"Flea, you remember what I told you?" Kain's voice was a low, jagged rasp that barely cleared the sound of his own thundering pulse. His eyes were locked on the seven prowling shapes circling them in the tall, orange grass. It was an almost impossible task for a human mind to keep track of seven distinct points of death at once, especially when every nerve in his body was screaming for him to flee. But he didn't really have a choice. If he looked away for even a single heartbeat, if his focus flickered for the time it took to blink, they would find the opening they needed. At that point, the hunt would be over before he could even draw a fresh breath.
"Yeah, man... I wouldn't forget something like that. Not with everything going on," Flea responded. The boy's voice was thin and brittle, vibrating with a raw nervousness he couldn't hide.
He was afraid, and rightfully so. By the very nature of Kain's plan, Flea would be doing the heaviest lifting for the next part of this gamble. Kain hated placing such a crushing weight on a kid who had only just seen his first real hunt, but as things stood, Flea was the only one left to rely on. Behind them, Tone was a broken mountain of a man, slipping in and out of consciousness as his life leaked into the dry earth. There were no other hunters nearby to call upon; the rest of the tribe was a distant roar of combat and dust.
They were utterly alone. It was a cold, unfortunate reality, but Kain knew that if they didn't execute this plan exactly as he had envisioned it, the Alpha would eventually finish Tone, and then the pack would pick them apart piece by piece. They had to move. Now.
With feinted, hesitant steps, Kain began to back away toward the dense, tangled treeline of the forest behind them. Flea moved in perfect, trembling lockstep at his side. Kain couldn't afford to be hasty. He didn't want the pack to become too rowdy and swarm them before his trap was set, but more than that, he was struggling to keep his own body from betraying him. The wounds from his earlier clash with the first wave of beasts were finally catching up to him in the form of a cold, creeping numbness.
His breathing was a wheezing, ragged mess that felt like it was tearing his throat. He had lost almost all feeling in his injured arm, which hung at his side like a piece of dead wood, and his foot felt like a shattered collection of stones; he had to bite back a scream every time he put weight on it. In his current state, any sane man would have laid down to die, but Kain had learned that in this vicious world, nothing was ever certain until the blood stopped flowing and the crows landed.
He waited until they reached the jagged, shadow-drenched edge of the forest before he sprung the trap.
"Flea—now!" Kain shouted, the command snapping like a whip.
He made a sudden, desperate beeline into the dense brush, Flea not a second behind him. They raced through the ancient trees at a brisk, controlled speed—fast enough to lead the pack away from the Alpha and the wounded Tone, but slow enough that they wouldn't collapse from exhaustion before the real fight began. The wolves, acting on their primitive, predatory instincts, followed them into the dark of the wood. They growled like the savages they were, their paws thumping against the moss and rot of the forest floor as they did their damnest to intercept and corner their prey.
Still, Kain pushed forward. He didn't need to lead them miles away—just far enough that their yelps wouldn't bring the Alpha down on their heads.
But his body was failing faster than he had anticipated. He had only been running for a minute, yet he was already gasping at the air for oxygen, his lungs burning as if he were inhaling the very heat of a summer fire. His feet felt as though he were wading through a deep ocean with heavy rocks tied to his ankles. Each step was a battle of will over matter.
Suddenly, Kain's foot bucked against something hard—a stray rock or a hidden tree root buried under the leaf litter. In his weakened, oxygen-deprived state, it was enough to fell the already tapped-out hunter. He went down hard, rolling once, then twice, the world a spinning blur of brown and green, before his tumble was stopped by the massive, unmoving frame of an ancient tree. He slammed his back against its large, indifferent trunk with a sickening thud.
He hacked out a series of violent, wet coughs, trying to clear the heat from his enflamed lungs. When the vapor finally cleared and he felt like he wasn't breathing pure fire anymore, he gripped his spear and used it to steady his aching body against the mighty tree. Flea ran up to him in an instant, his hands hovering over Kain as he helped him back to his feet.
"Are you still able to do this, man?" the young hunter asked, his voice barely hiding the mounting uncertainty of Kain's ability to survive.
"I'm fine... my foot just got hitched in a root," Kain lied, his voice a low grunt. It was a lie so transparent that the birds of the air would have killed themselves trying to pass through it. He was pale, sweating, and shaking, but he couldn't let Flea see the depth of the abyss he was staring into.
"Look, I don't know, Kain... maybe we should rethink this. Try to find a better way, a different path—"
"There is no better way!" Kain shouted, a sudden flare of anger, hot and biting, erupting in his voice. Everything was getting too hectic, too loud, and the last thing he needed was Flea wasting precious time trying to think of a better solution. If there were a safer way to save the tribe, Kain would have loved nothing more than to implement it, but there wasn't. And even if he wanted to try thinking of one, it was already too late. The wolves had caught up to them.
"Get behind me," Kain ordered, his voice dropping into a dangerous, quiet tone. Flea did exactly that, pressing his back against the tree.
The wolves crept toward them, seven shadows detaching themselves from the darkness of the trees. Their heads were held low, their shoulders bunched, and their fangs were wet, dripping strings of thick drool onto the earth. They could smell the blood. They could smell the weakness.
"When I rush them, you run further back and circle around to Tone—"
"Kain—" Flea started to object, his eyes wide.
"Flea!" Kain shouted, cutting him off with a look of pure, cold steel. "When I fricking rush them, you run. Do you hear me? Because I swear to the gods, if you let Tone die because you were too much of a cunt to step up when you were needed, I will make sure the tribe sees you in that light until the day you rot. I will make sure it's the last thing I do. Now, wait for me to rush... and run!"
For a second, Flea looked like he still wanted to argue, but then his face hardened into a look of fixed resolve. He nodded in compliance, his knuckles white as he gripped his spear.
That was the only cue Kain needed. With a roar of manufactured strength that cost him every remaining ounce of energy, he dived into the pack of seven wolves waiting to feast upon his flesh.
He swung his spear in a quick, wide horizontal slash. The obsidian tip, sharp as a winter frost, caught the first wolf across the eyes. The beast let out a high-pitched cry of agony and retreated into the shadows, blinded and broken. In the same moment, another wolf lunged, its teeth sinking into Kain's already injured arm, reminding him with a bolt of white-hot agony just what it felt like to get a "death kiss" from one of these bastards.
The beast used its mighty weight to pull him back, trying to trip him so the pack could swarm and finish him. But Kain wasn't having any of that. He didn't fight the pull; he moved with it, running alongside the force of the wolf until he was chest-to-chest with the creature. He then stepped hard into the beast's front right leg, and the world heard the snap of its broken status.
The other wolves moved to attack, but Kain hopped backward, bracing his spine against the rough bark of a tree. He refused to give them his back. He had already taken two of them out of the fight, but in the process, he had lost all functioning in his left arm. He didn't know if the bone was shattered or if he had simply lost too much blood to fuel the nerves, but it was useless to him now—a heavy, dangling weight.
He wasn't given a chance to ponder his predicament. As soon as he took a third, desperate intake of air to refill his oxygen-deprived lungs, a wolf leaped at him from his right. It moved like a bird of prey, set to take a nibble of demise out of his neck.
Kain, acting with the frantic speed of a starving dog, pushed himself off the tree—the only thing keeping him on his feet—and dived away from the beast's and into the wave of midnight fur in front of him. He hit the ground in a roll and turned around fast enough to respond to the wolf who took advantage of his felled stature to launch itself. Kain wasn't about to let it get him. He swung his spear with all the power his one working arm could produce, the blade slicing through both front legs of the wolf.
Before the body of the crippled wolf even touched the ground, another beast was upon him. This time, he wasn't fast enough. An excruciating pain shot through Kain's left shoulder as the mad wolf dipped its fangs into the meat. He gritted his teeth, swallowing down the cry of pain that demanded to be heard.
He fell back on his rear, and the beast started twisting and twirling its head as if to tear the shoulder off completely. Kain grabbed his spear, his vision blurring, and was about to try and get the wolf off him when another one leaped.
The dog pounced, arms outstretched and mouth wide, stocked with those vicious, ivory fangs. Kain lifted his uninjured foot and waited until the wolf was close enough before he drew the foot back and kicked the beast with all the power his leg could muster.
Fortunately for him, it was more than enough. The dog was thrown backward, tumbling away from him.
Still, Kain wasn't done. With his spear-hand, he stabbed the wolf that was still trying to tear his shoulder apart, driving the obsidian tip into its snout. He twisted the blade and sliced upward, freeing the steel and cutting off the wolf's snout completely. The beast gave a high-pitched whine of pure agony before fleeing into the dark. Kain marked its fleeting form as another one down.
That was four. He wouldn't have to deal with them again.
But he was reaching the end of his tether. He began to crawl away from the remaining three, his breaths coming and going in hasty, shallow gasps. He was fighting it with everything he had, but the fatigue of the fight was starting to rear its ugly, final head. His limbs were shaking uncontrollably, and his vision was swimming in a sea of grey and red. He managed to prop himself up on his good foot for a second, but it gave out beneath him instantly. He fell back onto his behind, the dirt cold against his skin.
The remaining three wolves took heed of his weakened state. They didn't rush in immediately; instead, they began to test the waters, inching closer with their heads tilted, watching the man who could no longer stand.
Kain looked at them, his spear trembling in his hand. He looked past them, toward the direction where Flea had hopefully disappeared. He had done his part. He had led the pack away. He had broken four of them. But as the three shadows crept toward him, he realized he had nothing left to give. His arm was dead, his legs were useless, and his lungs felt like they were filled with water.
One of the wolves let out a low, vibrating growl—a sound of triumph. It stepped forward, its eyes locked onto Kain's throat. Kain gripped the shaft of his spear, his knuckles white, but his arm wouldn't move. It was as if his spirit had finally disconnected from the meat of his body. He watched the wolf coil its muscles, preparing for the final leap.