Prologue: the encounter.

I sniffed the air.
Autumn was closing in. The leaves would shed their green raiment for more subtle tones and old man frost would begin to greet the wild life in the morning and retreat during the day.
The tracks I should have been noticing weren't fresh. By luck had the prints been made in soft mud. I really didn't need the tracks. The dry splotches of blood were trail enough.
I picked up my bow and slung it over my right arm and began jogging down the path.
Branches were twisted, rent asunder, and broken. Whatever this thing was, it was not covering itself.
Tonight it seemed, the cold reared its head early. I could see my breath. I drew my bearskin cloak tighter and looked about. I had come upon a small clearing with a pond at the center. I had come here myself to bathe several times before.
There was a man sitting at the side, clutching his head. He was covered in blood and tattered clothes. Perhaps he was a survivor.
I drew an arrow, knotching it with deft,quiet hands. No wind gave rise. No leaf betrayed my position. I eyed him down, holding the arrow, drawn now, for a few minutes. He moved not.
Very well...
I began to loosen my pull, when it happened.
His head snapped up and to the side, as if straining to hear some distant call. His nostrils flared as if he were smelling something.
He rose, and seemed to walk, hunched over, towards me.
I kept my calm and did not move, in case he was simply picking this direction on a whim. He was using his fists to aid him in his gait.
He stopped to look at the moon.
By clumsiness and curiosity, I did likewise. A full moon.
I heard something like bones snap.
He was clutching at his skull, as it seemed to grow unnaturally hairy. He was clawing at his beard, as if to rip it out; Yet more hair grew to replace whatever he attempted to yank free.
I was breathing heavily, shocked at this horrid transformation. My fingers were already pulling the string back before my mind could analyze this motion.
Right. I was warned of a large wolf that needed to be taken care of. This was it. Though not a minute before, a man had been there, now there stood a bipedal monstrosity-a mixture of man and wolf.
My mind was set now. My fingers ready. My heart had steadied itself.
The wolfman looked to me, sniffing me out.
As its head craned towards me, my arrow was loosed.
With a speed nigh recognizable, it ducked.
To think, I was a mere thirty feet away. I had no chance to get another arrow if the thing could move with such celerity.
I dropped the bow and rolled back as the beast jumped at me.
I kicked my legs up, mostly out of suprise when my back smashed through the underbrush and onto the hard ground. Still, my boots connected solidly with the wolfman's chest and heaved him over me.
I spin around and up, pulling my axe from its frog. I began to back into the clearing, hoping to have more room to move around. It seemed that the beast would have moved just as quickly in the woods as in the clearing. An arrow streaked past my face. Battle honed reflexes caused me to jerk enough that the fletching missed my cheek.
The beast noticed the arrow too, and dashed off, becoming lost into the deep woods. A fellow ranger emerged out of the woods and into the clearing after a minute. I stood, breathing heavily.
"Kinningson? You're alive. I came when I heard a scream. I've never seen something like that before."
I shook my head. How could I not have realized he was shadowing me. Still, I was grateful he came, though it had lost me my quarry for the time being.
"Guilden...whats the news from Westerhaven?"
He dropped his bow to his side.
He was a bit better dressed and armed, as well as clean shaven, whereas I felt I was a true ranger, grizzled and worn, assimilated into the woods.
"The beast has killed seven people. Three are missing. A girl, a farmer and a young boy."
"You mean a girl and a boy."
He shot me a quizzical look.
"You've found the farmer?"
I nodded.
"I believe so...you just scared him away."
We both looked back at the woods where the wolfman had previously been.
It would be a long hunt.