Netori: Stealing The Hero's Party!

We lived on an island–one ever bustling with storms, blizzards and desperate life scattered throughout. My father was half-human half…he never told me. As for my mother, she was a humanoid Arctic fox with a bosom full of warmth. And I had a brother, he looked just like my mom–ever joyous in his cackle and a rascal born to prank.

Inverse to what should've been, I took after my father and him after our mother. We lived in a cabin surrounded by dense pine and every so often a trader would come to buy and sell us goods in exchange for my father's magic. Coal too was a commodity we sold, but with thick fur on every hide, it was barely needed except for the rare occasions when the sun used to set out of nowhere and only came back after six months.

On such nights my father would open up a shop, a lantern-lit window of his station onlooking the forest dark. Lining the pine were many more such lanterns, illuminating the path for the patrons trying to find our house through the dark.

One such night, someone arrived at the window and knocked on it just as any other customer would. But the moment my father saw her face, he shut the window and locked it close. Rushing around the house he locked the front door and ushered us into the basement–that's where I found it, the rifle cased in glass and hanging behind a locked door.Nôv(el)B\\jnn

I had no idea what he talked about to that woman, but an hour passed by and our father finally came to get us. A flash of worry and doubt was painted across his face and yet he never told us what exactly had happened between him, our mother and the witch.

She was gone and we didn't see her again for long, but the sight of that rifle and the silence from my parents had already piqued my curiosity. Thus I asked…

"Dad, what is that thing we saw downstairs?" He ignored me at first, but after enough nagging, he finally turned to me and squeezed me by the arms. Getting down on his knees, he stared into my very soul and said the words which have haunted me since.

"Never touch it, that thing's cursed, okay? Nothing good comes out of that rifle, it has taken enough from our family, I don't wish for it to take more…" That was the end of it, he never spoke to me about the 'rifle' ever again or the past that he was referring to. I had never known my grandparents much less my great ancestors, so whatever was haunting him…it died on the night when the witch returned to kill my family.

The ruckus downstairs, the rampant footsteps rushing throughout the house, and the way my mother hastily approached us in our room–I can't forget anything about that night even if I tried to. My heart was pounding as I was being dragged by her firm grip while also holding tight on my brother's wrist. He was just as scared if not more.

Locking us in the basement, my mother rushed away with a promise that she couldn't keep.

"I'll be back soon. Take care of your brother, okay?" With a kiss on our forehead and a look of worry, she rushed to our father's side never to be heard from again.

Locked in that room for days, we could hear someone's footsteps creaking upstairs. My senses told me it wasn't either of our parents and thus I kept that door shut and reached for that weapon called a rifle. The moment I held it, something inside me changed, I could feel a strange darkness taking over my body, but somehow–something deep within defended me from being overtaken.

Grunting and groaning as it happened, I unintentionally alarmed the witch. She came rushing down the steps and forced the door open.

"There it is," she whispered with a deranged lick of her lips.

She tried to snatch my brother from beside me, but I tussled with her body. Even though my body was crumbling, I kept hitting her with the back of the rifle. She grunted a few times as I hit her in the rib and pinned my brother to the wall with my body so she couldn't pull him away.

"YOU MORONIC CHILD!" A dark hand emerged from her chest as she screamed and pinned me to the wall behind us. The rifle fell from my fingers and the witch finally managed to snatch my brother with yet another dark hand. "Another arctic heart, that should be enough!"

I heard her laughing while my brother cried and begged for me to save him. However, with my body being thrashed against the confining walls of the tiny room, I couldn't save him. Losing consciousness from the continuous assault, I found myself on the ground and by the time I regained my senses, the witch was gone with my brother.

I thought I lost him, but while getting up the stairs the rifle clutched in my hand, I caught a hint of my brother's smell and rushed out of the house to find him. There were no signs of my parents anywhere, not even their smell, but my brother whom the witch had taken, his smell was guiding me through the dark first until eventually I heard him screaming.

"I'm coming, wait!" I yelled and the crows scattered.

The voice of the witch could be heard in the distance as well, as I arrived in the opening where she was tussling with my brother, however, I had to stop myself from getting myself killed as well. Instead, looking at the rifle in my hand, I instinctively raised it towards the witch. Past that, everything happened on its own and one shot of that thing decimated the witch, half of the forest…and half of my brother's body.

I never knew it would do so much! That it would hurt him too! I didn't want to! I didn't know that it was really cursed! I-I had to…I had to do it, didn't I?! Please…just tell me I had to, I beg you.

Fun Fact: The Witch here is the only other user of Darkness in the story thus far.