Better than Theatre
Aurora POV
If there is a God of Hunting, he and I are on excellent terms right now.
Dangling from my jaws was the Pièce de résistance of the Forbidden Lands’ ecosystem: a Whisper-Hare.
To the uninitiated, it looks like a white rabbit that fell into a vat of blue dye and grew an extra pair of ears.
To a connoisseur like myself, it is the single most delicious thing with a pulse.
The meat is tender, sweet, and because of their diet of mana-infused clover, leaves a pleasant, tingling sensation on the tongue, like popping candy.
Catching it had been a nightmare. These little bastards can blink short distances, literally teleporting ten feet the second you pounce.
It took me an hour of stalking, a very precise application of wind magic to dampen the air pressure, so it couldn’t feel me coming, and a mid-air acrobatic twist that would have made a circus performer weep with envy.
But I got him.
I trotted through the underbrush, my prize secure, my tail giving a treacherous little wag I couldn’t quite suppress. ’Lunch is served, and it is going to be spectacular.’
The only fly in the ointment was the traffic.
The border was crawling today. Ever since I took down that Shadow-Stag five days ago, the Valdoran patrols had doubled. Maybe even tripled. They were everywhere, squads of three or four wolves, prowling the perimeter, sniffing at every bush and marking every tree.
It was annoying, mostly because they were so loud.
I paused, freezing mid-step as a patrol swept past about fifty yards to my left. Three wolves. A large brown male and two slightly smaller grey males. They were moving in a standard sweep formation, noses to the ground.
‘Amateurs,’ I thought, shifting my grip on the rabbit.
I didn’t run. Running triggers the chase instinct. Instead, I engaged Nature’s Veil. It’s not invisibility, not exactly. It’s more like becoming boring. I wrapped the ambient magic around me, convincing their eyes that I was just a patch of shadow, a trick of the light, a pile of dead leaves.
The brown wolf paused. He looked right at me.
I stared back, motionless, my heart rate forcefully slowed by a calm breath of internal magic.
He snuffed, shook his head, and kept moving. He saw me, but his brain registered “rock” instead of “wolf.”
‘Too easy,’ I scoffed internally. ‘You rely too much on your nose, heavy-foot.’
Once they were gone, I continued deeper into the Forbidden Lands. I needed a spot to eat where I wouldn’t be interrupted. The patrols were sticking close to the edge, afraid to push too deep into the Forbidden Lands where the real monsters lived.
I, however, thrived there.
I found a nice, elevated ridge overlooking a stream. It was downwind from the patrol routes, sun-dappled, and offered a clear escape route if a Wyvern decided to drop by.
I settled down, placing the Whisper-Hare between my paws. I was just about to tuck in, literally anticipating the first bite, when the wind changed.
It wasn’t the stale, sweaty scent of the border guards. It was him. The Storm-Scent. The Alpha from my stag kill.
My ears perked up, swiveling toward the south. The scent was stronger this time, less diluted by time. And it was accompanied by the rest of his chaotic circus. All of them.
‘Again?’ I huffed, looking down at my rabbit.
‘Do these people not have anything better to do? Like run the damn Kingdom, maybe? Why are they hiking in the monster-infested wasteland on a Monday afternoon?’
. Not that I actually knew what day it was.
Being on your own for years tends to mess with your sense of weekdays.
I sighed, a low, frustrated sound in my throat. I wasn’t going to leave my rabbit. I worked too hard for this. But eating with an audience, especially an audience that included an Alpha who seemed suspiciously interested in my existence, was bad for digestion.
I stood up, grabbing the hare.
‘Fine,’ I decided, slinking back into the shadows of the tree line. ‘If you want to play hide and seek, big boy, let’s play. But I’m taking my lunch to go.’
But just as I had started to move, the ground didn’t just shake; it heaved.
I froze, one paw lifted, the Whisper-Hare dangling limply from my jaws. The vibration traveled up my leg bones, deep and rhythmic. Thump. Crash. Thump.
Something massive was bulldozing its way through the Forbidden Lands, and it smelled like sulfur, wet granite, and bad decisions.
A Crag-Back Grizzly.
I rolled my eyes. Of course. Just as I was about to enjoy my meal, a monster decides to rearrange the landscaping. These things are nasty, easily twenty foot tall standing up, with plates of literal rock fused to their fur and a temper that makes a dragon look reasonable.
I checked the wind. The beast was upwind, barreling south. Directly toward the Storm Alpha and his entourage.
‘Well,’ I thought, a mischievous spark lighting up my mind. ‘This just got interesting.’
I didn’t run away. I went up.
With a quick weave of wind magic around my claws, I scaled a massive ancient oak, racing up the bark like a squirrel.
I settled on a thick branch nearly sixty feet high, hidden by the canopy and my magic.
From there, the clearing below spread out like a natural arena, where, if my calculations were right, the bear and that handsome alpha would soon collide.
I settled the rabbit between my paws, tore off a strip of meat, ‘oh, sweet mother of moons, that tingle on the tongue is divine,’ and waited for the show to start.
A moment later, the underbrush exploded.
The Crag-Back burst into the clearing, roaring with a sound like a collapsing mine shaft. It swiped a pine tree out of its way as if it were a toothpick.
Then, the pack arrived.
They didn’t stumble into the beast; they flowed around it. They were already in wolf form, eight of them, a sea of fur and muscle.
I took another bite of rabbit. Crunch. ‘This is better than the theater. Thanks for the show!’
Most packs would panic seeing a Crag-Back. These guys didn’t even break stride.
The reddish wolf, the one who looked like he had too much energy, darted in first. He was fast, annoyingly so. He nipped at the Grizzly’s heels, yipping loud and sharp. The beast roared and swiped, but the red wolf was already gone, weaving between the monster’s legs.
‘Bait,’ I noted, chewing thoughtfully. ‘Classic distraction.’
While the bear was busy trying to flatten the red nuisance, the massive grey wolf, the one built like a boulder, slammed into the bear’s side. It shouldn’t have moved the beast, but the impact was like a cannonball. The Crag-Back stumbled.
‘Heavy infantry. Nice.’
Then came the violence. The female wolf, probably the aggressive one I’d seen earlier, launched herself at the exposed flank, her jaws tearing at the softer fur between the rock plates. She was vicious, hanging on and thrashing like a shark.
But the star of the show was the Storm Alpha.
I watched him with professional appreciation. He didn’t rush. He waited until the bear reared up to shake off the flank-biter. Then, he moved.
He was a blur of obsidian muscle. He launched himself off a rock, clearing ten feet of air effortlessly. He didn’t go for the legs; he went for the throat, right where the rock plating ended and the vulnerable flesh began.
He hit the beast with the force of a falling anvil.
The Crag-Back roared, a gurgling, choked sound, and crashed backward. The ground shook so hard my branch swayed, but I stabilized myself effortlessly, not missing a single chew of my meal.
The pack descended. It was brutal, efficient, and almost silent. No wasted barking. Just coordinated destruction. Within seconds, the bear, a monster that usually takes a platoon of soldiers to put down, was still.
I swallowed the last bite of the Whisper-Hare, licking the electric-sweet grease from my muzzle.
‘Impressive,’ I admitted to myself, wiping a stray bit of fluff from my paw.
They were panting, but no one was limping. No blood on the ground that wasn’t the bear’s. They were checking each other over, nuzzling and chuffing. The Storm Alpha stood over the kill, his golden eyes scanning the perimeter.
He was good. I’d give him that. He controlled the battlefield like someone experienced.
I stood up, stretching my front legs in a deep bow. The show was over, the snacks were gone, and the neighbors had proven they weren’t just noisy tourists. They were pretty capable fighters in their own right.
‘Not bad for a bunch of pampered domestic dogs,’ I thought, turning to slip back into the deeper canopy. ‘But let’s see how you handle something you can’t just bite.’
I felt a distinctly mischievous itch tingling in my paws. I let a wide, wolfish grin stretch across my snout. It was time to introduce myself.
Let’s play.