I HAVE TO LEARN HOW TO TIME MANAGE - whenever it hits Uni I just get swallowed xD Thank you so much Astinus! Editing now - it's really stupid how the 'its' always escape me haha! Damn, I wish I had more to give you then just this chapter - I wrote this during the summer time - but with a little bit of luck I'll be able to hammer out some more before Easter? xD; Anyway, you should hopefully enjoy this? If a couple months late :x
Love you, m'dear! This one's for you. <3
Beta'ed by
ejunknown.
Chapter Four
Glaciers
With a shrug of movement, the great stag shifted from his prone position and leapt effortlessly over the fire, landing with a scuff of earth in the cub's path. Allowing his momentum to thrust him forward, Tobias easily sideswiped the growlithe as he fled past him, ignoring the boy's surprised yelp and pinning him lazily to the floor with a single paw. The surrounding demons ignored the disturbance, as he'd expected – they knew better than to meddle in the affairs of their betters - and he lowered his muzzle towards the cub, growling a soft warning as the growlithe struggled beneath his grip.
He watched as the human girl stumbled to a halt a few feet away, dark eyes shining with sudden fear, her shoulders shaking as she drank in the sight of the two of them.
The boy's first catch. He considered her with emotionless eyes, his lips pulled back in a partial snarl. The boy had chosen well.
He tightened his hold and the boy shuddered beneath him.
"Are you afraid, human?" he asked quietly.
She trembled at the sound of his voice, wrapping her arms around herself and her strange attire, her eyes not leaving his.
He saw his answer in them.
"Then run home."
She refused to move, her gaze flicking to the cub in his grasp. He growled his disproval, raising his hackles. Her trembling increased satisfactorily, her dark hair trickling across her features, brushing against her lips – but she remained where she was, against his expectations. She was stubborn, it seemed.
As if in response, the cub began to writhe beneath him, bucking against his weight. Tobias afforded the youth his attention, baring his teeth in a snarl.
"Leave her alone!" the boy growled, clawing at the dirt beneath him for purchase. Desperation shone in his eyes – a fool's determination, he noted with a faint touch of disgust. "She-she's- part of the truce, so you can't- touch-"
A heavier paw bore down on the cub, cutting his whimpering off with a sharp yelp. A flicker of movement before him, however, distracted him, and he turned back to the woman. A pained expression painted across her features, she inched closer, despite the fear that steeped her scent. He gazed at her in surprise.
The mortal was brave.
Not enough.
He snarled at her, mocking her strength.
"Run child."
"
No."
Her voice was barely above a whisper, trembling as much as she was, but the defiance was still there, burning, her protest barely audible over the collected cheer of the revellers.
He stared at her with a hint of surprise, examining her across the ash-streaked grass.
He'd underestimated her.
With a yelp of bark, the cub took advantage of his distraction to wiggle free and throw himself before the girl. Not noticing her flinch, he scraped to a halt before her. Foxfire flaring from his nostrils and the edges of his mouth, the growlithe arched and with a soft roar of flames was a boy again, crouched on his hands and knees, a grimace painted across his features.
Tobias's disgust stirred once more at the sight, and he lowered himself onto his haunches, a growl rumbling in his chest.
The boy besmirched his blood with his obsession.
"Would you rather be a human, child?" Snarls curled around the question, stunted claws clenching into the soil.
Nathaniel's answer was forced between gasps, and the boy swung himself upright, oblivious to his nakedness, placing himself between the stag and the girl.
"I'd rather not be a beast."
"Fool." He took a step forward, lowering his muzzle towards the two, hackles raised. The growlithe's beliefs unnerved him, an emotion he was unaccustomed to experiencing. "You are what you are born. Why do you idolize an inferior race?"
Nathaniel's features set in a very human frown, the child shrinking nevertheless in his place, ears pressing down against his skull. The scent of his fear filled the night air, mingling with the bitterness of the smoke. "They… are not inferior."
"They are
weak, child."
The stag's claws tore up the soil and grass in the easy flex of his grip as Tobias took another step, illustrating his point, irritation emphasising the movement. Nathaniel flinched at the display, shuffling backwards to the girl's side.
"There- there are other ways to be strong, you know-"
"Their lives are short. They have no power of their own, only that they've taken from others, and even that they
abuse."
The cub was giving away ground, as expected, edging back towards the hill slope, the girl retreating with him. Her eyes were fixed on Tobias's- but it was not only fear that held her gaze to his, he noted.
The boy's faltering response drew his attention from the observation.
"They've created their own, haven't they? The boy's lips were quivering, and he reached for the girl's arm, weaving his fingers in-between hers.
Cowering. "They've made cars, electrical appliance-things-"
"That is inconsequential." Tobias allowed his disgust to colour his words, eyes flashing. The boy's breath caught as he bared his teeth further in a soundless snarl. "Humanity fears us and calls us
monsters because they covet what we possess. Do not be fooled, child."
Another step – his flickering shadow fell across their feet, lapping at their ankles, electricity sparking, roiling across his twisted antlers, crackling, into the night.
"Don't think to deny what you are."
The boy held his gaze for a moment more, wide eyes glistening – before his nerve broke.
Fsshhh.
The child fled along the hill, dragging the girl behind him, as a decoy smokescreen exploded soundlessly on the hillside. Coiling wisps masking their escape, the faint layer of ash licked at the crescent moon overhead, breaking free of the forest in tauntingly flippant coils.
The stag snarled and snapped after the pair, a measure of personal restraint the only thought that prevented him from following. The electricity that gathered between his horns clawed at the night sky as his pride thundered within his thoughts, urging him to catch the coward, sparks arching down his neck to writhe against his skin.
The orphan, while
pitiful, infuriated him. The child embraced a truce that served as a permanent embarrassment to his race, casting aside his pack ties for the temporary, insipid affection of humans. His subordination was insurmountable, the boy trailing ever farther away from the hunt's territory as the days past, burying himself within humanity.
Coward.
This was not the time, however, to settle their misunderstanding.
Forcing himself to turn on his heel with difficulty, Tobias returned to his spot by the fireside through a crowd of Rapidash, his seat remaining suitably unadulterated, the mere hint of his scent warning enough to any who might've sought to take it. He did not rejoin the celebrations, however, as he sank back into the grass, his eyes settling back onto the flames of the fire.
If it were a millennium ago, he would've torn down the slope and challenged the boy for his insolence, slaughtering the girl before him as proof of his victory. A millennium ago, the girl would be only a whisper of an old legend told to the young as they suckled at their wet nurses breast, a frightened traveler's dying wish as he was run down by the hunt, the lead hounds braying as they nipped at his already bloodied heals.
A millennium ago he would still have been a lord.
He tucked his feet beneath himself and gazed into the flames, banishing the image of a pair of soft, dark eyes moistened with fear, tempered with another emotion he refused to recognize in the gaze of a
human, that rose, unbidden, from his thoughts.
The fire twisted and spat at the sky, a shower of sparks hissing into the grass as a log slipped in the depths of its embers.
All history, all of his history, had ended with the 'truce', and humanity had began, flourishing in the hunt's retreat, forcing the dwindling communities to assimilate or extinguish themselves. The once great 'Hunt' was reduced at last to a mere formality, an occasion to feast and to observe traditions long since rendered obsolete, its primal, joyful violence lost.
There had been an honour in it, he remembered vividly; a strength in the mastering of the blood-haze of the chase, a thrill in the taste of the host's excitement bleeding into the breeze. An energy that had coiled and twisted in every sinew, every bone, pushing the pack onwards.
Tobias shut his eyes and relived those moments, recalling the salty, metallic heat of a boar's lifeblood as it pulsed over his lips and tongue, flooding his throat. It calmed him as he drank in the heat of the campfire, the electric crackle settling in a shroud around him, sinking into his fur like a second skin.
His past was now myth, a folk tale clouded by the centuries and the liberties of licentious story tellers. It was a fact he'd been forced to acclimate himself with. It had been their own civil wars that had led to their fall, after all. He was no fool.
The child knew nothing.
---
The child in question hurtled the few feet down the slope to where he'd abandoned his clothes, throwing himself down onto the slope. He pressed into the grass in an attempt to hide, his ears straining to catch signs of further pursuit. Elizabeth followed after him, her slippers scrambling over the slick grass, dirt scraping under fingernails as she wrapped her fingers around the stalks and pressed herself into the earth.
"What- what was that?" she whispered after a moment, squinting at Nathaniel in the shadows. Her eyes slowly adjusted to the change in light, filling in his slightly hollowed features. "Or-
who…?"
The glowering, ochre eyes of the stag filled her mind, her thoughts stumbling over the memory of the coldness of the burnished depths, and the iridescent, ice-blue flecks that swarmed around the pupil. She was struggling to catch her breath as they lay there, panting, her chest heaving. Her heart still hummed with left over adrenaline, sending her pulse trilling through her veins, fluttering in her neck.
She'd felt those eyes swallow her up as he'd looked at her, shred her apart like a rabbit under a lion's teeth, with her neck snapped with a simple jerk of the head.
Yet they were so… beautiful.
"
That- was
Tobias," Nathaniel managed after a moment, fixing her with a shaky smile. He reached out to grip her hand, his fingers trembling in an all too familiar pattern. "He's, ah… one of the older ones. Older gods. He shouldn't follow us down here, though."
She managed a smile at that, squeezing his hand despite the lump that refused to shift from her throat. "Gods again?"
This was insanity, she knew.
He cracked a smile back, eyes twinkling with a fragment of his earlier joy, before his head jerked as a tremor wracked through him. Recovered his composure, he fought to replace the smile, clinging his shirt to himself nevertheless, fingers digging into the fabric. "Of course!"
She regarded him with watering eyes (a delayed response to her fear) as he shook once more, his grip tightening periodically in hers. Whatever had effected him before was apparently returning – his-
metamorphosis (she supposed) starting anew.
They lay for a moment against the hillside, his shuttered breaths the only sound that broke their silence, waiting for approaching steps that didn't come.
"Na…Nathaniel," she began softly, shuffling carefully towards him. The grass fronds were cool against her stomach, their dew seeping through her shirt to graze her skin. "You need to explain everything, now, alright? All of it."
He nodded as best as he could, eyes shining with a slight glaze of pain, and let out a little laugh. "It seems a lil late now, doesn't it? Haha, alright, though."
He pushed himself into a seated position, ignoring her unconscious intake of her breath, tugging lightly on her hand. "He's not coming, don't worry, I can smell him – he's moved away, not closer. But I'll start- from the beginning."
She listened for a moment more, ignoring the questions that had arisen at his use of 'smell', before forcing herself to relax, placing her trust in the boy. She felt that she could, after this mess.
He released his grip after she relented and sat up, moving backwards as best as he could until there was a decent space between them and bunching his shirt in his lap.
She watched him as he took a deep breath,
"…I guess it begins with the hunt. As I said before, we aren't… human. We are 'magical', 'supernatural' beings, or… I guess we are similar to werewolves, which is kinda cool, but that- that is off topic, haha. We aren't werewolves, although I think werewolves were actually some of us. Rather, we are creatures who have existed alongside humanity for centuries, millennia even, and are just a little bit
different."
Elizabeth nodded as he took another breath, trying to follow his words, Nathaniel shutting his eyes briefly before continuing.
"You've given us all sorts of names over the years, and depending where we are, the names change. In this part of the world, we were always called 'the hunt'. And indeed, we do a lot of that."
He gave a toothy grin.
"Our natural forms… also aren't human. They differ from species to species – I, for examble, am a Growlithe – a kinda of dog, I guess. Tobias, the big scary guy, is a Cab- Cobaleo, or something, I believe, similar to a lion."
Elizabeth nodded numbly, the memory of the glistening, polished teeth flickering once more into her mind - the flash of the canines as a growl rumbled from behind them.
Tobias. She fought a shudder.
"We have many, many different species, basically. The hunt itself is made up of mostly horse-types and canine, feline types, though, its just what makes up our community and always has. Oh, and the occasional bull, although they aren't quite nimble enough, see."
His expression spoke of an amusing past memory, his lips curving as he continued.
"It's just a
quirk we have. All of these different species, however, are separated from the rest of the animals by one more thing, mmm? Each one has a different 'power', a different ability. It's usually something that ties them to an element or the other, like fire, or water, or wind – I don't know why we have them, but we do, and it's pretty specific depending on the species. I can create and control fire all by myself, for example, as you've seen." He paused to peer into her features, "Following alright so far?"
She nodded. He smiled back.
"These abilities occasionally allow us, or well the stronger ones of us, to even change our form at times, to that of another creature, such as normal animals and eventually humans, although the process is… painful, and hard to maintain." He adopted a wry expression at that. "It was developed first as a power display, I believe, although it eventually became a survival measure. It was just an adoption of a shape, a body, with out any of the powers that shape would normally possess– and of all forms, a human is the easiest, I think because our minds are more similar. Whatever shape we adopt, you see, we adopt all of their limitations. The greatest shape shifters of our kind could take the shape of birds – but only at the great risk of losing themselves."
He paused to take another deep breath, screwing his eyes up in a moment of concentration as another ripple of trembles sunk through him. When he opened them, she noticed that his eyes were brighter, the gold sinking more into a rich scarlet.
"Anyway, a couple thousand years or so ago, though, humans and our kind lived separately in joint territories, only occasionally overlapping, and regarded each other with animosity but peace. Well, kinda. The hunt used to possess all of the forests (they were much larger then, I've heard) and the lands around the mountains, and we built our homes up in the peaks, the places that most creatures did not have the strength or ability to reach. On certain occasions, however, when we needed to, or just when we wanted to, we went out 'hunting'.
"The hunts would be bloody and long, these wild chases after boar and deer and other such things, whatever caught our eye. The pack was ruthless, and proud – the lords would lead, followed by their nobles, and then the rest of us, and the 'aristocracy' demanded complete respect. Still does, really. Anyone who didn't show proper respect when the hunt passed would be run down. Sometimes the horde even took itself through the human settlements, charging down their little dirt streets in the night, and the like. You have many legends and myths about the 'raging horde', or the 'wild hunt', as we eventually called ourselves." He grinned a little toothily. "As I said before, you've named us both gods and demons.
She watched him with wide eyes, her breath huffing out before in little clouds. "What happened?"
Nathaniel shrugged.
"I'm not certain when it all changed, but it did, at some point. We were never the only bunch of our kind out there – there were millions more living across this continent alone, joined by others across the world. Our numbers began to go down, though, while yours, humanity's suddenly… exploded."
He poked at the soil with a toe.
"We… live a long time, you see. If we aren't physically killed, or taken down by a particularly strong disease, we can linger for centuries. The stronger ones even more than that. As a result, we have fewer kids." He shrugged again at that. "Dunno why, we just… don't. We take longer to grow up too, by your standards.
"So there was that, and then there was also the civil wars. The different clans waged wars against each other, slashing down our numbers. By the time peace had been restored, the balance had already shifted, and the humans were grabbing at our borders. I don't know what century that was in, but it was a good long time ago. I wasn't born until long after.
"And then there are the caul bearers."
They were huddled against the slope's side at this point, Elizabeth gazing at the boy with a mixture of fascination and faint mystification as he spoke, ignoring her hair as it fluttered against her neck with the cool touch of a breeze. At his last words, however, she blinked, glancing down at her hands curled in her lap, the thoughts spinning in her mind.
Caul bearers.
That term again, as bewildering as this entire situation and somehow, apparently, linked directly to
this. The story was unbelievable as it was, but-
Somehow,
she was caught in this fairy tale.
"What exactly does it mean to have been born with the… 'caul'? She asked with a frown, looking back to the boy. He watched her with a twist to his lips, evidently working to keep his hands still as they clasped together in the folds of his shirt – and her frown deepened, a thought striking her. He mentioned they lived long. "and… how…
old are you?"
His lips twisted into a rueful smile, evidently despite himself and he shrugged again. "We don't keep count as you do, really." He withdrew his hand from hers to grip his knees, cocking his head slightly as if listening to the hubbub above. It continued as it had the entire night, a warm wash of raised voices and the crackle of bonfires, mingled with the flickering orange light that blurred into the darkness. "I was born seven summer cycles ago, though, so around... seventy years ago? Yeah, seventy three of something."
She stared at him in shock.
"You're seventy years old."
He laughed, a blush colouring his cheeks. "Yeah, by your count, but really I'm only seven cycles." He grinned. "Just a kid. If you were like me, you'd be hitting two hundred by now, fogey."
She blinked at him in wonderment, rousing herself enough to stick her tongue back at him in response. "Look who's talking!"
He giggled, wriggling his toes, before another tremor ran through him, shaking through him to the ends of his fingertips. Grip tightening on his knees, he cast his eyes down as he began to pant, the trembles increasing until they sent chatters through his teeth.
Elizabeth reached out gingerly for his shoulders, clasping it awkwardly as the attack swelled to its crescendo. It was happening quicker this time, she realized. Discarding the fear that rose at the memory of the icy flames, she drew the boy towards her, cradling his feverishly hot, shaking body against her chest. The transformation was forcing itself sooner than it had before. The previous time must've worn him out.
He glanced up at her gratefully, his eyes now a pure, deep shade of scarlet streaked with gold, and her heart broke at the expression within it.
He still seemed so young.
"Can't- really hold this anymore," he apologized through gritted teeth against her shirt, renewed pain straining his voice. "Can't- speak in the other- form, but there- are people you should meet- anyway. Follow- me, 'k?"
She nodded, and after a moment he tugged himself lightly from her grasp and raised himself onto his feet, his pale skin shining dully in the dark. Waving his hand to stop her following him, he took a couple of slow, faltering steps before he shuddered to a halt. Despite the number of times she'd now witnessed the process, Elizabeth still flinched at the flare of the heatless flame, her heart wrenching as a soft keen shivered into the air. Within seconds the blue light faded and he was the small dog again, trembling paws shuffling in his discarded shirt, claws catching at the fabric.
Picking himself up, the dog shook out its fur, sneezing a light spray of sparks, before turning to her with a short rasp of a bark, his ears perking as he waited for her to rise. Getting unsteadily to her feet, Elizabeth gathered Nathaniel's clothes after a small thought, and followed him around the crest of the hilltop, farther and farther from the reach of the forest.
She felt a strange sense of loss when the last of the pines slipped from view.
Wherever she was going, there was little to no turning back now.
