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A Viper is hunting. Large feet clad in leather land softly in a puddle, spraying mud up a tree trunk. Twin venomous knives curl backwards, two fingers clutching one, the other three fingers of that hand pressing their pads to the tree. Poisonous yellow eyes peer around the trunk, searching for a bird to devour. They see burst banks and a turgid river. The atmosphere is heavy with moisture, and rot. Air-drowned fish lie dead on the sopping shore, small waves picking them up and dropping them, over and over again.
Full moon. It's still dark out, but not for the Viper, and not for his prey. But something is wrong. He was contracted for one werewolf. But there are a pack of them lurking in these woods, something he discovered only when well past its borders. If the poster of the bounty doesn't pay up for the extras, he's going to torture him until he does. And if he hasn't enough gold, then he'll torch his village and take what he wants from the remains. Gold, women, other valuables.
Some minutes later a man in the form of a gigantic wolf is picked out by yellowish silver light, the creature prowling the river for prey. The snake in the form of a man slithers closer to the cursed creature, his scent that of a regular serpent, cold and musty. The wolf pays no attention to his smell over the others filling its world.
Out of the undergrowth the Viper strikes, a Sign paralysing the wolf, another burning it, twin silver fangs biting into either side of the creature’s neck, meeting in the middle. The monster goes down, but now there is blood in the air, very potent blood. Howling starts up elsewhere in the wyrd wood. The hunt changes its target. No time to strip the corpse of its valuables. The Viper returns to his tree, swinging up into the branches. Climbing a tree won’t save anyone from a werewolf, but aside from being a witcher, he’s not just anyone.
When first one werewolf and then another breaks through the treeline, they begin fighting. A third arrives and turns its immense head towards the tree, where the trail of werewolf scent leads. It ignores the dead wolf and the dueling pair, and approaches. The slight distraction afforded by it standing on its back legs, is what the Viper is waiting for. He falls out the tree, feet first, but what falls out of his hiding place is not a man or mutant, but a monster. With a single slash of its terrible claws the ulfhedinn takes off the common werewolf’s head, then leaps after the other two, reducing one to a screeching mess with a savage overhead blow, before chasing the remaining dog into the woods, the howling reaching a petrifying crescendo.