I was pretty happy that the dirty old man did not, apparently, have any intention of eating me. He had even saved one of the soldiers! Unless, of course, he was 'saving' him for later...

Nothing had changed when I returned to my body. There wasn't really a way for me to let everyone know that the situation outside had transformed drastically, so I decided to just wait and see what happened. My patience was rewarded a short while later when our door was opened and a call went out (which I couldn't really understand) that was met with obvious relief. Everyone around us began packing things up into neat piles while gathering up any personal belongings they had kept with them over the last few days.

Father came limping into the safe room soon after the bar had been lifted from our side, and we saw him right away what with him being pretty much the tallest person in the whole village. Mother kept her composure, only speeding up slightly as she swept towards him (carrying me with her). And, of course, the first thing she did was scold him, though it was obvious her heart wasn't in it. Father just smiled and scooped us both up in a huge hug, saying nothing at all as mother relaxed against his body, burying her face in his chest.

The best part about the whole ordeal was finally being reunited with my new father, and my smile was just as genuine as my laugh when he held me up and rubbed his hairy cheek against mine. His menacing teeth had never looked so cute! I still didn't know where he had been the whole time, but my assumption was that he was part of a second line of the defense force, meant to distract and delay anything that breached the outer layer of the fortress and buy more time for the children and their caregivers (who were, like Mom and I, generally the ones secured in separate safe rooms).

It felt strange to me that nobody was happy and cheering that the monsters were gone, although the sense of relief was palpable. There were no overt celebrations like you might see after a victory in battle, nor any sense that we had 'won'; instead, the atmosphere was more akin to those who had survived a flood, and could return home to survey the damage. There was, however, a lot of crying going on when people were unable to find their loved ones...

I heard the same word that the sword-wielding soldier had said - 'Merrik' - numerous times, and from context clues I had figured out that it was a name of some sort (possibly even a title). Perhaps the old man was called Merrik? Overall, the sentiment towards the term wasn't as universally thankful as you might expect towards someone that single-handedly ended a calamity, although there were some who appeared to be praying to this 'Merrik' as if he was some kind of diety, or guardian spirit. I even heard a number of villagers quietly curse while invoking the same word (or name), but they were generally hushed or scolded quickly by those nearby as if the act was taboo.

Perhaps there was resentment that he hadn't perfectly saved everyone, mixed in with relief that the ordeal was finally over? With the power the short, dirty, wolf-eating old man had displayed, it was pretty clear that he wasn't a normal person at all. Also, when I thought about it, he was one of the very few people I had seen without a visible mutation, although it could have been hidden under his general lack of hygiene...

Afterward, everyone worked together to distribute food and comfort those who had lost friends and family members. Apparently, everything was fine now that the old man had arrived, and since the danger was completely gone we were quickly let out of our safe rooms. The children were all kept in the fort (along with their caregivers, for the youngest of us), while most of the villagers went outside to (I assume) deal with the corpses of the fallen, and the mess left behind by all the wolves the old man had somehow blown up. Jaws stayed with me - after a short, loud argument where Mom kept pointing at his wounded leg over and over - so the two of us stayed behind and proudly watched her take charge of a few groups of villagers who seemed to be among the less motivated.

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You fools! That's what you get for letting Mom see you slack off! Jaws and I shared a smile, and he joined me in laughing soon afterward.

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In the days following the attack, I witnessed the resiliency of my new home as the villagers rapidly cleared the streets and started fixing what was broken. I listened intently to try and understand more about the situation, but Mom didn’t seem inclined to explain the attack to her baby. Maybe she thought I had been through enough, but there was still a lot I managed to pick up from both context clues, and my growing mastery of the language.

Apparently, attacks like this happen as often as every few years! However, this was the worst one the current generation had suffered, and the death toll was more than ten times greater than any attack in a very long time. From what I gathered, the monsters had snuck past some sort of defenses at night, and had circumvented, or killed, any scouts that would have given us early enough warning to avoid the initial slaughter, and the last-minute evacuation.

The strangest thing to me is how everyone just… went about their lives afterward. At first, I found it hard to wrap my head around the fact that everyone wasn’t freaking out. They treated it more like a natural disaster, maybe an earthquake, and just rebuilt and carried on. Then again, it wasn't as if I was privy to any of the actual discussions, just things I picked up when floating around as a soul-rope-thing (I really needed a term for it, but I was drawing a blank), or overheard from Mom and Dad.

I also gathered that the old man I saw was definitely called Merrik, or maybe 'The Merrik'. I still didn’t know if it was a name, a title, or maybe even a job description, and I didn’t know what he was doing or where he came from, but I heard plenty of conversations in the period of time after he left. Some would go on about how great it was that The Merrik was there to save them, praise Merrik, but it would have been fantastic if he was faster. Others declared that he sometimes took a full week to respond to an attack, and we had gotten lucky he arrived as soon as he did. Everyone old enough to talk knew about him, and had their own opinion.

I was starting to put together a clearer picture – there were periodic attacks, but they were generally carried out by different types of beast (sometimes even multiple types mixed together). The beasts came from ‘the Mountains’, wherever those were. We usually had a few hours warning before the beasts arrived, which was more than enough time to get everyone safely locked up in the fortress. Then, if the beasts were weak enough, the strongest fighters in the village would sortie out from the fortification and try to clear them out. If there were too many beasts, or if there were any true monsters like the giant wolf, we just… waited for Merrik to arrive. He always came, though it usually took him anywhere from a few hours to a week to show up, and he always made a huge mess of the invading monsters.

And that’s about the full extent of what I overheard. I really wanted to know more, and I was especially curious about those red-armored soldiers with the kung-fu skills! They had used some kind of superpowers, or maybe even magic, and that was the first thing about this new world that got me more excited than blacksmithing!

I didn’t know if Merrik was the same as them, but stronger, or if he was something entirely different. Did gods exist here, or demigods like Hercules? Maybe the old man even had flashy powers, but hadn't needed to use them?

I really wanted to talk to Mark about all this, see what he knew. That was the main reason I spent so much time astral traveling in soul form, but it was boring so I went around listening in on other people whenever Mom was busy with her job or some other task. This also had a huge impact on my language learning curve, being the first time I could freely hear adults converse like that (Dad was rather silent, as a general rule, and Mom usually tried to 'include' me in the conversation, which meant it was a lot of baby talk). I did limit myself to short trips though, and I went back to check on my body frequently. Nobody needed to see my mother getting all hysterical again… The village had suffered enough already.