"It's gone for now," he starts, hardly wishing to pull her from her meditation and set her watching her back, for all it might be a good idea to tread carefully at all times. "I've gone looking for signs, but they're all old. Which isn't to say it won't come back, or there won't be other things like it."

Lightning wasn't like it, except for how it struck quick and couldn't be fended off, even by the best of them physically and tactically. His grief wasn't for the woman lost to the wendigo, but there are plenty of people he would now miss if the thing struck again.

"It was called a Wendigo. It attacked livestock and people, before I arrived. They're--warped things, all claws and teeth. They eat flesh, most think they come about when people turn to cannibalism, and who knows what circumstances were in this village before it was abandoned."