Since ancient times Witches were associated with Werewolves. Whether it was the Witch turning a man into a wolf, the presence of Werewolves when Witches supposedly made their pact with the Devil, or a Witch healing a Werewolf, the two were nearly synonymous with each other.

Simply put; where Witches tread, Werewolves roam and where Werewolves tread, Witches roam.

Years before Crystal Lovelace was born there was a coordinated attack on her people, forcing all of them to flee and scatter, hiding among the Naran Humans. Gwen Lovelace, when she fell pregnant with Crystal (and after she had been betrayed), managed to find a rural town where they could hide and her daughter could – hopefully – grow up in peace.

Then the Hunters found them.

Crystal stumbled out of the bathroom, still feeling nauseous from the illness going around the school. Her Mom had promised to get her something for her stomach, but she had to go to the next town over. With no one she could trust to watch Crystal while she was gone Gwen had promised to hurry. Crystal hoped that her mother got home soon; she felt awful and her head was spinning from hunger because she couldn't keep anything down. Using the wall for support she went to the top of the stairs and knew that she would fall down them if she tried to descend them on her feet.

I'm hungry... She thought and sat carefully at the top of the stairs.

Crystal carefully shifted down to the next stair on her bum, using the railing to help her not fall. Getting to the bottom of the stairs proved to be more difficult than she had anticipated, so she took a moment to catch her breath on the second-to-last step. Once her breathing evened out again Crystal got up and cautiously made her way to the kitchen; she was going to try making herself some chicken noodle soup in the hopes that, maybe, she could keep that down.

It was while opening the bottom cupboard to get a pot that she caught the sound of voices outside.

They were male and talking about looking for any survivors. One of them didn't think that it was likely.

“We were pretty thorough; water, food, everything. No one's getting away.” One of the voices said.

“I don't care how thorough you think you are; look for any survivors and kill them.”

She closed the cupboard silently and went for the knife drawer, cautiously pulling it open without standing. With her head spinning she opened the wrong one and grabbed a butter knife instead of a kitchen knife by accident. Crystal hid behind the kitchen table, trying to keep her breathing steady and quiet through her raw throat. She listened as they complained that the door was locked and then decided to break a window. Her adrenaline started spiking in response, sharpening her senses and clearing her mind. She tracked their movement around the house through her hearing and shifted her position accordingly, butter knife gripped tightly.

As soon as she heard the sound of the window shattering it brought her attention to the kitchen window. Her grip reflexively loosened slightly on the bottom two fingers. A hand came through the window and she darted for cover. Another window broke, this one in the living room; they were entering the house from multiple vectors.

Fear began to transform into terror, adrenaline spiked even more and she darted on instinct into the living room just as the Hunter finished climbing through the window, facing the way he had come. Crystal jumped on his back, legs locking around him, free hand on his forehead, pulling and exposing his neck that she stabbed three time in rapid, terrified and desperate succession. They fell to the ground and her legs became pinned as he gurgled and struggled. The other came into the living room and spotted them, froze for one moment, then drew his gun and started aiming. Everything slowed down to a crawl- the cat attacked him, clawing and biting. Crystal got free as the man with the gun flung the cat away so hard that it hit the wall and didn't move. He brought the gun back around, but she had already closed the distance. Grabbing his fixed blade knife she stabbed him in the side, pulled it free, twisted her body as she hugged close to him and then cut the tendons in his elbow before flipping him over her shoulder, keeping hold of his arm and the knife – knicking her forearm with it – and bringing his limb down on her knee, dislocating his elbow in the process. She quickly grabbed his gun and shot him. The kick from the heavy calibre knocked her arms straight up to the ceiling and her straight onto the floor on her back, but one shot was all that was needed.

Crystal panted, boarder-line panicking; she had just killed two people.

I killed them, I killed them, I killed them, I killed them,Ikilledthem,IkilledthemIkilledthemIkilledthemIkilled... I killed them. I just killed two people.

She vomited on her self and started crying.

Crystal Lovelace, bastard daughter of Gwen Lovelace. Ten years old. Kill count; two.

He lugged a heavy can of gasoline over to the light blue house, feeling a bit guilty, as his colleague followed with another can close behind him. They had killed the entire town with wolfsbane, something that he reminded himself yet again was a lot more peaceful than gunning them down, of knifing them. Still, having to kill an entire town to prevent the lycanthropy from spreading was... It didn't sit well with him. He told himself that he knew that it wasn't their fault what they had become; a random attack from an unnatural creature can't be predicted, let alone avoided (how would you avoid an attack from a creature that supposedly doesn't exist?). But, be that as it may, they were still too dangerous to let them roam free, creating more of their kind with a scratch, or a bite each time they transformed on the full moon.

“God, I'll be glad once these monsters are all gone.” His colleague grouched.

“'Creatures'.” He corrected them, “These creatures were once Human; have a little respect for that.”

His colleague snorted and said, “Whatever man. As long as you keep killing them. One of these shits killed two of our guys and that was just a kid. Don't get too soft-hearted on them.”

He pursed his lips and reminded himself that this was a mercy and the only way to release a person from the curse. Despite modern story tropes Werewolves don't actually have any known weaknesses, besides – maybe – silver. The wolfsbane was, he had been told, just a superstitious tradition that Hunters follow 'for good luck'. Of course silver working on Werewolves had more to do with the fact that, as near as anyone could tell, Lycanthropy was some kind of supernatural infection and silver is an antibacterial. You have to use the right kind of silver in order for it to work, but it does kill bacteria and bacteria can also carry those deadly silver ions to other bacteria.

In fact, it was his research into the medical applications of silver that got the attention of the Hunter's Association. Eventually, they fully pulled him into the Association as he became increasingly aware of the – to him – terrifying reality that Werewolves are real. His fear drove him to 'realize' that he needed to do what he could to eliminate them. He willingly and fully joined the Hunters in their fight, knowingly breaking his Hippocratic Oath in the process because the Werewolves were just too different an existence for him to cope with.

The rest of his supposed reasons were only his justifications for doing so.

His 'compassion' was a bald-faced lie and shallow at best.

The others knew the truth.

As he splashed gasoline on bushes and the exterior of the house he mentally cursed the 'necessity' of what he was doing, but did not stop. Only being able to truck in so many jugs of gasoline the Hunters had to parse it out strategically to make certain that the entire town of five thousand would burn.

Five thousand people dead... We have got to find an alternative, a cure for this curse.

It was a thought that he always forced, to make himself feel better, assuage his conscience.

Half an hour later and the first bottle with a burning rag and fuel was thrown and he wondered when it would end-

A plain blade, six centimetres wide and runneled protruded out of his chest from behind. His first thought on registering that it was there was that the blade must be very sharp to be going straight through his breastbone like that.

“And you call us the monsters.” A woman's ragged voice said from behind him.

Oh Hell... He thought, She might right-

He fell to the ground dead and stared down at his own corpse. He watched as the woman ran past him in articulated armour with a raised dome to accommodate her chest and an armoured coat. She was running straight towards the fire. He wondered who she was.

“That was one of the Werewolves you were trying to kill.” A male voice said, “But that's not for you to concern yourself with.”

He turned and found an angel in black robes towering over him... And found out that he had been the bad guy when he was taken to Hell. It seemed that the Werewolves belonged to divinities – including God – and that their original purpose was to protect the women with spiritual powers... Primarily from predatory males and xenophobes.

They were bodyguards.

“But Humans became so violently repugnant towards females in general,” A horned figure the Hunter found himself staring up said, crouched down to where the Hunter had been deposited, “That those very same women had to be given a means by which to protect themselves, rather than being body-guarded and allowed the space and time needed to develop their abilities properly. I believe they're now called 'Magical Girls'.” The horned being stood, adding, “Well, in any case, it doesn't concern you now other than being the reason for your punishment.” The horned figure picked him up in one hand and said, “In your next life – if you have one – maybe don't kill the women given power and their bodyguards; they are sanctified and you are profaning yourself through your abuse and profaning of them. Also,” Thay added in icy rage, “Don't you ever go into the medical profession ever again you fucking BASTARD.”

“How many survivors in the town?” Gwen asked her suit, voice muffled by her helmet as she spoke in her native Eiseros Manu dialect.

Energy swept through the town as the suit's on-board systems scanned the surrounding area, filtering out interference from the energy out-put of the fires burning everywhere. It responded in the same language that she had spoked in.

“One survivor detected.”

“Where?”

“Your personal residence, living room.”

Thank-goodness. She thought, relieved that at least her daughter might still be alive.

If Crystal wasn't the one alive Gwen would burn their nations to the ground. All of them.

“Warning; hostiles detected incoming.”

“Reason for assessment as hostile?”

“Thought-projection energy patterns consistent with mental illness 'xenophobia'.”

Great. She thought derisively.

“Understood. Continue tracking hostiles.” She ordered, space folding and compressing under and around her until she was at her house, near the centre of town.

It was an inferno.

“Retain undersuit, drop armour, increase fire retardation and heat shielding.”

The armour seemed to vanish into light as her undersuit changed composition, all in fifteen seconds.

“Deploy mask and visor.”

Attached to the hood of her undersuit a mask covered her lower face, a visor her eyes and she took off at a run into her house. A repulsion field pushed the fire away and a map appeared on her visor, showing her the route through to where her daughter lay curled into the fetal position and struggling to breathe. Gwen picked Crystal up, the field extending around her daughter, allowing her to breath more readily. Navigating her way back outside with her daughter held with one arm was difficult as she manoeuvring around large parts of the house that had collapsed and lifted and moved smaller obstacles.

The staircase collapsed, blocking their only exit, just as she reached it. Her daughter in one arm and – feeling a little desperate at this point – with adrenaline coursing through her body the staircase proved to be less heavy than she had thought it would be. Pushing it up with her forearm she ducked underneath and shoved it behind her. It crashed down as she kicked the door, sending it flying with her only a second behind it.

“Medical assessment of Crystal Lovelace.” Gwen ordered her suite.

“Shock, smoke damage to lungs, infection in lungs, fever, malnutrition, dehydration, severe irritation of the eyes due to smoke.”

FAK! She thought emphatically, her mental voice still in her native tongue.

In the time that she had been gone to get medicine Crystal's condition must have gotten worse.

“Hostiles closing in along cardinal directions.”

Gwen didn't verbally respond, simply setting her daughter down and standing up.

“Deploy armour.” She commanded, voice hardened; she'd had enough.

They're lucky that my daughter is alive.

Her armour reappeared in a flash of light that was the by-product of the energy expended to enact her order.

“Dance of the Pole Star.” She said.

“Restrictions released.” The suite responded.

Gwen raised her arm straight up, palm facing the sky as she looked straight ahead. There was a safe zone around her automatically anytime she deployed a large scale attack in order to prevent her from being hit by it.

“One thousand lances of light.”

The sky and air dimmed as photons were gathered and condensed into a solid.

“Target?”

“All hostiles within a two kilometre radius of my position. Devil of the Light.”

Light rained down.

Everyone who died from the light had dodged, or shunted their accumulated bad Karma on to someone else for the very last time; they finally paid the consequences of their decisions and actions taken.

Two deity-class beings were elated when they found out.