(was gonna write a few more chapters before this. But then I realized when I was writing beach party that I don't like it and the next dozen or so episodes are just filler. So this is my kind of timeskip.)
30 miles off the border of Canada, Minnesota
Will has been on a mission for a few days now. He was tasked with hunting down a gem plaguing the northern part of Minnesota and the south of Canada.
This gem was first encountered a few years ago by a local who said they wasn't stalk off into the forest with a mangled corpse. The thing then appeared multiple time by eyewitness reports over the next few years. But it was only the last case just a few weeks ago when someone managed to capture a blurry image that Quasar found out about it and told the gems.
The sheer severity of it caused Will to pack up immediately and hunt the thing down. The other gems wanted to go with him but they had problems of their own to deal with. So he left the next morning in a Warthog and made his way North.
He started his search at the house of the person who took the photo. It belonged to a miss parker.
Will walked up to the door and knocked on it. After a few moments a young woman opened the door. She had tan skin that made him guess Hispanic ancestry. Long curly black hair that stopped a bit above her mid back. She had blue eyes and wore a.mixture of jeans and a blouse.
"Hello, I'm here to talk to you about the photo you took a few days ago." Will said to her.
"Umm... yeah come in." She said.
He stepped inside the small home. It looked well listed in by her.
The living room was immediately off the front door. There was a brown fabric sofa and chair in front of a decent sized Flatscreen. A desk was in the corner of the living room with a laptop and several half hazardly arranged books and an empty mug on it.
"Your rather tall arent you." She said.
"I get that a lot."
He sat down in the chair as she grapped a photo off the desk. She walked over to hand it to him.
"It all happened one night when I was investigating the local dissapearences. I wanted to find out what was going on in my hometown. So that night I went venturing off into the woods but, what I found was a lot more than I wanted." She said that last part with a bit of uncertainty.
"Do you remember what it looked like in detail." He asked. She nodded.
"It was easily 8 feet tall. It had pale white skin, with really spindley arms and legs. But don't let that fool you, I saw this thing easily lift up a whole grown man. It's skin hung tight to it's bones. But the head was the worst part. It was a deers skull, with razor sharp teeth. It had wide horns extending out the sides of it's head. It had dark red muscles extending from the neck attaching it. But the weirdest part were the eyes. There were no eyes, just blank sockets in the skull. But even still I could tell it could see better than any human."
"This doesn't sound like any known animal."
"It doesn't an animal. It was something this town has history of." She said as she looked down.
"What do you mean something the town has history of." Will asked curiously.
"The original Native Americans that inhabited this land had a new for it. They called fit a Windego."
"A Windego?"
"Yes a human that was corrupt with selfishness. They became cannibalistic and turned into monster." By the end of it she had her head in her hands.
Will extended his hand to give her a reassuring pat on the shoulder. "It's gonna be alright. Anything you can tell me about where it is."
"I found it in the woods north of the town."
"Thank you. I promise I will find this thing. And when I do it will never harm this town or it's people ever again." He stood up and looked determined into her eyes as he exited out the door.
________
It was nearing night time in the small town. Will was grabbing his hear and heading out into the forest to find this thing.
He walked for nearly ten minutes in the forest before he asked Quasar.
"Anything else you can tell me on Windego's."
"Wait you actually believe this thing is a real Windego?" The AI said form inside hai helmet.
"No, but I think that this corrupted Gem may have been what started the myth. The native people probably saw it hundreds of years ago and mistook it for this Wjndego, of the Gem is the original and they made the Windego after it." Will replied.
"Fair point, corrupted gems have certainly been around enough for some legends to have been made around them."
"Anything else you can tell me about it."
"Well wendigo's have been known to have extreme speed and strength as well as enhanced senses."
"Well this isn't gonna be easy." Will said.
"Nope."
Will then spotted a set of tracks on the ground to the right of him. He walked over and knelt down.
"This looks like a body was drafted through here." Quasar said.
"As well as something large and most definitely not human." Will said pointing to another set of lritns alongside the drag mark.
"There is blood over there." Quasar said.
Will then walked over to it and turned in his helmet lights. He put this armored finger in the small pool and examined it.
"This is still fresh." He said.
"Meaning this thing has been here recently." Quasar finished.
He got back up and followed the trail. Grabbing a B55 battle rifle off his back.
He continued the trail until it lead to a open patch, where it just abruptly stopped.
"It just ends?" Will said.
He looked on the ground for a few moments before Quasar spoke up.
"Ummm...I think I found where they went." Quasar said as Will looked upward and his jaw dropped.
Humdreds of bodies hanging from the trees. Showing various stages of decay and consumption. Bones littered the ground under them.
"This has been going on a lot longer than a few years."
"Contact." Quasar said.
Will looked over to a part of the clearing. There was a figure moving over there. It had pale white skin and fur that couldn't be seen at night. It was snacking on a body that was most definitely dead considering it's head was no longer attached.
Will be in a low crouch behind a bush. He liked up a shot on the corrupted gem and get it's head in his cross hairs. He pulled the trigger, and three rifle bullets left in a rapid succession. He could almost see them travel to their target. Before in the blink of an eye looked at him and jumped out of the way.
"How did it do that?" Will said.
"Incoming!" Quasar said.
Will felt something smashingly him, knocking him back a good few feet and knocking the wind out of him. He looked up at hai shield bar to see it was at 33 percent.
He quickly got up and ran, firing in the direction of the Windego.
"How fast is that thing moving." He asked.
"On your left!" The AI shouted
Will entered what was generally known as Spartan Time. He saw the Windego ran at him. "Even slowed down it's like he's an Olympic sprinter."
"He barely parried the clawed hand, it slid along his shields, causing them to fall another few percent.
He jumped back from another stroke aimed at his torso. He pulled out his Magnum to try and shoot it but by the time he tried to aim the Windego was gone.
He materialized an M90 shotgun form his gem. He decided not to use full flame mode due to alerting where he was to the monster and the risk of burning down the forest.
He scanned around. Looking for any sign of movement. Alert was high so he twitched to every subtle movement of the trees and bushes.
"Above."
He looked up just in time to see the Windego dive down from the trees and slash him across the chest and arm.
The class took out his regenerating shields and made decent sized gashes in his chestplate and left arm armor.
He then spun around the shotgun and fired. The shot grazed the leg of the Windego. It quickly jumped up into the trees and ran south. Will pulled out the Magnum and shot at it. He pulled his shotgun back out and ran after it. Quickly getting up to his 40 MPH top speed.
It jumped form branch to branch with a practised ease. He chased it for a few hundred feet before it jumped into a tree and dissapeared form sight.
"Any idea where it went."
"Motion tracker and sensors show nothing." Quasar said.
Almost immediately it tackeld him form the bush. Will tell to the ground, just barely having time to bring up the shotgun to bar it from trying to eat his head. It snapped at hai helmet, even taking off a few chunks and making many scratches. He then enhanced his already superhuman strength with his gem and kicked it in the gut with a nice crunching sound.
The Windego quickly got up from being kicked by a titanium armored boot.
He then fired the shotgun at the Windego, impacting it directly in the chest. This caused it severe pain but did not seem to do much more than piss it off.
It angrily lunged out with it's arms and grabbed onto his. It opened its mouth wide and chomps down on his left arm. There was the sound of breaking bone and crunching metal as it tore through the reinforced titanium skeleton and ripped it apart.
Will then backed up and took a quick glance at the prosthetic. Everything below the elbow was either crunched, snapped, or broken. He quickly brome apartthe elbow Joint. Causing the forearm to fall off. He quickly stomped on it to avoid reverse engineering.
The Windego, not satisfied with just part of an arm lunged at him again. He back stepped the attack. It attacked again and he parryied it with his right arm. Causing the shields to break and scratch the arm gaurd even more.
This cycle continued for a few times. The Windego kept back him up. He kept parrying or blocking with his armor plated. Everytime he tried to reach for his gun or materialize a new weapon it would savagely attack him.
"It wants to keep you unarmed." Quasar said.
"I noticed. But I can't exactly do somethi having it at the moment!" He yelled.
"Your running out of space to back up."
"I noticed that to."
Will was getting pushed back up against a rock face form blocking the Windego.
Right when he was pushed against the wall the Windego lunged at him.
'there' the Spartan thought. In the blink of an eye he materialized a familiar silver bolt into his right hand. It ignited in a boss of plasma as the familiar dark green dual bales erupted.
The monster realized to little to late. Will cleaved it in half diagonally along it s torso but didn't stop there. While it was still in the air he chopped off its legs, another slash for one arm, again for the other, another hour the neck and one final Stab into the head.
He panted as he finished cleaning the monster into pieces. It lay there in the ground unmoving as he watched it.
"Why is it not poofing." He asked.
"Beacause the gem has somehow combined with organic matter. Which in turn has been made stronger and resulted in the gem becoming dormant."
"Can it reform." He asked.
"No, the gem has been broken."
"Where is it?"
"The gem is located where the rain would usually be."
Will looked where he stabbed it. He somehow stabbed right through the middle of the gemstone. He knelt down and examined the inside of the head. The gem was a white color with random gray lines and several fissures throughout the gemstone.
"Sorry Steven, I couldn't save this one." Will said deactivating the energy sword and strapping it to his belt.
"I don't think there was any saving this one to begin with." Quasar said.
"What do you.mean?"
The tissue of the head was deeply connected with the gemstone, hence the fissures. Removal of the tissue would almost certainly result in it's shattering. And keeping it there would probably create a monster."
"So what your trying to say is I stopped a monster from being created by breaking it and I stopped it form shattering." Will said
"Yes, but strangely the tissue doesn't seem to be decaying."
Will looked down and saw that there wasn't any blood either. Now the energy sword usually either boiled it or cauterized a wound. But where he shot it there was not one ounce of blood.
He then placed a beacin where he stood and started walking back to where he parked the Warthog.
"What are you doing?" Quasar asked.
"I'm gonna put the remains in the back of the Warthog."
It took about 20 minutes of walking to get to exit the forest and get where he parked it. He turned the key with his one good arm and pulled out of the parking lot.
The ridge through the forest was slow. He had to avoid all sorts of roots and places where he couldn't fit but Eventually he got to the remains of the Windego.
He loaded them back where the machine gun would be.
He then drove slowly out of the forest and out of the small town. He toom his helmet off and placed it in the paseenger seat. He watched the road in the night. He could see just as well at night as the dark so he didn't need headlights. It made the armored truck more stealthy. It would be tricky to explain if he got pulled over though.
He just drove in silence for a while l. Just watching as the night sky and stars passed overhead as the empty highway stretched in didn't of him.
"Time to head home."