Listen or die.

When your body is screaming at you and your nerves are afire, remember these words. The gift of fear was given by the gods to us humans alone. We are not the fastest, nor the strongest. We have no natural weapons and no armoured shells to defend us. What we have is fear.

That feeling in your guts, that certainty that something is wrong and the Dread Wolves of Scrimshal are at your heels – that is what will save you. Do not doubt it.

Listen. Give yourself over to that fear. Hear its siren call and respond in kind. To do otherwise is death.

Speech attributed to Lanista Gallatius during the Rising Tide rebellion – transcribed from graffiti in the ruins of the Mystine Empire’s capital, 1st cleansing.

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Dawn broke and found me alone in the woods in a way I hadn’t experienced for almost two months. No birds chirped nearby, greeting the day with their characteristic fervour. No small rodents snuffling through the undergrowth, no stags bellowing in the distance.

An eery silence had descended over the area, and my body had reacted. I woke to every tiny hair on my limbs standing upright, the back of my neck itching and my spit tasting sour and thick in my mouth. My pupils drank in the light as soon as my eyes flew open, already dilated. Sweat coated the inside of my palms, and my legs and hands trembled with the need to move.

The cloying hands of sleep’s warm embrace were blasted off my mind in an instant by the deluge of adrenaline coursing through my system.

I rolled to my feet, muscles loose and eager to obey my commands. My hands rose to my shoulders even as my legs bent to sink me into a fighting crouch. I turned, surveying all around me before looking up to the canopy. I rotated in place, small movements of my feet, little shuffles so as to always keep both feet close to the ground, ready to propel me away from whatever was stalking me.

Nothing was within sight though. No beast or calamity came for me, only the strange stillness of the forest. A few more moments of stillness passed before I decided to move.

I gathered my cloak, loading the two internal pockets with my knife and fire-starter pebble, grabbed two javelins and started towards the nearest tree. I then reconsidered, chucking the 10 remaining wooden stakes down to the forest floor, before turning back to the tree and shimmying down to the ground.

No wolves greeted me as I landed, as expected, and I set off. I had no idea what could quiet the forest like this, but I was willing to bet that whatever had caused this strange stillness had also drawn the wolves to investigate.

Now was a great chance to put some distance between us, to get as far away from this area as possible. With my new strength and endurance, not to mention skills, I should have been able to make it out of the forest and onto the safety of the ridge before the sun fully rose.

Perhaps the wolves would run me down before then, but it was less of a risk than the alternative I was currently considering. I knew I could outpace them if they didn’t catch up to me within the first half of the flight through the forest, as I had outlasted them before that way. They were incredibly quick over short distances, but their sustainable loping was actually slower than my consistent run, and they couldn’t keep up their faster pace for long.

It was clearly the best option, and one my body was already automatically taking me on, as I started to rush through the trees and over fallen logs. Within only a few minutes the noise returned to the forest, insects buzzing around and birds calling to each other again.

But my mind wouldn’t leave the rock I had lived on for the last day and a half, no matter the widening distance between us physically. I was replaying the fear and pain that those wolves had put me through.

I knew I was being an idiot; they were just animals doing what animals do. But I still felt those emotions, and my logical mind couldn’t overrule the hatred and blame I felt for the Tarkenzi pack that had pursued me across a forest a hunt a hundred miles long. Why should they get to live, to slink away after other prey now that they didn’t have the confidence in taking me on without overwhelming numbers?

My feet slowed and I turned back, looking through the trees towards where my boulder still lay. What if they were successful in their new hunt? Would they follow my tracks, and ambush me later? And if they weren’t successful – If they died instead and I never saw them again – would I ever stop looking over my shoulder?

Probably, when I left the endless valley…which meant I had another week or two of constant low-level fear to look forward to at the least. Fuck that.

I teetered on the edge of a decision for a few moments before finally committing and then started running back through the woods. I knew I was being impulsive and stupid, but I’d spent so long reacting to the world around me, I needed to follow through on something of my own.

They’d picked a fight with me, and I had survived. I’d bled and killed for this fight and at the moment of my victory, they had run away. I couldn’t accept it, and I would not be denied my win by some spindly fucking wobbly-necked assholes!

As I retraced my steps, I noticed the bizarre silence had moved, only being present at the very moment that I reached the rock. Thankfully, this gave me a direction to search in, and my traitorous mind used that as an excuse to remind me how poorly thought out this decision was.

I ignored it, as was becoming habit at this point, and pushed onwards. I no longer ran, instead trotting at a slow jog that allowed me to keep one javelin propped on my shoulder and ready to throw, with my head on a swivel, searching for any signs of the wolves’ passage.

I saw none of course, they were canny hunters and left very few tracks to an inexperienced eye like mine, but I did reach the edge of the silence again. It was strange, as I’d considered it to simply be the absence of normal forest noises but now that I was more cognizant of the differences as I left the domain, I realised it was far more thorough.

Sound didn’t seem to travel more than a meter in any direction. I heard my footfalls and the sharp crack as I snapped a nearby tree branch, but on throwing a random sick against a tree a few meters away, I heard no sound whatsoever despite seeing the impact.

It was disconcerting to say the least, and I would have been more afraid that something was sneaking up on me without my awareness if that hadn’t been a pretty much constant worry already.

I traced along the edge of the field, a few minutes of walking enough to confirm that it was roughly circular. At least it would be if it kept a consistent shape – for all I knew it could be constantly in flux around me. On the assumption that it was a circle, I cut inwards towards the centre of it, hefting a javelin in either hand and beginning the process of psyching myself up for the fight ahead.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Within minutes I came across the first corpse. One of the two remaining smaller wolves, burnt so thoroughly not much remained but darkened bones. It wasn’t until I reached the charred body that the smell hit me, and I mentally added smell to the list of senses obscured by this weird domain.

I tried to gain as much information from the corpse as I could, but after some poking around all I could tell was that the creature had been burnt to death, and swiftly. I saw no other marks that could be a killing blow on the bones, and there was no skin, fur or other flesh on the skeleton for me to analyse.

Just before I stood to carry on, my Guerrilla Warfare skill gave me a nudge, and I focused on the lower jaw of the wolf’s skull. A few quick stomps and the entire jawbone came apart from the rest of the skull, and I hefted it in one hand. The grip around the incisors at the front was uncomfortable, but after wrapping the remains of my shirt around it in a temporary grip, it was much easier to hold.

The two mandibles – the hinge joints that attached the lower jawbone to the rest of the skull – had been delicate joints and had a rounded edge, but my leather clad heel had broken them apart and left jagged edges on either side, leading the whole jawbone to look like some sort of primal gauntlet-weapon.

I was sceptical of its efficacy since the jagged edges weren’t well tapered at all, but then with my enhanced strength, what qualified as a weapon was possibly a different calculation than it would have been otherwise.

I moved forwards again at a slight crouch, trying to minimise the sound my footsteps made on the twig strewn forest floor. I then remembered that sound wasn’t spreading in this zone and stood up sheepishly. Luckily nobody was around to witness my stupidity, so I continued on without further embarrassment.

I passed signs of further fighting, with small sections of the undergrowth being burned away, leaving nothing but ash. No blood was visible – to my eyes at least – so it seemed a fairly one-sided fight. I didn’t run, instead moving slowly and carefully, determined to notice my enemy before they saw me.

And so it was with great reluctance that I soon found myself directly in the middle of a fight to the death.

It happened so suddenly. One moment I was brushing past a tree, scanning the immediate surroundings for any hint of movement, and the next I nearly stumbled upon a whirlwind of violence.

Before me, rolling around on the floor were two wolves, one of the larger ones and one of the normal ones that I had killed before. They were spitting and biting and snarling with ferocity, tearing each other to pieces before my eyes in a display of soundless ferocity.

With a final step forwards that I had been unable to stop by the time I noticed the two creatures, I entered the range where sound could travel and was hit with the smell of blood and the sound of violent combat.

I tried to back away before being noticed, as I was clearly missing something here, but before I could make it back behind the tree and out of direct sight, the larger wolf sunk his teeth into the smaller one and tore out its throat with a vicious yank.

I stared in horror at the large animal looking up at me. Yellow eyes boring into me on top of a long neck, but unlike my other previous kills, this wolf was built less like a slender deer and more like a large wolf from Earth.

It slowly rose to its feet, padding to the side away from the corpse of its pack mate. Its gaze was level with mine, and while that sickly sinuous neck added some height, its shoulders were at least level with my chest. The improvised javelins suddenly seemed a little flimsy and inadequate, and the flowers of vengeance I’d been nurturing in my soul since I woke began to wilt.

This wasn’t just an animal with sharp teeth and pack tactics; this was a creature larger and stronger than me, and with hunting instincts that I couldn’t hope to match.

But then was that true anymore? I was far stronger than my frame would suggest, could run for half a day without stopping and lift rocks with ease that my previous self wouldn’t have got off the ground.

And while I didn’t have a particularly strong bite, I still had teeth of my own. I raised the improvised gauntlet weapon I had created only minutes ago and felt confidence start to seep back into my bones. I might die here, sure, but I was about to battle a goddamn wolf with an improvised knife made from the skull of another wolf. If this wasn’t the coolest thing I’d ever done, I was way more interesting than I’d given myself credit for.

“Recognize this? I’ll make another one with your corpse” I said.

So much for being cool, you dickhead I thought derisively to myself, and as much as I hated agreeing with him, I had to admit that my inner critic was on the mark this time. I wasn’t sure what good trash talk would do against a wolf that couldn’t speak my language anyway, but I had never been particularly good at banter at the best of times, and it showed.

Perhaps it was more effective than I thought though, because the wolf chose that moment to charge at me with a few long bounds. I fell back, shocked by the speed of the attack, but still managed to raise the javelin at approximately the right angle to intercept the falling wolf. It smashed through it with ease, barely impaled and not at all slowed down, and only a frantic roll to the side prevented me from having my skull crushed by a bite.

I recovered from my roll in time to see the wolf spinning in place from its missed bite attempt, and lurching forwards again with incredible speed. I activated Check-Step and immediately rolled back the way I’d just come, stabbing my fist up at the wolf’s stomach as it lunged over me.

The improvised weapon scraped along its belly doing little damage with the right-hand prong, but the left-hand one slipped in easily, punching through the layer of tough muscle and creating a large gash as I ripped it out. I planted a hand and pushed to my feet as I came to the end of the movement and stared into the piercing gaze of the large wolf.

I was panting and blood ran down my chest from where it gushed from the wolf’s belly wound. It snarled, and I caught a promise of retribution in its tone. It seemed far too complex an emotion for such a creature to form, but I did recall my dog once stealing my wife’s slippers in retaliation for taking away his toy, so I supposed anything was possible. The unexpected pang of emotion hit me out of nowhere, and I suddenly realised this was the first time since I had arrived in this world that I had thought of either of them. It didn’t make sense, I shou-

My racing thoughts were interrupted by nearly a hundred kilos of snarling wolf charging towards me. I juked to the side, and managed to avoid the rush, but I was now in a worse position, backed against the tree. I realised that the wolf was herding me, driving me back against something solid to reduce my possible movements.

Maybe it was just hunting instincts, but why would it herd me, play around with positioning and tactics if it could just rip out my throat? Unless it wasn’t confident in its superiority in a straight up fight? I rushed forwards, directly at the animal. It leapt to meet me, but I activated Check-Step and jumped vertically, allowing the wolf to pass beneath me by inches.

I had envisioned myself twirling in the air to land behind the wolf with a dancer’s grace and an acrobat’s precision. Reality had me flailing in the air only to bounce off the ground and inexplicably land on my feet. I took a stumbling step back to regain my balance before charging forwards again in a drunken tackle. The wolf used the tree in front of it to slow down, turning a headlong rush into a shoulder check. The tree, unsurprisingly, was completely unfazed and the wolf bounced off, using its reversal of momentum to wheel around to meet me. But I was faster.

My arms wrapped around the shoulder of the wolf as my chest crashed into its own, a twist of my hips enough to unbalance it, and I drove it to the ground. The landing was surprisingly soft for me, ensconced as I was in its a great fluffy chest.

For the Tarkenzi it was noticeably harder, and I felt the ribs beneath me give way as they were slammed into the gnarled tree roots below. I raised my fist and drove the bone weapon into its stomach and chest one after the other. I drew back and punched forwards again at its neck, desperately trying to keep its powerful jaws away from my face and managed to hit something hard and inflexible.

I rolled backwards, finally seeing the bloody maw of the wolf inches from where I had been. Its lips were ruined, and I realised the thing I had just smashed my weapon into must have been its mouth as it came in for a bite. I stumbled back a few steps, searching around till I found one of the discarded javelins. The wolf didn’t rise, just staring balefully at me from its position on the floor, great chest heaving with ragged breaths.

It seemed almost cruel to just watch it breathe its last, and so I hefted the javelin, prepared to put an end to its no doubt very painful existence. Just as I moved into position to deliver judgement, sound returned to me.

The domain had been dropped, and a howl cut through the air. The Tarkenzi before me raised its long neck and returned the gesture, its howl guttering to a halt as I slammed the javelin through its windpipe. A few choking coughs slipped out before it slumped.

You have killed a Tarkenzi Maned-Wolf (level 31). Experience gained.

You have reached level 18. Attribute points available for allocation.

Guerrilla Warfare has gained in level. Guerrilla Warfare - level 7.

Check-Step has gained in level. Check-step – level 2.