CHAPTER 2

PART A

The midnight blue predator bounded majestically through the dense forest, powerful muscles propelling it faster than the human eye could follow. Yet, its passage barely ruffled the bushes.

The scene was breath-taking… but also very odd. For one, the midnight dyrewolf did not get its name only for the colour of its fur. It was a strictly nocturnal beast, and this was the middle of the day. Furthermore, this confident king of the forest, for once, looked mightily stressed out. Its tail hid, tucked down between its legs. Its yellow eyes were stretched wide and barely blinked. It was panting loudly, a long tongue lolling limply out of its maw. Had it been a man, he would have been sweating profusely.

Every so often, the wolf darted nervous glances backwards at the large shadow that quietly raced after it.

*BOOOM*

A loud crash rattled the woods. The wolf flinched and froze in its tracks. It half-turned around, panting, with an expression both anxious and awkward on its canine face. A dozen leaps back, the scary black female two-leg who smelled like burnt pine trees… was currently plastered against a tree. The branches of the trice-centenarian oak still rattled from the impact.

Next to her, munching unconcernedly on some fern, stood the inedible prey. The sight of the placid donkey made the wolf’s heartbeat hike. As scary as Smell-like-burnt-pines was, it was the weird Not-prey who set all of the wolf’s instincts on edge. Fear was something the wolf understood. It was natural and useful to avoid danger.

The wolf did not understand this other creature. The not-prey looked soft but was harder than stone. It did not seem to follow, but whenever Smell-like-burnt-pines made them stop, the not-prey was there, eating the vegetation with that bored look on its mug. All of the wolf’s senses said it was prey, yet this prey did not seem to care in the slightest about the wolf’s presence.

The wolf shook its head. It was not natural, it thought. Not natural at all.

“Hahahahaha…”

The cackles of Smell-like-burnt-pines brought the wolf’s attention back to the figure half-embedded into a tree trunk.

This was the fifth time today Samael ran head-first into a tree.

The first time, a small critter had caught her attention. It had looked so white and fluffy, Samael had not been able to look away. She had never seen anything so soft-looking other than her aunt’s feathers. She had tried catching it, but it gave her the slip, and she head-butted a tree.

The second time had been because of a funny-looking bush. The vegetation of the Midworld was fascinating. It took on so many different shapes and colours, and Samael could not figure out for what purpose. In Tartarus, the plants disguised themselves to attract or trap prey, but here, she had yet to come across anything aggressive.

The plants of both worlds did share one thing, though. They did not taste very good.

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Her third encounter with a tree was due to a small stream. She had been so utterly shocked to see so much water flowing freely aboveground that she had tripped over her own foot.

Tartarus was a scorched land. Even the lightning storms only occasionally rained acid that evaporated as soon as it touched the arid ground. Except on scarce opportunities, all Samael ever had had to quench her thirst was the hot blood of her prey. What precious little water could be found at all was hidden deep underground. It was tepid, murky, and had an unpleasant sulphuric aftertaste. The water of the Midworld was so unbelievably limpid and cool in comparison. The stream tasted so pure Samael had almost made herself sick from drinking too much.

The fourth time had been the sunrise.

After getting distracted by the changing light, she had climbed up a tree—the very tree she had just rammed—and found the highest spot that could handle her weight. She had sat astride the branch, hugging the trunk, and watched with a little sadness the stars fade away from the sky.

That bitterness had been blown away when the giant glowing orb rose off the horizon. In its glorious light, the entire Midworld came alive with colours, warmth and noises.

Samael was not sure how long she had stayed in that tree, dazedly basking in the sun’s gentle warmth—so unlike the searing hot winds of Tartarus she was used to. Her trance had lasted at least long enough that the sun had climbed much higher in the light blue sky. Samael also had to track down and recapture her canine guide who had tried running for the hills. Of course, Slei, being the lazy bugger than he was, had not bothered stopping it.

This fifth time, she had become distracted observing the clouds. Instead of an endless mass of writhing black waves that rolled like an inverted, storm-stricken ocean above her head, these scattered, fluffy white bundles of wool drifted lazily in the bright blue sky, changing playfully into shapes which Samael delighted in trying to recognise. Here, she saw an erupting volcano. There, she spotted a clawed hand, a swarm of boiling bats, a devourer mushroom, or a tentacle abomination of the deep.

She was having so much fun, and she had just figured out a cute cerberus when she walked into the tree. Instead of getting irritated, however, she pressed her cheek against the bark, feeling its coarse coolness against her skin, and deeply inhaled the earthly mixture of damp wood, moss and lingering animal scents.

She laughed, then closed her eyes and sighed contently. “The Midworld is so marvellous, Slei. It’s so… alive.”

“Eh aaah,” the donkey agreed nonchalantly, reaching with its teeth to rip another plant. He too was enjoying the Midworld’s abundance of life in his own way.

Samael let out another sigh. She leaned away from the trunk but did not let go, running her hand over the damp mossy bark with a look of wonder on her face. “What am I feeling?” She had never resented the dead expanses of her home; and yet, here, it was as if she was discovering something invaluable that she had been missing her entire life. She had not even been aware that void existed before it started filling up.

A flock of birds noisily took off in the distance. Samael could hear the agitation in their cries and turned to look over. The wolf mimicked her actions, sniffing the air with his ears up. Even Slei lightly pivoted one long ear. The wind changed, and Samael’s sensitive nose picked up a familiar and enticing smell that filled her mouth with drool.

It was blood, and lots of it, enough for the smell to travel all the way here.

Her stomach rumbled. Without her noticing, Samael’s pupils had shrunk to slits, and a wide predatory grin full of pointed fangs had split her face.

She took off running, quickly disappearing in the dense vegetation.

The wolf stood rooted in place, watching the forest swallow Smell-like-burnt-pines. It waited just long enough to convince itself the scary two-leg was not coming back. After a wary glance at the grazing Not-prey, it spun on its paws and darted in the opposite direction at a speed that defied all conceived notions about dyrewolves.

In its limited bestial mind, the apex predator swore solemnly it would never wander even close to this part of the woods ever again.

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