The Hunter's Trial.

His lungs gasped relentlessly, struggling to endure the noxious air that permeated the dungeon. The torment echoed in a ceaseless rhythm.

Regardless of the inquisitor's relentless lashings, he held his head bent, refusing to give in.

The Delta's smoldering gaze bore down on him with scorn, rendering words meaningless.

Panting heavily, Higgins managed to muster the strength to speak. "Is that the best you can do, inquisitor? Put your back into it."

His bold grin revealed his fortitude, as he dared to believe that the suffering inflicted upon him was mere child's play.

He refused to let the Delta feel any pity for him.

However, the Delta's unfazed expression, accompanied by a mild grin, suggested that such thoughts didn't even cross his mind.

"If you say so. Don't hold back, you weakling! Tear him apart until his skin is shredded and his spirit is melted," Ramsy declared.

Delta Ramsy refused to acknowledge the inquisitor's perception of him as a living being, if he even did so in the first place.

"Hmmph," the inquisitor grunted, belittling Ramsy's higher rank.

As a Beta, he had no say in opposing the Delta, as Ramsy's rank surpassed his own. Yet, the inquisitor seemed more inclined to whip Ramsy than the persistent nuisance at his side.

But in reality, the inquisitor was nothing more than a misguided Beta whose penchant for torture earned him a title and rank in the dungeon.

His duty was to kill, whether slowly or swiftly, and he reveled in the pain he inflicted.

Ramsy ordered him to do just that, and the inquisitor's libido soared at the thought.

Higgins showed no signs of backing down, and it exhilarated him.

With his magical prowess, as a sorcerer capable of facing death and tempting fate, he called upon the deity, daring it to take him if it could. It felt otherworldly.

***

Abraham Van Helsing, the Dutch vampire hunter, had once had an apprentice whom he admired and held in high regard, long before he even considered the holy order as a potential calling.

Helsing betrayed his apprentice and thought he had disposed of him.

However, the tales surrounding this event were shrouded in insufficient recounting and relied solely on rumors.

Higgins, renowned for his extraordinary ability to communicate with the dead, was known as the Necromancer Hunter. His expertise lay in influencing the living through the use of the deceased as conduits.

His discarded body had washed up on the shores of a massive island housing several packs of werewolves, one of which belonged to the Nefario legacy.

The Nefario pack, an empire of sorts, had gained enough reverence to become the namesake of a pack in its honor.

Located in the eastern Himalayas of Aracord, a distant continent dominated by werewolf packs known for their frequent interpack raids, the Nefario pack was where Higgins found himself.

The hunter was not dead, but his fate seemed even worse, as he was trapped on an island that once provided him love but had taken it away, along with any reason to stay.

Having lost his mate, his child, and all that he had built, his life as a prisoner of war was dedicated to seeking death.

"I've suffered enough. It's time to end it," Higgins thought to himself.

Blood flowed down his scalp, and his struggling breath reminded him of the singular reason he had allowed himself to be captured.

As a necromancer, his prophesied fate was grim: confined to an island that managed to provide someone to love him, took her and the only other light at the entrance of his tunnel and left him nothing.

Having been rid of any justification or reason to remain, no way to escape the taunting reality of memories made with his mate or the island itself, to end his life after years of mourning became the only way, his only salvation.

His being a human ensured that he saw enough scorn to assure that, but his words fed the flames to make them desire it more instead of seeing potential in his long lost abilities.

Humans had been reduced to mere tools that always managed to reproduce and serve as important resources for the werewolves to thrive.

They worked as slaves, were dealt with as needless, sex derived pawns and some even organized resistance that Higgins managed to have hidden under the facadé of, with their being thwarted at every turn up until it happened.

Every full moon, new omegas emerged from human that had received the werewolf curse from an Alpha's bite, and when they died at the hands of their fellow creatures, the circle of life proceeded with an unsheathed equilibrium, allowing a system to emerge.

Higgins' seized regalia included the limitless skulls of omegas-green-eyed, recently transformed werewolves that exhibited characteristics of havoc-loving wolves yielding to their primal urges-as well as other weapons he had collected from his several attempts kill as many werewolves as possible.

They become insane and are powerless to halt their never-ending terrible urge to slaughter because no Alpha has welcomed them to join their packs as scout ranks.

Scout rank teaches them how to maintain their composure before their grey skin transforms into the vicious, brown-furred, quadrupedal stance adopted by betas, not to mention their sensitivity to silver.

They formed the majority members of a pack and receive belitting remarks from betas.

Higgins had one goal: scavenge the wasteland left by the werewolves in their usurpation attempts, scour their vastness, and save as many lives as he could using the alchemy abilities he had adopted along the way.

All this was who he has been something more than ten years ago, before he met her, lost both of them and became a shadow of his former self.

Unfortunately, he was seized and held hostage in the Nefario pack Alpha's Dungeon, about to be lifted to a platform where the vulture-like vampires circled the rays of the full moon, ready to gorge on his convicted-to-death remains.

This was no mistake actually, he wanted to get captured, he wanted to die and since his hands couldn't do it on his own...

"Ahhhh!!!" Higgins' screeched to the reverb of the whip that rebounded about his body, feigning ignorance to the death that chose to elude him.

"Do you have any last words Necromancer? Alpha Damian wouldn't see truth in your attempts at laying blemish to my name so you thought the best way would be to show him, it wasn't a sensible option if you ask me. My being a Delta holds more reverence than a hunter like yourself ever would. The resistance holds no backing in Nefarios' activities." Ramsy boasted.

Delta Ramsy mustered little heed to Higgins' pitiful state as the spat to the soon to-be corpse in his wake.

Hunters were members of the resistance, who were mostly humans that had their only goal to be liberating their people and domineering the greater mass of carnivorous beast that desired to usurp any attempts they made to establish a system like theirs or breed enough to try.

Higgins' life was dangling on a thin thread, his hands laid across the two ends of the baracade by chains anchored to his wrists and a weakened resolve from that death that just insisted on taking its time before truly drawing the life out of him.

"I am not in the resistance, I left them years ago. So you were an asshole the whole time?" Higgins spoke out in an outlandish tone.

He was able to raise his attention to the rust-encrusted bars of the cell he had been confined to.

His entire attempt to disclose Ramsy's goal appeared to be a farce designed to prove his suspicions that he was actually out for something sinister.

Higgins' gaze was fixed on the Delta Ramsy with such intensity that it would take a simpleton to conclude his intentions as not been to flee in any way, but rather to stare him down, ignore the pain from blood being drawn by the chain restrained to his wrist, and see through his arrived decision to have the vultures gourge his flesh, or so it seemed.

Was this really the end of a legacy never built.

Ramsy hid more than a melodious intent in the tapping of his feet that he had begun.

"What are you playing at Necromancer? You came off as being so eager to be apprehended that it almost seemed as if..." Ramsy inquired, as Higgins boldly impeded his train of thoughts.

"I'm pretty sure you're the one with doubts, I mean you pulled me away from my attempts at Damian, told him that you would 'take care of me' and now, you're thinking I would just allow you to kill me, the f***? I am the king of death. The grim reaper has nothing on me." Higgins boasted.

He had finally proclaimed who he was and judging by the reverb in his tone, there was extra meaning instilled into his declaration.

He wanted Ramsy to try harder because the pain that stood parallel to the inquisitor's every attempt was far from even rendering him unconscious.

"You see yourself as a god but I would belittle your tainted nature, deicide you if I could." Ramsy made towards Higgins and drew on his chin, in a bid to indulge his' focus partially towards his words. "...if only you weren't the only one to know of what I need." Ramsy revealed.

Higgins' became struck, as a bewildered expression engraved itself unto his gaze following Ramsy's reveal, it basically threw him off.

"How'd you figure?" He led without a thought. "I could count a million more moons you could have come up with a better excuse, but this."

What could have been so important that Ramsy would opt to spare him and torture out instead? Higgins traced the entirety of his mind-scape for what this meant.

"Could it be what I'm thinking?" He insinuated, but solely in his thoughts.

"You do not know how long I have waited for this." Ramsy raveled in the accomplishment he wrought.

Higgins, although, feigned ignorance as to any knowledge he seemingly held on knowing anything that Ramsy supposedly thought he did.

"I'd rather call it self-pride and it's not even leading to where I need it to. I don't know what you're talking about, I don't have any shit that you need." He said.

He wouldn't allow him the perceived sense of accomplishment he seemed to draw from the situation, as he tried earnestly to down Ramsy's inflamed ego.

He also didn't see the light in the reason Ramsy had to want him alive. Nevertheless, he didn't fail to persistently hint his begging for his own death.

"I will soon rule this pack and dethrone the Alpha. Maybe then, I will have all human kind exterminated and gain full control, you don't have what I need, but you know where to find it." Ramsy blurted out.

"Don't gamble life based on inaccurate factoid." Higgins proclaimed his foreseen ignorance. "I don't even know what..."

"Bang!" A sound erupted from beyond the dungeon. It was unexpected as it was peculiar from the reverb.

Their notions led to believe it as a somewhat explosion that led a thud from an obscure portion in the hold.

Ramsy then raised his head in the direction of where it came from, so did the betas by his side, standing guard to Higgins' sentence.

"What was that?" He asked

Ramsy seemed to have also been bewildered by what he heard, and that sealed it. Something else was afoot that he wasn't the root cause of.

"You! You did this. I knew your resistance would come for you... Find out where that came from, betas. He can't get away, and it seems unlikely that he wants to." He instructed the betas to search for the origin of the sound.

Ramsy wasted no time in convicting Higgins, judging his motives solely based on the unfazed expression on his face.

He would exterminate all human lives in his path, and Higgins appeared to have no firm intention of trying to stop him, but why?

"I've told you countless times, I..." Haggins persisted on his unawareness of what Ramsy had insinuated.

"Keep it. I'll take care of this mess on my own. Hold him, inquisitor; I'll take my time extracting it from you, even if it takes using Eleanor's heirloom to do so." Ramsy said.

Ramsy seemed to excuse Higgins' attempts to clear the air. He had remained steadfast in his determined opinion that it was his fault.

"I'm serious, Ramsy, I don't..." Higgins wouldn't give in though.

"Shut up, runt! He never asked that I should quit attempting to pummel you so..." The inquisitor hindered his plea.

Ramsy had then departed their presence in the company of the same betas who had earlier remained by the bars of the section Higgins was being incarcerated against.

"You were attempting? All I could hear was a mute man struggling to speak through his deranged..." Higgins chuckled out.

Higgins had his face bruised, his body subjected to the most severe form of tortures possible, yet he stood tall to confront the inquisitor with words that didn't only cut corners in butressing the bold in his tongue.

He had the makings of an Alpha. The resistance to damage and resilience not to affirm neither physically nor magically to subjected conditions, which only proved it.

Alas, all he was and had been was a hunter whose willingness to die had been infringed upon by the same force seemingly clawing it's way through the gates of the dungeon.

"Who the hell would..." The inquisitor asked.

"Ahhhh!!" A voice led out.

The scouts who had seemingly been mounted at the entrance as guards, chorused their accompanied wails that came off to even the inquisitor as a teaser to their being rendered unconscious.

"I knew it, the hold is under attack. I guess someone really came for you, who could that be, Necromancer." He chuckled, taking a bunch of keys hung to the cells to his hand.

The inquisitor grunted at Higgins' since insisted proclamation of his innocence with what had happened.

"I don't know anybody. There's no one that could possibly have the fool-hardy resolve to..." Higgins doubted anyone could even muster the thought of coming to his rescue.

He had lost everything, everyone that ever mattered to him. The only way out now would be to hope that the suspicions were downed by the realization of its being a false alarm.

"Wait... What are you doing?" He shouted.

Higgins wouldn't even reduce his tone to the inquisitor's leaving him to a gruesome fate of what worse torture awaited his arrival, as he left in the direction of where the shrieking came from.

"At this point, I'm convinced that you just want to die." The inquisitor firmly asserted why he had been summoned back.

He had unwittingly phoned Higgins to the actual cause of his persistence, but he didn't follow through with it.

Higgins' intent had been met, as evidenced by his rising from his previously assumed kneeling position.

The inquisitor had come to a halt, twirled then approached him with a witty grin that belied the horrific intent behind it.

"I guess I have no choice but to grant your wish, but I'll force out the confession first." He declared.

He then drew Higgins up from his kneeling posture and attempted to draw his hands towards each other, yanking on the restraints in the process.

"What is this?" He asked.

He had felt a sharp pain explode from where the bloodflow had been cut off in the area where the restraint was taken from.

A ringing reverb began to lead a trailer to his digits, after which his hands began shaking parallel to the extent of pull that the inquisitor persisted as bore a meniacal grin at.

"The Nefarios cultivated an ancient method of torture. ''Ecstasy', when you can't feel it,' entails my continuing attempt to force out all the flow that your body can conjure till your heart becomes bloated with its pumping out to nothing." The inquisitor began with a reveal.

He began a detailed narrative of what he had done to Higgins, which caused quite a stir.

"The ecstasy is literally like the drug's effects; you can't feel anything but happiness until you die. So, you see, I'm inviting a wonderful feeling that will only end if you tell Delta Ramsy everything he needs to know, so I would understand your hesitation, take your time in thinking about it." He concluded.

The inquisitor had created the ideal environment for him to get what he wanted, tempt Higgins with an inevitable end, and possibly extract whatever confession Ramsy hampered on. It was a win-win situation with his partly siding that Higgins would stick to his resolve not to say anything.

Higgins had finally started to grunt in response to the lingering pain that signaled the blood being pulled out of his arms, causing him to drop to the floor and writhe in anguish.

External injuries appeared to have little effect, but his insides were not so impenetrable.

It was puzzling why he hadn't used his rumored abilities against his adversary. Perhaps it was due to his willingness to see the effect of "Ecstacy," but he refused to oppose it. He could only watch it happen to him.

"Swoosh!" A sound came off across his view.

Suddenly, a dart swifted through the side of the inquisitor's face and braced the surface of the region just below his eyes, leaving a scarred incision.

His senses seemed to have been so keen to avoid it as his gaze turned to where it originated from, while clearing the petite blood that flowed down the scar.

"You just never quit, do you? I had thought you would be wise and..." The inquisitor said as he turned and received the belittling remark from a shady presence, whom judging by the proportional bust to her figure, had been a woman.

"Oh shut it Vladimir, we've been through this before and we both know how it ends." She said.

"How many times has it been now Rayla, what makes this time any different. You can't even strike down a beta, always lowly omegas." The inquisitor added.

He had identified the presence behind his attempted attack and she was no other than the disposed princess of Nefario, Rayla Nefario.

She appeared as a tall, dainty, endowed and slender looking beta as she walked out of the darkness that provided a silhouette haven for her ominous self.

"How'd you know it was me? I tried a lot harder this time." She declared.

"I've tried so many things just to convince you Rayla, you know. No matter how hard you try, you're already meant to be here as..." He said.

The inquisitor tried to caution her attempts, seemingly conversing in a tone that wreaked of familiarity all over it.

"Vladmier?! So that's your name." Higgins said as his earlier released head manage a raise to taunt the inquisitor.

A jolt shot through to his struggling heart as his gaze made contact with the sight of Rayla.

He heart began racing, pumping more to portions of his body that had their flow halted.

He had only felt this sensation once before, when a certain daring werewolf helped him escape, single handedly coerced him into falling in love with her and allowing her join his crusade with the resistance.

It was as if his supressed feelings for years now has come to life again to demand reconciliation.

"No one ever asked you, piece of shit." The inquisitor, now identified as Vladimir, pulled on his restraints even harder as he cautioned him, finally snapping Higgins out of his trance like state.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you!" Rayla called out his taken action but the deed had already been done.

"I've already done it, I'm just making it worse." Vladimir bragged as he turned back to the smug expression on her face.

"Hey... Vladmier, get back to trying to kill me would you?" Higgins prompted.

He had called back on the inquisitor's turned attention, but he wouldnt give him the light of day.

"I'm going to make you regret coming to the hold again, Rayla. Maybe you'll learn your lessons this time and stop trying to return for something else than to give me an answer..." Vladimir said, as he paid no mind to Higgins' actually talking to him. He began approaching her.

what did she think he was going to do, agree from the onset?

"Wait what?... You wouldn't Vladimir." She spoke all high and mighty a while ago but had been reduced to what she actually came off as. Or was this also a trick to get a particular hunter to hone the rejection?

A frightened damsel who decided to cosplay and play hero with a warrior's kelt, that's what she was going for.

"Huh! This is pointless." Higgins let out a sigh as he finally let loose. His indisputable prowess finally had enough of Vladimir's dilly dally. Rayla smirked and let out a huff.

As Higgins broke his restraint, silence reigned supreme.

His speed managed to shatter the sound barrier in a fraction of a second.

This was the hunter without a legacy, whose heart-shattering only strengthened his determination to escape his island prison, forcing him to overwork himself in order to be strong enough to handle it.

Alas, this also made the needed force to his own death to be insurmountable.

As he heard the clattering of chains, the inquisitor's gaze was drawn to him, but his head did more than turn to his will.

"Clack!" As Higgins drew his zenith and jaw in opposite directions, the inquisitor's neck snapped, maintaining its turned position.

"What in the world did you do?" Rayla wailed, clearly thrown amiss by the sight and sound of the inquisitor collapsing on the floor.

"Better question, who the hell are you?" Higgins stroked his wrist, attempting to restore the flow.

He talked condescendingly to the unique entity who, for the first time in several years, had him at a loss for words simply by looking at her.

She also delayed his death, which invoked his taking action in the first place.

"Is he dead? Vladimir, wake up!" She began to mope about his apparent death, ignoring Higgins in that stead. "Help him!" She then looked to him and urged that he render what little he could in the form or revival.

"He's a beta; one snap won't kill him." But do that to an omega and..." As he turned his gaze to the lying body, Higgins spoke out against her overreaction.

"What's the deal with your stare?" He inquired, seemingly piqued by the tenacity in her imagined grin.

"So you're the hunter that Rachel kept telling about. Paul Higgins, the renowned and experienced warrior hunter who became stranded on this continent and incorporated magic into his..." She was led to confess everything she knew about him, at least the scratched surface information that she had been exposed to.

"Shut up, little girl." Higgins blurted in a clear-cut manner.

As he strutted to the door, he walked over the inquisitor's laying arm, listening for an incoming sound.

"The guards, on the dungeon floor? They seem unconscious! Someone had to have knocked them unconscious. They're in the dungeon!" A voice trailed from beyond the dungeon's hearing range, but Higgins' sharp senses managed to pick it up.

"Who are you calling, 'little girl'? I'm the same age as you." Interestingly, she wasn't exactly wrong, at least Higgins realized that; it was an insult that wasn't meant to mock her age.

"I'm afraid I don't have time for you right now." Higgins muttered as he made his way back to his cell, raising the chains that had fallen to the floor and attempting to wrench them back onto his hand.

"What are you up to?" Rayla inquired as she observed the string of activities Higgins had began to do.

She sought an answer, especially because her concern for the inquisitor's life had not subsided, while fighting the single tear that tried to fall from her eye.

"I'm returning to a position that will ensure I get what I've had coming for a long time." Higgins stated his firm intention.

"Wait, do you want to be killed?" Rayla inquired, as doubt began to gather around the erroneous story of a hero or something resembling a crusading hunter that she imagined him to be.

He chose not to respond to her concern, instead opting to look her down with a heightened expressionless glare.

She seemed perplexed by his determination to put an end to his life, but she also narrowed her visage in an attempt to declare that she would not let him do so.

"You can't die, Higgins, there's so much you haven't done. Why would you wish to perish when..." Rayla began telling the story of an unheeded attempt.

"Look, I don't know who you are or why the heck you stopped Vladimir over there from nipping my life supply in the bud, and I won't say I appreciate your assistance as much as I should. Leave me alone and..." Higgins supplied every unspoken explanation he could think of to argue Rayla's assistance.

The hunter wanted to put an end to it all, and prolonging his death just added to his anguish for the years of misery he had endured.

Higgins' unexpected halt in his statement was not caused by Rayla's interference, as one might expect, but rather by the lauded thuds of a familiar Delta's feet.

"Are you a fool? If you think there's something in the dungeon, then go investigate. Vladimir is keeping an eye on Higgins, but what if he is unable to handle whatever is there?" The steps turned to words as he declared and appeared to speak down on one of the betas who followed him to validate their suspicions and confirm its potency.

"As you wish, Delta Ramsy." Higgins peered through as the beta announced his determination to do as he was told, which included raiding the site.

Both Rayla and Higgins had their heads turned in the direction of the speakers, but their reactions were nullified by the other's command.

Perhaps it was the only window's being coveted with a coated steel bar, but the tension in their deciding gazes radiated throughout the entire room.

"Did you hear that, Higgins? This isn't the time to be fooling around." We have to get out of here." Rayla exclaimed. "They'll be down any minute now," she added.

"Does it look that I'm messing around?" Higgins had been trying in vain to reattach the shattered chain's buckle to his mitts. "I'm trying to get this piece of shit back unto my hands."

He strained, with his tone indicating a greater longing to be tied to the dungeon once more.

Rayla appeared dazed and was now sure that the reason she had risked so much to return to the prison would rather be hung by the heads in his regalia and perish by the lot of his plunder than help her.

"Please, Higgins, you can't go through with this. I've been through so much already, all for the sake of finding you. I need your assistance..." Her cries simply revealed the actual amount of her desperation for him to assist her with something.

"Look..." Higgins began to speak out as Rayla straightened herself and her bent head that had sunk.

She had collapsed to offer him an empathy-seeking plea, merely to see how he reverberated her tears.

"Stop looking at me like I'm some sort of saviour or something, I'm a scumbag who can't even..." He was cut off by the anthem of increasing foot clapping, which thudded down an array of steps leading to the confinement.

At this time, Rayla's wails and relentless moans knew no bounds; she couldn't stop herself from drowning Higgins with enough reason to refrain in his attempts at allowing Ramsy meet him as he left.

"They're nearly here. So, either you help me claw these restraints back onto my hands, or you stay and see if I'll be as eager to knock out Ramsy as I did that cunt." He call out on her to either aid him, broker his silence, or have her exposed to Ramsy as a threat.

With the choice she was forced to make, Rayla was thrown off guard. Put her reason for coming in jeopardy, help Higgins, or face Ramsy's fury.

Nothing seemed right, as she peered into a huge abyss that cloaked her undetermined fate for a brief period.

"I recommend that you hurry up with whatever decision you make because..." Higgins rushed her thinking, aiming to introduce more variables to sway her decisions.

"I know they're on their way; it's just..." Her face became grey; she had reached a decision, but what was it?

"I'll help you." She declared her decision.

She then finished by getting to her feet and walking towards him with her gaze expressionless.

He was once again entranced by her person, but this time he was also stricken with a bewildered feeling as to why she would make such a choice, forcing him to snap out of it at an early stage.

"Have you given up on trying to force me to help you with whatever it was you sought out for in the beginning?" He began with a query in order to confirm his deficient fears.

He lusted for her in a profound way, but he wasn't as quick to react to it; in fact, he didn't want to feel it at all.

"I haven't, but being who I am, there are more than one ways to get what I want." Her dreadful tone instilled fear, one that was unrivaled yet boundless.

"What are you trying to say?" He spoke, drawing little emotions from her unmatched gaze.

"What I suggest is, what if you were bitten by a half-breed, the offspring of an Alpha werewolf and a human?" She revealed, probing even deeper into an unspoken reality.

Her gaze had finally met his as she raised her head to his unwavering look at this moment.

They remained fixated on each other's gape, probing deep into their eyes as though on a soul-searching mission.

Hearts began racing, as both had made up their minds about what would happen next.

They drew like a pair of drawbridges towards each other, slowly but steadily, to explore an unknown, newly discovered region, in a feat that appeared to be the consequence of a lever being pulled.

Their lips were nearly in contact as a sharp voice exclaimed, "What the hell!" A Beta barged in ahead of the troops, signaling their impending arrival behind him.

Higgins and Rayla both had their attention drawn to the Beta's rage when, very instantly.

Rayla became the first to return to her prior attention's driven hold as she met Higgins' turned gaze, but it wasn't to finish what she started.

She drew closer to him and flexed her canine that unretracted to led forth a bite to Higgins' neck.

"Shit!" Higgins yelled as he felt the bitten-down grasp on him.

"Get off of me!" He pulled her jawed down grasp away from him, causing her to stumble to the floor, with a sneer etched onto her face.

"What did you do?" He asked, as he massaged the region of his neck where her bite mark scarred him.

The scene in his wake slowly began to round, before finally diming, Higgins' moment of heightened feel in a long time was short-lived, so was his consciousness after that.