Shades Of Morality

"Determination"

I spent my time pondering different teaching techniques on my way home. I was not what you would call "naturally gifted" in the art of teaching but I still had a few ideas.

Maybe I could make some flash cards? Yeah. Flash cards would work. I would have to get some paper, that wasn't going to feel good on the old wallet.

My train of thought was cut short as arrived at my cabin and noticed a familiar ghost setting on the porch, reading a thick book with a heavily worn spine.

"Rogers! Your back, how did the expedition go?" Rogers looked up from his book. His beard splitting in a wide smile.

"It went well, I found a glowing turtle that preyed on entire schools of fish, but only ones containing odd numbers. how are you doing?!"

The mountain of a man rose to his feet, the faded gray of his ghostly head contrasted  sharply by the massive red beard that covered his face.

A damp blanket was thrown over the spark of joy that seeing my oldest friend and father figure had lit.

"A few things have happened, we need to talk."

Rogers was a good listener. He didn't interrupt except for the occasional clarifying question.  Simply listening and letting me talk, like I knew he would, he had heard many a frustrated rant about school or a ghost I was helping over the years. He always just sat there nodding along when needed. I told him everything, about the packs, and especially Blair's, about the Mrs. Blunder and the creature in the mists. And of the mage clans. And the coming undead.

When I was done he didn't exactly respond in the way I was expecting.

I was expecting maybe some questions about the undead, or why the mage clans were coming at all? But instead he came straight out of left field with his question. "You've made some friends! FINALLY!"

"What?!"

"You made some friends didn't you? that's what friend of the pack means." He sat back in the couch and let out a sigh. "Finally" he said again, this time in a whisper.

I paused, thinking about it. I– I guess he was right.

Friends. Something I had wanted for such a long time, living friends. But could I have really obtained something like that and not even realized it? I wasn't really sure what constituted a friend, I wasn't a sociopath but I've never had a living friend so I didn't have a lot of experience.

"I -I guess yeah. But about the undead. The thing in the mists, do you know what it is?"

He sat there for a minute stroking his bushy beard. finally he looked up at me. "What did you pick up from it? Your senses are sharp son."

I shiver ran across my skin and my gut twisted at the memory "Hunger, all-consuming, overwhelming hunger. The Mist was cold as well, colder than it should have been. When the thing got closer to me it got even colder. I think the ground would freeze if it stayed in one place for any length of time."

Rogers let out an explosive breath and his heavy shoulders slumped lower.

"I was afraid of that. it was a wendigo."

"A wendigo? That's a creature from North American legends right, don't they eat people?"

Rogers gave me a slow nod. "That they do son, that they do. Many different tribes have a variation on the wendigo and call them By Many different Names. It was from the tribes that dwelt in Canadian and Alaska from which those legends originated.

Someone becomes a wendigo when they commit the ultimate taboo, consuming human flesh, cannibalism." I felt another cold shiver run down my spine.

"Someone would be in the woods lost, hungry. They can't find any game to hunt, maybe there with a partner, or maybe they Stumble Upon somebody. In There hunger they attack them, killing them. then they have a feast. The act of committing that atrocity changes something in them, the heart freezes over, and it opens them up. Something comes into them, changes them. Some kind of dark spirit. And they start transforming into a wendigo. They're starving still, wendigo's are always starving no matter how much they eat. they can never seat that hunger.

There frozen heart stops and the rest of them is freezing as well. That mist is the air freezing from coming in contact with their bodies, they constantly generate it."

That was horrifying on its own but I needed to know more of their actual capabilities. "Do they run in packs?"

Rogers shifted on the couch, his ethereal body silent. "No, not usually. More often than not they will consume one another when they cross paths.

But if something strong enough can grab hold of the spirit that resides within the wendigo it could guide them, force them to get along."

"What about size, the one that attacked me sounded big."

"Big. The older they are the bigger they grow. Although a young one could grow large if it ate a lot. They're strong to strong as werewolves at least. The older ones even stronger. There fast as well. Not to mention their essentially immune to damage. The only way to kill one is to crush their heart."

A Sickening thought crossed my mind, and I asked "how good is their sense of smell." Pretty poor in general but when it comes to smelling flesh there better than wolves."

And just like that any hope I had it surviving the week was gone. Hiding myself magically would do me as much good as snuffing out a fire on my arm well my house burned around me.

Rogers face paled even further as he came to the same conclusion. There was silence for a couple of minutes. "Blairs pack will protect you if you ask them."

Hope flared up in my chest again. He was right! The where strong, I could make it through this after – No.

That hope, it flared up and then burned out. It had turned into something else though. Rogers looked at me, his eyes where old, tired. He knew why I couldn't stay with the pack. But I said it anyway. "If they can smell me out, than anywhere I am, some of them are going to be. Depending on how many come... I could get Blairs pack killed."

I had to pause for a moment to swallow the lump in my throat.

"Maybe only a few would show up, and they could handle them easily. Or maybe dozens would show up. I won't balance the life of her and her pack on that chance."

That hope had changed, it had changed into a determination that was strong as stone and twice as hard. If I died it would be doing the right thing, I wouldn't be a coward. Never again.

Rogers looked sadder than I'd ever seen him, but something else was mixed into his expression. "I'm proud of you son, I wish you didn't have to walk this road, but I know you'll walk it well. I laughed a bit, "you make it sound like I'm some selfless knight standing up to an impossible foe. I'm not selfless, just stupid."

Rogers did something then he'd never done before. He hugged me, his massive frame engulfed me, lifting me a good foot off the floor.

It must've been a strange sight if anyone had been watching, I would've appeared to have been floating. Rogers wasn't a cold or distant man emotionally speaking, but he was the epitome of "no touchy" my arms reacted on reflex and wrapped around him, returning his hug. He squeezed me for a good five seconds before dropping me. I snorted as an errant thought struck me. "I'm probably not going to be able to fulfill that mages request "

"What was his request?"  I gave a dark chuckle. "Survive."