The wolf dreamt.
Images, concepts, names, functions and definitions flashed rapidly before its eyes. The gray mice from before floated and flashed across its sight, and like an unraveling tapestry, split. Its fur, soft and insulative, was broken down, a combination of oily guard hair on top and a thick underfur beneath. The guard hair kept moisture from reaching the skin, and the underfur acted as an insulating blanket to keep the little creature warm.
Then in a dizzying flash, it split again. Its nails separated, and he saw the strands of biological material that created them. It split again, its organs, their purposes, even some names like 'liver' and 'heart' being embedded into its mind, knowledge so smoothly placed it felt like remembering something it had forgotten rather than something it just learned.
It split again, its muscles breaking apart, its bones splintering to reveal they were made of some sort of hardened connective tissue, its ligaments, joints and eventually, its brain, all being shredded apart and understood on an intrinsic level.
A vague notion of choice hung over its half-aware mind, and for a moment, the dream turned lucid. Its mind scoured through the options presented, yet none but one felt like it would be even remotely useful. Much like in a dream where it had no notion of questioning what was happening, it simply moved on, the consciousness retreating back to dormancy.
The six leggers.
Cockroaches.
The information was far, far more vivid this time, the names flashing in its mind along with every function and placement in a giant burst of information that nearly woke it from its slumber as it lodged into its mind.
The compound eye, the antenna, the metathorax, mesothorax, the abdomen, stylus, cercus, walking legs, wings, hind legs, mid legs, forelegs, laxial pump, cerci, maxillary, palp, tibia, tarsus, femur, coxa, the abdominal segments, and the trochanter, all the knowledge of their functions and their placement on the cockroach was absorbed. And then the cockroach split, its insides unraveling, its complexity almost painful to its mind to comprehend. The ventral cephalic trunk in its head, interwoven around the dorsal cephalic trunk, the thoracic and abdominal spiracles, the lateral, dorsal, and ventral longitudinal trunks that ran down its sides, the atrium, and a few dozen more organs flashed by in its mind, all fitting in such an incredibly small being with the utmost efficiency.
The choice hovered once more, and the dream turned lucid.
The amount of things this creature had at its disposal were numerous, and for a moment, the wolf simply thought of them all in awe.
Yet, the unspoken question it was brought there to answer still hovered. And the wolf hesitated, looking through all the organs that worked like bricks, one supporting the other, all useless without another.
All but two. The cerci, thin hairs connected to an internal organ that could sense even the slightest of changes in wind speed and direction. These hairs could not only easily blend into its own fur, the cost of the new organ was low. Of course, by what metric, or how any of this was happening, it didn't know, but seeing as it was a dream, it was not particularly questioning of its circumstances.
Then, it turned its focus on the antenna, an organ that would connect to the brain and sense vibrations. It would probably look strange on its head, unless it used the much more effective antennae to replace the whiskers on its snout. With but an errant thought, it also removed the pain receptors from the antennae.
The choice solidified in its mind, and its consciousness sank back into sleep.
Yet at the same time, it didn't. Sleep was once a complete darkness, coming and going in the blink of an eye, yet now the wolf was in an odd limbo between being awake and asleep, able to feel the sensations of its body, able to hear the sounds around it. Like a flitting, momentary dream, sounds and sensations were combed through and discarded if they were not alarming, and despite the tiny amount of mental capacity such a thing required, the wolf felt safer than it ever had in sleep.
In what felt like little more than a moment, footsteps neared, and the wolf's subconscious jolted it, its eyes snapping open. Despite the usual drowsiness that usually followed its sleep, no such thing was felt, its mind and body instantly awake and aware. It turned and saw two small humans staring at it, and it jumped to its feet with far less pain and effort than what such a motion should have required. Not to say it was negligible, but quick movements were but a far off dream just two naps ago. Even its burned lungs seemed to be healing, slowly but surely.
The two two-leggers seemed to be paying a lot of attention to it, their eyes wide open and focused on it, so it bent its legs into a half-crouch, ready to bolt. The humans were small, but the wolf still barely reached their chest. The half-crouched stance made them stiffen instantly, the small male reaching for a blunt pipe that it had tucked into its skin layers.
"Holy shit, it's still alive." One of the humans breathed out.
The wolf didn't know what the sounds meant, but the soft tone was sometimes used by the nicer humans who'd thrown some edible waste at it, so it tilted its head as it tried to understand their intentions through the contradictory sounds and body language. Which was something two-leggers did sometimes, it had come to find out.
"I mean, we could still kill it. It's got a lotta energy compared to how it looks, but it doesn't seem tough. And it will be a good meal, at least for us. Just uhm… distract it, and I'll hit it on the head real hard, okay? Don't get bit, it looks sick." The male human whispered, touching the quivering, smaller human female on the shoulder.
The wolf didn't like their body language, from the way their muscles were tensed to the nervous way they observed it. While keeping its eyes on them and an ear behind it, it quickly backtracked, keeping its body diagonal to the pair, and the humans hesitated for a moment. Then the thin male stepped forward aggressively, only for the smaller female to grab his arm and shake her head, saying something the wolf couldn't catch with its single functioning ear pointing in the other direction.
The humans backed away as well, and the wolf's muscles relaxed ever so slightly as their forms fled around the corner of the alley. Looking around, it realized that it was, once again, completely lost. Two-legger nests were too large and too complicated for it to have the mental capacity to map out anything more than a few spots, but simply by finding downward tilting roads and alleys, it could at least figure out how to go to the only place that had any food for it, which were the lower, dirtier bits of the human nest.
Part of it hesitated to return, remembering the rivers of thick burning sludge that separated the lower parts, yet it was too weak to go anywhere but there. Two-leggers were oddly wasteful, and while rare, it wasn't entirely uncommon to come across dead bodies that had been flushed down from the upper parts of the iron nest. The variety was fairly large, ranging from winged creatures to two-leggers, to canines or scaled creatures. The small, squirming creatures eating them were even a decent snack, if a bit repulsive to its instincts for some reason. Maybe once it grew a little, it could hunt rats. Or an isolated two-legger, though it wasn't sure if two-leggers were protective enough of their nestmates to hunt it for doing so, so until it knew, it would probably continue avoiding them.
With slow, careful steps, it slowly stalked through green and yellow tinted streets, under hanging signs and barking and howling two-leggers, squeezed through metal fences both bent and cut through, crawled under tightly pressed pipes several times larger than itself, lapped up some dripping water from one of the leaking pipes for a few minutes and rested, then continued until it found what it was looking for.
One of the giant pipes that led directly down to the green-brown rivers, diagonal, huge, and hanging over a complicated network of abandoned automatic factories, walkways, bridges, and cables.
After a bit of climbing and a small jump, it got on the pipe, tail tucked between its legs. It began to slowly, slowly inch its way forward on the downwards sloping pipe, the eroded nature of the metal being the only thing giving its paws any friction and preventing it from slipping off into the increasingly lifeless darkness underneath, lined with cold, dead metal.
Its instincts screamed at it, turning its limbs stiff with the fear of the giant stretch of air and cables separating it from the walkways underneath. Yet, it still inched forward, knowing it had to use whatever meager energy reserves it had to get to the only feeding ground that it had proven at least a little successful in.
Eventually, the pipe connected to a giant metal rectangle drafted onto a cylindrical pillar of steel that reached up and down beyond where its eyes could see, and the wolf had to jump to the metal walkway underneath to continue. If it could grip the metal bars that the two-leggers used to descend to the burning rivers, or use one of their hanging boxes that went up and down on one of the iron cables, it's journey would be little more than a field trip, but it couldn't.
Bracing itself on legs quivering with fear, it powered through the instinctive fear of the massive height underneath the walkway, reasoning to itself that it had taken such drops a dozen times before. Yet, the temptation to walk back up the pipe and take the long, long way down through the snaking alleys and stairways was still there.
But, it knew that that was the wrong choice. Its legs hurt, its deaf ear was slowly becoming itchy and attracted more and more flying tiny insects, its limbs felt weak and wobbly, its throat felt so dry it was worried it would start cracking like dried dirt, and its functioning ear was so swamped by the constant clanging, humming and shrieking of the shifting metal in its infinitely vast surroundings, that it was starting to feel a little dizzy.
And the thought of getting dizzy when it was sitting over a death drop was the straw that broke the camel's back.
With a timid shuffle that made its fur crack and split from where the sludge had solidified on its back, it moved to the corner of the pipe, and with a yelp of fear, allowed itself to slide off onto the walkway underneath.
Its legs crumpled underneath it like wet paper, and the walkway moved underneath it for a moment with the familiar rattle of failing metal, filling it with cold terror.
Yet even as the metal railing kept wobbling in its loose casing, the walkway stabilized. With a mild pant to its breaths, the wolf slowly got up from its bruised rib cage, and walked down the winding staircase that curled around the metal tower like a jagged metal centipede, bits of broken and bent railing being the only thing that stopped it from falling off to its death from a single misstep. Small, flat metal platforms were placed in front of heavy iron doors every few feet down, allowing it a moment of relatively safe rest on its journey downwards. The metal towers usually reached around some sort of two-legger gathering spot, and from there it was only a short walk to the burning rivers.
An entire hour of cautiously walking down stairs, resting, and repeating later, it finally reached the bottom.
A few two-leggers were drifting around the giant open area around the base of the tower, all covered head to toe in extra skins, with glass and metal coverings over their faces. Some of them were checking up on some of the two-leggers made of rock, waving their hands around and touching their glowing bits, repairing the erosion and cracks, before ordering them around to continue whatever it was those things did.
The wolf really disliked those things. They were shaped like two-leggers, but narrower and shorter, their limbs being able to shift and extend with a sound like grinding gravel, and despite moving, cleaning drains and hauling waste into the burning rivers like living beings following their instincts and orders, they weren't alive.
They were just moving rock. It made no sense, and it was just unnatural.
But they weren't dangerous. The few times it had seen some living things in the area attack them, they'd just ignored the animal until it gave up. So the wolf stalked around the edges of the square, avoiding the scant few two-leggers hanging around and repairing their deformed stone duplicates, and sought to find a place to rest for a while.
In just less than a minute of slow walking, the sounds of life and activity were drowned out under the cacophony of shrieks, groans and rumbles of the surrounding machinery. Bent pipes leaked foul-smelling liquids into the cobbles, exhaust pipes snaked towards the walls of the pits and shot upwards, hidden behind a mess of scaffolding and wires from which the humans repaired and maintained them. Barrels of dangerous green liquids were thrown haphazardly around every corner with space, waiting for a stone two-legger to come pick them up and empty them into the metal boxes that emptied their contents into the burning rivers. Some pipes would expel a fine, odd smelling mist with a menacing hiss, which the wolf avoided out of sheer caution. The humidity of the environment was staggering to get used to, but after a few minutes, it grew accustomed to it.
It found a spot relatively free of danger, hidden behind some sort of segmented cylinder surrounded in spiraling wires, and crawled under the half-hanging mass of wires that ran into it, appreciating the warmth of the odd machine. It fell asleep almost instantly despite the dirty water soaking into its paws and chin.
In what felt like little more than a few seconds, a crackling sound woke it from its sleep, and a menacing sound somewhere between a hum and a buzz made it panic, scrambling out from under its cover to run away. After it moved away a few meters, it turned and stared at the cylinder where the sound was coming from, the volume getting higher and higher.
And then, with a deafening crackle that made it yelp, arcs of white shot out from the top, flashing to the water with speed it couldn't fathom.
And straight to its paws, still partially submerged in dirty water.
A pained sound like a high pitched yowl ripped itself out of its throat as its muscles seized, feeling like a thousand needles stabbed themselves into its hide and dug into its bones. Despite its seizing muscles that contracted and tightened without a goal, it managed to jerkily stumble and fall away from the puddles of water, partially due to how little meat it had on its bones, and it half-crawled, half stumbled away from the scene with its tail tucked between its legs, which were barely responding to its orders, still twitching and buckling.
After sitting panicked for a few moments as the shocks faded, it snarled, its head turning wildly to see what hurt it. After several moments of nothing, it relaxed a bit, its senses not picking up anything dangerous nearby besides the still oddly buzzing machine.
The wolf was about to continue, to go and find something to eat or just find some spot to finally sleep uninterrupted for just a few hours.
Until a certain sound pierced through the now faint buzzing in the background of its grimy path.
The squeaking of a rat.
It turned around, ready to bolt, and after a moment of confusion, its eyes wandered back to the machine.
In one of the puddles, a small rat was suffering in much the same way the wolf had, trying to walk yet twitching and rolling instead, the white arcs ravaging its soaked, tiny body much more than it did the wolf.
Despite the adrenaline in its veins directing it to run away, it slowly stumbled back to sit next to the puddles, its movements a little more even and controlled by now, and sat on its haunches, watching the rat, waiting for it to either stop moving or grow so exhausted it could eat it. After a minute or two, the rodent barely twitched, its chest pumping up and down as it hyperventilated.
After five minutes, shallow breaths and weak twitches were all that signified that the rat was still alive, and the wolf crept forward, wary and uncertain of if it would get shocked again. Slowly, it put a paw in one of the puddles, and a minor shock burned through its nerves as it yelped and jerked back a bit.
Its curiosity overcame its hunger for now, and it moved back to the puddle, very slowly putting its paw next to the water.
Nothing.
And then it slowly put its paw in the water, and despite being ready for it, the wolf was still startled by the shock, retreating a couple steps back as its mind struggled to understand why this water looked normal but momentarily took over its limbs and made them hurt. It stomped its paw on the ground a bit to get rid of the numbness, and it was fine again.
It moved to another puddle, and put its paw in it.
Nothing.
Puzzled, it tilted its head, trying to find some pattern to what was going on.
It took more than a few attempts as it ran around the area, shoving its paws into water with increasing fervor to try and understand what was going on, until eventually, the machine crackled again, this time much quieter, and white lines visibly flashed down from its top down to its base, and spread throughout the water that touched its metallic base that was bolted into the cobblestones.
The smell of charred rat confirmed that the rodent was definitely dead, and after a moment of staring, the wolf moved to a puddle that was isolated, carefully putting its paw into it.
Nothing.
And then, with extreme hesitation, it put its paw on a small puddle connected to the water that had the white lines through it a moment ago.
Pain shot through its front leg, and the pup snarled in response as it jerked back, experimentally moving the limb back and forth in the air to gain back the feeling. As its eyes settled on the rat, it couldn't help but linger on the mystery of the sparky water, and after a couple seconds of thought, it realized what was happening.
Or rather, a rough approximation of it.
After bracing itself on its bad paw that had been shocked a bunch, it leaned forward over the puddle, and quickly put all of its strength into a swipe with its good paw, managing to batter the semi-fried rat out of the puddle with only a few minor shocks to its leg.
After another minute of waiting to make sure no more sparky water was on the rodent, which was about as large as its entire head, it poked it with its paw, and judging it safe, quickly chomped down.
In little more than a few bites that felt amazingly easy, it had devoured the rat, fur and all, and started licking the blood off the floor. Smacking its jaws shut with a meaty clack of satisfaction, it turned and walked off into the dimly lit undersides of the mechanical behemoths above, wondering why its teeth felt almost as much resistance when biting through the rodent as they did when biting through air
Okay.
Listen.
I had no idea this story was going to get so many fucking followers and views THIS damn fast. Like holy shit. My main story got as many followers and readers in 170 pages as this did in 30!
So, just as a show of appreciation, i decided to write an extra long chapter today.
And its pretty fucking wild.
Also no, the wolf won't get super overpowered super quickly or any such shenanigans, trust me. Im just...
Planting my little seeds for the future. :^)
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With a jaw-popping yawn, the wolf settled to sleep, tucked next to a small series of heating pipes that kept it blissfully warm. A few moments later, its consciousness faded.
You have gained the Skill [Electricity Resistance - Level 1]
- [Electricity Resistance] has Leveled Up. Level 1 → Level 2
The wolf dreamt once more, seeing the rat it had devoured be deconstructed piece by piece in its mind.
Yet, there was no real difference between a mouse and a rat besides size and tail structure, so there was little to see, and its choice in the dream was that the rat had nothing it wanted.
The odd lucid dream faded, and for the first time in the last couple days, nothing had appeared to disturb its sleep besides the usual annoyance of the flying little things. Hours and hours passed, and eventually, it opened its eyes, feeling well rested for what must have been the first time ever. It had no frame of reference to know how much time had passed, no sun to indicate, but it felt like it had spent the better part of an entire day sleeping, based on its internal clock.
Wasting no time, it got up and walked towards the faint sound of rushing liquid, a strained sound that barely slithered out from under the all encroaching cacophony of pounding metal. Its paws pounded against humid grimy stone at a steady trot, feeling solidified waste tickle against the underside of its paws from where it had fused into the mossy stone and tainted it brown-green. The noxious scent of fumes invaded its nose, which was probably both good and bad, as it meant its nose was healing from the burn, but it also meant it could smell the foul scents of the rivers again.
Meaningless shapes of uncountable varieties and dizzying complexity surrounded it, but besides a cursory glance to ensure nothing was about to break and hurt it, it continued through them, the sound of rushing liquids getting closer and closer. It ducked under a pipe so hot that it released faint white wisps of steam as the surrounding moisture settled on it, and a forty five degree angle incline met its eyes, which turned into a far less steep angle a few feet down, and met in the center with another identical incline on the other side. Right where the two inclines met, a canal lined with lead directed the vast majority of the river, with bits that overflowed usually sliding back into the canal from the downward trending walls.
How it knew what a canal, or lead was, it didn't know, but questioning things had never given it anything but a mild headache, so it left it alone.
Dead and rotting bits of blackened meat were strewn all around the edges of the canal, interspersed with dissolving, unidentifiable materials of less organic origin. Some parts of the river frothed and churned as if alive, the liquids interacting and reacting with each other in a cacophony of sizzling, boiling, and light screeching when the most volatile of the liquids met the lead. Glowing green insects buzzed all around the rotting corpses, undulating and covering them from top to bottom, carrying with them the pungent miasma of decay. Bits of slowly evaporating green-gray foam were strewn about on the edges of the canal, and brown slugs the size of the wolf's front legs were gathered around the foam, hooked tentacles slithering out of their undersides and prodding at their surroundings as they walked, occasionally finding some organic material and dragging it under themselves to dissolve it in mere moments.
Some slithering vines twisted, their needled leaves piercing into slugs that wandered too close by, before the vines contracted and wrapped around the squirming slugs, after which too much glowing plant matter was covering the slug to see what was going on.
The wolf tilted its head as it stared at the plants, finding them oddly familiar, and after a few moments, it remembered the organic, dry looking green stuff that one of the metal buildings above was giving out to the two-leggers, back when some human threw orange sparks at it.
It continued observing the river as it turned its body and walked up towards the source, hoping that the droppings near the top would be less dissolved, rotten, and less dangerous to eat. It wasn't exactly sure of why, but the closer one was to the top, the less dangerous the river's liquids were. Maybe the liquids simply didn't have enough time to grow and become stronger, it wasn't sure.
That also presented the problem of less scavengers and more predators lurking about.
In an area like this, the only things that could be around the more dangerous rivers and survive were either scavengers like the things it saw below, or stronger creatures that had adapted to the environment, like those brightly glowing chubby things that jumped around everywhere, the eight-tentacled things that stuck to the bottom and waited for things above to come so they could drag them under and consume them, and the utterly terrifying behemoths that were those scaled quadrupeds with maws twice as large and long as the wolf's entire body.
It couldn't even hope to compete, so it was simply going to see what kind of things were around the river, and if they were dangerous, it would return to one of the bridges that went over the canals, and go look for a less risky choice. There were many burning rivers in the nest, and it didn't have any desire to risk its life in a futile fight against the river-dwellers.
After a couple hundred steps more, it confirmed its suspicions, and backtracked in disappointment, hoping the next river was less scary.
It eventually found one of the arching bridges, and crossed over the canal safely, only having to avoid a single stone two-legger on its trip to the next canal. Unfortunately, from just a glance, it could tell that the river was only a tiny bit less dangerous than the last one, so it moved on to the next canal, its legs screaming for rest, its tendons feeling sore somehow.
Thankfully, it was rewarded for its efforts, the next canal being about as safe as it could reasonably hope for. Besides a couple of those dangerous plant things in the corners that it knew how to avoid, and a couple slugs, it was fairly safe. The flies would burst into green burning liquid if the wolf hit them too hard, so it had to approach some of the dissolving organic bits with caution and slow steps, lest it jostle the things too much and they'd burn another hole through its fur.
With cautious steps and a single upright ear, it crept forward, checking the washed up bits of scrap food it could find. A couple brave rats, dissolved down to their hind legs and covered in flies, some strange black winged thing that was half eaten by the-
The wolf stopped as it realized that it suddenly had a name for the flying things, out of nowhere, so naturally that it barely noticed as it used the word inwardly.
Flies.
Deciding not to dwell on it, as per usual, it resumed walking. Not wanting to waste the food while it was still there, it slowly moved its snout to prod one of the half-eaten rats, making the green glowing flies scatter, some of them trying to settle on top of it and its foul-smelling ear.
As soon as it was sure little to no flies were still attached to the rat, it gripped it between its teeth, barely feeling the pressure on its teeth, and briskly turned around, slowly increasing its speed until it was trotting away, and then lightly running, making sure no flies impacted it. After a couple moments, it turned, watching the scattered flies go off to eat the winged thing.
It didn't particularly mind the loss. It had eaten more bits of rats than anything else, and it knew that they were at least somewhat safe to eat. It had never eaten one of the flying things.
Although now it suddenly wanted to. Both its mind and body wanted nothing more than to turn around and charge through the flies, grab the odd black winged thing and eat it whole.
Instead, the wolf chomped down on the half-eaten rat, flinching slightly as the familiar burning settled in its mouth and throat.
Lessened significantly, but it still hurt. The first time it had chomped down a rat from around there, it was covered in so much burning stuff from the flies that its entire mouth and throat were rubbed raw and bleeding, and it had almost choked on its own blood when it went to sleep, barely able to breathe through the pain.
Lessons in the two-legger's nest were often as dangerous to its life as they were helpful.
It repeated this process a few times, but besides the tiniest of scraps, most things were too rotted, too dangerous, or too unknown for it to try and eat, despite the angry snarling of its stomach.
Still, with the total amount of about an entire half of a rat in its stomach, this had been a great day when it came to food.
It decided not to stick around too much in the area, both because some of its worst memories were created down there, and because it was far more dangerous than the places where two-leggers were, despite more food being available.
It trotted up, backtracking to where the giant metal tower met the ground, and after about half an hour, it was safely nestled underneath the staircase it descended down with.
For some reason the two-leggers rarely if ever used it, preferring their moving metal boxes that were on the inside of the tower, but it wasn't about to question why two-leggers were so insane they'd ride a moving box of metal rather than walk down like normal beings. Especially when it gave it such convenient shelter.
It closed its eyes, fully ready and willing to sleep away its digestion and go back to find a few more scraps of food soon.
-[Restful Awareness] has Leveled Up. Level 2 → Level 3
A short while later, it woke up from its nap and headed straight for the canals, taking a slightly different route that used the two-legger's streets, hoping it would help it circumvent or entirely avoid things like the sparky water from before. Its left ear had started to hurt, enough for it to be noticeable, but there was nothing it could do about it, as any attempts to scratch it only made it hurt more.
It got a little lost much sooner than it expected, the sound of rushing liquid too drowned out to be distinguishable, much less with a direction that the wolf could infer with any accuracy.
With a low grumble of annoyance, it turned the corner and instantly stopped moving, tilting its head. A two-legger lay collapsed on the ground on its side, the glass mask the two-leggers wore cracked open, most of the glass missing entirely. The two-legger was groaning weakly, turning over on its stomach with slow, lethargic movements, its breathing ragged as it tried to curl its limbs inwards.
The movements and motions of something dying were more than familiar to the wolf.
It had gone through them itself multiple times.
So it moved to the side, eyes nailed to the two-legger as it tried to find the best spot to wait for the two-legger to die, its limbs and heart basically vibrating with excitement at the potential of a huge meal.
The two-legger managed to curl its bottom legs under it, and extended its upper legs to touch the ground, paws flat as it coughed, a wet, sickly sound. It put its bottom leg's knee against its own chest, supported it with its upper paws, and staggered upright, much to the wolf's dismay.
It leaned on the wall for a few steps, each one slower and more unstable than the last, until its knees buckled, its grip on a pipe turning its body to drop on its back.
The wolf stilled its tail that begged to wag, and slunk forward, as still as it possibly could be. The two-legger's motions were oddly reminiscent of the rat, it thought, as it watched its ribcage expand and contract with heaving breaths, shallow coughs shaking its entire body. The wolf moved up against a wall, and sat on its haunches, slowly becoming more confident in the two-legger's inability to harm it, so much so that it sat on its butt just a mere couple feet away, silently watching, its eyes boring a hole through the two-legger and its right ear pointed up.
Two minutes passed without much change, and the wolf started feeling nervous as time passed and the human refused to die, wondering if one of its kin would come and take away its meal. Not only that, the more it waited, the higher the chance some stone two-legger would come and save the human. It didn't know the capabilities of those things, nor if they would even bother helping the two-legger, and it definitely didn't want to find out.
After a shuddering breath, accompanied by a dry sounding cough, the two-legger's head lolled to the side, its eyes settling on the wolf, who simply stiffened and went even more statue-still than before.
A halting series of tiny coughs came out of the human, something that humans did when conversing happily with each other, yet the sound was oddly bitter. The wolf didn't know what the two-legger was trying to say, nor did it care too much, just hoping it would die already without it having to risk its safety by getting close and biting it.
"Haaagh. My mother… always said that. The Keeper of Oblivion sends a different… vision. For everyone. Oddly fitt-" A violent cough stopped the two-legger's sounds, but it continued after a series of small convulsions. "Oddly fitting that he sent… a dirty fleabag… like myself." A shuddering series of sounds like the tiny coughs from earlier came from the two-legger, the sound more like a series of bastardized yelps, and the wolf tilted its head, curious as to what the sound meant.
Despite its curiosity however, it felt a heavy sensation in its gut, an unpleasant emotion like sadness as it watched the two-legger die. It was still just a lucky meal to the wolf, but the two-legger's eyes portrayed so much emotion, so much despair, that it transcended any and all barriers that stood between them, be they barriers of intelligence or linguistic ability.
If it just closed its eyes, it could easily imagine itself in the exact same position, as it had been many times before, its breath choked by poison and fumes, certain it would die in a moment that never came, inwardly begging for one of its kin to sit next to it just so it would not die empty and alone. So a part of it was tempted to just make it quicker, jab its head into the human's neck and try to do the job itself.
Caution prevented it from following through.
"Just… give me a moment… Oh honored guide. Let me… regret just… a bit more." The two-legger yelped again, tears visible through its shattered glass mask, pooling around its cheekbone.
Another two minutes passed in relative silence, the wolf's concerns fading as it stood straight, staring into the two-legger's eyes without so much as a twitch.
The two-legger's breathing grew slower and shallower, breath by breath, and that relatable, heavy emotion in its chest faded entirely at the prospect of a large, fresh meal, anticipation and joy taking their place.
Renfred breathed out slowly, the motion still almost causing him to burst into a fit of coughing. An odd sense of peace washed over him, tainted by despair. His lungs churned and burned and convulsed in his chest, the mana-infused poisonous fumes of the Bone Pits ravaging his insides.
His broken gas mask obstructed his view of The Guide, and for that, he cursed it more than he cursed it for causing his death in the first place. Never was a religious man, never been a real man in general. Yet how could he deny what was in front of him, how could he not curse his mask for not allowing him the final wish of a clear look at the servant of a god?
Another sob threatened to escape him as he felt death come ever closer, his legs growing numb and cold, yet burning at the same time. His vision swam, the colors changing and the shadows lengthening, darkening.
It was a natural response, yet he still felt ashamed to be crying when he had already accepted what was going to happen to him the moment the glass cracked and shattered alongside his heart. Through teary eyes, he tried to focus on the Guide.
It was beautiful, in the way few things could ever be. Wondrous in the way something could only be when one knew their time was running out, and every millisecond was precious and beautiful, when every image could be the last they'd ever see.
The Guide stood above him, towering over him despite its small stature. Its form was gaunt beyond belief, little more than a skeleton draped with a hide of matted fur that was darker than darkness itself, like a torn hole in reality. The utter stillness of its form was that of a tree standing tall in howling gales that tore the earth around it asunder, an eternal presence that could never be displaced. Its youthful eyes gazed into his own, the deepest, most wonderful shade of gold he'd ever laid eyes upon, like liquid churning honey, like the golden glint of lost wealth, like the warmth of a campfire in a frigid winter storm, like forgotten summer sunshine and the bottom of a glass of shared beer, like the scent of midday harvest and the bittersweet sound of Eline's laugh.
The Guide gazed down upon him with a faint, cold sense of compassion.
No, not just compassion.
Of understanding.
Like a kindred soul that had felt what he was feeling now, like it knew what he was going through, like if only by the tiniest pluck of the strings of fate, their positions could have been reversed, and he would have been the only one in the entire world to sit by its forgotten, fading soul, and guide it into the embrace of Oblivion.
"What was… the prayer?" He whispered, his mind fuzzy and his senses fading, the wondrous sight of the Guide growing murky.
"Ah." He remembered, whispered words spoken before a flaming pyre, his mother's warbling voice the only thing to keep him grounded. "It's…"
No, that prayer was for those who couldn't pray for their own souls. One that was spoken if you wanted to be sure of the fate of your loved ones. Yet, he knew that nobody would speak the prayer for him. There were none left. The one he was looking for while he still drew breath was another, something half-forgotten, written in a book he'd placed on his mother's pyre with a bitter glare.
"As I was lowered to… the cradle… take me to… my grave. Thank… you, oh Leader of The… Broken. Guide to our… fading souls… may i pay… the toll?... Oh revered…" His mind grew fuzzy once more, trying to remember the rules. Yet, an outside force nudged him, ever so slightly, and he remembered. Sincerity was all that mattered.
"Hound of Oblivion."
He breathed out, so low he feared The Hound didn't hear him. Yet, its eyes widened, its pupils growing smaller as beautiful gold spread across his vision, its fur standing on end in reaction. He twitched the smallest of smiles, happy at the acknowledgement.
With his next breath, his heart stopped.
"Hound of Oblivion."
It whispered, its tone strange and full of an odd sense of awe. A familiar sensation washed over the wolf, whose eyes widened, its fur standing on end in a wave as a shiver washed over every inch of its skin.
The abstract notion of a choice clawed at its mind as the world froze.
It lacked the complexity of its dreams. It lacked the flexibility, the understanding of what exactly it was being asked. It was a simple idea of acceptance, or refusal.
It found that it could not move. The two-legger's eyes remained glued to its own, and while no breath left its lips, not the faintest twitch of movement could be seen out of the corner of its vision, they were both frozen in time, the light of life frozen in the process of receding from the two-legger's eyes.
The freezing grasp of death slithered up its spine, its gauntlet slowly closing around the scruff of its terrified neck, the tips gently scraping against its spine. It considered each option for only the most minute of moments, and found that both had dire consequences it couldn't fathom nor understand.
So it accepted, and the world vanished.
It did not fade, it did not dim.
It simply vanished, there one moment and gone the next. There was no light, no sound, no scent, not even the faintest brush of moving wind against its fur.
The all encompassing darkness receded like ink retreating back into its fallen pot, condensing into a tiny pinprick of black in the distance, alone in a vast, endless expanse of pure white.
As if the strings that bound it snapped all at once, the wolf could suddenly move, which it did by jerking out of its frozen position into a terrified ball on the ground, its tail tucked so deep between its legs that it brushed against its ribs as it stared wide eyed at its incomprehensible surroundings. Had it any water in its bladder or any waste in its guts, it would have expelled them both out of pure terror.
Despite the void of white all around it, there was ground under its feet, marble smooth and perfectly flat. Some corner of its mind wondered 'what if there wasn't?', and then suddenly, there was nothing below it.
It yelped in terror, legs kicking wildly as it desperately wished there was ground just under its feet, and suddenly, there was, its body slamming into the ground without an ounce of pain.
For many, many minutes, it simply curled into a ball and hid its face under its paws, beyond terrified, and uncaring of the faint sensation of something being tethered to its very being, floating above it.
Yet, after what could have been a second or a century, nothing happened, and it slowly unfurled itself, phantom nerves making it vibrate in place. Because something called it forth, the small point of black in the endless white filling it with understanding.
It was a Guide. And it had to take the two-legger's soul to the darkness.
With just a thought that it wished to complete its goal, a single step suddenly placed it in front of the sphere of pure darkness, a gargantuan sphere millions, billions of times larger than the wolf, towering so high it was difficult to even tell that it was a sphere rather than a curving mantle that passed above it to become one with the sky.
It simply knew that it was.
And out of the sphere, a two-legger's foot stepped out, followed by its shin, its knee, a second foot, and in one incomprehensibly long stride, a pitch black titan towered over the wolf, its head so impossibly far away that were it looking, its eyes would never be able to catch even the faintest glimpse of it.
But it wasn't looking. The moment the giant's chest stepped out of the sphere, it nailed its eyes and snout to the ground in a show of submission, trembling from tail to snout in terror.
Silence. Silence like the world itself had ceased to exist. And then-
you're not one of my own