Íomhar || Hound of Quaintrelle

Gwyllgi, they called her kind in the old tongue— corpse dog, death hound, thing that should not be. But she learned to wear humanity like armor, learned to stand on two legs instead of four, learned to hold a sword instead of using teeth. Until she was unrecognizable from the wolves that lurk the tree line or the loyal mastiff to its hunter owner.

The blood, though—the blood remains the same. From the bloated corpse she sends drifting into the river to the animal she feasts upon on her dinner plate. Too thick to trail between her fingers like water but loose enough to wash away before she visits the Princess—scrubbed from beneath her nails, rinsed from the creases of her palms. Though it never truly leaves. Water may cool her, may wash the streaks away, but it marks her skin and never decays. The bodies that surround her throughout the years, with their lifeless eyes gone milky and mouths hanging open in eternal anguish, frozen mid-scream or mid-plea—they decay. Flesh softens, bones yellow, faces collapse into themselves.

She makes sure of it.

Someone had tried to sneak into her Princess's garden while she leisured among the roses. A group of men, moving under the waning moon like a hungry pack, daggers glinting like teeth and eyes sharp with revulsion for Her Princess.

Íomhar tasted it in the air, her hand resting on her sheath. She tilted her chin towards the sky, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath through her nose. There. Cutting through the garden's perfume of roses and damp earth. A sharp tang of sweat, adrenaline souring into something animal and desperate. Like starving animals in the winter they hurried, unequipped, unfamiliar on how to navigate the forest quietly. They stumbled and pushed away leaves, left boot prints, their tools cracking against the tree stalks as they sliced it down.

“My Princess,” Íomhar whispers, dropping to one knee by her side. “I have duties to attend to. I will return.”

Then she rose, and she started towards the edge of the large garden. Where the hedges stood taller than her—ancient, gnarled things twice her height, their branches woven so densely that sun died trying to penetrate them. They were thick as castle walls, a natural boundary cultivated over decades to ward off intruders and animals alike, their leaves dark and waxy, their thorns hidden.

But Íomhar found her grip with practiced ease, gauntleted fingers curling around branches that would tear bare skin. She hoisted herself up and over in one fluid motion, her black cloak billowing briefly before settling. As her armored boots met the ground on the other side they made no sound. The gwyllgi in her knew how to move without disturbing the world, how to become shadow and silence, how to hunt.

Íomhar rolled her shoulders back, feeling the familiar weight of her armor settle into place, the plates shifting against each other with the softest breath of metal on leather. She straightened her posture before she set off towards the swallowed curses and muffled panic echoing through the trees ahead. Her hand never left her sword hilt.

The hunt had begun.

"We're almost there, just hurry up." Marius whispers, wiping his brow with a trembling hand as sweat stings his eyes. He hacks away at another bush, his blade catching on stubborn branches that refuse to yield cleanly. The walk had been arduous—roots catching ankles, thorns tearing at exposed skin.

But it was the quiet of the forest that sent alarm bells ringing in his ears, that made his gut twist with unease. The forest was abundant with wildlife big and small—owls should be calling, nocturnal creatures rustling through underbrush, insects singing their endless chorus. And yet... the only sounds he could hear were his own ragged breathing, his footsteps cracking twigs like breaking bones, and the frustrated curses of another man somewhere behind him, tangled in vegetation that seemed determined to hold him prisoner.

"Are you sure we should do this?" Gilbert piped up from the rear, voice thin with barely-concealed fear. He fought his ankle out of a sudden depression in the earth, boot sinking into soft rot that released the sweet-sour stench of decay. "You know who we are going up against, right?"

"A hound." The third man interrupts with a bark of laughter, shoving Gilbert hard enough to make him stumble. His sneer made his already ugly face even uglier, all yellow teeth and cruel amusement. "Are ye afraid of a wee dog? What kind of man pisses himself over a pet?"

Gilbert whirled around to face Otto, eyes blazing with indignation and terror in equal measure. "Tis not just a—"

He stopped.

The words died on his tongue, strangled by sudden, absolute wrongness.

Where Otto stood—where Otto should have stood--- there was nothing. Not even an imprint remained in the soft ground where his boots had been planted moments before. No sign he had ever existed beyond the lingering echo of his shove, beyond the spreading bruise forming on Gilbert's shoulder.

"Marius..." Gilbert started, voice stammering, cracking like a boy's instead of a man's. He took several hurried steps backward, boots sliding through dead leaves. Closer to Marius. His hand reached out blindly, desperately, finding the other man's shoulder and gripping it hard enough to bruise. "Otto's—Otto's gone, he's—"

"Otto is what?" Marius turns, annoyance flashing across his features.

And his heart drops into his stomach like a stone into a well.

Gilbert stood three paces away, mouth still open mid-word. His eyes bulged grotesquely from their sockets, whites showing all around the irises in an expression of pure, animalistic shock. Through his stomach a sword had been driven clean through. The blade had entered from behind, punching through leather and cloth and flesh with surgical precision, emerging from his front in a glistening arc of wet metal. Blood bloomed around the wound like a dark flower opening, spreading across his tunic in an ever-widening stain. All at once the color drained from Gilbert's face, skin going waxy and gray as his body realized what his mind couldn't yet process. Blood poured from his mouth in a thick crimson stream, spilling over his lips and chin, bubbling with each attempted breath that only filled his lungs with more of his own life.

The sword twisted once, a deliberate, cruel rotation that made Gilbert's body jerk like a puppet with cut strings, made wet sounds that would haunt Marius's nightmares if he lived long enough to have them—and then pulled free. The withdrawal was slow, almost gentle, steel sliding back through. Gilbert collapsed into a bloody heap at Marius's feet.

Behind where Gilbert had stood, stood no man.

But abeast in armor.

Taller than any knight had right to be. The black cloak hung motionless despite the breeze, as if even the wind feared to disturb it. Blood—Gilbert's blood, Otto's blood, the blood of how many others—dripped from the sword in steady rhythms, pattering onto the forest floor like obscene rain.

The Hound of Quaintrelle tilted its head, studying Marius the way a wolf studies wounded prey.

And then it smiled.

Marius fell backwards, chest heaving and eyes flickering left and right. How did he get here? How come no one heard him? Was this truly the power of the Hound? Then he summoned one last bit of courage to raise his knife, though his fingers trembled as he white knuckled it.

“I’m not going down without a fight. I’ll kill the princess—”

It felt like slow motion, time stretching and warping around him as his mind tried desperately to process what his body already knew: he was going to die here.

For one second he held the knife up in front of him like a talisman, like a prayer, like it could somehow protect him from what was coming. His hand trembled so violently the blade caught sunlight in jagged flashes. He could barely hold it straight, knuckles white and locked, arm shaking with the effort of keeping it raised between himself and the beast.

The second second, the knife clattered to the ground.

And his arm was gone.

Not broken. Not wounded. Gone. Severed cleanly at the shoulder in a single stroke so fast he didn't see the blade move, only felt the sudden, shocking absence where his limb had been. For one blessed, merciful heartbeat, there was nothing—just confusion, his brain unable to comprehend the empty space, the wrongness of his body's new shape.

Then the blood came.

It sprayed from the stump, hot and thick, painting the ground in dark streaks. The metallic tang of it filled the air, overwhelmed everything, made him gag even as his body went into shock. He stared at where his arm should be, at the way blood just kept coming and coming and coming—

And then the pain rushed in all at once, a tidal wave of agony so complete it erased thought, erased everything except the animal need to scream.

Marius collapsed, rolling in his own blood—slipping in it, drowning in it—the spreading pool warm and slick beneath him. He writhed like prey before predator, like a rabbit in a snare, body thrashing uselessly as shock and blood loss made the world tilt and spin. His remaining hand scrabbled at the ground, fingers digging into soft earth, finding no purchase, no escape, no salvation.

The sword came down.

It punched through his chest with the sound of breaking wood and tearing fabric, through sternum and ribs that cracked like kindling, through the desperate hammering of his heart that suddenly, horribly, stopped. The blade pinned him to the forest floor like an insect to a board, drove so deep the tip buried itself in soil and root beneath him. He couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Could only stare up with bulging, bloodshot eyes at the beast looming over him.

This would be the last thing he sees, then.

A monster masquerading as human. Steel and shadow and those terrible, empty eyes watching him die with something that might have been satisfaction. He tried to speak—to beg—but only blood came. It flew from his lips in dark spatters, bubbled up from his throat, filled his mouth with copper and salt and the taste of his own ending. Tears cut clean tracks down his dirt-smeared face, mixing with blood and sweat and the pathetic remnants of his courage.

The monster leaned in close.

When it spoke, the voice was deep and cold and promised things worse than death.

"Pray, human." Each word fell softly, menacingly. "Pray that I do not search for you in the afterlife to kill you again."

Then the beast raised his sword from Marius’ chest, and brought it down on his neck.

Under the waning sun’s gaze, Íomhar dumped the bodies into the river. No one would find them, their parts were broken and scattered so the beasts that roam could feast. No one should know their names or who they were. They deserved no burial. Only to rot in a wolf's stomach.

The last bit of blood trailed off her armor as she splashed herself. She had been away for too long, any minute was too long without being at her Princesses side. But to return covered in blood? Never. And so she took time washing herself off, until the river reflected in the armors sheen. Then, she cupped the water between her hands and drank from it.

Across the river, she spotted two pairs of glowing eyes watching her. Íomhar raised her head slowly, and gave a soft nod. From the bushes, a wolf drank from the same water she did. Their eyes met more than once, before Íomhar stood and started towards the castle gardens. The forest seemed alive. Birds sang and she could hear the hesitant pitter patter of rabbits in their burrows checking to see if it were safe. A lone wolf howled in the distance and she resisted the urge to howl in return. Focus. The Princess required her. She always did.

Íomhar raised herself over the hedge, and she landed quietly to see nothing had changed. The princess was still seated in the garden venue, surrounded by exquisite flowers. Gifts from neighboring kingdoms and their... suitors. Íomhar closed the distance and finally dropped to one knee, resting a hand over her heart.

“My princess, I have returned. Nothing will trouble you no more.” She whispers.

Gwyllgi, they called her kind in the old tongue— corpse dog, death hound, thing that should not be. But she learned to wear humanity like armor, learned to stand on two legs instead of four, learned to hold a sword instead of using teeth. Until she was unrecognizable from the wolves that lurk the tree line or the loyal mastiff to its hunter owner.

The blood, though—the blood remains the same. From the bloated corpse she sends drifting into the river to the animal she feasts upon on her dinner plate. Too thick to trail between her fingers like water but loose enough to wash away before she visits the Prince—scrubbed from beneath her nails, rinsed from the creases of her palms. Though it never truly leaves. Water may cool her, may wash the streaks away, but it marks her skin and never decays. The bodies that surround her throughout the years, with their lifeless eyes gone milky and mouths hanging open in eternal anguish, frozen mid-scream or mid-plea—they decay. Flesh softens, bones yellow, faces collapse into themselves.

She makes sure of it.

Someone had tried to sneak into her Princes garden while he leisured among the roses. A group of men, moving under the waning moon like a hungry pack, daggers glinting like teeth and eyes sharp with revulsion for Her Prince.

Íomhar tasted it in the air, her hand resting on her sheath. She tilted her chin towards the sky, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath through her nose. There. Cutting through the garden's perfume of roses and damp earth. A sharp tang of sweat, adrenaline souring into something animal and desperate. Like starving animals in the winter they hurried, unequipped, unfamiliar on how to navigate the forest quietly. They stumbled and pushed away leaves, left boot prints, their tools cracking against the tree stalks as they sliced it down.

“My Prince,” Íomhar whispers, dropping to one knee by her side. “I have duties to attend to. I will return.”

Then she rose, and she started towards the edge of the large garden. Where the hedges stood taller than her—ancient, gnarled things twice her height, their branches woven so densely that sun died trying to penetrate them. They were thick as castle walls, a natural boundary cultivated over decades to ward off intruders and animals alike, their leaves dark and waxy, their thorns hidden.

But Íomhar found her grip with practiced ease, gauntleted fingers curling around branches that would tear bare skin. She hoisted herself up and over in one fluid motion, her black cloak billowing briefly before settling. As her armored boots met the ground on the other side they made no sound. The gwyllgi in her knew how to move without disturbing the world, how to become shadow and silence, how to hunt.

Íomhar rolled her shoulders back, feeling the familiar weight of her armor settle into place, the plates shifting against each other with the softest breath of metal on leather. She straightened her posture before she set off towards the swallowed curses and muffled panic echoing through the trees ahead. Her hand never left her sword hilt.

The hunt had begun.

"We're almost there, just hurry up." Marius whispers, wiping his brow with a trembling hand as sweat stings his eyes. He hacks away at another bush, his blade catching on stubborn branches that refuse to yield cleanly. The walk had been arduous—roots catching ankles, thorns tearing at exposed skin.

But it was the quiet of the forest that sent alarm bells ringing in his ears, that made his gut twist with unease. The forest was abundant with wildlife big and small—owls should be calling, nocturnal creatures rustling through underbrush, insects singing their endless chorus. And yet... the only sounds he could hear were his own ragged breathing, his footsteps cracking twigs like breaking bones, and the frustrated curses of another man somewhere behind him, tangled in vegetation that seemed determined to hold him prisoner.

"Are you sure we should do this?" Gilbert piped up from the rear, voice thin with barely-concealed fear. He fought his ankle out of a sudden depression in the earth, boot sinking into soft rot that released the sweet-sour stench of decay. "You know who we are going up against, right?"

"A hound." The third man interrupts with a bark of laughter, shoving Gilbert hard enough to make him stumble. His sneer made his already ugly face even uglier, all yellow teeth and cruel amusement. "Are ye afraid of a wee dog? What kind of man pisses himself over a pet?"

Gilbert whirled around to face Otto, eyes blazing with indignation and terror in equal measure. "Tis not just a—"

He stopped.

The words died on his tongue, strangled by sudden, absolute wrongness.

Where Otto stood—where Otto should have stood--- there was nothing. Not even an imprint remained in the soft ground where his boots had been planted moments before. No sign he had ever existed beyond the lingering echo of his shove, beyond the spreading bruise forming on Gilbert's shoulder.

"Marius..." Gilbert started, voice stammering, cracking like a boy's instead of a man's. He took several hurried steps backward, boots sliding through dead leaves. Closer to Marius. His hand reached out blindly, desperately, finding the other man's shoulder and gripping it hard enough to bruise. "Otto's—Otto's gone, he's—"

"Otto is what?" Marius turns, annoyance flashing across his features.

And his heart drops into his stomach like a stone into a well.

Gilbert stood three paces away, mouth still open mid-word. His eyes bulged grotesquely from their sockets, whites showing all around the irises in an expression of pure, animalistic shock. Through his stomach a sword had been driven clean through. The blade had entered from behind, punching through leather and cloth and flesh with surgical precision, emerging from his front in a glistening arc of wet metal. Blood bloomed around the wound like a dark flower opening, spreading across his tunic in an ever-widening stain. All at once the color drained from Gilbert's face, skin going waxy and gray as his body realized what his mind couldn't yet process. Blood poured from his mouth in a thick crimson stream, spilling over his lips and chin, bubbling with each attempted breath that only filled his lungs with more of his own life.

The sword twisted once, a deliberate, cruel rotation that made Gilbert's body jerk like a puppet with cut strings, made wet sounds that would haunt Marius's nightmares if he lived long enough to have them—and then pulled free. The withdrawal was slow, almost gentle, steel sliding back through. Gilbert collapsed into a bloody heap at Marius's feet.

Behind where Gilbert had stood, stood no man.

But a beast in armor.

Taller than any knight had right to be. The black cloak hung motionless despite the breeze, as if even the wind feared to disturb it. Blood—Gilbert's blood, Otto's blood, the blood of how many others—dripped from the sword in steady rhythms, pattering onto the forest floor like obscene rain.

The Hound of Quaintrelle tilted its head, studying Marius the way a wolf studies wounded prey.

And then it smiled.

Marius fell backwards, chest heaving and eyes flickering left and right. How did he get here? How come no one heard him? Was this truly the power of the Hound? Then he summoned one last bit of courage to raise his knife, though his fingers trembled as he white knuckled it.

“I’m not going down without a fight. I’ll kill the prince—”

It felt like slow motion, time stretching and warping around him as his mind tried desperately to process what his body already knew: he was going to die here.

For one second he held the knife up in front of him like a talisman, like a prayer, like it could somehow protect him from what was coming. His hand trembled so violently the blade caught sunlight in jagged flashes. He could barely hold it straight, knuckles white and locked, arm shaking with the effort of keeping it raised between himself and the beast.

The second second, the knife clattered to the ground.

And his arm was gone.

Not broken. Not wounded. Gone. Severed cleanly at the shoulder in a single stroke so fast he didn't see the blade move, only felt the sudden, shocking absence where his limb had been. For one blessed, merciful heartbeat, there was nothing—just confusion, his brain unable to comprehend the empty space, the wrongness of his body's new shape.

Then the blood came.

It sprayed from the stump, hot and thick, painting the ground in dark streaks. The metallic tang of it filled the air, overwhelmed everything, made him gag even as his body went into shock. He stared at where his arm should be, at the way blood just kept coming and coming and coming—

And then the pain rushed in all at once, a tidal wave of agony so complete it erased thought, erased everything except the animal need to scream.

Marius collapsed, rolling in his own blood—slipping in it, drowning in it—the spreading pool warm and slick beneath him. He writhed like prey before predator, like a rabbit in a snare, body thrashing uselessly as shock and blood loss made the world tilt and spin. His remaining hand scrabbled at the ground, fingers digging into soft earth, finding no purchase, no escape, no salvation.

The sword came down.

It punched through his chest with the sound of breaking wood and tearing fabric, through sternum and ribs that cracked like kindling, through the desperate hammering of his heart that suddenly, horribly, stopped. The blade pinned him to the forest floor like an insect to a board, drove so deep the tip buried itself in soil and root beneath him. He couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Could only stare up with bulging, bloodshot eyes at the beast looming over him.

This would be the last thing he sees, then.

A monster masquerading as human. Steel and shadow and those terrible, empty eyes watching him die with something that might have been satisfaction. He tried to speak—to beg—but only blood came. It flew from his lips in dark spatters, bubbled up from his throat, filled his mouth with copper and salt and the taste of his own ending. Tears cut clean tracks down his dirt-smeared face, mixing with blood and sweat and the pathetic remnants of his courage.

The monster leaned in close.

When it spoke, the voice was deep and cold and promised things worse than death.

"Pray, human." Each word fell softly, menacingly. "Pray that I do not search for you in the afterlife to kill you again."

Then the beast raised his sword from Marius’ chest, and brought it down on his neck.

Under the waning sun’s gaze, Íomhar dumped the bodies into the river. No one would find them, their parts were broken and scattered so the beasts that roam could feast. No one should know their names or who they were. They deserved no burial. Only to rot in a wolf's stomach.

The last bit of blood trailed off her armor as she splashed herself. She had been away for too long, any minute was too long without being at her Princes side. But to return covered in blood? Never. And so she took time washing herself off, until the river reflected in the armors sheen. Then, she cupped the water between her hands and drank from it.

Across the river, she spotted two pairs of glowing eyes watching her. Íomhar raised her head slowly, and gave a soft nod. From the bushes, a wolf drank from the same water she did. Their eyes met more than once, before Íomhar stood and started towards the castle gardens. The forest seemed alive. Birds sang and she could hear the hesitant pitter patter of rabbits in their burrows checking to see if it were safe. A lone wolf howled in the distance and she resisted the urge to howl in return. Focus. The Princess required her. She always did.

Íomhar raised herself over the hedge, and she landed quietly to see nothing had changed. The princess was still seated in the garden venue, surrounded by exquisite flowers. Gifts from neighboring kingdoms and their... suitors. Íomhar closed the distance and finally dropped to one knee, resting a hand over her heart.

“My prince, I have returned. Nothing will trouble you no more.” She whispers.