So,...some news.

I've been a bit MIA these last few months and I felt the need to explain myself. It's been a…rough few months, from seasonal depression hitting like a battering ram to the burnout of writing a story for almost 3ish years straight, a month where my insomnia is at its peak, I also had a death in my family with a brother passing away and dealing with my siblings is always…a hassle to put it lightly.

I just need some time before I work on the Heir to the Hunt again; I have most of it thought out already. I just need to find the will to write it. But in the meantime, I am working on the endings to "In the Coils of the Serpent" and the next chapter of "The Last Compartment on the Left" to try and clear my palate, I guess.

I know you've all heard this before and hate the words as much as I do: but I do plan on finishing this series; just hold on with me.

But with that out of the way, how about a bit of a sneak peek at the biggest fight in the current arch?

Harry versus Loscenn-loom in the depths of Es Mentiras.

On with the show

Harry continues to lose ground against the monster before him; its ever-widening smile and mad cackles that echo down the hallways sounding like a distorted radio play did nothing but piss him off. He knew long before he ever set foot back on English soil that the war before him wouldn't be easy. The monsters released upon his home country by Voldemort were far different than the run-of-the-mill cyclops or chimeras; they were, in a few words, as overwhelming as the fears they represented. Loscenn-lomm was no exception; while a far simpler Hunt than Cathlenn or Goll, it was no less dangerous. Lomm's entire body was a weapon and just as hazardous as Harry's own spear.

Lomm's form could extend, twist, and divide in impossible ways. Avoiding his attacks while counter-attacking in the same moment, was maddening, to say the least, a fact that Harry didn't doubt Lomm found beyond amusing.

As he bats away another swipe of its claws that tore the continuous hallways of Es Mentiras apart, he steps into the swing for a lunge of his own. The barbed blade clips Lomm's side, slicing and ripping its way through its side as it tries to move out of the way. The abrupt burning pain in Harry's side catches him off guard for a moment before he looks down to see Lomm's claws buried into his side; he can feel them in his lungs as it wiggles its fingers inside of him.

"Got ya," Lomm says as Harry looks back up to its fractal eyes and the mad glee that lies within them as it laughs at him; the sound echoing down the infinite corridors.

Harry growls at the monster before him, with the Hunt hissing in his head for blood, Harry grabs the hand that was penetrating his side before quickly pulling back his spear to half-hand the haft. He swings it upwards to sever Lomm's forearm from the rest of its body. Lomm's screams echo just as much as its laughter as Harry lunges once more, tackling and running his spear through the monster's chest. With a roar from Harry, both he and Lomm slam through a thin swinging metal door before crashing to the ground.

All Harry could see through the red haze of his own rage was Lomm's laughing and grinning face; consumed by it, he lashed out. Ripping his spear from the monster's chest just to plunge it back in, reaching behind his back to draw his hunting knife, he slams that into the body as well. Lomm didn't lay on the ground, just laughing maniacally at the rage-mad boy above it; it quickly regrew its forearm before tearing into the boy just as the boy was tearing into it. Sickle-like fingers cleave flesh and meat from the bone, slipping under his ribs to cleave and rend his organs. Crimson red and foul blackness fly across the room in ribbons as they tore into each other like animals, all sense of defense gone with only animalistic slaughter remaining.

With one deft strike, Harry stabs down with his hunting knife into Lomm's shoulder before twisting the blade; dislocating the joint. Lomm howls in pain before the Gae Bolg comes back down, stabbing into its arm and pinning its arm to its body while robbing the body of the last of its wind. Harry quickly gets to his feet to stand over the body before raising his foot and bringing it down into a stomp onto Lomm's skull, sending skull fragments, brain, black sludge, and seafoam scattering across the floor.

Breath leaves Harry's lips in ragged gasps and tinged with crimson as his blood and organs spill from his ruined body. His body burned with pain, but his adrenaline and the Hunt were tampering with the sensation. His eyes, wild and hungry, scan the room he is now in. It looked like a reception room from a hospital, but he knew better than to trust anything in the realm of madness. An echoing chuckle catches his attention as his Azura eyes blaze with an inner fire as he turns to the blonde-haired and blue-eyed woman in hospital scrubs who is sitting behind the reception desk.

"Mister Potter! Welcome to Wonderland House!" the woman says cheerfully as her smile stretches past what a normal human face could do and is filled with teeth like shark teeth. We've been expecting you for a while now, Luv. Now, don't worry about checking in; we've had you down for an age now," the woman admits as she stands for her seat and walks around the desk.

"Shut. It," Harry hisses at the monster as he rips his weapons from the vanishing body below him.

"Why's that Luv? Don't like the truth?" Lomm says with a tilt of its head. "The truth that you belong here, that you're just like us," it teases Harry before a small mad giggle escapes its lips.

"I am nothing like you," Harry retorts with a sneer on his lips as he draws himself up, his body now whole and hale as he feels the nagging voice in the back of his mind warning him that he was digging too deep…again.

"Are you sure, Luv?" Lomm asks as she folds her hands in front of her. "Just look at you, almost mad with rage and bloodlust with that pesky little thing in your mind egging you deeper and deeper into my realm," it argues as she reaches up to tap the side of its head.

"You remind me a lot of Nemad, actually," it says the words like an insult even as she chuckles at its words. "He was afraid too, you know?" it tells Harry with a sick smile. "He was always a sickly man, always afraid of what he'll catch next and so afraid that it will be his last cough, always afraid of what festered in the wet, damp, and dark places of the world," it explains to Harry with joy in its eye.

"I'm not scared of the common cold," Harry snarls as he holsters his hunting knife and slides into his ready stance to charge at the monster before him.

Lomm does a cold and haunting chuckle that echoes across the halls of Es Mentiras. "No, you're not scared of that, are you?" It says with a grin that nearly split its face in two. "You're scared of something far worse, aren't you? That cold silence…" it says, trailing off as its fractal eyes glow with the hue of a rainbow set into a kaleidoscope as Harry feels claws in his mind, digging and digging deep into his mind. Wading through the wreckage of the burnt-out remains of the house, he never called a home. "And even colder, Touch," it whispers the last bit as the cupboard doors begin to rattle.

"Stop it!" Harry snaps before making a wild charge at Lomm and its constant prying in his mind. He roars as he slams into Lomm's current form, his spear ripping through its body as it wears its twisted grin.

"Come now Mister Potter, no need to attack the staff," a far more masculine voice says after Harry slams the other body of Lomm, his spear piercing its heart. As the body vanishes into seafoam, Harry whips around to find a doctor in his lab coat leaning against the wall with a grin. "What's wrong, did I hit a nerve?" The doctor laughs as he pushes himself off the wall, his hands never leaving his coat. "But you're just like us, Mister Potter, nothing more than a monster in the making; I mean- just look at yourself!?" the doctor says, gesturing to Harry as the hunter kicks the body off his spear.

He was covered, head to toe, in black sludge and his own blood, his eyes burning like Azure touches in the night. Shaking head to toe in rage and bloodlust as the Beast in his head hisses and growls at the monster In front of him.

"All you can think about is the Hunt, about killing us, about killing Voldemort," the doctor says as the smile on the mask grows with its amusement at Harry. "You're just as mad as I am! You're feeding bits of your soul to the Hunt to keep it under control! What sane being does that? Both of you, it's just something you just won't accept! Out of the two of us, you're the one who looks and acts like more of the monster, Ghost of Tethra!" It screams before it begins to laugh as deep and dark as the moonless night as Harry had heard enough.

A bloody scream escapes his throat as he calls on the silent domain of death and it answers him eagerly. Twisted strokes of iron thorns rip through the tiles and ceiling, crawling up the walls of the reception room as the fires of the Beast in his mind burn even hotter.

"That's it, Ghost of Tethra! Come on! Let's see what a second Nemad can-" the Doctor says, spreading his arms wide to welcome Harry with open arms and armed claws to continue ripping him apart. But as Harry charges at his prey with only the slaughter of the Hunt in his mind and fractals breaking his eyes, the door to the room slams open as a wave of mist engulfs the room.

It hit Harry like a physical blow: the scent of wildflowers and freshwater, the peaceful sound of singing somewhere off in the distance humming in his ears, as if trying to lull him to sleep. The sense of peace and serenity came so suddenly and filled him so swiftly that it made Harry lose his footing and crash to the floor and onto his hands and knees…

And for the first time in what felt like his whole life, the Heir to the Hunt felt… at peace.

Even the Hunt was banished from his mind. "No, not banished… sleeping…" Harry thinks to himself more clearly than he had in hours, maybe even weeks. He could feel the Hunt curled up in itself like a cat, dozing off in the sunlight of a warm spring day. The madness, the hate, and the rage all drained from him as Harry pushed himself to his knees. He knew this feeling, he didn't know how or why, but deep down in the very recesses of his soul did he know this… peace, this serenity that brought a tear to his eye. It was what he had been seeking all his life, for that day after tomorrow where he would finally be free from all the anger and the demons of his past. Oh, how he just wanted to curl up like the Hunt and bask in this peace forevermore, but like everything in the past two weeks, Loscenn-loom ruined it.

"No, no, no, no, nonononono, NO!" It hisses through clenched teeth, clearly enraged by the feeling and who it was coming from. "You're not supposed to be here! How are you here!?" Lomm says in a panic as he starts to slip his claws through the mist. "How the hell are you even here, Vivian!?" Lomm snarls with rage.

"Oh?" A new voice calls out, echoing throughout wherever the mist had drifted. "I'm surprised that you know that name for me, it's relatively new compared to my others," the voice says, light and playful, tinged with wicked mischief and trickled in like water from a stream. "But I'm glad to see you're still up to your old tricks, Loscenn-lomm. You never did kick the bad habit of having the backside of a bull stick out of that maw you call a mouth and taking a shit," Viviana says with an amused scoff.

Harry sees the shadow moving in the mist with robes fanned out across her shoulders like a cap; the click of heels on the linoleum floor heralds her coming, as he can barely make out the shifting of long blonde hair in the mist.

But he could easily see her most distinguishing feature on her diminutive figure…

Bright sky-blue eyes burning with power glow within the mist…

Till next time~