Midnight swamped the woods in darkness. Despite Wulfstan's impossibly perfect vision, it was like trying to navigate a maze. There was no strange instinct leading him, like there had been before, just the tugging in his heart that pulled him back to Leofric.
All that did, though, was pull him in a straight line – there was no map for him to follow anymore. Stumbling around tangled bushes, wreathed in thorns and sharp branches, swerving around trees as wide as houses, Wulfstan had to hope that he wasn't going to walk into anything he hadn't encountered before. He knew the woods were dangerous; even if he couldn't bleed or, if he guessed right, would have great difficulty dying, he could still become trapped if he found a cliff or a treacherous bog. Not being able to die easily would make it worse – he could be there forever, no one ever finding him, no way out.
Leofric would never know what really happened to him.
Fortunately, even if there were potential threats because of the landscape, Wulfstan had nothing to worry about when it came to animals – there were no animal threat in England. There was nothing for him to fear when the bushes rustled nearby as he ran through the woods. Deers, foxes, badgers, owls and bats were barely on his periphery. People were the biggest danger but the likelihood of him stumbling upon any was pretty slight due to the isolation of the area.
After what felt like an insurmountable distance, Wulfstan stumbled over a particularly prominent, shrub-hidden tree root and flew out of the claustrophobic woods into a clearing. He was sure it must be the clearing where he had begun the journey to the cave that afternoon. Pushing up from the ground, ready to look around, Wulfstan froze as he locked eyes with a group of people hunched around a smouldering fire. Faces barely lit by the orange light stared out at him, a mix of men and women, ranging from younger to much older than Wulfstan, hardened from wind and sun. An unpleasant, unwelcoming expression was worn by all of them, a sea of guarded faces.
He'd been wrong about the likelihood of people. It was still undeniably strange that they would be there at all. There had been no traces of humanity at all just a few hours prior.
Standing straight, Wulfstan eyed them warily, taking a step back so he could watch them in return, shrinking back almost to the treeline. His hands curled into loose fists, and he lowered his centre of gravity by an imperceptible amount, bending his knees and bracing just in case the unfriendly strangers made a move. Wulfstan didn't know how to fight – he'd never had to – but he'd seen enough drunken brawls to know what not to do if he didn't want to get hurt.
A thought flickered in his head.
How could he get hurt at their hands? He, feasibly, would be fine even if all of them came at him. Without weapons, of course, but that didn't stop him wondering. If anything, shouldn't they be worried? Wulfstan knew he was already stronger than everyone he'd met before, on top of his strange healing. Regardless, he'd rather not risk it.
A voice cut through the heavy atmosphere, deep but gentle, with an accent that didn't come from any place nearby. It was off-putting given the circumstances. "Good evening, my friend. What brings you out this way?" From the shadows, where the dim firelight didn't quite reach, a man stepped forward, a warm smile on his ruddy, age-lined face. He held his arms out wide with his hands splayed open as if trying to prove he wasn't a threat.
That didn't stop Wulfstan noticing there was a wariness,taught and tense, in his steps – he couldn't quite tell why though.
Wulfstan was tall but he was not muscular, nor did he have a threatening face on him. It was apt to call him a pretty boy, which he had been, in an insulting manner, many times. He couldn't understand why this man would seem wary of him. Wulfstan didn't even look like the average farmer; he'd been told enough times that he had the looks of an idle nobleman's son. Unless… unless the man wasn't wary of Wulfstan – he was nervous for some other reason. Observing him, he saw the man's eyes darting around in the dark, never staying still, his feet braced more obviously in the same stance that Wulfstan held himself in. He clicked his tongue slightly; Wulfstan may be literate and learned, but that didn't mean he understood why people did things sometimes.
Silence drew in close, and he realised he'd just been staring blankly at the man for a while. Wulfstan felt sheepish for a moment before responding, "Travelling. I'm on my way home." He had decided it prudent to keep his response short, revealing little.
"In the middle of the night?"
Wulfstan looked around for a moment. None of the other people had moved from their spots, though they still stared intensely. A slight rustle startled him, and he looked back to see that the man was beginning to move closer to him. "Yes."
Another step. His smile widened, no longer feeling any type of welcoming – Wulfstan was clever enough to know that. "That's strange. Why don't you rest with us for the night and continue in the morning? Put down your pack – it looks heavy. What on earth are you carrying about?"
Not wanting to show his nerves, Wulfstan didn't move an inch, continuing to observe the man. All he did was slightly shift the position of the bag slung across his shoulders, so tiny of a movement the man wouldn't notice it. "No, thank you, I'm not far from home now." Straightening up completely now, leaving the loose fighting stance he'd entered earlier, Wulfstan made to leave. That didn't mean he had relaxed in the slightest. "I've got to get going, my family is waiting for me."
"The nearest village is five miles out at least – that's a way to go without rest." The man was closer than before, still walking slowly towards Wulfstan. It was like a predator cornering its prey, pushing Wulfstan back further and further until only the thick treeline was at his back, no wiggle room to run. "We can give you some food and shelter for the night."
"That's unnecessary." He'd never been in this type of situation before – he wasn't even sure if he was reading the room completely correctly. Wulfstan was not a cold person, always polite even when others were rude, but his hackles were raised as he eyed down the strangers watching him. It felt wrong to assume, but he was getting the feeling that, if he stayed, he would find himself stripped of his belongings by morning. He dreaded the thought of what would happen if he possessed the ability of sleep – if he could, he doubted they would intend for him to ever wake up again.
The man was closer still, an arm's length away. Wulfstan didn't quite know what was going to happen; the most threatening situation he had ever had to deal with was Godwin at the village and that man just used thinly veiled threats. Actual physical violence was not something he had ever had to deal with. "Don't make this hard, friend."
Unfortunately, Wulfstan's experience was quickly updated as the strange man swung a fist out, aiming for an uppercut to his jaw. In that one movement, the man was a mere step away from Wulfstan and that clenched fist, veins popping with the force he was holding it, was a moment from smashing his face in. It was clear that the stranger did this a lot, a trained precision within his movements speaking of a violent history. Startled, Wulfstan couldn't help but widen his eyes, moments from stumbling back when it felt like something slid into place.
Everything felt slow like the world was dunked in sap. A strange, deep-seated instinct was roused from the pits of Wulfstan's brain as he suddenly snapped backwards, folding almost in half until his torso was parallel with the floor. That swinging fist flew above him, missing him by a handspan. None of his body felt tense, even as he held this impossible pose for an unnatural amount of time. This all felt like second nature.
Sounds amplified and echoed in his ears, the bellows of calling, enraged voices, feet pounding against the ground. Everything was bursting to life, reacting to the new potential threat. None of it mattered. Wulfstan reached his arm out and grasped onto the man's still lingering forearm - had it even been more than a second? – and yanked hard. At that moment, he pulled himself upright as the man came tumbling towards his body. Somehow knowing exactly what to do, Wulfstan kicked his leg out and made contact with the man's knees – an impossibly loud snapping, crunching, wrenching noise broke through the hubbub, followed by an agonised screech. It drilled into Wulfstan's ears, their sensitive nature becoming almost debilitating.
Wulfstan felt the arm in his grasp go limp and he let the man fall to the ground. It seemed, as he looked down, that the bones in the strangers legs were displayed to the air and blood darker than the night spurted into an arc through the air. Despite the fact he knew he had done that to the man with one swift kick, Wulfstan felt numb as he looked at the mutilation as if he was outside of his body, a simple observer. A torturous, clawing sensation seized his stomach. That pit in his belly wrenched open anew, agonising and all-consuming.
He could hear that attacker's companions scurrying about, panicked and fearful from the damage that had been inflicted upon their apparent leader in only moments. Wulfstan couldn't focus on anything going on, his eyes trained on those bloody bones and the gore spreading across the mossy floor.
Never before had he understood 'hunger'. That rumbling in his stomach had never urged him to eat, just decried its hollowness. Something foreign that his family spoke of at the end of the day, their desire to always consume food, that had evaded him until that moment.
Wulfstan craved that fresh, warm blood.
But he didn't snap, not descending on the gushing wounds, his attention drawn to the heat and smell of the man's group. Swivelling his eyes away from the limp body, the man gone silent, unconscious or perhaps dead, beneath his feet, with great effort, an inhuman rumble echoed in his chest. A snarl like a rabid dog bubbled past his lips. Baring his teeth, animalistic from his desire, Wulfstan turned to face the fearful visages of the man's companions. Firelight glinted off his exposed, wet fangs. He crouched slightly, flaring his fingers out as if he wanted to pounce and tear the throat out of the nearest person with his hands. No, not 'as if'; he was going to rip their throats out.
Wulfstan lost all thought as he came closer and closer to the huddling group of people. They were ready to bolt into the woods, uncaring that they could become impossibly lost as long as they got away from the wild, blood-stained, red-haired monster. A huddle of humans reduced to a herd of shivering, wide-eyed deer. Vulnerable prey in the face of a tyrannous predator. He could smell the fear dripping from them, oozing through their blood, tantalising and maddening.
Saliva grew thick in his mouth, slobbering like a starved beast. Only the slightest glimmer of his humanity remained.
As he stared down the terrified mob, Wulfstan couldn't know that his eyes reflected the firelight like a cat's eyes, that his brown eyes, a slight tint of red always there, became unnaturally bloody, bathing in the chaos. That monstrous face of his, reflected in the blown wide eyes of his prey did not register as his when he looked at them, seeing only their flesh, ready to wrench apart.
A woman who had been shoved to the front of the pack collapsed to the ground, her face wet with tears, her eyes never moving from the hunched form of Wulfstan, shrieked, "Demon! Begone, you foul beast!" A crude, wooden cross was clenched tight in her outstretched hands, a desperate plea to her god to save her.
Something about those shrill words yanked him out of his stupor. His lips which had been curled back to bare his canines dropped, a stunned expression replacing his ferocity. Realising what he had been about to do, he dropped his hands to his sides. Regret flooded his body and, before anybody else could attack him, before he could hurt anyone else, Wulfstan sprinted out of the clearing. It wasn't hard to know the direction he had to go in – there was only one path he could take now.
Running and running and running, the sound of people fell away and the suffocating, claustrophobic forest turned into a rolling, hilly landscape. Blood was thick in his nose, clinging to his clothes as it dried in the night air. Wulfstan knew he was alright now, that there was nothing threatening around, but he couldn't stop his legs pumping at the speed they were. His body was not under his control as it propelled him back to the village and the end of the yanking tether around his heart.
It had taken him about twelve hours to get to the forest from the village the previous day. Darkness had descended again while he'd been in the woods and the cave. As his home loomed on the horizon, the sun hadn't even cast a minute glow across the sky, night still thick around him. His terror had moved him to an extent that he had never thought possible. Unable to think all that clearly, Wulfstan could vaguely guess it had only taken him a handful of hours to get to the boundary of the village.
Crawling through his window, his home was still devoid of waking life. Donngall was snoring, Ita was murmuring and Leofric was soundless. No strange happenings in the other man's room tonight. All was as it should be.
Slumping against the wall, Wulfstan wished more than ever that he could sleep – he couldn't help but think that it would be so pleasant to be able to switch off. If exhaustion was like this, he couldn't understand how the average human functioned at all. This was miserable.
How in the world could that version of him four hundred years ago find pain and agony beautiful? How exhausted and bored of the world had he become that leaving it all behind, leaving the one he loved behind, was a welcomed adventure?
Wulfstan couldn't fathom it.
He couldn't fathom that he had centuries of life to experience, the idea of that time chilling him to his core. He'd lived only five years – a hundred times that, a thousand times even, was his lifespan. Longer than any number of years he knew.
"By God's bones, Wulfstan, what the shit?" Leofric's face filled his vision, painted with exhaustion and worry. His hands grasped Wulfstan's face, caring yet stern. "Where 'ave you been this past day? Why… fucking 'ell, why are you so bloody?"
Stunned into silence, unable to respond at all, Wulfstan fell forward, crashing his face into Leofric's shoulder. He wished more than anything to be able to feel the warmth of Leofric's body. Alas, just the pressure of that hug around him would have to do. His broad, muscular arms were strong, bracketing Wulfstan's body, crushing him tight against his chest. Wulfstan pressed his face into the crook between Leofric's neck and shoulder. The scent on his skin overpowered the distressing scent of that stranger's blood, soothing Wulfstan's mind.
Leofric smelled of home.
"Talk to me. Please."