DWC June 2026 Day 5: Prey
@daily-writing-challenge
( Trigger warning for violence and strong language )
The fog had teeth in Drustvar.
Not proper teeth—not the kind a man could knock loose in a back-alley brawl and spit into the gutter with a mouthful of blood. No, this was a slower kind of bite. It crept between the trees like something living, curling around the roots of oaks so old their bark had gone black, slipping into the gaps of Ridley's coat collar and settling against the back of his neck with a damp, intimate chill that made his skin crawl. The whole forest felt like a mouth closing. "Shoulda stayed in Boralus," he muttered, shoving a low-hanging branch out of his path. It snapped back and clipped his ear. "Fuck—shoulda stayed in Boralus.” He shoved another branch out of his face and it whipped back behind him with a wet thwack and sent a fat cold drop down the gap of his collar, straight along his spine. "Fackin'—" he hissed, jamming a gloved hand under the fur and clawing the water out. "Bloody miserable shitehole.” The canopy overhead was so thick the light came through grey and strangled. Somewhere to his left, something creaked—long and low, like a ship's hull in bad water, except there was no ship and no water, just trees leaning into each other at angles that didn't make sense, their branches tangled like fingers interlocked in prayer, or the bars of a cage. "Bloody, bloody miserable. Who lives 'ere. Who’d choose to." he muttered, scraping his sleeve across his nose. The cold had set up shop behind his teeth and showed no sign of leaving.
It had been two hours ago, maybe three at this point. Ridley had told him, plain as day, no room for misunderstanding—that splitting up was a shit idea. A catastrophically shit idea. The kind of idea that got carved on a headstone under the words ‘Here Lies A Stupid Bastard’. And Merrick had clapped him on the shoulder, flashed that shit eating grin of his and said, "We'll cover more ground apart, Rid, don't be a tit about it."
"Don't be a tit about it, 'e says." Ridley spat into the bracken. “Bloody witch country, backwoods folk an’ Light knows what else, an' 'e wants us split. Brilliant. Top o' the class, Merrick. Round of bloody applause." He shifted the weight of the rifle on his back and kept moving, gloved hand resting near the pistol at his hip. His breath came out grey and he could feel the wet creeping under the wool at his shoulders and the fur at his collar, that particular Drustvar damp that was less rain and more the air sweating onto you. Then he came up over the lip of a shallow draw, and came to a sudden halt as standing there, half-hidden by a curtain of mist and the skeletal fingers of a dead hawthorn was a doe. Holy shit. Ridley's hand fell away from his pistol and his breath caught somewhere between his teeth and his chest and stayed there, trapped, because for a moment he forgot he was supposed to be hunting.
He knew it before his brain caught up to his eyes, because there was no mistaking what they'd been told to look for: pale as bone along the flanks, and blotched in soft brown patches like someone had taken a brush to her hide with trembling hands. Her ears flicked, twitched, settled, and then twitched again as she lifted her muzzle from a puddle with a slow, drained weariness. “Tides…” Ridley breathed. He'd seen plenty of deer in his life out in the wilds of Tiragarde, but none of them looked like this, and none of them felt like this. She had a hush around her, like the woods were holding still for her sake. The dark eye on the brown side of her face had a film to it of pure exhaustion. The kind he'd seen on Dampwick kids in a hard winter, the kind that didn't blink right. He could even count the slats of her ribs and the knobs of her spine through her hide, and the line of her hips jutted sharp as a hatchet. Her lavender eye found him and fixed on him. Ridley felt something he couldn't name move through him—not magic, not exactly, but something close to recognition. As though she wasn't just looking at him but reading him. He should signal Merrick because that was the plan, if plan was even the right word for whatever half-formed scheme Merrick had grunted at him before they’d been swallowed by the treeline.
Let Merrick handle the rest.
Merrick always handled the rest, that was how it worked with them.
Ridley found, and Merrick finished.
But his hand didn't move toward the signal flare in his coat, his feet instead did something else entirely. They stepped forward. Slowly. Carefully. One boot easing into the soft earth, then the other, weight rolling from heel to toe the way he'd learned to walk on the creaking floorboards when their mum was sleeping and he didn't want to wake her. "Easy, girl," he murmured lowly, the same way you talked to a dog you didn't want to bolt. "Easy now. Easy. I ain't gonna—" Gonna what? You're 'ere to catch 'er, you stupid sod. You came out 'ere wiv Merrick to drag 'er back in chains. What are you doin'? He didn't have an answer for that. He took another step, then another. He was close enough now to see the way her coat was matted in places, clumped with mud and burrs and what might have been dried blood along her left flank. Ridley could see the faint tremor running through her legs—not from cold, but from exhaustion so deep it had become a kind of vibration, the body shaking itself apart because it had forgotten how to be still.
She was fifteen feet away.
Ridley raised one hand, tugging the glove off without thinking because bare skin meant no weapon. "That's it," he whispered. "That's it, easy girl, I'm just—I just wanna 'ave a look at yeh, yeah? Just a look." He offered his palm as he reached out for her, and she did not move, her sides heaving in shallow little pulls.
The shot split the wood in half, birds exploding out of the canopy in a black ragged sheet. Ridley's whole body jolted so hard he heard his own teeth click. The doe's head snapped up and for one suspended instant, Ridley saw in her a terror so old it had fossilized, grief so heavy it had bent her spine, and underneath it all, buried so deep he almost missed it, a flicker of something that looked horribly, unmistakably human—, and then she was gone, diminished into a white streak vaulting sideways through the brambles before his brain caught up to what had happened. "NO, Merrick, you stupid—MERRICK— " She made it four bounds, and on the fifth, the iron came up out of the moss like a mouth. The sound it made was a wet, bright, mechanical CHUNK, and underneath it a noise came from her—high and broken and entirely too human, a sound that lived in the agonized space between animal and human, and Ridley felt it hit him in the sternum like a fist. She went down in the bracken thrashing. The chain rattled tight against its stake. Blood was already blooming dark against the white of her hindleg, and she was screaming, screaming, that wrong human scream out of a deer's mouth, and Ridley was running before he knew he was running, slipping on the moss, swearing, "No no no no no—"
“There’s m’girl!” Merrick stepped out of the trees on the far side of the clearing, calm as a man strolling out of a pub, rifle resting easy across his forearm. His silver hair was swept back wet and neat. He was grinning under his mustache. "Knew she'd circle this way," Merrick said, pleased. "Set that trap an hour back. Told you I had a feeling, little brother."
"You bleedin'—she were—" Ridley had no words. He had only his hands, which were shaking, and a hot wet pressure behind his eyes that he hadn't asked for. "She were comin' to me, Merrick, she were eatin' out me 'and, you didn't 'ave ter — "
"Mind your step." Merrick crossed the clearing in three long strides. The doe was still thrashing, that scream now a wet ragged bleating, foam bubbling at her dark lips. He went down on one knee beside her head like a man tending a horse, and from inside his coat he produced the suppression collar, the runes along the inside of it already humming.
"Ridley." Merrick didn't look up, his voice had that velvet edge it got when he was done playing. "Hold. 'Er. Head. Or I'll do it meself an' I'll be cross about it." Ridley's hands moved before the rest of him did. That was the old shape of it, Merrick's voice and Ridley's hands, over two centuries of muscle obeying before his conscience caught up. He went down in the wet moss and took the doe's long jaw between his palms. She was burning under his gloves. Her dark eye rolled while her lavender one looked at him and he felt something in his chest fold in half. Ridley couldn’t speak, instead he bowed his head and pressed his forehead into the fur between her ears. The collar clicked, and it made a small metallic snick, like a lockbox closing. The runes flared once, bright violet, and then she came apart. It was not the beautiful, graceful transformation he'd heard travelers describe when talking about the Kaldorei who could change shapes. It was a wrenching, tearing thing, as though the collar's magic had reached into the marrow of her and ripped the animal away by force. Bones cracked and reformed, fur receding in patches and revealing pale skin covered in gooseflesh and grime. The delicate legs thickened and reshaped, becoming human—save for the one still caught in the trap, where the shift dragged the iron teeth across changing anatomy. Suddenly, there was a girl's face where the muzzle had been, eyes wide and mismatched and full of an agony so pure Ridley felt his own teeth ache from it. And then she was screaming properly, high and raw and torn from somewhere under her ribs. She was naked, mud-streaked, leaf-tangled, and as thin as a sparrow. Her hair was a sandy snarl that was matted with bracken. Her right leg below the knee was caught in the iron teeth and there was so much blood, so much red against so much pale, and she was clawing at the collar with fingers that hadn't been fingers a second ago. The runes were burning her, Ridley could see the welt rising under the iron band, an angry pink scald spreading down her collarbone, every time her hand touched it. She yanked her hand away with a hiss and her head went back against the leaves and she sobbed once, raggedly, and then bit it down to a whimper. "There we are." Merrick stood, brushing leaf-mulch off his knee. "Hello, witchlin’. Long way from home, ain’t we."
"Aaahh—ah, ah— " She whined, the lilt of her words breaking through her teeth like water through ice. "Athair—Athair guide me—oh, oh the iron in me, the iron's bit me bone— "
Ridley found his voice somewhere down in his boots and dragged it up by the scruff. "Yeh shot at 'er." His voice had gone thin and ugly. "Yeh bloody shot at 'er, yeh planted that, yeh—"
"'Course I planted it." Merrick smirked, sounding quite proud of himself. "Set three of 'em while you was off havin’ a sulk. Worked a treat, didn't it?"
"You absolute cunt, Merrick. Look at 'er! You didn't 'ave to spring the trap, she were comin' in soft, I 'ad 'er, I 'ad 'er in me 'and an' you—"
"Bitch, bitch, bitch." Merrick rolled his shoulders inside his coat and grinned at him, all teeth. "Listen to yerself, proper old wife you are today. The trap took 'er, didn't it? Collar's on, ain't it? Job's a good 'un. Stop yer fackin' bitchin'."
"She'll live. These backwoods folk are hardy.” Merrick crouched, examined the trap's jaws, and gave the chain a businesslike yank, causing her to whimper. "Bit a' rope round it, splint it back at camp, she'll be right enough by mornin’. Won't ye, pet."
Sybil was shivering on the ground now in great wracking waves, arms wrapped round her chest, blood pooling slow and dark in the moss beneath her. Her eyes had gone unfocused and she was murmuring something, very fast and very soft, almost like a prayer or a chant. “—Three crows on the rooftree, one for the comin' an' one for the goin' an' one fer the boy what didn't mean it—didn't mean it, no, no, no. Mam, Mam, the kettle's gone over, the kettle's gone over on the hearth—"
Merrick snorted through his nose. "Don't listen to none of it," he said, waving a hand dismissively. "All these backwoods sorts are a bit fackin' touched, ain't they. Live out 'ere with the mud an' the moss an’ drinkin' rainwater an' talkin' to trees—wouldja be right in the 'ead? I wouldn't. 'Alf of 'em are inbred, t'other 'alf's been kicked by a goat. She'll babble all the way to camp if yer let 'er. Tune it out."
Ridley knelt then, working the jaws of the bear trap until the iron came open with a tired groan. She gasped, a thin little inhale, and then went very quiet, which was somehow worse than when she was screaming. The wound was bad. The teeth had bitten clean down the meat of her calf, and one of the lower fangs had gone through. He shrugged out of his coat without thinking and tore the lining of his shirt with his teeth, because his knife was too slow. He wound the cloth tight round her leg above the bite and knotted it. His fingers left red prints on her white skin. "Easy,” he muttered. "Easy now, I gotcher, breathe, tha's it, breathe, in an' out, in an' out.”
"Well, pick 'er up." Ridley lifted his gaze to stare at Merrick. "We got a camp four miles east an’ I ain't carryin' 'er; my back's been givin' me grief since Freehold." Merrick straightened, rolling his shoulders as he reached for his tobacco pouch as though the last five minutes had been no more taxing than a hand of cards.
"Four miles," Ridley repeated flatly. "Four miles, Merrick. Through this." He jerked his chin at the soaked tangle of bracken and root and fog. "She's lost a pint already an' she ain't got the meat on 'er to spare it. Yer back's been givin' yer grief since Freehold, 'as it? Bullshit, yer back's been givin' yer grief since it suited yer, more like."
"Nah, nah, I'm mindin' meself just fine. Yer the one tha’ set the bleedin' trap, yeah? Yer the one who fired the shot. Yer the one wanted 'er kicked through the teeth 'stead of walked in on me palm, an' I 'ad 'er, Merrick, I'ad 'er, she were three foot off an' breathin' on me knuckles. But no, no, gotta be the big clever lad, gotta plant three of 'em and come swanglin' out the trees like the Lord Admiral 'isself wiv 'is rifle slung pretty—”
Merrick had stopped listening somewhere around the word pint. He was tamping his pipe with one thumb, watching Ridley over the bowl with an expression of mild, patient amusement—the same expression their mother used to wear when one of the regulars was working himself up to something he couldn't afford. He snapped his fingers and summoned a small flame, lowering it into the bowl with the slow deliberate care of a man who had nowhere else in the world he needed to be. The smoke unfurled out the corner of his mouth and went to join the fog, which welcomed it like family. After a moment he plucked the pipe out from between his teeth and looked at Ridley properly. "Y’done?"
Ridley's jaw worked. "Yeh—"
"You done, Rid? 'Cos yer makin' a lot of weather for a man what's already got 'is arms full. Take a breath, have a little think, an' tell me if yer done."
Ridley's jaw worked, and he looked down at the girl—at the wet stick of her lashes, the blue beginning to bruise into her lips, and the violet pulse of the collar at her throat. The heat in his chest banked itself down to a dull miserable ember, because what good was it? What good had bickering at Merrick ever done him in over two centuries of trying. The words went where words always went with his brother, out the ear and off into the fog. "Yeah." He didn't look up, the word came out small and gravelled, more breath than voice.
"Say again, love? Didn't catch it."
Ridley lifted his head then and met him square. The pale grey of his eyes had gone flat as wet slate. "I said m’done."
Merrick smiled around the pipestem. "Atta’ boy. So pick 'er up, stop bitchin', and let's move before somefing in this forest decides it don't like us." He then sauntered off, already walking ahead.
Ridley kept his gaze on his brother as he went, shrugging off his coat. The cold hit him immediately—Drustvar's wet, bone-seeking chill sliding through his shirt like a blade through linen. He ignored it and leaned forward, lifting her shoulders—Light, she weighs nuffin, she weighs absolutely fuckin' nuffin, and wrapping the long dark coat around her, pulling the fur-trimmed collar up around her neck where it sat strange and large against the cruel metal band already circling her throat. He tucked the hem beneath her legs, folded the front panels across her chest, and for a moment his hands hovered there—not quite touching her and yet not quite letting go because some part of him understood that this was a threshold and he was standing on the wrong side of it. She was looking at him again. Those mismatched eyes were wet, but the tears hadn’t fallen. Her lips moved, and he leaned closer without meaning to. "...warm," she breathed, the word came out wondering and bewildered, as if warmth were a thing she'd stopped believing in. Her fingers curled into the coat's lapel with filthy, trembling fingers, and held on.
Ridley's throat closed, and he quickly cleared it. "Right." He bent down and slid one arm beneath her knees carefully, moving like a man handling black powder near an open flame. The other went behind her shoulders where the coat bunched and folded around her narrow frame. She stiffened, every tendon in her body drawing taut at once like a bowstring pulled to its limit. For a moment, Merrick was already a smudge of smoke and dark red wool between the trees up ahead, not waiting or looking back. Why would he? The job was done. The hard part—the planning, trapping, and collaring was Merrick's domain. The carrying, the cleaning up, the messy aftermath was Ridley's. The forest pressed close around them. Without his coat, Ridley felt Drustvar's cold with a viciousness that seemed personal. His shirt was thin—thinner now, with three strips torn from the hem, and the damp got through it in seconds, plastering the cotton to his chest and back until it felt less like a garment and more like a second skin made entirely of discomfort. Fog condensed on his bare forearms, and ran down to his elbows in slow rivulets, dripping from his knuckles and onto the dark wool wrapped around the girl in his arms.
He still didn't know her name.
He should ask. Shouldn't he? That's what a decent person would do. What's your name, love? Simple and easy. Except nothing about this was simple or easy, and the word love sat wrong in his mouth when he was carrying a woman his brother had just caught in a bear trap like a fox bound for skinning. A root caught his boot and he stumbled. She gasped—a small, bitten-off sound, her fingers tightening in the coat as her injured leg swung with the motion in a way that must have sent a bolt of pure white agony up through her bones because she pressed her face into his shoulder and went rigid. "Sorry," Ridley muttered as he steadied himself and adjusted his grip. "Sorry, ground's shite. 'Ole forest's shite. I—watch your leg, I got you." She didn't respond, instead her breathing came in shallow little pulls against his collarbone, warm and damp through the cotton, each exhale trembling at the edge.
Ahead, Merrick had paused at the crest of a low ridge, one boot braced on a rock, pipe pinched between two fingers as he surveyed the path down with the leisurely air of a man on a country stroll. He didn't turn when Ridley caught up, he just exhaled a thin stream of smoke through his nose and gestured east with the glowing end. "Ravine's too steep to take straight. Circle round the birch stand, come at it from the north. Should cut back toward the creek where I set camp."
"You remember th’way?" Ridley's voice came out shorter than he intended. Or exactly as short as he intended, hard to tell.
"Do I remember th’way." Merrick repeated it flatly, amused. He finally glanced back—past Ridley, to the bundle in his arms, and something akin to both appraisal and inventory moved across his face. The same look he gave a crate of smuggled goods when checking that nothing had been damaged in transit. "She still bleedin'?"
Merrick's mouth twitched. "Romantic." Ridley said nothing at that. His jaw worked, the muscle in his cheek twitched once, twice, then went still. Merrick held his gaze for a beat—testing, always testing, probing for the exact edge of Ridley's patience the way a man might press a bruise to see how deep the pain went, and then turned away with a shrug that dismissed everything. "Circle the birch stand," he said again, and disappeared over the ridge. Ridley stood there. Cold to the bone and arms full of a shaking girl who smelled like blood, the forest floor and something faintly sweet underneath it all—herbs, maybe, or wildflowers crushed into the skin from weeks of sleeping rough in meadows, and for one white-hot instant he imagined setting her down, drawing his pistol, and putting a round between his brother's shoulder blades. The thought came and went, because Ridley was good at letting thoughts come and go.
He started walking again.
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