Ymiden 5th. The Untold.
Continues from here.
The scent was not fresh, nor clean. In the past, he'd smelled meat and felt his stomach growling, but today the scent he followed was one of burning corpses as he rushed through the chromatic void. The creature they chased was a thing of shadows that jumped erratically between points, its speed allowing it to put massive amounts of distance between them in an instant... but this was Emea, where distance and time were loose constructs. Grey, Cold, Myrth, Squeak, Vabina, Arch and Cyshe converged around Nir'wei as he felt, through his Taste of Prey, where the creature was... the direction, the distance, the leap. The swirling colours around them all blurred together as his thoughts took over. It was like diving underwater, but instead of immersing himself, he pulled the water over himself... and they leaped through the void, flashing with a roar of sound and colour right behind the ink-like monster. It was only through knowing exactly where he wanted to be that he could make the jump, but he was glad he did. Even as the creature spun and launched itself straight for him, opening a black mouth filled with far too many fang-like teeth that looked like they could be made of gemstones.
It didn't get the chance to put them to use. Vabina roared the moment it leaped, and the lightning cat hurled a yellow, crackling bolt straight into its side. As it backed away, Nir'wei jumped forward for another snap of his teeth, the thing jerked away, but by that moment the others had arranged themselves to attack from above, beneath, the left and the right. In this three-dimensional space it could attack from multiple angles and confuse foes; if it had been fighting one by itself, that added maneuverability would have made it an unstoppable force when pitted against something less agile or accustomed. Here, it meant they could attack from anywhere, sometimes in two directions at once. He could see the glint of glowing purple eyes opening all over its oily skin, surveying them all with critical, inhuman eyes... and then with a shudder it vanished yet again, dragged through an invisible current of concentrated energy.
"We can't catch it," growled Grey. He knew what the wolf meant; in a traditional hunt, they'd be able to surround it completely and cut off any chance of escape. Here, not only did they have to contend with three-dimensional space, but also the ability to slip across huge distances with a single leap to completely cut through defensive blockades. They couldn't even surround it from a distance and ambush, without the ability to limit the immense distances it could pass in mere seconds.
Nir'wei stopped and sniffed the air again. The scent changed direction. Without any obstacles to maneuver he knew the scent trail would always be a direct, perfect line, so it had no reason to change unless the creature had suddenly made a lateral move. Then it changed again, and again. Where was it going? He closed his eyes, feeling with his nose the steadily increasing distance, the continuous diagonal shifts, like it was... oh.
"It's not just looking to escape us." If it were just trying to increase distance, it could double back on itself, make sudden and random moves in any direction just for a temporary escape. If that were the case they'd never be able to catch it, lacking the speed and mobility that it did; attempting a long-term pursuit would be impossible without fatigue to wear any of them down, nor the necessary time investment for a patient creeping advance. Ambush was also off the table without understanding of the terrain. "Feel the direction changes. It's trying to throw us off... but it's heading towards something." A home? An escape route? Predict where it was heading and they could cut it off the next time it tried to jump away; its lateral moves could have disguised its intentions if not for the fact that they could track its movements from a distance, but keep using them and it wasted more time to reach the same point. Time they could spend predicting where it would next land and arriving there pre-emptively. "Cold, Myrth, peel off ahead and corner it the next time it tries to jump ahead. Grey, Squeak, you're with me. We push it into running and pinch it between them and us."
It was a risky move, particularly because every time they split their numbers, there was a higher chance of one group being overwhelmed. It meant that the next time they rushed in, they had to give it everything they had. The next jump, as the inky-black thing spun once again with its teeth bared, he kept running. Straight for the face, mouth already wide open, ready for teeth to meet teeth. To tear into something and rip. To feed. When had he ever felt like this last? The hunt had always been something practical, something necessary for survival, to be approached objectively. Now, he ran head-first, heedless.
Because this time, his life, his soul, was on the line. If he miscalculated, he was dead on the spot, but if he avoided risks, ran from danger and stuck to only what he knew best, he'd never succeed, and die regardless. Everything boiled down to the moment.
The creature slithered mid-leap, its body contorting bonelessly for a moment like the puddle of ooze it so often resembled, and vanished again. In the wrong direction. Just like before, zipping between several different points at an unprecedented speed, except now in reverse. What?! Squeak was in the best position, pressed as close as he could to Nir'wei for guidance, and seeing the opportunity he spun and raced after it, rebounding off a floating stone larger than his own head before vanishing in a streak. "It's throwing us off. Spread out, get ready to converge the moment it shows itself." Vabina and Grey were the last two to peel away, one going high and the other going low. It was a frantic move, in all honesty. It was just so frustrating, how it could evade them at every turn. Even as he could still sense its movements as the scent trail changed again and again, coming from above, then below, then off to one side, then back again. Was it repeating?
Wait, was this a pattern?
There was a ripple, almost like a brief flash of colour and sound, and the creature was before him again. Up close, he could make out so many details that had evaded him before... and he could tell why, too. It changed, constantly. Even floating before him motionless, he could see very human-looking hands pushing out of the top of its 'head', each sporting four fingers and a thumb, wrist and elbow joints... they hung limp and stuck out at odd angles, but the way they were limited to the top, it was like a stylistic choice. Its maw lacked lips, jagged teeth sticking out in odd contrast to the rest of its glossy black and purple body... and he couldn't count the eyes on its face, because they didn't follow any order, nor were they even symmetrical, just slapped on wherever there seemed to be room.
Despite that, he could pick out parts that looked roughly animal. Six legs was unusual, but two in the front and four at the back made it easier to pair them together and think of them as almost canine. The number of toes changed at will, but seemed to regularly settle for three, occasionally growing a fourth when it needed to scratch at itself - perhaps that was just a thumb of somesort? Did it have bones? He didn't think so, its movements were too fluid, even the arms with joints and structure seemed to spin and sway in ways that no human arm could.
Suddenly it hissed, making a strange noise, like three different voices overlapping one-another, and it struck. The others could feel his distress and he could feel them all itching at the corners of his mind as they readied themselves to appear at his side, but he shoved them back as he recoiled from the first bite, then swept underneath the second. "It's waited until I'm alone! You come now and it'll run off again." Whatever this thing was, whatever it wanted, he needed to know. Unfortunately, at that moment, the only thing it seemed interested in was clawing him to death. The unnatural 'human' arms on its head swung around angrily, trying to claw and grab at him in an unfocused jumble; they knocked into one-another in their eagerness for him, so it clearly didn't have a lot of control. He tried to use this to his advantage as they swung back and forth, snapping at each-others heels in small flurries of teeth and claws, but even lacking the coordination, every swipe came dangerously close to tearing into his hide. It set him on the back foot, always recoiling, defending, jumping above or below in the hopes that using the unnatural space could play to his advantage somehow - but this wasn't unnatural for this being. It streamed through empty space and floated without pause, it manifested stones and huge walls to jump off, to separate them, even to use as weapons, throwing them into his sides and one directly against his chest, making the wolf wheeze for non-existent air as his mind struggled to catch up.
It didn't add up, it didn't make sense, it wasn't fast enough. And then it bit him. Cold teeth sank into the nape of his neck, top and bottom, right down to the gums. Pain flared everywhere at once, pounding on his skull, but there was something else there. Colour. Vibrant, whirling colour, bursting from the back of his head, clashing with the pain. It fought with the writhing pain, a separate battle in its own right deep inside his skull, but look deep enough and he could feel something like what he'd felt before, an alien type of dream, fleeting and blurry and difficult to focus on. A chick in a nest feeding from a mother. Two friends embracing after a powerful argument. A hand reaching towards the sky, where a huge blue sun scorched the sky blood red. A mouse feasting on a cat.
The creature clenched his jaws and pain bloomed all the more harshly against the vivid images, and without thinking he squirmed, twisting his head in the thing's grip, feeling the tear of skin and flesh - and he clamped his mouth tight around the things side, tasting something sharp and fizzy on his mouth as his teeth sank in. The colours burst, violent, powerful, intense. The powerful odour of burned chicken sizzled in his nose and three voices tried to say different things at once in his ears. A feedback loop?
They both ripped away from each-other in unison, the creature's chin dripping with blood he knew was leaking from wounds on his back. Well, it wasn't blood, actually. It looked clear and sticky, and the pain eased almost at once. Right. I'm not really alive... I'm not really sure what I am. He could taste the thing's blood on his chin, a disgusting and unexplainable taste, but he could see the wide teethmarks his fangs had left behind smoothing over like wet sand.
In seconds he was surrounded by wolves, all their heckles on-end, Vabina looming behind them all with a crackling energy that could cow a thunderstorm. "WAIT." It was making another noise, three voices overlapping one-another over and over again in sequence, but it was... purring? "I think... I think I just made a friend." It certainly wasn't attacking him anymore. If anything, all the hands on top of its head were flexing their fingers eagerly as it looked at him with several pure purple eyes and cocked its head. "We kinda shook hands." Had it been trying to communicate with him this whole time? Or had he just really been misreading the whole experience. There really was no right way to read it.
Continues from here.
The scent was not fresh, nor clean. In the past, he'd smelled meat and felt his stomach growling, but today the scent he followed was one of burning corpses as he rushed through the chromatic void. The creature they chased was a thing of shadows that jumped erratically between points, its speed allowing it to put massive amounts of distance between them in an instant... but this was Emea, where distance and time were loose constructs. Grey, Cold, Myrth, Squeak, Vabina, Arch and Cyshe converged around Nir'wei as he felt, through his Taste of Prey, where the creature was... the direction, the distance, the leap. The swirling colours around them all blurred together as his thoughts took over. It was like diving underwater, but instead of immersing himself, he pulled the water over himself... and they leaped through the void, flashing with a roar of sound and colour right behind the ink-like monster. It was only through knowing exactly where he wanted to be that he could make the jump, but he was glad he did. Even as the creature spun and launched itself straight for him, opening a black mouth filled with far too many fang-like teeth that looked like they could be made of gemstones.
It didn't get the chance to put them to use. Vabina roared the moment it leaped, and the lightning cat hurled a yellow, crackling bolt straight into its side. As it backed away, Nir'wei jumped forward for another snap of his teeth, the thing jerked away, but by that moment the others had arranged themselves to attack from above, beneath, the left and the right. In this three-dimensional space it could attack from multiple angles and confuse foes; if it had been fighting one by itself, that added maneuverability would have made it an unstoppable force when pitted against something less agile or accustomed. Here, it meant they could attack from anywhere, sometimes in two directions at once. He could see the glint of glowing purple eyes opening all over its oily skin, surveying them all with critical, inhuman eyes... and then with a shudder it vanished yet again, dragged through an invisible current of concentrated energy.
"We can't catch it," growled Grey. He knew what the wolf meant; in a traditional hunt, they'd be able to surround it completely and cut off any chance of escape. Here, not only did they have to contend with three-dimensional space, but also the ability to slip across huge distances with a single leap to completely cut through defensive blockades. They couldn't even surround it from a distance and ambush, without the ability to limit the immense distances it could pass in mere seconds.
Nir'wei stopped and sniffed the air again. The scent changed direction. Without any obstacles to maneuver he knew the scent trail would always be a direct, perfect line, so it had no reason to change unless the creature had suddenly made a lateral move. Then it changed again, and again. Where was it going? He closed his eyes, feeling with his nose the steadily increasing distance, the continuous diagonal shifts, like it was... oh.
"It's not just looking to escape us." If it were just trying to increase distance, it could double back on itself, make sudden and random moves in any direction just for a temporary escape. If that were the case they'd never be able to catch it, lacking the speed and mobility that it did; attempting a long-term pursuit would be impossible without fatigue to wear any of them down, nor the necessary time investment for a patient creeping advance. Ambush was also off the table without understanding of the terrain. "Feel the direction changes. It's trying to throw us off... but it's heading towards something." A home? An escape route? Predict where it was heading and they could cut it off the next time it tried to jump away; its lateral moves could have disguised its intentions if not for the fact that they could track its movements from a distance, but keep using them and it wasted more time to reach the same point. Time they could spend predicting where it would next land and arriving there pre-emptively. "Cold, Myrth, peel off ahead and corner it the next time it tries to jump ahead. Grey, Squeak, you're with me. We push it into running and pinch it between them and us."
It was a risky move, particularly because every time they split their numbers, there was a higher chance of one group being overwhelmed. It meant that the next time they rushed in, they had to give it everything they had. The next jump, as the inky-black thing spun once again with its teeth bared, he kept running. Straight for the face, mouth already wide open, ready for teeth to meet teeth. To tear into something and rip. To feed. When had he ever felt like this last? The hunt had always been something practical, something necessary for survival, to be approached objectively. Now, he ran head-first, heedless.
Because this time, his life, his soul, was on the line. If he miscalculated, he was dead on the spot, but if he avoided risks, ran from danger and stuck to only what he knew best, he'd never succeed, and die regardless. Everything boiled down to the moment.
The creature slithered mid-leap, its body contorting bonelessly for a moment like the puddle of ooze it so often resembled, and vanished again. In the wrong direction. Just like before, zipping between several different points at an unprecedented speed, except now in reverse. What?! Squeak was in the best position, pressed as close as he could to Nir'wei for guidance, and seeing the opportunity he spun and raced after it, rebounding off a floating stone larger than his own head before vanishing in a streak. "It's throwing us off. Spread out, get ready to converge the moment it shows itself." Vabina and Grey were the last two to peel away, one going high and the other going low. It was a frantic move, in all honesty. It was just so frustrating, how it could evade them at every turn. Even as he could still sense its movements as the scent trail changed again and again, coming from above, then below, then off to one side, then back again. Was it repeating?
Wait, was this a pattern?
There was a ripple, almost like a brief flash of colour and sound, and the creature was before him again. Up close, he could make out so many details that had evaded him before... and he could tell why, too. It changed, constantly. Even floating before him motionless, he could see very human-looking hands pushing out of the top of its 'head', each sporting four fingers and a thumb, wrist and elbow joints... they hung limp and stuck out at odd angles, but the way they were limited to the top, it was like a stylistic choice. Its maw lacked lips, jagged teeth sticking out in odd contrast to the rest of its glossy black and purple body... and he couldn't count the eyes on its face, because they didn't follow any order, nor were they even symmetrical, just slapped on wherever there seemed to be room.
Despite that, he could pick out parts that looked roughly animal. Six legs was unusual, but two in the front and four at the back made it easier to pair them together and think of them as almost canine. The number of toes changed at will, but seemed to regularly settle for three, occasionally growing a fourth when it needed to scratch at itself - perhaps that was just a thumb of somesort? Did it have bones? He didn't think so, its movements were too fluid, even the arms with joints and structure seemed to spin and sway in ways that no human arm could.
Suddenly it hissed, making a strange noise, like three different voices overlapping one-another, and it struck. The others could feel his distress and he could feel them all itching at the corners of his mind as they readied themselves to appear at his side, but he shoved them back as he recoiled from the first bite, then swept underneath the second. "It's waited until I'm alone! You come now and it'll run off again." Whatever this thing was, whatever it wanted, he needed to know. Unfortunately, at that moment, the only thing it seemed interested in was clawing him to death. The unnatural 'human' arms on its head swung around angrily, trying to claw and grab at him in an unfocused jumble; they knocked into one-another in their eagerness for him, so it clearly didn't have a lot of control. He tried to use this to his advantage as they swung back and forth, snapping at each-others heels in small flurries of teeth and claws, but even lacking the coordination, every swipe came dangerously close to tearing into his hide. It set him on the back foot, always recoiling, defending, jumping above or below in the hopes that using the unnatural space could play to his advantage somehow - but this wasn't unnatural for this being. It streamed through empty space and floated without pause, it manifested stones and huge walls to jump off, to separate them, even to use as weapons, throwing them into his sides and one directly against his chest, making the wolf wheeze for non-existent air as his mind struggled to catch up.
It didn't add up, it didn't make sense, it wasn't fast enough. And then it bit him. Cold teeth sank into the nape of his neck, top and bottom, right down to the gums. Pain flared everywhere at once, pounding on his skull, but there was something else there. Colour. Vibrant, whirling colour, bursting from the back of his head, clashing with the pain. It fought with the writhing pain, a separate battle in its own right deep inside his skull, but look deep enough and he could feel something like what he'd felt before, an alien type of dream, fleeting and blurry and difficult to focus on. A chick in a nest feeding from a mother. Two friends embracing after a powerful argument. A hand reaching towards the sky, where a huge blue sun scorched the sky blood red. A mouse feasting on a cat.
The creature clenched his jaws and pain bloomed all the more harshly against the vivid images, and without thinking he squirmed, twisting his head in the thing's grip, feeling the tear of skin and flesh - and he clamped his mouth tight around the things side, tasting something sharp and fizzy on his mouth as his teeth sank in. The colours burst, violent, powerful, intense. The powerful odour of burned chicken sizzled in his nose and three voices tried to say different things at once in his ears. A feedback loop?
They both ripped away from each-other in unison, the creature's chin dripping with blood he knew was leaking from wounds on his back. Well, it wasn't blood, actually. It looked clear and sticky, and the pain eased almost at once. Right. I'm not really alive... I'm not really sure what I am. He could taste the thing's blood on his chin, a disgusting and unexplainable taste, but he could see the wide teethmarks his fangs had left behind smoothing over like wet sand.
In seconds he was surrounded by wolves, all their heckles on-end, Vabina looming behind them all with a crackling energy that could cow a thunderstorm. "WAIT." It was making another noise, three voices overlapping one-another over and over again in sequence, but it was... purring? "I think... I think I just made a friend." It certainly wasn't attacking him anymore. If anything, all the hands on top of its head were flexing their fingers eagerly as it looked at him with several pure purple eyes and cocked its head. "We kinda shook hands." Had it been trying to communicate with him this whole time? Or had he just really been misreading the whole experience. There really was no right way to read it.
