[Open] Predator

[Malon]

If someone had wandered the forests of Camelot, and if that someone had left the path and come to a nameless river near the edge of the verse, they may have been greeted by the sight of Karil bathing in a pool that had formed at the foot of a little waterfall.
But nobody strays from the beaten paths of the forests of Camelot, because they fear the predators.

The wolpertinger had her clothes on as she stood beneath the waterfall and allowed the cold water to splash onto her, so that they would be washed at the same time as herself. What had once been white linen and light leather was now all dark brown, its fibre having changed its color a little more each time that Karil had walked through the foliage, rolled around in a pit of mud to camouflage her light fur, dug her claws and teeth into the carcass of a hunted prey or hidden in a hollow tree or burrow when running from a predator that was even bigger than her. The green and blue, the red, brown and black and many more colors present in the forest had left their marks on her clothes, and with time layer upon layer of color had mixed with the others and tainted the clothes until no amount of water could clean it off anymore. Not that Karil minded. The dark brown allowed her to vanish into the forest much better than the bright white of her fur which gave her location away to any predator or potential prey from miles away. Similarly the smell of dirt, moss, trees, berries and many other 'forest' smells obscured her own scent, in the event that she had to sneak up on a prey downwind.

Some poor devil who had been killed and robbed blind had been laying there, rotting by the wayside of a path that Karil had scouted on a day where she was feeling particularly bold. She had picked up the smell of blood, found the remains of a caravan and the dead horse, and the body not laying far away. She had not understood what had happened and could not make sense of the feathered sticks in the corpse's chest and the horse's neck, but she understood that they were the cause of death. And when dead you didn't need clothes, or anything else for that matter, so Karil had taken the dead man's trousers, his shirt and his jacket, and put them on in the same way that he had worn them. The jacket swiftly was discarded again because of the metal buttons on it that glimmered in the sunlight and had a strong smell, and because it was thick and hot. Karil's furcoat was already providing her with more than enough heat. But the shirt and the trousers had stayed, and Karil had made them hers.

Now they were a near-indispensable asset. They weren't always comfortable but because they held smells and their color so well Karil had become able to take on hunts that would otherwise have failed, and she had comfortably escaped situations that would otherwise have turned out much hairier.

Her bath done, Karil stepped to the edge of the water and sunk her body into the foul-smelling mixture that had washed up at its shore: mud, sand, half-composted branches, leaves and small plants, insects and one or two larger carcasses. With her own smell mostly neutralized by the water, this swampy paste seeped into her fur and clothes and completely suppressed it, while at the same time making her blend in more with the forest. It was time to hunt.

Two pheasants ate on a tiny clearing, gobbling up insects and wild berries from a bush and blissfully unaware of the predator until she was right behind them. Neither had the time to feel pain or fear as she snapped both necks at the same time. She ensured that they were dead and, hearing neither heartbeat nor breath, proceeded to strip them of their feathery suit, gut them with her claws, and dig into one of them, while wrapping the other into a big leaf. Lunch was served, dinner was taken care of too.

If someone had wandered the forests of Camelot, and if that someone had left the path and come to a tiny clearing near the edge of the verse, they may have been greeted by the sight of a stag-horned wolf wearing a shirt and trousers, devouring the raw meat of a bird and smelling worse than a compost heap.
But nobody strays from the beaten paths of the forests of Camelot, because they fear the predators.

[Malon]

As Karil was on her way back to the place she called home - little more than a roof of sticks and leaves with a bedding underneath, really - something struck her as odd. The smell of the forest... it was different. She put her snout to the ground and sniffed.

Humans.

There were several... five or six? No, more than that. A dozen or more. Could it be a large hunting group? But why out here? This area was away from the other villages and cities. The closest she could think of was the portal... to that place with the bad smell. She sniffed again, and made out the smells that she had not paid attention to earlier. Metal. Cured meat. Whetstones. Freshly cut wood. Horses. Human pups. She followed the scents and soon reached the path leading to the gate to the Pale Moors, though she did not know that name. There she found tracks of people in the dirt, belonging to nine or ten humans, and the tracks of a carriage. The children had probably sat on the carriage because she could only see one or two tracks but smelled them clearly.

This wasn't a hunting party. It was a group of civilians. Townspeople coming with their tools and their children to... what? Visiting someone wouldn't require them to bring tools along or to cut wood in such quantity. She noticed a pair of tree stumps in a thinly forested area where felling them wouldn't have been too hard. They smelled freshly cut and sawdust was laying on the ground. Then they had transported the timber somewhere. But why? Humans used wood for all sorts of things, from protective clothes to tools to houses. But they would only need this much wood for one thing.

No, these weren't just civilians. They were settlers. And judging from the path they had taken, Karil had no doubt that they were coming from that portal. And if they had cut timber around this area they were probably looking to settle somewhere nearby. Transporting so much wood was hard and they were surrounded by forest, so they could have cut elsewhere if they'd wanted to go further away. She sniffed the air again, but the slowly rising fog was making it difficult to pick up scents. Well then... time for a little scouting. She pulled off her clothes and hid them in a hollow tree where she could find them easily, then dropped to all fours and followed the scent as if she was a wild wolf or dog. Now her antlers: those she couldn't hide, but with any luck they'd mistake her for some strange hybrid, or a feral wolpertinger.

Within an hour she arrived at her destination. The scent was getting stronger, intermixed with the smells of human settlements. They had made a small fire that they were roasting meat at, some of them were cutting branches off the timber, yet others were setting up makeshift tents between the trees, hanging the tissue from the branches or driving hooked nails into the trunk to attach the tent to. A few were collecting fresh water from the stream that passed through the center of the clearing. Even the children were helping, she noticed. Everyone looked pale and thin, worn from the long journey and whatever hardships they'd endured in their previous home.

Karil hated the sight.

This forest was wild, one of the few remaining places undisturbed by the hunters. If these humans settled here they would chop down the trees to create houses and fields, they would hunt the game and chase away the predators until none remained and they would corral noisy, smelly and bad-tasting animals that would then eat away the grass and leave only barren land behind. They needed to go. Well, let's see if she couldn't...

Two hours later

"Mommy! Mommy look! A doggy!" a child exclaimed and pointed to the edge of the clearing. The mother took a brief glance while trying to tell it that there were no wild dogs, when she noticed a strangely colored canine with antlers between the trees, eyeing the settlers. She yelled something and two men immediately readied their bows, aiming at the creature. But the oldest of the group, a man in his fifties, stopped them. "Don't shoot it. Wild wolves don't come alone."

"That ain't no wolf... look at it. It's got horns", one of the two men said, still keeping his bow drawn. "Looks like a timber wolf."

"A timber wolf? Nate, you need to get your eyes checked. That's a husky if I ever saw one, but I've no idea how it would get to such a warm climate. It might be a tamed dog." He took a small bit of dried meat from a stack and approached Karil with it. Karil waited, pretending to be one of her feral cousins, and when he came closer got up and approached him.

"Oi. That dog's got something between its jaws", the old man said. Karil lowered her head and let the large piece of bark drop to the ground before snagging the piece of meat from the old man's hand and returning to the edge of the clearing to eat. The man picked up the piece, turned it over, and saw what Karil had carved into the surface of the wood using a pointed stone: a vague picture of a human surrounded by trees, then a picture of a human laying down, with sticks in their chest like the ones she had once seen on that merchant. She also had added a vague shape of a very large creature of some sort surrounded by trees. Below that, a second set of pictures, neatly separated by a line: a human surrounded by little houses with a smile on its face, far away from the forest, where again a very large creature surrounded by trees stood, which also had a smile on its face.

"It's a message of some sort", the old man mumbled. "I'm not certain I catch everything, but I believe we are not welcome here. Someone wants us gone." He looked at Karil. "And that, lads, is a feral wolpertinger. They're not dangerous unless you attack them first, but steer clear of it - they're vicious as a wolf and a stag put together. If someone was able to tame that thing and sent it to deliver this message, that person's not to be trifled with."

"Well, I don't give a bloody damn 'bout if we should or shouldn't trifle with some shithead who wants the forest to themselves! We left Darkshire to find a new home after those bloodsuckin' Primes destroyed it! And now that we found a good place to settle we're told to leave?! Well, tell you what: that wolperthing can go back to its owner and tell 'im that we ain't movin' an inch. There!" He let loose an arrow but missed Karil. She hid among the bushes and backed away as the hunter continued to shout profanities while the old man looked at the pictures. It seemed that it wouldn't be that easy. They wouldn't leave over that warning, she realized. And the longer they stayed, the harder it would get to drive them away. She needed to plan out something more elaborate...

[Malon]

The hunters were out that morning. The men not proficient in bowmanship were cutting down more trees to build more huts. The rudimentary homes that they had right now were fit to house multiple settlers at once, with a roof over their head and the most basic of walls around them to give them a sense of security: sticks and trunks dug into the ground bound together with rope and elastic sticks. It would withstand some wind and water, certainly. But Karil would be able to tear it down easily if it ever came to that. Or if they left their junk behind after leaving.

She had seen many of them walk into these huts in the evening or come out of them in the morning, and the smells were concentrated around them. She guessed that the huts were a dormitory for the settlers until they got individual rooms. They would be gathering there at night. It would be dangerous to get near it. They would be encouraged by their numbers. She had to try a different approach.

Karil's goal was to get them to leave the forest. She would not kill them, of course. There were too many of them and she could not kill them all at once. Humans became unpredictable when afraid, she had noticed. They might decide to set fire to the forest or to lay out traps. They might arm everyone with bows or other weapons. They might also flee but she did not want to take chances. Best to intimidate them and observe their reactions. She could always fall back to her plan to kill their hunters if they DID react in a way she didn't want them to. Or she could chase the animals away from their settlement to prevent them from getting supplies. She hid her clothes away again and scouted around the outskirts of the settlement, hiding from sight in the bushes. They had more fires going on and were gathering around that. Animal furs were hung up on leather racks and the females were making thread out of plants. Children were gathering black rocks. Two girls were coming closer to Karil's hiding spot as they searched. This gave her an idea. She made a wide arc around them to avoid them, retreating deeper into the forest, and laid in wait.

When they were deep enough in the forest to be out of earshot of the village Karil stepped forth from between the trees, on all fours like a feral, and dragged her feet through the leaves so that they would have to hear her. They looked up from the ground and noticed her. For a moment they just looked at each other.

"Hello", Karil then spoke. She knew a few words from the humans, this was some sort of introduction she understood.

"Hello", one of the girls replied. This was where it would get complicated... formulating sentences.

"You not belong... here." She dragged a paw over the ground. "Forest... not for humans."

"We can't leave. We need to find more flintstones first!" one of the girls exclaimed and showed Karil a handful of black rocks in her dirty hand.

"No. Not you." She wondered for a moment how to make herself understood. "All humans. Human pack. All humans not belong here. Not belong in forest."

"I think it's saying that the New Darkshire settlers don't belong here", one of the girls whispered to the other. Then, more loudly, she asked: "Doggy, where would the humans go if not into the forest?"

"Human packs. Big packs. Homes outside forest. Many homes."

"Yeah", the other girl said, "but they're Camelots! We're from Darkshire, you know. The Camelots say that people of the Pale Moors are all infested with the evil taint of the Moors."

"You humans. They humans. Together is good. Separated is bad."

The younger girl tugged on the older's arm. "Hey Mei, let's go back. We can tell gramps about the talking doggy." After a little back and forth the older girl agreed to it and they retraced their steps to the village, now much more hurried than before. Karil wondered how the humans would react. Maybe she should kill a hunter just to send them a warning? She ended up deciding against it and withdrew to give the settlers some time. Two warnings in such a short amount of time could not pass without reaction, right?

If someone had wandered the forests of Camelot, and if that someone had left the path and come to the forest around the Pale Moors gate near the edge of the verse, they may have been greeted by the sight of a wolf walking on her hindlegs collecting smelly clothes from a hiding spot behind a bush, and putting them back on before running off into the deeper parts of the forest. But nobody strays from the beaten paths of the forests of Camelot, because they fear the predators.

[Malon]

It had been three months now since Karil had last checked on the human settlement. Their presence, however brief it may have been, had resulted in an out-of-season migration of the herds of game and forced her to follow. She had left her burrow behind, promising to return in time for the winter months. During the cold times there was no better place to stay warm, concealed deep underground and stuffed with furs and dried leaves. And she had gourds made of hollowed-out fruits to hold water in, to avoid going out as much as possible. The only thing left to consider was to eat enough to put on a little fat, both to stay warm and to scrape by through the winter months when the amount of available game would be at its lowest.

It may be better to double up on the fat actually, considering that the human pack might try to hunt too.

This Karil thought as she knelt in the shallow river and sunk her snout into it to drink. The cold, pure water quenched her thirst as it ran through the inside of her neck to her belly. She could feel how it made its way down, cooling her from within. Her teeth hurt a little. Yet she kept drinking. It was time to hunt, and she could not risk getting thirsty again in the middle of it. But it would not be good to drink too much and be weighted down, either. The middle ground was important.

After that came the washing-down, though it was difficult in a small body of water as this one, and getting herself covered in mud. Lacking the washed-up sludge here, she instead used a muddy hole near the river which didn't smell as strongly, but would do what was needed to mask her presence and smell. Then she began her search for traces along the side of the river. Animals of all shapes and sizes came here to drink just like herself, it would only be a matter of time before she found some fresh prints.

Instead she found human prints. Clearly and indistinguishable, they were the prints of the leathery wrappings that the humans used to protect their hindpaws. She leant down and sniffed. Fresh leather still carrying the scent of the ugly horned animals that the humans called "goats". It would be easy to track this scent back to its origins, but she had a hunch. The human settler pack was sending its hunter-males out to pursue the game that had fled. They were hungering for meat, like she was.

Closer inspection of the human prints yielded that they had not stayed here long, and had not stayed still. She noticed how one area had a particularly large amount of prints, so many that she wondered how she had initially missed them. They seemingly belonged to one human who had inspected the area before her... soon she understood why.

Bear tracks.

And not just regular ones... they looked small, as if belonging to a young animal, old enough to reach maturity but not yet as dangerous as a complete adult. And the right prints had speckles of a red substance next to them that smelled of blood. The humans believed that they had found the tracks of an easy quarry, did they? Sure enough the prints followed those of the bear. Karil knew better though. The scent of the blood was too intense and a bear would not venture to such a small river. These were bait-prints... laid out by a Catoblepon. With the body of a cape buffalo and the ability to mimic the pawprints of other animals while secreting a blood-like substance from glands near its legs it created the illusion of an injured creature to be easily killed, whether its 'hunter' saw the prints or the Catoblepon itself, only to reveal its true nature as a dangerous predator when it had lured its prey in. And the human hunter-males had taken the bait like a pair of cubs. It was inconcievable that they would pursue the Catoblepon knowingly - its meat was stiff and dry like a carcass's and its skin too brittle and dry to be used as leather.

If the hunter-males were killed it would cause the rest of the pack great trouble... perhaps even enough that they would move to one of the big settlements and allow themselves to be taken in by the large packs of humans that lived there, as she had suggested. Or perhaps they would not make it through the winter days. She would have her forest back to herself.

And yet she followed their tracks, cursing herself for coming to the aid of her rivals. She had no idea why she did it. She had nothing to gain from it, and a lot to lose. The humans did not like her and she did not like them. Helping them would change nothing.

The silence draped over the forest was pierced by a shriek so loud that Karil’s ears rung. Only someone experiencing pure terror could scream like that. She ran faster, until she saw before her a small clearing and a gruesome picture before her:

The Catoblepon’s paralyzing gaze had stopped the two hunter-males in standing positions. One of them was violently thrashing his arms and head about, to absolutely no avail. His upper body seemed to have been spared the magic creature’s curse, but his legs refused to move, and thus would not carry him one bit from where he was standing. The other hunter-male was laying on the ground before his comrade, doubtlessly dead. The Catoblepon had snapped its neck and was in the process of feeding from…

Karil averted her eyes from the horrible scene. She was not unused to gory carcasses but the paralyzed human, forced to watch, was sending a chill up her spine. Luckily for her both the predator and its to-be prey were focused on the carcass, giving her the opportunity to strike.

The Catoblepon’s snout was too deep in its kill to smell much more than blood. Karil’s smell was washed off from her bath and obscured by the earthy scent of mud she had bathed in. The hunter did not notice that it was about to become the hunted. Karil snuck around along the edge of the clearing, readying for her kill. She only had one opportunity. If she missed she would join the hunter-male as prey.

Catoblepons had two weak points. The first was their hearts because their boney bodies had little meat on them to form a barrier. The other was their eyes, who held in them the magic to maintain paralysis on its prey. Karil began her attack on the latter, leaping onto the four-legged animal from behind. Before the Catoblepon realized what was happening, blindness set in and a moo-like howl came from its emaciated throat. It tried to swing around to bite Karil, who had already leapt off anticipating a counter attack, and in doing so exposed its chest. Its suffering was cut short when the wolpertinger’s claws dug into its flesh, slid between the ribs and struck their mark. The beast’s pained howl quickly lost its energy and it toppled over next to its prey. Its suffering lasted only a few seconds before it had bled out.

The man who had been paralyzed had screamed again when Karil jumped to his aid, but feeling the paralysis disappear from his limbs as the wolpertinger broke the spell with her first attack, then seeing the massive beast topple over after she struck the killing blow made him shut up. Wide-eyed, he stared at his savior, at the gory carcass of his comrade, at the prey that had deceived them.

“You… free of curse”, said Karil as she cleaned her bloodied claws on the grass. “Danger is over.”

“You… you…” was all the man responded. The shock was keeping him paralyzed, but slowly it withdrew. Karil said nothing. She waited.

“You… monster!” the man then suddenly blurted out. His widened eyes narrowed to slits and he bent down to pick up a piece of curved wood that he had apparently dropped. His other hand jabbed in Karil’s direction, his finger accusingly pointed at her. “You killed Frank!”

This confused the wolpertinger. Had this man not seen what had happened? “Kato-Blepon killed human. Kill you too, if Karil not help.”

“Lies!” he spouted. Shakily he reached for the leather tube on his back. Only now did Karil notice that there were feathered sticks inside. “You… you were in cahoots with that beast, weren’t you?! You want us gone! You killed him!”

Karil snarled. “Human not belong in forest. Karil help so human live. Human tell to pack that humans not belong in forest.”

“Hah! You admit to it!” the hunter-male put a feathered stick onto the curved wood and pointed it at her. A maniacal grin spreaded across his face. “Just you wait. I’ll rid this forest of you, monster!” He pulled a string that was attached to the curved wood, still shakily aiming the feathered stick at her.

Karil knew that the stick was dangerous. And she saw that the human was beyond reason. A moment before he loosened his hand his eyes widened and Karil leapt to the side. The feathered stick darted forward faster than the eye could follow, passing where Karil had stood moments ago. She leapt onto him and knocked him to the ground with her paws, then without giving him time to grasp at her leapt and ran back into the forest. His enraged screams followed her for a while as she put as much distance as she could between him and herself. She only stopped when she arrived at the river again, near the spot where she had first seen their tracks.

Another surprise awaited her there: a water-lizard was laying by the shore, dead and with two feathered sticks in its tough hide. She got closer and sniffed it. Yes, they bore the two hunter-males’ scents. But why had they not eaten or brought back that which they had hunted? Did they not know that it was good food?

Going back to get the Catoblepon was not an option. She had no idea if the human would be around when she returned and its meat was inedible anyway. But this water-lizard saved her the need of looking for new prey. Carefully she pulled the feathered sticks out and tossed them aside, then she passed the dead water-lizard over her shoulder and stepped into the water, so as to mask her scent from the hunter-male and avoid leaving footprints behind that they could track back to her lair.

If someone had wandered the forests of Camelot, and if that someone had left the path and come to the forest a dozen or so miles from the Pale Moors gate, they may have been greeted by the sight of a wolf walking on its hindlegs and with antlers on its head, carrying the carcass of a dog-sized Axolotl on its back, off to its lair. But only a few people stray from the beaten paths of the forests of Camelot, because most of them fear the predators.

[Malon]

The human-pack’s hunters were as noisy as a pair of clashing stags and as ravenous with their appetites as a flock of ravens. In an astonishingly short time they had driven a great part of the prey animals from their grazing grounds, roosts, nests, burrows and hives to other parts of the forests, and as the herbivores left the predators followed them. The hunter-males had to cover bigger distances to find the larger prey, which led them to hunt after smaller animals.

When Karil wandered the forest that day it was silent. The trees rustled in the wind but the birds did not chirp as loudly anymore. The grass blades moved back and forth as the breeze caressed them but there were far fewer traces on them. The rushing waters splashed and guzzled but there were fewer fishes swimming in them. And though the waters ran crystal clear there were fewer animals coming to drink from them.

Soon they would come to harvest what had remained. They would pluck the fruits from the trees and dig up the roots from the ground. They would find the glimmering stones on the surface and dig them up. Then they would dig deeper and tear up the land in search of more. They would harvest the rocks from the mountainsides. They would fell the trees and uproot the bushes. And what was left they would feed to the goat-animals. Then they would move on. All that she could hope for was that they would not come to where she was.

She tracked her way back to her old burrow, to retrieve her belongings. It would be easier to stuff her bed into the leather bag that she had once found in the forest and to bring it to her new home, rather than to make a new one. She needed to do it soon though, before the humans began cutting down the trees around the area and she would have to sneak past them.

She was just coming close to the river where she used to drink at when a familiar scent filled her nostrils. Humans. Not just any humans though, she recognized these ones… two, no, three young humans. One she had not smelled before. The other two she had. It was those two girls she had seen before. The ones who were collecting the black shiny stones. The Wolpertinger laid on the ground and crawled closer instead of wandering into the open. In this manner she reached the edge of the hill behind which the river was running, and peeked down between the bushes.

The two girls that she had met near the village were indeed there, but they had a boy with them who looked like he was about their age. They were busy by the river, all three of them were barefoot and had rolled up their sleeves and trousers. Karil sniffed the air but she could not smell any fish. They did not use metal claws or feathered sticks either so she imagined that they were not hunting. One of the girls, the older one, picked a large rock from the ground and heaved it over into the riverbed where it created a large splash. The boy brought in two handfuls of tinier pebbles and dirt and stuffed it into the cracks. They were building a wall in the midst of the river to back up the water, like a beaver dam. Karil wondered why they were doing it. She slid a little closer to get a better look.

The younger girl seemed to hear something and looked up - straight at her! Immediately a cold wave rushed through Karil’s arms and legs as her instincts activated. She’d been found. The girl would alert the rest of the pack and they’d attack. Should she flee, or try to silence her before she could scream? Yet the girl didn’t scream. She did not inflate her chest with air or get the attention of the others. A smile formed on her lips. “Mei, look!” she said finally, without looking away.

“Alice? What is it now?” the girl spoken to asked.

“It’s the doggy! Look! Up there!”

Karil should have fled now. The older girl was probably going to know better and scream. If she delayed her escape she would put herself at greater risk. Why was she not going? Because, she answered her own question, she felt no threat coming from the humans.

The younger girl knelt and held her hand out, beckoning for Karil to come closer. The boy had also noticed her by now, thus all three pups were looking. He was also the first one who came closer and climbed the small hill, curiosity glimmering in his eyes. “That’s a strange dog”, he said. “It’s got antlers. Like a stag.”

“She’s not a doggy”, the older girl said as she followed the boy. “She’s a, uhh… a wolf-singer or something. I don’t remember the name that grandpa gave her, but she’s that.”

“A wolf singer? That’s a dumb name. I bet she can’t sing.”

“Back away”, Karil warned. “Karil attack if...“ But her words got stuck in her throat when the boy reached out and began scratching her head. She wanted to snarl, to snap at his hand or at least to back away, but instead she pressed her head into the fingers. He was pressing just the right spot, one that she had trouble scratching when it itched. Then she felt that her tail was wagging, like a common dog’s. She wanted to make it stop, to force it back, but she could not. “Ngh~”, was all she could say.

“Ohh. You enjoy being pet, doggy?” the boy asked. He got to his knees and reached his other hand out too, to rub at her chin. Karil could not help but to close her eyes, letting the pleasure rush over her. She had never thought that it could be so enjoyable… it made sense now that dogs enjoyed being pet so much.

Now the two girls joined in as well and laughed as they started to rub Karil’s sides and her back. Karil thought that she would pass out from the pleasure. To be scritched, rubbed, petted all over like this, she wanted to do nothing more than to lay her head into the laps of these human-pups and fall asleep against them…

It took all her willpower to pull herself away from their hands. She was panting, her tongue hanging out the side of her maw, draped over her teeth, but the pleasure was quickly withdrawing. The pups looked surprised before the boy asked: “Doggy, do you not want to be pet? Do you not like it when we rub you?”

“Karil… Karil like rubs”, she said. “But Karil not want rubs.”

The younger girl looked puzzled at this. “Why do you not want rubs? If they feel good and you like them, you’d want them, right?”

The truth was, she wanted more. She would have wanted nothing more than to sit between the three of them and let them continue. But she forced herself to sit on her tail so it would not wag anymore, and bared her fangs for a threatening snarl. “Karil is not dog. Karil is predator. Forest belong to Karil. Forest not belong to human-pack. Human pack destroy forest, kill food, remove trees, rip out grass and bushes. Human pack… enemy of Karil. Karil not want rubs from enemy.”

“We’re not your enemy”, the older girl said. “First of, the forest isn’t even yours, if it’s anyone’s it’d be King Aragorn’s. But really it’s there to be shared by everyone! And we’re not destroying the forest! We just need a little space to build our homes!”

“Homes… not in forest. Human pack go outside forest”, Karil said. “Go with big human packs outside forest. Live happy there. Leave forest alone.”

“Don’t act like this place belongs to you”, the boy said, now in a more aggressive tone. He had picked up a rock and a stick that he was waving at Karil as if threatening her. “We have every right to be here, just like you!”

Karil growled. Then she leaped forward and snagged the stick from the boy’s hands before snapping it in half between her teeth. The pups screamed and turned around to run away. The boy dropped his rock as he ran. Together, the three of them slid down the small hill, waded through the little river and disappeared into the undergrowth towards where they had come from, as fast as their hindpaws could carry them. Only the youngest girl had the presence of mind to snag up the leather bindings that they had worn around their hindpaws as they ran. The Wolpertinger gave no chase. She waited.

Soon the silence filled the forest again, with only the gurgling of the river disturbing it. Karil wandered down and knocked over the little dam that the children had built, then pushed the biggest rocks back towards the edge of the riverbed where they had come from. It was but a small feat, the tiniest of ways to fix what the human pack had done to this forest, but she felt strangely good about it nontheless.

At the same time she felt a deep sadness within. Having scared the children would mean that she could not speak to them anymore. She felt that they would return, after all she had not attacked them. But if they met again it would not be on amicable terms. They would run away or attack her like the hunter-males. They would not pet her.

She felt that day that she had made a choice. She could have taken the offer that was extended to her by the children. She could have stayed and let them pet her. They could have brought her back to the human pack’s homes. They could have treated her like a dog. She could have found a dog mate and had pups. She could have laid by a cozy fire in the evenings and slept. She could have died with the human pups crying for her, after having had a happy life. All these things could have been hers, perhaps, had she made the right choices.

Now the offer was no more. She had chosen the lonely path of the predator. She had chosen not to let herself be tamed, but to stay a Wolpertinger. And though she felt sad that everything she could have had was gone she did not regret her choice. Her face hardened as she shook her head to rid herself of the lingering feeling of the pettings, then leant down into the river to drink. Then she covered the remaining way to her old burrow and retrieved what she had come to get.

If someone had wandered the forests of Camelot, and if that someone had left the path and come to the forest a dozen or so miles from the Pale Moors gate, they may have been greeted by the sight of a wolf walking on its hindlegs and with antlers on its head, carrying a leather bag on its back stuffed with dried grass and shedded fur. But not too many people stray from the beaten paths of the forests of Camelot, because they are worried about the predators.

[Malon]

The small town was improving with every passing day. After the exodus from the Pale Moors, fleeing from the dark creatures that lurked in the land of Dracula and seeking shelter in the outermost reaches of Camelot, the settlers had begun a new life. They had believed their lives to be cursed, that the taint of the Moors would never leave them, but soon the smiles returned to their faces and laughter filled the homes in the evenings after the days of hard work. They had named the town New Darkshire. A new beginning with new hope.

Who would have thought that its settlers were fated to such a terrible end?

Father Urthney was one of the older people to have inhabited Darkshire, and among the settlers he was the oldest. His old bones had served him well in his younger days, but now they were brittle and tired. Why had the settlers not just taken him along, but welcomed him with open arms when he had followed them? Because he was a priest, a man of the church of Omni, and the people of Darkshire, as many Secondaries, believed in higher powers. After all it was no secret that Omni brought the Primes to the Omniverse. What creature could have the power to give life and bestow such immense powers as a Prime had on others, but a great deity? That was where the faith of the church of Omni stemmed from, and in the Pale Moors faith was a strong pillar that kept the people from falling to despair.

That evening the Father held a sermon, preaching about the sacrifice of Tyrael and the hope that he had given them all by giving himself to the darkness so that the Omniverse may be safe. He held it alone, because the altar boy had fallen ill and was bedridden. The people of Darkshire attended and together they prayed. After the mess they left and the Father went to extinguish the candles and close the doors of the church for the night. But in the dusk’s fading light he failed to notice the single wet leaf on the ground that one of the settlers had brought in. As he climbed the stairs to extinguish the last two candles to the left and right of the central altar, he slid and fell to the ground, his outstretched arm knocked over the candle and it fell onto the white cloth that was draped over the altar. And because Father Urthney hit his head on the stairs and fell unconscious at the foot of the altar there was nobody to stop the flame from spreading and growing.

New Darkshire, praised by its inhabitants to be their second chance granted to them by the merciful lord Omni, would be consumed that night by the fire born from its church. What an irony.

When the flames snuffed out the stars and illuminated the forest with their flickering orange light Karil saw it. She saw how the flames licked the sky, how they emerged from the clearing that the human pack had made by cutting trees. And she knew what it meant.

She had gathered what little remained of her belongings in the burrow near the village, intending on bringing it to her new home along with the rest and never to look back after that, so she was close. The angry, vindictive side of her wanted to go closer and enjoy the spectacle, to see the human pack burn. Had they heeded her warnings they might have survived. Her other side wanted her to help the human pack, for they did not know better and they did not deserve that horrible fate. And so she ran through the forest, dropped on all fours, to the clearing that she had wanted never to set foot on again.

The human pack were screaming, running around, frantically searching for the others. Some were throwing water onto the fires, but it was of little use: the wooden structures had caught fire and the mild winds were spreading the fire faster than a handful of people could extinguish them. A few had realized it and were retrieving what items they could from their homes, or letting the animals out of their stables and pens so that they could run away. Others were trying to get into the burning homes to help others escape.

Karil stopped at the edge of the clearing and closed her eyes. The scents. Like colored vines they filled the air around her, each linked to the human that it belonged to. It was like a giant ball of wool but Karil had no trouble with picking out the scents she was looking for. She forced herself to ignore the strong, stinging smell of fire and focused on the human pack. Then on the pups from yesterday.

There was the boy. She smelled his fear, but he was close to an adult. Perhaps his mother. The girls however… their scents were faint, suffocated by the fire, but they were there. In a house. She opened her eyes again. There was one man trying to rip the door open but it was stuck. The house was burning and would soon crumble. The two pups inside would die a horrible death.

As she sprinted through the crowd few took notice of her. She heard a scream or two but most probably mistook her for one of the dogs. She lined herself up with an unstable wall on the side of the house, away from the view of the man. She charged forward, her teeth clenched, as she drew upon the force of her cervidae heritage. Then she collided with the wall.

The force of her antlers broke the flame-touched wall and she broke through into the flame-filled room. The two girls were huddled up in a corner as far away from the flames as they could, crying their eyes out. The older one had the younger wrapped up in her arms. Fearfully they were looking at the door, listening to the cracking sounds of the sharp item that the man was now using to try and break down the door. Karil remembered that item. It was what they used to cut down trees. But he would not be fast enough. The beams supporting the roof would soon break and everything would collapse. She had no time.

“D-doggy?” a meek voice asked, followed by coughs. The pup were breathing in the black smoke. They had done so for a while now, given no choice. Soon they would pass out. They would not be able to walk, Karil knew.

“Pups no die today… pups not bad, no deserve death”, she said. She stood on her hindlegs and grabbed both girls, one under each arm, then turned around to run back out through the way she had opened.

CRACK! With a horrifyingly loud piercing sound the central beam broke in the middle and its halves dropped down. Karil was weighted down by what she was carrying and was a moment too slow to dodge. One half hit her on the back of her head. Her field of vision exploded with pain and turned red, everything went blurry. A stinging pain formed on the back of her head and moments later against her chin, and she realized that she must have fallen to the ground. From her hazy vision she could see that the collapsing roof had blocked their exit. The way out was no more.

Was this how she would die? Helping out the human pack who had brought nothing but trouble to the forest? Rescuing two of the only three humans that had ever done anything friendly for her?

She refused to believe that. She did not want to.

Her grip around the two girls tightened again and she stood up, shaky on her feet, mobilizing every bit of energy that remained in her body. Though the roof had collapsed it had also created a new opportunity, a way for them to escape, that was riskier than all the others. Like a burning ramp the collapsed roof, proof of its architect’s great craftsmanship, had sunk into the house in large chunks which were quickly burning as the reeds that made it up burnt like tinder. One wrong step would cause her to get her feet stuck and her fur would catch fire. Yet there was one way… the support beams that the roof was placed on, if she could walk over them she would reach the top. It was a daring move, but she had no other choice.

She walked. She balanced herself along the edge. She felt that she would slip and accelerated her steps. Her paws caught pointy splinters but she clenched her teeth and forced herself to ignore the pain. Not now. The fire cleared before them as they arrived on the top point where the house-wall and the collapsed roof formed a triangle with the ground. There Karil jumped as far as she could and landed belly first on the ground with the two girls to her left and right.

She could hear screaming, crying, names being shouted… hers, too. Her energy was gone though, and the smokes she had breathed in were further making her dizzy, along with the throbbing pain on the back of her head. She caught glimpses of the two pups running into the outstretched arms of a human-female. Then things went black. Just before she passed out she felt how she was lifted up and heaved over something soft.

She knew not how long she had been unconscious, when she woke back up. She was still on top of something soft that was bobbing up and down. She felt the breeze of air on her fur. They were moving. Her head still hurt, as did her arms and legs, her hands and her feet. Around her she could see the greens of the forest, bathed in the darkness of the late dusk. So it could not have been long… just as she thought this the bobbing stopped and a pair of strong arms heaved her off the soft surface, then dropped her on the ground. More pain shot through her waist. What was going on? A nudge to her shoulder made her roll onto her back. Her blurred vision slowly cleared up. A human stood there. The hunter-male that she had saved from the Catoblepon long ago.

“Still kickin’?” he asked.

“... yes…” Karil replied. Her voice felt hoarse. Was that because of the smoke she had breathed?

“Good”, said the hunter-male, knelt and leant over her. He did not do anything but Karil saw the burning hatred in his eyes. Whatever he intended on doing, it was not good.

“What… human want… from Karil…?”

“So Karil really is your name, eh?” the man asked. “I thought as much. So tell me, Karil. Are you happy now?”

“...”

“I asked if you’re happy now”, he repeated. “Don’t play weak, I know you can hear me.”

“Karil… not understand…”

“Yeahright”, he scoffed. He took the curved piece of wood off his back. Only now did Karil notice that there was a fine string hanging off one end, which the hunter-male grabbed and attached to the other end of the wood too, so that it was very tense. “Don’t bother denying it. We all know you wanted us gone. We were all afraid of that creature that tamed you, who had you deliver a message, but I believe that there is really no such creature, right? You were the one who made that carving.”

The carving? Oh, yes… the piece of wood from months ago, when she had first told them not to stay. “Karil… wanted humans… out of forest”, she admitted.

“And you warned us, didn’t you. You even set that Kato-thing off on us. But to go that far… to set fire to our entire settlement…” He spat on the ground. “Not even I thought you could go that low, beast.”

Karil blinked, looking puzzled. “Karil… set fire? No… Karil no know how set… fire…”

“Until the bitter end you lie, huh”, the hunter-male said. He took a feathered stick out of his quiver, looked at it, then put it back. He took another, this one with red feathers, and seemed satisfied. The stick’s feathers reeked of human blood. “It’s no use. I’m gonna kill you anyway, you know.” He showed her the red stick. “See this? This was one of Frank’s arrows. I promised him that I’d kill you and marked his arrows red with my blood so that I could tell which ones were his. I promised that it would be his arrow, delivered by my hand, who’d get revenge on you.”

“Karil… no set fire…” she replied. “Karil also… no make Kato-Blepon attack humans… Karil rescue… pups from fire…”

“Pups? You mean children?” the man asked, looking confused.

“Human pups… females…”

“Mei and Alice? The only two girls of New Darkshire, my own two daughters? Don’t be ridiculous. They escaped the fire when the house collapsed, by the mercy of Lord Omni alone. The collapse opened a hole in the wall and they escaped through that.” He put the feathered stick, the arrow, on the curved wood and pointed it at her. “Your lies aren’t going to save you now. Pfah, but I’ll at least grant you the mercy of speaking some last words.”

Karil was disillusioned. How could a man deny so many truths even though they had been right before him? She found herself unable to speak a word.

“That’s what I thought. Frank, this one’s for you.”

Twang! The arrow, loosened from the bow, pierced Karil’s chest and dug itself deep into her. Whether by mercy or sadism of Omni or simply pure coincidence it missed her vital organs, which would mean a slow death from bleeding out. The hunter kicked her body backwards, off the side of a cliff where he had brought her to. As she rolled down, unable to break her descent, he spat on the ground again, then turned around and left. Only after he had walked a few steps did he realize that he could have cut off her head and claimed those beautiful antlers as a hunting prize. Ah well, he wouldn’t go down that hill to retrieve them now.

Karil’s lifeless body stopped by a small lake. The arrow shaft had broken in half during the fall and the remaining length just barely stuck out of her chest. Her magnificient antlers were sullied with bits of mud and chunks of planks used to build houses. Red blood stained her brown shirt and fur.

If someone had wandered the forests of Camelot, and if that someone had left the path and come to the forest a a few miles from the Pale Moors gate, they may have been greeted by the sight of the lifeless body of a wolf with antlers on its head laying at the foot of a hill, near a lake. And why would they not stray from the beaten paths of the forests of Camelot? There are no predators to fear.

Karil is bleeding out and will die on February 19th unless she gets help.

THE END

[Angel Fisher]

The forest is a dark lonely and dangerous place, especially for a child, who’s predators are multiplied compared to that of a well trained human. Yet it’s still the forest place they try when they run away from home. To them it represents ultimate freedom, no rules, no adults, nothing to protect you from the monsters that come out at night…

You see, that’s where many children back out of the idea, they always pick a forest near where they live, so that they can run back home when things get to scarey, or so that the parents can find them if they are petrified with fear.

Billy however, he was smart, he went to a forest at the edge of the verse, one that people feared, so that didn’t become an option, at least that’s what he tried to convince himself with as to why no one had tried to ‘rescue’ him yet, then he kept remembering that he still had his phone, that people could try to contact him if they wanted to know where he was, on if he refused to answer track him here with. He knew no one in town liked him.

He was the son of the two cockyest bounty hunters in Minas Tirith after all, the only reason they were nice to him is because he lost them, funny how people try to manipulate you when your broken, putting you back together the way they want and purposefully missing pieces.

But then like all little boys he grew up, or, more specifically, grew the balls to face his fears on his own and head on… after that he found out how cruel people can be. Neighbors giving him dirty looks, friends wanting nothing to do with him, his ‘Guardian’ using his parents an excuse to keep him in fear and under her control, that and the whip, the whip hurt…

And that’s why his slim, blond-haired, seventeen-year-old body was here, shifting sticks to try and make a fire to limit his changes of freeze during the night, a stolen sword sitting in the ground next to him, it’s rainbow light allowing him to see what he was doing. And then he smelt smoke, it was working, he knew he could do it, sure it had taken him 5 nights to do it, but that was a minor detail.

Disappointment soon ran through him when he realized it wasn’t his smoke, before being replaced with dread when he realized how pontent it was. It was huge, and it was close.

His brain told him to run away from it, but then he heard people, he had the power, he could help them. And so his feet run where his brain told him not to.

The only voice that was left had been a little ways away from the fire, the smoke that was wafting through the air was still a hazard though, especially with the way it spoke, broken and unable to make a full sentence.

As he followed the voice, the boy found that it was coming from a strange non-human creature. If it had been any other situation, he would have questioned it, but it was hurt and dying from large scapes and coughing, presumably from trying to escape, there was no time for questions.

“Shh…” The boy said, bandaging up the most severe wounds if creature with supplies from his backpack. “You don’t need to waste your energy talking to me now, I promise you can thank me.. after I save you.”

If someone had wandered the forests of Camelot, and if that someone had left the path and come to the forest a a few miles from the Pale Moors gate, they may have come across a Golden haired teenager trying to carry an injured wolf with antlers to safety on his back. But everyone who strays from the beaten path fears the predators, only they don’t live inside the forest, they live inside the people.

[Malon]

Cold.

So cold...

...

And pain...

As a grim irony these feelings were the only things that let Karil feel she was still alive. Like the thinnest thread of spiderweb they connected her to life.

Karil believed not in an afterlife. She thought not that there was a paradise beyond death where she would meet her parents again and be happy forever. She hoped not for a reward that would be given to her by a higher power if she lived a good life, or for a punishment that would befall those who did evil. She had not saved the human pups for that reason. When death came for her, it would be the end. She would be gone.

Yet, she longed for it. She wanted the torture to stop. Each breath meant another sting of pain through her lungs, each movement felt as if her chest was torn open anew. She wanted the thread to snap. She wanted to be released.

But the thread refused to listen to her pleas. And so Karil was forced to continue living.

A distant voice spoke to her. She could not make out its words, nor could she reply. Her body did not obey her. All it did was hurt.

...

She could not say how time passed. Her brief moments where she was conscious enough to grasp a thought, she floated through darkness. Sometimes the voice was there and though its words she could not understand, they sounded friendly. Was it someone not from the human pack? But who then?

In the state she was in, she could not find an answer before unconsciousness overtook her again. But eventually she came to again, and this time she opened her eyes.

Though all she saw were muddy blobs of color, blurred shapes and motions mixing these colors further she felt relieved at the sight. It meant that her eyes were working. Her nose and ears also did, and they were sharper than her eyes. The smell of mud, of stone, of rotting twigs and... of fire surrounded her. Above her she saw specks of blue among dark... the sky? It must be daytime, then. She tried to take in a deeper breath and was promptly punished with a painful sting through her chest that forced her to exhale. She tried it again, this time slower and shallower. Yes... the mud and wood scents were very near. All around her, too... was she still in the forest? Or perhaps in some form of shelter?

A stick snapped in half, causing her ears to perk. Then she heard crunching of leaves someone was stepping on. And the steps were getting closer, but they were so loud and clumsy that they could only be a human's.

"Oh!" a familiar voice exclaimed. "You've opened your eyes!" The crunching happened faster, then a shadow obscured the blue above her. Someone was leaning over her. The scent gave them away if the steps hadn't already: a human. "I thought you might never wake up again... can you hear me? Just, uhm, blink if you can."

Karil breathed a little deeper again, even though it hurt. "You... human..."

"You shouldn't talk, you know. It's a miracle that that arrow I pulled out of you missed your heart and lungs, but even so your life was hanging by a thread for a while."

"Why... why you... help... Karil...?" She wanted to sound stronger, but she felt weak. Even now she struggled to stay awake, to not just close her eyes and drift off again.

"Is your name Karil? Well, I... I couldn't just leave you out to die like that, could I?" The human shuffled around and Karil felt something being brought up to her maw. The scent of fresh water filled her nostrils. "Can you drink?"

"Yes... thirsty..." Her throat felt dry and itchy, she felt. She was very thirsty.

"Okay, I'll slowly feed you water. Be careful... here it comes." With that, slow and careful mouthfuls were poured into her maw and she swallowed. She had no idea she had wanted this much.

"How long...?"

"You mean how long since I found you? Ten days, almost. Gosh, you emptied the whole jar."

Ten days! She shuddered at the thought.

"You've been feverish for a while, and that bloodloss really weakened you... I thought you'd keel over more than once. You're gonna be okay now, though."

"Th... thanks..." Karil murmured. With her thirst sated she felt her spirits liven up, but her strength was exhausted for now. She needed to rest again.

If someone had wandered the forests of Camelot, and if that someone had left the path and come to the forest a a few miles from the Pale Moors gate, they may have been greeted by the sight of the lifeless body of a wolf with antlers on its head laying at the foot of a hill, near a lake. And why would they not stray from the beaten paths of the forests of Camelot? There are no predators to fear.

If someone had wandered the forests of Camelot, and if that someone had left the path and come to the forest several miles away from the Pale Moors gate, they may have been greeted by the sight of a young man in a makeshift shelter made of rocks, wood, bark and leaves, caring for a wolf with antlers whose chest was wrapped in bandages and who looked dead, if it weren't for her slowly rising and falling chest. Yet the only ones who stray from the beaten path are those who do not fear the predators, because they are the predators themselves.

[Angel Fisher]

“You rest as long as you need to, okay?” The boy rubbed between Karil’s ears as she drifted back off to sleep. He had to admit though, they were cute, even when sick like this…

*cough, cough* The young man managed to turn his head at the last minute so that the blood he coughed up landed on the floor next to him and not on the bed. “Eh? I guess… i have been using a lot… of my power lately...:” His voice was soft, partly because of strain and partly because he was only meant to talk to himself anyway. “If this past week is anything to go by they’ll be out awhile… so I guess I can rest myself… for a little bit…” As the man grabbed his sword a rainbow light washed over him, his silhouette of light growing smaller as the sword did. Soon he was no more than a child of strawberry blonde hair, 12 yrs of age at most. The once mighty sword no more than a mere pocket knife in the boys hand. “I should probably go outside tho, if they find out I’m just a little kid they’ll probably start worrying about me, that’s the impression I got from all their mumbling at least. Why do i mumble to myself so much anyway? I guess it helps me sort out my thoughts, or maybe I’m just crazy.” He laughed softly to himself as he stepped through his makeshift door. “Yeah, maybe…”

If someone had wandered the forests of Camelot, and if that someone had left the path and come to the forest a a few miles from the Pale Moors gate, they may have been greeted by the sight of a wolf with antlers, protected by a guardian as they slowly recover. And why would they not stray from the beaten paths of the forests of Camelot? There are no predators to fear.

If someone had wandered the forests of Camelot, and if that someone had left the path and come to the forest several miles away from the Pale Moors gate, they may have been greeted by the sight of a child, determined to protect a near dead animal because of their irrationally large hope. Yet the only ones who stray from the beaten path are those who do not fear the predators, because they are the predators themselves, or at least pretend to be.

[Malon]

Wolpertingers are a peculiar and special breed among the family of canine hybrid species, and to this day one thing among their unique anatomy remains an unsolved mystery about which dozens of theories exist: their ability to feed on adoration.

The most common theory is that there’s some sort of vampiric gene in the general species. Now, not all vampires are the pale-skinned bloodsucking type, there are numerous types ranging from the dangerous (soul-sucking Dementors, life-draining Faceless Shadows, stamina-absorbing Silver-winged Bats etc.) to harmless or even useful varieties (nightmare-devouring Dreamers, lust-feeding Succubi and sound-eating Earlings). Wolpertingers are adoration-eating vampires, in fact from puppyhood to adolescence their diet consists of over 50% adoration. As a result the cuter a Wolpertinger puppy is, the more they get to feed on the adoration of those who care for them and the stronger they grow once they reach adolescence and eventually adulthood. Natural selection and evolution took care of the rest and thus Wolpertinger puppies tend to be so heart-meltingly cute that they could reduce the manliest of men - the bear-wrestling, navel-length-beard, eats-the-hearts-of-his-enemies viking type - to big-eyed teddy bears.
This vampirism power sees less use once a Wolpertinger reaches adolescence and is barely used after adulthood, as they shift their diet to a ‘standard’ format of both meat and greens and they grow from adorable and small to strong, tall and heavy.

Why that exerpt about canine hybrid biology? Because those days it was what accelerated Karil’s healing… and perhaps, indeed, saved her life.

Without realizing, Billy’s fondness of Karil, his finding her cute and rubbing her at times let the Wolpertinger feed, even when she was asleep. It supplied her with much needed energy in addition to the food and water that he managed to give her when she was awake, and it accelerated her body’s healing process. Two days after her first waking up she awoke again, and this time she did not pass out. She was still weak of course, having laid down for that long typically resulted in that, but she felt that she was on her way to getting better. Soon she was able to stand up and do short walks, to regain her constitution.

One day as they were eating, she asked: “Karil wonders´why… why human-male now human-male-pup.” She struggled to find the correct words in human speech but Billy understood.

“I told you, my name’s Billy. You mean why I’m appearing as a child when I used to look older when you first saw me?”

Karil nodded.

“It’s not that easy, but I guess I can explain.”

If someone had wandered the forests of Camelot, and if that someone had left the path and come to the forest several miles away from the Pale Moors gate, they may have been greeted by the sight of a child, determined to protect a near dead animal because of their irrationally large hope. But only few stray from the beaten path, and if they do it’s usually because they’re hiding from those who paint them as predators.

[Angel Fisher]

Billy reached into his pocket, a small smooth black blade extending from his hand as it came back out, it’s golden handle reflecting harshly the sun that had decided to been nice for the day.

“You see this? This used to be my mother's before I lost her… it happened in this very forest actually…”

“So, Human Pup… out here, looking for mother?”

There was an award silence between the two of them for a while, making Karl question whether she said something wrong or not.

“Yeah, I guess you could say that...” Despite his eyes being directly on the Wolpertinger, his blank stare passed right through her, giving a cold shiver as went.

“But you wanted to know about the age difference right? Well… the knife can empower you with a sort of, magical energy. That’s where that ‘Older’ me came from. I was in that form when I found you so I thought it best to stay in that form until you healed, I have to admit it was a little tiring though.” An awkward laugh escaped him at the end of his explanation until he saw that Karil was still worried. “But I mean, It’s worth it for a friend right?”

Karil looked up at the boy confused “Karil… friend?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t you be?”

If someone had wandered the forests of Camelot, and if that someone had left the path and come to the forest several miles away from the Pale Moors gate, they may have been greeted by the sight of a boy petting a wolf with antlers as they sit and eat. But few people stray from the beaten path and those who do should be extra careful, as even predators can have friends.