He thoroughly enjoyed himself. The time away was simple, as all things should be. The hunt. The struggle. Mesopredators climbing, clawing, fighting, and competing to become the apex. Live or die. Strength and weakness. Every path, choice and point of divergence split into only two roads. Growth or stagnation.

The decision between the two was utterly straightforward. As all things should be.

A tall, bipedal rock came into his vision. The vibration that transferred to noise barely registered. Not that he could coherently recognize what it said anyway. Its body language told the dirus that it beheld a question. He was tempted to growl, but couldn’t, because the answer was in his mouth.

Blood dripped from Dion’s maw. Dark red and viscous touched with the tang of victory. The kill was fresh. Minutes hold. Being dragged by the neck was a dead four legged, furred beast. Elongated snout of a herbivore but the teeth of a deadly carnivore. Eyes slightly protruded to allow better forward sight. Its hair was as long as its legs, white and matted terribly. Large deer-like antlers jettisoned out of its forehead. All but two faced forward with their form pointed and wicked barbs sticking to the sides. The last came together from opposite stocks. A point of mana gathering, Dion learned.

The hunt was an outlier of the usual pattern. A long, grueling and tedious track with a short, intense battle. Adversely, this beast tracked him down, and this war was one of attrition. The beast had hundreds of shallow scratch marks, and Dion just as many. In the last, decisive bout, Dion gained a large laceration on his shoulder, bleeding lightly with the instant cauterization of the beast's mana attack. While it had its neck severed.

Dion didn’t even glance at the gray sentient as he sat down his kill and began to methodically rip, tear, and eat. He would take the best parts. The tongue, eyes, brain, lungs, kidneys. Then he would let the part-rock thing scavenge his kill. And whatever was left, would be given to the forest. With a muzzle bathed in blood, he took hold of the heart. Ripped it out and set it aside. Then started to eat again.

Weeks in the woods, on the hunt, had changed the wolf-beast. He was larger, fully grown at this point. From paw to ear he was about five feet tall. Big for even dire-wolves. A great mane of black fur. And white tuffs in the places his scars were placed. His teeth were as big as human fingers and sharper than most non-magical weapons. Yet, that was only the physical. And minor compared the leaps and bounds in the metaphysical.

Before, magic was alien. A door only opened thanks to his connection. With the bond strained, he couldn’t rely on Kenan’s share of power. He had to use innate talent and instinct. That changed something about his mana, miniscule but vital. The magic type itself wasn’t much different. Same fire, same tricks. Dion's dantian become bigger and bigger with each passing day. Mana denser and stronger, seeping into his body and feeding it.

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Still, something wasn’t entirely correct. Dion sensed he wasn’t entirely whole. Off balance in a way of being incomplete. A sword without a hilt, an ouroboros set of snakes yet to bite. At first, Dion didn’t understand. The truth and comprehension eluded him. Yet, as he delved further into his bestial understanding. An answer came to him as if it was always there.

As the final bit of heart flushed down Dion's gullet and started to dissolve into his stomach. Later to become dense mana. He stood, tried to shake his fur of blood and meandered to the usual spot of slumber. He eyed the fire long ago started by the rock. Who dragged the carcass his way.

For the first few nights, the fire was a warmth and comfort. Kinship in the connection of his master. Deep in the flames he found the unwavering eyes of Noctis. But now, it felt… not… an impossible convoluted emotion that a non-sentience like himself couldn’t even begin the fathom.

But the depth beyond the fire. Beneath it, hiding in its corners. Where it wasn’t. There…

***

The footprints were larger than his. Significantly bigger. As least thrice the size. Maybe more. Two human-like feet followed by another two sets of fists pressed into the ground. At first Dion thought of a sentient. But its smell betrayed such an assumption. Dion first caught its scent a week ago. Pungent to the point of it being foul. And oddly intertwined with a strange, dark mana.

The beast's presence was merely an echo. He knew that the trek would be days long. Even more time would be fueled into information gathering, and probing the beast's responses. Regardless of the situation, he was hunting an apex. He was a beast and lacked tangible sentience. But that didn’t necessarily make him unintelligible.

Time passed. Day closed and night unfurled, then as the dark lost its power the light shone. Dion's focus disproportionated the time. He was meant for this, built for it. A long trek to seek and kill. As the scent became denser and clearer, even through the awful taste of it, his tail began to sway in excitement.

Soon the only taste that reached his nose was that of the quarry doomed to meet his tooth and claw. Dion had to actively repress his thrill. He came upon an opening. In the middle of it was a large mound cresting on its size to become a hill. A large hole etched to its side. It was a lair, and the dirus knew that a blitz done with hasty forethought would lead to undo consequences.

Dion waited, barely holding back an amalgamation of bloodlust, temptation and an odd bestial instinct to topple the apex. But soon his patience paid a dividend. A large, much bigger than himself beast lumbered out of the cave. A bi-pedal thing emerged, shaped vaguely consisting of a human. It was hunched and leaned on two sets of corded, muscle bound arms. Black fur covered most of it, with its stomach, burley chest and other bits in a dark gray color. High, black ears that came to a point. Large flat nose with three eyes, one on the forehead. It snarled, all of its teeth unerringly sharp with a second row emerging. It leaped to a sudden standing position as it viciously beat its chest to the beat of the tyrant. A spittle flying roar followed that.

Dion was tempted to howl his challenge then and there. But he waited, and delved back into the forest. Not now, but soon. So very soon.