One slice. Two. Wood rattled under the bite of a knife. Stripped bark fell into the water and floated away into the night. Ymiden fireflies winked in the darkness, as if the stars themselves had come down to witness the hunter’s victory.
Everything was impossibly hot, even after he’d shed his shirt and cut half the legs off his pants. The breeze touched him, he could feel it trying to cool him down, but he kept burning. Sweat poured off his forehead, down his back, soaked his filthy bandages. The only way he could stay sane was to sit in the river itself, water up to his waist, which left him just cool enough to understand what he was trying to do.
One slice. Two. Wood rattled under the bite of a knife. Another short stave was whittled down to a deadly point, and he set it aside onto the growing pile of them. Another raw spear of wood picked up. One slice. Two. Wood rattled under the bite of a knife.
Why was the heat still rising?
Elraya rumbled uneasily beside the campfire. Something rustled in the grass. Thairoch and rider both knew the wolves were circling them, and Elraya wanted to fly. To get away. Twice he had tried to scoop Jinyel into his claws, and twice Jinyel had bade him stay grounded. They needed to eat. Well, Jinyel needed to eat. They had lost the morning’s rabbit, and the wolves had frightened all the small creatures away from Jinyel’s traps.
Jinyel had never eaten a wolf before. In the dreamscapes of Emea, plenty of wolves had tried to eat him. If he couldn’t return the favor in dreaming, he could do it in the waking world.
Mere yards away from Jinyel, a twig snapped. Elraya came to attention and bellowed, lumbering a few steps away from the fire. The stalking wolf fled into the night. Jinyel cried out, “Stay!” and after a glare of command, the dismayed Elraya returned to the fireside.
Eventually, another wolf would come. Another wolf would attack. Another wolf would fall, and Jinyel would devour his own helplessness over an open fire as proof that no creature in the world could strike him down.
The infection wouldn’t fade. Jinyel’s hand shook as he pulled the swollen, pulsing cattail off his arm and threw it into the water. He pulled another stalk from the plant beside him, magicking it with a single command:
Adhere: Leech: Infection.
It was the third time he’d cast the same spell since the sun went down. He couldn’t tell if that was his ether shivering from overuse, or just his body. Had he overstepped? He didn’t think so, not since his flesh had been corrupted. But the infection was so high, the cattails filled up so fast, it was hard to keep up.
Elraya bellowed again. Jinyel realized dangerously late that another wolf had come stalking along the river. He grabbed one of his rough spears to defend himself, but Elraya had already scared the thing off. Again. Loyal, foolish Elraya who couldn’t see what Jinyel was trying to do.
Elraya’s vision was too sharp. Sharper than Jinyel’s, at any rate. If Jinyel had any hope of catching prey tonight, the wolves needed to be closer to him than Elraya.
He had five crude spears now, enough to keep going no matter how many of them broke. Jinyel finished carving his last one and gathered them in trembling arms. He stood, fell, and then stood again. It was a long trip into the darkness, made longer by the fact he had to keep looking at Elraya with the command, “Stay.”
Elraya didn’t like it. Elraya thought it was foolish. Elraya was probably right.
With all his willpower, Jinyel observed the details around him. The murmur of slow water. The lick of grass against his skin. Wind in his hair. It faded in and out, and it took another panicked chuff from Elraya to realize he was close to his goal.
Too close.
Jinyel brought up a spear just in time for a wolf to strike, although neither of them were confident enough to do real battle. The wolf shoulder-checked the pointy end, let out a yelp of pain, and retreated into the grass once more. That was the irony of a hunt: between prey and predator, the predator was the cowardly one. It was the predator who had to measure its strikes and choose what damage it was willing to take. A predator needed to walk away from a fight with all four limbs intact, its teeth all in order, or else it would starve.
The predator fought to eat. But the prey? The prey fought to live. Prey-fear was far more dangerous than predator-fear.
He could feel them circling him. Watching him. Trying to gauge how dangerous he really was. Drawn to his dreams, drawn to his ether, their antlers sharp and their wings splayed for…
What? Antlers? Did these wolves have wings?
Another one made a go for him, more cautious than the first. He saw its yellow eyes in the darkness, and for one terrifying moment, he though he saw the shadow of a colossus over all of them. The wolf made a halfhearted snap, and he jabbed his spear toward it ― then fell, panting, as the effort blinded him with pain.
The wolves’ overcaution gave him just enough time to realize what had happened.
This was the waking world. The real world. These were wolves he could actually kill. If he’d done it in dreams, he could do it here, and from his knees he lifted the spear again with an infection-addled cry:
“Come on!”
One of them did. Just one, a young and scrawny thing that couldn’t be older than a year. It hadn’t grown the wisdom of its elders, and didn’t know the true danger of furious prey. It had sharp teeth, and believed those would be enough.
Jinyel’s spear was even sharper, and found its sheath between the wolf’s shoulderblade and collarbone.
The young wolf howled in agony. The others scattered again, further this time, while Elraya finally reached the point of disobedience. The thairoch took wing, bellowing defensively, and came to land just yards away from Jinyel.
Jinyel dug fingers into the wolf’s scruff. Felt its blood rush over his fingers. The wound had crippled it, but not killed it. The thing scrambled to get away, called out to its packmates, but its packmates didn’t come.
Something in Jinyel’s back tore open and began to bleed anew.
Energize: Remove Flesh: Hamstring.
It was a trick he had practised on slavers and bandits, directed by his experience butchering deer in the wild. He crushed the wolf from above with his full weight, so it couldn’t bend around to bite him, and used his magic to eat away at its back leg. His vision blurred. A tendon snapped. The wolf cried out in new terror as another one of its legs was crippled.
Jinyel released the wolf and staggered to his feet. He stood over it, safe in the knowledge that Elraya would defend him from all others. The wolf struggled, but couldn’t run. It had lost the use of two legs, front and back, with the spear still lodged under its shoulder. All it could do was turn its belly to him and scream. And bleed. And believe it still had some chance to live.
Live.
Jinyel’s hands tingled. The scent of hot blood was so strong he could almost taste it. His hands tingled with the memory of his magic. That wolf was alive. He’d felt its enervations as surely as his own, felt its beating heart and seizing lungs as he’d grafted it to permanent disability.
Why had he done that?
What was he doing here?
The wolf had turned belly-up to him, its one working forepaw pulled defensively against its chest. That wasn’t a threat, it was a submission. It was the panic of utter defeat. That wolf was begging him not to kill it, because it was defenseless. He’d crippled and bled it because… because why?
What was he doing?
Reality finally struck him through the fog. This wolf was real. This wolf was alive, no horns, no wings, no wicked shadows to curl into its flesh. A hunter, like him, whose territory he had dropped into for no other reason than he wanted to prove something. There was a tribe waiting for him with open tents, a healer waiting to purge this infection, and he’d come out here because he needed to prove he didn’t need it.
He’d crippled this wolf for no other reason than his own pride.
“I didn’t…” He sank to one knee and reached out. The wolf screamed in fear before he’d even touched it. How much magic did he have left? Enough to fix this. “I’m sorry. I’m not… I’m not the Prince. I shouldn’t have…”
He grabbed its wounded shoulder. It tried to bite him. He couldn’t blame it. With Elraya standing guard, Jinyel straddled the wolf and held down its head so he could pull out the blood-soaked spear.
Energize: Add Flesh: Skin.
It was rough work. Shoddy. But he just needed it to stop bleeding, he just needed the wolf to live. If it lived, he could fix everything. If it lived, he could make things right.
The camp was silent. The Keha’al slept, stars charting their slow course past midnight and beyond. It was the time of night which no one measured, save the two watchmen at either side of the camp.
The sound of wings was no stranger. The kahrunowak, the winged mounts of the Keha’al, occasionally flew during the night for reasons of their own. The key was to listen to herdmates still on the ground; the kahrun and kahrunowak recognized their family. They also recognized their guests.
They recognized Elraya.
Jinyel landed with no alarm, and no turned eye from the watchmen. Not until he dismounted, barely able to see the watchman’s fire in front of him, and dragged an unconscious, crippled wolf in his arms did the herd grow uneasy. They whuffed and stomped at the scent of a predator in their midst, and the northern watchman turned. He saw the thairoch, dark and hulking against the kahrun.
“Who goes?” he asked, not that any answer was needed. Only one person had ever flown to this camp atop a thairoch. “Hunter?”
Jinyel took a step. Another. He barely felt the weight of the wolf; the problem was his legs. They burned, like everything else, and they wouldn’t stop shaking.
“Keha,” Jinyel said, before one of his legs shook too much to stay upright.
He went down to one knee. The watchman disappeared. Someone might have shouted, or Jinyel might have imagined it. Either way, he knew the Keha’s face the moment she appeared. He’d seen it so much since becoming a lucid dreamer, it seemed like the only thing in the world that was real now.
“Take that thing and skin it,” she said to whoever stood next to them. “Help him to the tent―”
“It’s not dead,” Jinyel rasped. Then, in sign language: Help it. Heal it.
There was a moment’s pause.
“Do what with it?” the Keha asked.
“Please.” He leaned the wolf across his knee. Keep it alive. I’ll heal it when I wake. I can fix everything, just ― don’t let it die.
“It’s a wolf.” The Keha stared as if he’d grown two heads. “It’s a wild animal.”
So are we all.
“It will attack as soon as it wakes.”
Tether it. I’ll fix it as soon as I’m able. Keep it alive, and I’ll do anything you ask.
“Anything?” the Keha scoffed. “Even lie still? Even stay put? Even when you get into your head to run wild in the night with your back skinned like a hare for the cooking?”
Even that, he replied. Keep it alive.
She let out a grunt of frustration. There was silence for a moment as she watched him, and eventually she turned with a snap:
“Get a rope around that thing and tie it to the windbent tree. We’ll deal with it tomorrow.”
Don’t kill it.
“Don’t kill it. Foolish boy needs foolish promises to obey common sense.”
The wolf was taken from him by hands he couldn’t quite see. It was hard to track events as they happened; everything made sense too early, or too late for Jinyel to react. He didn’t know he was moving until the Keha’s tent was already in front of them, his arm already hauled around someone’s shoulders.
“You are impossible,” the Keha growled as she held the entrance open. “But by the grace of the Fates and the plains, you will survive to be impossible again.”
Hereafter
Jinyel spends the rest of Hot Cycle 725 with the Keha'al, under the Master Medicine level care of the Keha.
Renown: More weird and unsettling behavior with the Keha'al Do you want this to be considered for Mark Progression? No If any PC in this thread is in a faction, please list them: None Faction Points: N/A Wealth Points: None Collaboration: No Local Language Thread? Yes, Common Sign
Oh man, I love this story. It makes sense that Jinyel will be looking for a scapegoat for the terrors he encountered in the dreamworld. And that the scapegoat takes the form of a wolf is particularly apropos. You didn't lie, this was a brutal thread, where Jinyel really cuts a wolf down to size with his graft. It was downright sadistic at times, which Jinyel only realizes after a moment of merciful perspective. He realizes the wolf was just an innocent more or less. At least where he was concerned. It hadn't done any wrong. That was touching that Jinyel sought to correct the damage he did.
Also the technique of leeching his infection into the cattails was an interesting useage. I'm very impressed with Jinyel's creative way with graft. Some other grafters could certainly learn a thing or two from how he uses it!
Great job with this thread, and it allows Jinyel to receive the treatment he desperately needs, so fills more than one role in his ongoing series.
