his many eyes were glued to Thomas as he turned to bark at Mr. Fisher, the ferocity dragging him back to consciousness with a start. Junior and Penelope cowered behind their father.

"What\'s going on?" Mr. Fisher gasped. Thomas could barely hear him as his voice was hoarse, nearly gone from blood loss. The father struggled for a moment, then let out a pained yell as he put weight onto his severed arm.

Thomas tried to sneak another step but Shay let out a low growl. "I\'ve waited too long for this moment. Don\'t mess it up."

Mr. Fisher\'s eyes darted around, putting the pieces together. With his awareness spiking, he glanced past his children to Thomas, then jabbed a finger at him: "Y-you ate my arm. You...children, stay away."

"Hello, you gluttonous, backstabbing goblin." Shay greeted, pulling the father\'s dwindling focus to himself. "Do you remember me?"

"We don\'t know anything about you!" Penelope yelled, still trying in vain to pull her father through the snow. "We haven\'t done anything! Please, just leave us alone!"

Shay laughed. "This is fantastic! Your father hasn\'t even told you two about me, has he? Afraid of what they\'ll think of you, Mr. Fisher?"

Mr. Fisher was slow to react as the shock was temporarily keeping him conscious, and fading by the second. "S-shay," he sputtered. "That\'s you, isn\'t it?"

"Father, why do you know that thing\'s name?" Junior asked in utter disbelief.

"He knows me very well!" Shay yelled, practically foaming at the mouth. "After all, he destroyed my life. He and the rest of my wretched neighbors cursed my very existence. They burnt my home to the ground. Then cast me out like a monster. That\'s exactly what I\'ve become, a monster. Was it worth it to stuff your bellies?"

Mr. Fisher was silent, the guilt written across his face. "I\'m sorry," he whispered.

"Y-you cursed him?" Penelope exclaimed. "You\'re a worshiper of the goddess. You always preach to us curses are bad, wicked magic."

"Admit it," Shay said, so caught up in his rantings that he had completely forgotten about Thomas, who slowly inched his way closer.

Mr. Fisher lowered his head. "We had no choice. W-we would have all starved to death. Junior, you were just born. It was the dead of winter…" His eyes closed, opening after a few labored breaths. He barely clung to consciousness.

"The city was out of grain. We were starving. Shay, I\'m sorry. We didn\'t know the price. We didn\'t know it was you who\'d be cursed. I\'m sorry but let them go. It\'s not their fault. I\'m...sorry." He slipped back into unconsciousness, leaving Penelope and Junior in a stunned silence.

Shay, having gotten his confession, snapped out of his trance and locked eyes with Thomas, who cursed. "I\'m sure you would be happy if I killed you instead but that isn\'t enough," Shay said as life essence condensed around his legs. "You took everything from me. Now...I\'m going to take everything from you!" He charged after the defenseless family, bloodlust on full display.

Thomas narrowed his eyes but he didn\'t bother giving chase.

He knew from the start, deep down inside of him, that Shay would go after the children. It was the way things were; monsters going after the weak.

He had planned on it. That\'s why two heavy sacks were tied to the bridge.

Thomas dashed the last few feet to a flowerbed, and leaned his pistol on the edge to steady his quivering hands. His heart beat incessantly inside his head, his body remembered the thousands of times his aim had been put to the test as he pulled the hammer back and fired. A black blur sped out of the barrel, raced through a maze of thin support beams, and struck true.

Great pillars of flames engulfed the lycanthrope, and a deafening roar echoed throughout the silent night. Thomas looked on in awe as the bridge came crashing down. A piece of debris flew by his cheek, then another by his leg.

He spun around and dashed away. The ground trembled under his feet. The discordant clangs of smoking metal sought to drag him down with them. He barely made it out of the radius before throwing himself behind a metal railing. After that, he watched the rubble and shrapnel whizz over his head and embed into a wall.

Thomas waited a few seconds, blew the smoke out of his barrel, and threw the firearm back in his spatial ring. \'If I barely made it then Shay definitely didn\'t,\' he thought. \'Maybe guns aren\'t that useless after all.\' After waiting out the enormous cloud of dust that rose up with the ancient bridge\'s collapse, he let out a long sigh and stood up. He froze. \'Crap, the family. Were they too close?\'

He had a spring in his step as he ran over to the rubble but forced himself to slow down when he maneuvered through it, or he might get crushed himself. Peering over what was left of the bridge, he found the children huddled against one another, shaking like wet dogs. Since they were at the very back of the garden, they were safe. 

"Wh-what are you?" Penelope gasped as she looked up at him. "What was that?"

Thomas let out a nervous chuckle.. "Let\'s just save the questions until after I get you both home."