The Stag (Writing Exercise 1)

I bougth Chaotic Shiny's writer's tools to motivate me and I've been doing some fantasy-ish writing exercises. I'll post some of them along with the prompt that inspired them.



Write for at least 700 words about a stag, a person and several runes.

Azvar could not believe his eyes.

Before him, in a clearing lit by fireflies and his own dying torch, stood the majestic creature he'd been looking for for years. His calling, the mission of his life.

It had started as a hobby, hunting the Elderhorn. He saw it in a painting once, from a travelling troupe of artists. They had refused to let him see it twice, claiming no one was allowed to, lest they would be taken in by the curse. He heard the story several times, to the point of having it memorized.
There was in the forests an enormous wild stag, once the mount of choice of a powerful witch. She found him dying by a river as a baby and rescued it. They bonded quickly, with the stag's imposing presence and her strong willpower made them the perfect team. Soon afterwards, villagers started blaming her for the ills of their small town, and she was driven away. She was chased out of every village she set foot on, resorting at last to hide within a cave in the wilderness.
The witch soon came to thrive in the middle of nature, finding the close contact with herbs and animals to boost her powers. The stag found itself at home in the forest as well, and soon the two of them had become the peacekeepers of the land.
Every equinox after she was cast away, the witch would engrave a single rune into the beast's majestic horns, She said that should harm come to her, it would inherit all her magic in order to keep their new home safe. The stag accepted this, their wordless bond reaching their souls.
So they lived for years, shielded from the human world, the stag's horns growing intricate and detailed as the witch's features too grew lines and details, and her hair was white and brittle. However, one day came in which soldiers from one kingdom or another - she kept no record of their  petty battles anymore - stumbled upon her cave in a drunken stupor in the dead of the night. They attacked her, and before she could even react, the stag had tackled them away, making their bones rattle in their armor. They refused to back down and drew iron swords, fully ready to kill, but in the blink of an eye they were killed by the very roots on which they stood. Noting their disappearance, more and more soldiers starting showing up in her forest, and soon enough a myth had grown around her. She never attacked first, it was a promise she had made to herself. She was only defending herself from the attackers that came into her home with the sole intent of harming her. But after time went by of troops and troops coming to take her down, she became a legend, hunted by adventurers and mercenaries. Those too fell before her, paling before her hundreds of years of experience and wisdom.
However, one equinox, while she was engraving yet another rune onto her stag's horns, an adventurer took her by surprise, shooting an arrow right through her heart. The stag, enraged by its mistress' murder, hunted the hunter, enhanced with the magic filling him from the underworld. It was the witch's magic, as promised, the runes on its horns burning brightly. It ripped the adventurer to pieces, and soon took up the woman's role of defending the forest against invasion. It was said that every equinox it went back to its cave, to nuzzle the dried-up body of the witch, from which wildflowers had sprouted for as loon as she had been dead. The years it lived became uncountable.

Which was why Azvar was in utter shock, the silence of his fear broken only by the singing of birds, signaling the coming of dawn. He felt thankful. Daylight could not come soon enough.
Before him was the creature he had hunted his entire life.
Dead.
Its body stood at least five meters above him, looming even while lifeless. Its mane had grown moss, making it seem hair had kept growing even after he had died. And on top of  his head, the horns. The precious horns  he'd been after for ages. Only  he had  expected  an epic fight, and  instead had been treated to a corpse that was no older than a month. Even so, instead of the stench of decay, the clearing was filled with the perfume of fruit, despite no fruit growing nearby.
A note at the feet of the beast caught his attention.

"It would appear I got here sooner. Boring fight. The monster did not even have any treasure to steal. Why were you after this trash? - Merval"

Azvar felt blood boiling in his veins. He was going to murder that rogue.