?'s P.O.V.

I was frantically looking around, trying to find my hunter. That was supposed to be a simple mission: get to the place, check in with the team already there, and solve whatever the problem was. Normally, a team would send a report every week, ten days at most. But as the end of the second week arrived, the king had lost all of his patience: the first team was very overqualified for a simple kidnapping mission.

But that wasn't the problem. Something lurked in the forest nearby the damned village. At the beginning, it had limited itself to watch us from between the trees. Slowly, one by one, the other members of the team had disappeared on the course of the days. They would be found hours later after their disappearance, dismembered.

We chose to leave, but the thing was still following us. It could be seen watching at a distance, unmoving. Its eyes glowed a creepy blue hue, and it was really lanky. It was still awfully strong, as it had managed to overpower my leader without even batting an eye.

I could feel it. Its eyes were burrowing their way inside me, slowly filling my soul with dread. I had started running at some point, leaving behind all of my things. It wouldn't matter anyway, with my whole team dead, not that I cared about them, mind you, and the luggage was only slowing me down at that point.

I turned around for a split second, but that was enough for me: it was still there. No matter how far I would run, it would just follow no matter what.

I didn't want to die like a coward tough, so I stopped in my tracks and turned to the monster following me. It seemed surprised by my actions, but didn't move at all. It just…stared. Like it always did.

Slowly, I drew my sword and started advancing carefully towards my enemy. It didn't so much as twitch, it just watched. I was within one meter an half of the beast.

Looking at it from that close, it didn't look all that threatening. It looked like a mix between a cheetah and an ape, just a little shorter than two meters, standing roughly at eye level with me. Its clothes were quite strange, covered by a dark grey cloak. It looked very thin compared to an ape, but its eyes showed an intelligence that I had rarely seen in my life. Suddenly, its mouth opened and it spoke:

"You want to fight me?"

It-his tone was low, but audible. I was not that surprised by that, tough, as I had heard him whisper things whenever I looked at him, so I answered promptly.

"Yes, I do."

A small smirk appeared on the monster's face, and he inclined slightly his head to the left.

"Do you realize you have no chance in defeating me?"

I knew that. I wasn't even a skilled warrior. That was my first mission, and I never had any combat experience beforehand, but I wouldn't go down without a struggle. I simply nodded my head slowly, my eyes still trained on the weird being in front of me.

"You intend to fight me even knowing that you will lose? That makes you honor. Shall we begin then?"

As he finished talking, he swiped his hand in the air in front of him, and a sword materialized in front of him. Grasping it, the being pointed it lousily at me with one hand, adopting a relaxed stance.

I readied myself, holding my blade with both hands and eyeing my enemy carefully. He gave a halfhearted swing, and I parried it easily. What I did not expect was the impressive amount of strength behind that simple move. It wasn't enough to stagger me, but if he could put such power in a lousy hit, I pitied whoever got him to actually try.

Shaking myself from my thoughts, I narrowly deflected a downwards slash, and retailed with a lunge at his open side. He sidestepped my attack with extreme ease, and tripped me immediately after. My sword slipped from my hands, too far away for me to even think of getting it back.

I felt the creature pressing his foot on my back, and saw the glint of his sword at the edge of my vision. I knew that my time had arrived, and I readied myself to meet my ancestors.

"I am impressed. You're quite a good fighter, all in all."

What was he waiting for? Did he enjoy the feeling of having lives at his mercy? Did he put everyone else through the same treatment as me?

"Now, now. I know you are confused, but let me explain before you go in a tangent. You see, a little over two weeks ago, some of your kind attacked and tried to kidnap a young dragon from under my nose."

At that point, he wasn't even pressing his foot on me anymore, but he had walked right between me and my sword, so I just chose to stay down.

"Now, I don't like to see children being mistreated, so I had to save them. It just so happened that in order to do that I was forced to kill the whole squad. Would you imagine my surprise when exactly two weeks after that another bunch of apes appeared in my zone of the forest."

He had gotten so carried away in his speech that he sat down, and I found that at some point I had sat up and started listening intently.

"So, I started to observe you guys, hoping that you weren't here for the same reason. But when I heard your leader talking about it, I just couldn't let you guys do it. After all, if it came to protecting your friends, you would do the same, right?"

I nodded numbly at his question, and a question floated at the forefront of my mind:

"That actually doesn't explain why you had to dismember my teammates. And also, why are you even telling me all of this?"

He just shook a little his head and said in a mirthful voice:

"I did nothing of the sort. I just wanted to mess with you, so I put a couple illusions here and there. I'll say that it worked superbly, standing to how you guys reacted. As for the second part, I was getting there."

While that eased some of my worries, I still didn't want to trust him to just letting me go. After all, he still had killed the others.

"Now, if you'll let me continue. I have the peculiar ability to gauge someone's attributes just with a look. Your team was too stupid or too corrupt to suit my needs, but you are different."

He had leaned a little in my direction as he said that, and I was getting a bad feeling about what was going to come next.

"You are smart, and your allegiance is only to the ones you care about, not to your king. You were forced in this position, weren't you?"

For being a heartless monster, he was quite observant. He was right, I never wanted being a soldier, but with our king planning whatever he was, the call to arms had become mandatory. Nonetheless, I still had no idea where he was going with that.

He must have noticed my confused look, for he continued:

"I'll get to the point: I need information. All of you apes seem to be targeting my friend, and I want to know why. Plus, I need a spy in the ape ranks, and I think I can trust you with this. Of course, I can give you some things in return."

He had gained my attention with that: he would give me the chance to probably sabotage my king's operations, and something more. The deal was tempting, but I wanted to know exactly what was in it for me.

"Let us say for a second that I agree with you: what do I get from this and why should I believe a single word of what you say?"

The smile on his face became even bigger, if possible, as he heard that. I was honestly thinking he was just insane and wanted to play with me before killing me.

He might just have heard my thoughts, as he dropped the smile and assumed a blank expression. His voice had assumed a business-like tone, and he said:

"Assuming you'll take up my offer, I'll firstly let you leave this place alive and provide you with a story to cover how you survived, while your team did not. Secondly, I am assuming that you have not seen your loved ones in a while: the story I will provide you should be able to grant you some time off duty, so you could see them once more. And finally, if I deem you trustworthy enough, I'll grant you a power beyond your wildest dreams. Now that all the cards are on the table, do we have a deal?"

I pondered the pros and cons for a while in my head, as the choice was not an easy one: on one side I could have a chance to do something against that imbecile on the throne, some time with my family and finally a chance to power, all with supposedly a powerful ally.

On the other side, if I were found out, I would most likely be killed for treason, and my loved ones would follow suit. Then again, I doubted I would even leave this blasted forest if I didn't agree to the pact.

In the end, I chose to follow the path that gave me some chances at surviving:

"So be it. We have a deal."

The creature dropped his cold demeanor and helped me up at my words. While he was dusting himself off, I eyed my sword for a second, wondering whether I should take it or not. He must have noticed my gaze, as he said nonchalantly:

"Go ahead and take it. If you want to get out of here alive you'll need it. I'm not the only dangerous thing here, you know."

I shrugged and followed his directions, wondering what could be called as dangerous as whatever that weird being was. Once that thought passed through my head, I noticed I didn't know neither his name nor what he was. I turned to ask for my supposed ally's name, but he beat me to the punch:

"By the way, if you're wondering, I am a human. My name is not your concern, as you won't find any other humans anywhere nearby. Now, what would your name be?"

I felt a little miffed at his manners, but as I was in no position to criticize him, I opted to keep my thoughts for myself, and simply answered:

"My name is Zilan. Anything else is not your concern."

He snickered a little at that, and shook his head in mirth. He didn't answer, tough, and simply motioned for me to follow him. I complied, wondering where he was bringing me. He said nothing, he just kept poking at the air like an imbecile, and his eyes darted around like he was reading something.

After a couple minutes of silence, he started agitating his fingers wildly in the air in front of him, and poked the air one more time. In that exact moment, a weird blue floating rectangle appeared in front of me. I took a step back from the scare, and studied the thing in front of me: it seemed to follow me, and there was something written on it:

You have 1 new message.

Underneath the confusing sentence, there were a green circle and a red one. Confused, I tried touching it, and it felt solid to the touch. Applying more pressure, the rectangle gave in and my finger slipped trough just as if it were made of water. Casually, I touched the green circle and the rectangle collapsed onto itself, making place for a bigger blue square, once again with some writing on it:

Can you read this?

-D

Underneath, there was a blank zone and a huge bunch of squares, each with a letter engraved on it. I pressed a couple of them, to see what would happen, and the blank space started filling up with the letters I was pressing. I found a small rectangle with an arrow pointing towards left, and pressing it the last letter disappeared. Trying again, I got the same result.

Having gotten the hang of it, I used the floating letters to write a positive reply, but I had no idea what to do then. Scanning the blue square once more, I spotted a small writing underneath what I wrote, reading 'done'. Assuming that I had to press it, I did so, and the square disappeared.

Turning my head to the human, I saw him looking at me with an affirmative look on his face. He gave a small nod, and said:

"That's good. You learn fast. I was fearing I would have to teach you how to read and answer to my messages."

I stared at him flabbergasted for a good a bunch of seconds, then I said the smartest thing I could think of:

"Are you saying that it was your doing?"

He shrugged his shoulders a little and said:

"If you want to put it that way, yes. But I still have to tell you a couple things about it: if you want to tell me something immediately, you just have to say or think 'chat'. Don't worry, it doesn't work if you say it in a sentence, and even then, no one can see it except you. At least, I couldn't. Just as I suppose you couldn't see what I was doing?"

He gave me a quizzical look when he paused, and I shook my head. Seemingly satisfied, he continued:

"Alright. I will check in with you once a week, and I expect to tell me all of note that happened and you found out during the week. If you hear something critical, you will tell me in the first free moment you have. Anything. Missions that are being scheduled, the objectives, what are your leader's plans, and pretty much anything you believe can help in some way."

That was oddly specific, but I nodded nonetheless. The 'human', as he called himself, was getting weirder by the minute, but I avoided pointing it out.

"Very well. Now, two more things until you can go: one, your cover story. You will say that a monster has taken to protect the village, and that it killed your leader before you could do anything. Your teammates then attacked the monster to give you a chance to leave to tell the tale, as you were the youngest and could run faster than any of them. Get that?"

That actually sounded plausible, but they would ask for me to describe such a creature. Voicing my concerns the human, he hummed in contempt:

"Yeah, that might be a problem, but maybe I can do something about it."

With that, he closed his eyes and stopped moving immediately. Slowly he started becoming taller, until he easily cleared three meters, his arms long enough to reach his knees, and he became even thinner than before, to the point where I thought that he was going to fly away with a breeze. His skin paled to the point of becoming a very light grey, and his face slowly lost all of its features, leaving only a mouth that split his head almost completely in two.

He smiled down at me, revealing two uninterrupted sets of fangs, and said in a nightmarish voice:

"WhAt do yOu ThInK?"

What did I think? I was thinking that I was utterly terrified. I had started backing up without even noticing, and I ended up with my back to a tree, unable to even utter a word.

"I aSsuME thIs WilL bE EnouGh."

He then changed back to his original form, and gave a confident smirk. The human then said:

"If they won't find this terrifying, then I'm eating my cloak. And judging from your reaction, they definitely will. Now, tough, for the second point: I have a question that I need you to answer."

I took a moment to calm my raging heart, and gestured for him to go on.

"Now, I know that your target was supposed to be a young fire dragoness living in the village just outside of the forest. Right?"

I nodded impatiently, as I wanted to leave already.

"Good. Now, my question is: what would you need her for? What were you guys trying to achieve by that?"

I took my time to gather what I knew, which unfortunately wasn't that much, and stated:

"For what I know, it was because of her inner fire. You see, rumor has it that our king's mages have become able to harness the inner element of the dragons, and as she is supposed to become the Fire Guardian, her inner fire is one of the strongest. I think you can understand what would happen if our king gained such a power."

The human nodded looking quite pensive, then looked back at me, and said:

"This strengthens my suspects. Our deal is still the same, but remember: if you rat me out, I'll find you and make you regret it."

I let my lips morph in a small smirk as I answered:

"You don't even exist to my knowledge. All there is to this place is a nightmare, and nothing more."

He donned a smirk matching my own, and said:

"I have the feeling this will be a nice partnership."

He then helped me up once more, and added:

"Just a stray thought, but before you go: who is this king of yours?"

I made sure to add as much venom to my voice as I could, as I voiced my opinion on the king:

"His name is Egul, son of king Gaul. But, the only thing they are similar in is their aspect, as Egul is a total fool. He is aware that we only just got out of a war, yet he seems to be planning attacks left and right like nothing. If you are planning to take his place, I doubt many would oppose, as you're undoubtedly smarter than him."

I didn't notice it, but the human had inched away from me somewhere during my tirade, and was staring at me questioningly. He shook his head, and spoke:

"Don't worry about that, you just keep me informed. I'll take care of everything. Now, off you go, and I expect you to let me know when you reach… wherever you were dispatched from. Come on, shoo, shoo."

He didn't have to tell me twice, as I started running at full speed away from him, and towards the basecamp I was dispatched from.

Thinking back about it, who could have known such a simple mission would turn in that clusterfuck. At least, I gained one or two things out of it.

Alright, everyone. I know this chapter is way shorter than the others, but I didn't feel comfortable in making a chapter in two different P.O.V.. You might have some questions, for example: 'Why did Daniel get Zilan to become his spy?' well, for that and other questions you will have to wait. All will be explained either in the next chapter, or further on in the story. Again, sorry for the shorter chapter, but I wanted to let you see from Zilan's eyes in this part, as he will be important further on. On a side note, did you enjoy the beginning of the chapter? I tried to make it as creepy as possible, since I wanted to remember you guys how Daniel would be seen from an outside perspective, yet how you think he would be seen is your opinion, and actually, why don't you tell me your opinion on his character? I definitely would like to know that.

Normally I would answer the reviews, but I guess the only thing I have to say to Y'all is: THANKS FOR THE SUPPORT EVERYONE! And now, Xeno out!

P.S. I want to give Daniel something along the lines of a familiar later on. What beast would be better for him in your opinion? (If you say wolf you have no imagination in my eyes)