It wasn't fun, killing werwolves, in fact Gabriel flat out hated it. Unlike most other Beasts born of magic, their curse was truly a curse, if not saved before too long they would go rapid and kill anything near them. Only a few, such as his Mama Scarlet, really could handle their lycanthropy and even then she leaned toward a terrible temper during the three days of the full moon... and that was only due to a series of experimental spells his Other Mother had crafted her her.

  Armed with his spelled axe, charmed by his own power to penetrate even the strongest of hides, Gabriel was however very, very good at killing... and really, it was a mercy at this point. His target was a woman, attacked an unnamed wolf many moons ago, had fallen into the full rabidness... and so, had to die. She, having lost her children in the attack, sought children to fill her loss... only to tear them apart. If she really had been a mother, a good mother as he had heard... she would rather have death than what she had been warped into.

  Laying a trap was easy, laying in a spelled circle covered in deer blood... he just waited... and waited...

  And then he felt her, dark and warped, her slobbering breath thick with the stench of rotting flesh. Her paws, wrathful and strong, touched the sacred circle, ramming untold energy into her body. She convulsed for a moment, before his magic held her in place.

  He did not make her suffer, such a thing was beyond cruel, and he took her life without hesitation. Kneeling next to her, placing hand on her body, he offered a final blessing. "May you rest, finding peace with those you held most dear... Burn." he intoned, his palm radiating sun set red light, before fire erupted along her cursed form. She would be gone in a matter of moments, all traces of her infected form scattered to the winds in the form of ash.

  """'

  Mama Scarlet was the first to greet him, having smelt his approach from miles away. Dressed in her traditional crimson hood, she was tall and strong, body firm with wolf like potency. "Happy Hunting, Cubby?" She asked, before sighing at the sadness in his scent. "It wasn't good, was it?"

  "No... she was a mother... doomed to suffer through the cruelty of another. I cannot blame her for what she became..." Sighing, he turned skyward, smiling at the rippling wards of the Coven's Base. There were not too many of them, but every single one had been harmed by magic, and yet took the powers that wrought harm to heal and help.

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  Mama Scarlet, once known by her Late Grandmother as Little Red Riding Hood, had come with her adoptive father, Markus... a Legendary Wolf Hunter. Turns out, Grandma had been infected by a werewolf months before and was going rabid. Only Markus' saving Mama Scarlet, with his own axe, gave her a chance to meet the Guardian Coven... albeit that was twenty years ago, when Scarlet was a child. Now, standing in her thirties, she had become a Hunter and Werewolf, able to control herself after being healed by Mama Gretel... who she then courted almost immediately after, joining as the muscles and tracker of the Coven.

  Though others would come and go, learning magic and self defense, few really stayed... a few actually died, taken too soon in their pursuit of healing. They had several allies that helped them, from Undine the Sea Witch to Cassandra the Great Fairy! However, the heart of the Coven had remained the four of them... Absently, the boy looked at his arm, seeing the pale everlasting scars of his old life under the Vampire that had tormented him... and the heroic Hansel that had given him hope and healing. His beloved Uncle Hansel... his best friend and closest confidant, even seven years later. Nineteen or not, Gabriel loved his family... the memory of them forcing a smile across his face.

  Looking about, he realized something... odd. "Why is the air so cold and... it's well past noon, how is there Frost on the ground still?" His eyes went wide. "Wait, this has to be magic... it's her, isn't it?"

  Mama Scarlet nodded, her eyes warning. "Prudence... the Snow Queen, arrived this morning... she... she is dying, and carries a warning for humanity..."

  Stumbling back, the boy looked at her. "How, she is fey? What could kill her of all people?"

  What Scarlet said next haunted him. "Do you remember your lesson on the Legend of Dark Mirror? That which shows only the worst in those that see it, awakening resentment and lingering darkness?" He nodded, dread flooding his soul. "Not a Legend... she saw it... or rather, pieces of it... the thing was shattered, and it's fragments retain their power... she... she found a child burdened by it's fragments, one on his eye and another in his heart... he was saved, by a beloved friend,... or so we thought." She shivered, looking at him with terror. "Removing the fragments delayed it, but the madness returned...he killed the girl that saved him, his wife now... and came back to the Snow Queen, stabbing with a blade of spelled iron... even Gretel cannot save her..."

  They both turned then, as cry sounded about, one of mourning and loss... it was a man's voice, and as it rippled through the air, every ounce of mist and frost sublimated into nothing.

  "Who?"

  Mama Scarlet cringed. "Her son... Elias... he carried her here... come, it... we should pay our respects... I can no longer smell her life. The Snow Queen has passed..."