How Gods Bleed

Though the Yonga Ponday was perhaps the best known of these kind of stories it certainly was not alone. There were literally hundreds and hundreds of other tales that spoke of creatures and beings summoned, created and forged by man to seek vengeance upon the werewolf. Most of these stories were not known by the east but there was another tale arguably better known in the world of man than even the Yonga Ponday. The Beret Oonoon, meaning the women in white. According to legend the Beret Oonoon were a race of giant 10 foot tall women with blood red hair and dressed in long white dresses. Each wielded a knife of silver that was as long as a sword, it was said that Beret Oonoon used these knives to cut the hearts out of any werewolf they came across, where they would proceed to devour the hearts. It was said that the Beret Oonoon were formed from a lake created by the tears of human mothers who wept over the bodies of their sons and daughters who had been killed by the werewolves.

  The reason why this legend was so well known in the east was its potential to replicate. Granzool who was a master of fear mongering had on more than one occasion dressed Helluvan women in such fashion when patrolling the western borders of the land. Leannol herself who with the exception of her height mirrored what the Beret Onoon were suppose to look like had used such a tactic. When in battle against the werewolves, she would sometimes eat the hearts of the monsters she killed, adding to the legends about her that she was indeed a Beret Oonoon. But this was a manufactured thing designed specifically to install fear into the werewolves. Like the Yonga Ponday the origin of the Beret Onoon was unknown. There was a popular rumor that Granzool had started the legend himself but this was impossible considering stories about the Beret Onoon reached back over at least two thousand years.

  This footprint however was real; there was no doubting that. What was known about the Yonga Ponday was so vague that the very language its name was supposedly derived from was completely unknown in both the west and east.

  Silence had reigned too long even for Helluvans to bear and Tanagy sought to break it.

  “ This footprint is real of that there can be no doubt…but that doesn’t mean it was made by the Yonga Ponday.”

  There was a fusion of both a quiet doubt and a certain frustration in his tone, but he had made a good point. They were now further than any human had been in the west for thousands of years and though Helluvans possessed the most knowledge and the most accurate maps of the west in the east there was no solid proof that their knowledge was 100 percent accurate. This footprint may or may not have belonged to the Yonga Ponday but for all they knew it could very well have belong to a completely different creature, one that for whatever reason had not been mentioned by any of the interrogated werewolves.

  Just as the group was collectively looking back at the footprint Gokkus spoke.

  “I may have seen it once, the Yonga Ponday.”

  This revelation was like the first light of dawn after a 100 centuries of night. With intrigue that could be seen in even Cada Varl the group waited for Gokkus to explain.

  “Roughly 8 years ago myself and a handful of Emuge Mura members were in the west, reports of werewolf border patrols acting strangely over a three week period was enough to warrant our presence there. Fearing the possibility of invasion we were sent to capture at least one of the border guards for interrogation. One night we were moving through the woods, the snow had fallen heavily making it easy for us to follow the tracks of an enemy border troop. With the light of a full moon above we carefully followed the tracks until suddenly something overhead blocked out the light of the moon. It was only for a moment and in the second it took for us to raise our heads we could see nothing except the top of the nearby trees were quivering like something had caused a great gust of wind to move them. I remember a fellow Emuge Mura member by the name of Helsot describing the moving of the leaves like they were quivering, as if something scared even the trees….”

  The air became heavy with anticipation as everyone listened intently to the man dressed in black. “Somewhere beyond the reach of our vision we could hear the unmistakable sound of werewolves screaming, cries filled with nothing but the outmost of pain. Quickly we moved towards the sounds that soon fell silent as we came across a break in the woods. There in a clearing were 15 werewolves each and every one of them dead, their bodies lay eviscerated pulled apart by something, their wounds were not from a weapon but from tooth and claw…. We had no idea what possibly could have done it; the time seemed too minimal between the first and last scream for it to have been the work of an enemy werewolf group. Besides each of the corpses brandished the markings of Gorgoza’s kingdom.”

  “Did you find any tracks?” Leannol asked with almost desperation in her voice.

  Gokkus looked to his fellow Helluvan as he said, “ No, not a single one that did not belong to the werewolves that had fallen, it was as if whatever had killed them had done so without ever touching the ground."

  “But you never saw it?” Tanagy asked as a genuine question.

  Gokkus looked upon the Abider and shook his head. “No, we saw or heard nothing….”

  The man dressed in black’s story only added to the mystery of the Yonga Ponday if in fact this was the footprint of such a creature. The silence then became broken once more but not by anyone in the group, a sound so powerful and great it seemed to make the very trees shutter came from somewhere far in the forest. The sound was like nothing anyone of them had ever heard, a whispering scream, resembling nothing a human could possibly make and saying nothing. The scream seemed almost to echo endlessly through the woods if only for the briefest of moments. Imbaka and Leannol immediately rose to their feet as every single one of them reached for a weapon as they turned to face the direction of the sound.

  None amongst them may have known a lot about the Yonga Ponday but they knew enough about werewolves to know they were not the source of the sound. They waited silently and motionlessly for the source of the sound to reveal itself. Some in the group were expecting to see some kind of giant creature smashing through the trees directly towards them. Nothing came, the woods remained still but a thick tension remained in the air. They stood ready to defend themselves for a very long time made longer by silence. Finally Cada Varl spoke looking up towards the sky as he did so, “ When I stand guard tonight I will be sure to keep my eyes upon the sky as well.”