Bravenasil was nine tenths beauty, yet Tegfan Fielder found himself wading through its mire in the far south; petrified trees and overcast sky.

It was his own fault. The Scarred Foresters fought a less than conventional war, and one nobody would rightly volunteer for. Thus, the Marshel of the Bravenasilian Military decided to set up a conscription service of sorts; any recruits, too proud, where sent to the Scarred Foresters to receive a course in humbling.

Tegfan’s problems had begun with an obnoxiously temperamental personality, which manifested at its peak when the sour young man dropped his training sergeant for bawling him out in front of everyone when he had overslept.

But that man was a stranger, more so, a vague, indistinct memory of a man Tegfan had once known. In the past five years since, Tegfan felt as if he had lived through several centuries, overshadowing his eighteen years prior to becoming a Scarred Forester.

His first encounter with a Dominator bear, nine feet tall, as broad as any fortress, had broken one man in half by the time Tegfan had been able to turn around. Claws, large enough to gut a dragon, had strewn every organ and length of intestine over a fifty-yard stretch. Tegfan had frozen, and had it not been for a thrown spear, he’d have been next.

Dragons, griffins, chimera, big cats, bulls were simple. When you knew where to put an arrow, it was a matter of repetition. But a Dominator bear, every beast was different, every attack holding something new. They were not the hunters, the Dominators were. The Scarred Foresters’ job was to accept that they were the prey and hope to survive.

Yet if the Scarred Foresters did not cull their numbers every living being in the region was at risk. The Dominator had no natural predators and seemed to live in a state of perpetual hunger.

One legend about the bear’s origin involved a tyrant, who fed himself into a state obesity so grotesque he couldn’t move. This was done at the extent of his kingdom dying of starvation. The gods cursed him into a beast which could never sate its hunger and would draw in and consume all beauty in the world. Thus, the Dominator was born.

Here and now, Tegfan felt the prey. He had been cut off from his team after falling through a dead-pit; a hole choked with branches, soil, and moss, covered so thoroughly it blended with the trail. He tumbled, receiving what felt like a gang-beating from all thing’s nature, coming out to a small valley.

Overhead petrified branches reached up to the forlorn sky, as if begging for light. Underfoot, the moss seemed to squeal rather than squelch. And the rocks held the same sombre grey of neglected tombstones.

Yet, at the head of this hovel, leaning against a decrepit tree, was a longbow. The string was in place, the horn limb tips holding a sheen as if brand new, and its fur grip was immaculate.

There was no way further forward, and Tegfan had learned what it was to be alone in this region. A person just knew when there was no one else close by. The environment seemed to enjoy letting its travellers know this. Gingerly, he picked up the longbow, surprised by how untouched the wood appeared.

“Well, that’s every member of the fort,” Commander Winston Harel sighed, chuckling to himself. The commander of the Onyx Fort was huge, six-seven with legs that could kick through masonry. As the first to try the mysterious bow, it seemed silly to get anyone else to.

Quartermaster Robert Laninga added, “I can’t figure out the wood, the material of the string… But that fur grip is Dominator, and those limb tips are from its claws.”

“So, we’ve got ourselves an oddity,” Harel mused, running hard eyes along the length of the bow. “Something you should have left alone, eh, Fielder?” Feeling rather naïve in the giant’s presence, Tegfan said nothing.

“I heard a tale of a bow, which a mage built,” Robert continued. “Its draw would sheer reality apart, so the gods made it impossible to draw. If you do sheer reality apart, Fielder, give us a heads-up first.” He cast a wink to the young man before leaving.

“Well, Fielder, by the law of finders-keepers, it’s yours,” Harel tossed the stave over, which Tegfan almost fumbled. “And I’m making it your mission to figure out how to draw the thing.”

Years passed, and Tegfan not only survived a few more Dominators, but rose through the ranks and even married. Then those years seemed to fade, and still Tegfan bore the brunt of more Dominators, with a new incentive for fighting and surviving, children.

His temper waned too. Something about having beautiful daughters who he was terrified of hurting. Tegfan’s own father had been a violent, bigoted drunk. To keep himself composed, and his mind focused on what mattered when hunting, he took to binding his arrows’ flights with his daughters’ hair. Something about the scent their hair held as he drew the bow kept him balanced between terror and over-confidence.

The mystery longbow had been stowed away, forgotten, until one morning, Tegfan thought he would try it once more. It had been, what? Seventeen years? And yet, the bow looked as pristine as when he’d found it. No cracks in the limbs or ware on the string.

Standing in the amber glow of fires keeping the training den warm, Tegfan sighed, muddled by the bow’s unyielding temperament. However, without frustration. Sometime ago Tegfan had accepted the mystery as unsolvable. But Tegfan decided to fix one of his arrows, threaded with his daughters’ hair, to the string anyway and sighted on one of the hay bosses. He cleared his mind, and just stood in an almost meditative state, to see if anything new came to mind.

Without thinking, he drew the bow. For a moment he forgot it was the mysterious longbow and almost loosed the arrow. Quickly, Tegfan let the bow down, not believing that he had actually drawn it. He looked back to the large round target, and without thinking lifted the bow, and drew it.

For the first time in decades a trembling ran through his fingers as they leaned against the string. Countless types of arrows had been nocked to the bow over the years. Tegfan let the bow down, plucked the arrow off the string, and placed another on the string. Once more he drew on the target, the string placating as the scent of his daughter’s hair began to push away the tension in his spirit.

So, he loosed.

As the arrow passed by, he caught the scent of his daughter’s hair again. And that was it, Tegfan knew. As his children had quelled him, so two had the scent of his daughter’s hair tamed this bow.

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