I hate goodbyes.

It’s one of the reasons, I think, my breed generally has such a mercifully short lifespan. Generally, we snuff it in the night, in our blissful sleep between our owners’ thighs.

Though nowadays who knows – maybe I’m immortal. Astonishing what a few drops of special-boy human blood will do to a hound, huh?

Anyway, my farewell to the wolves of clan Jagged-Tooth was smooth enough. To be honest, it was the words of their Elder that stuck with me the most and – I think – will stay with me as I depart on what will very likely be a suicidal journey.

Freedom…it means having a choice…

I probably think about this more than I should. I think about how I could have answered him back – stating with feeling that I feel like I’ve never had any say in any of this.

And then there’s that pale guy from my dreams…

“What do you think, Swift – is freedom real?” I ask my companion as he takes us both through a section of reeds that lead us into a riverbed filled with spume.

(Did I mention he’s currently carrying me on his back? No? Ok. He’s carrying me. He offered, and this Lightborn-Loafblade is a tired pup. What can I say? There’re some perks to being a hero.)

“Our kind lives on the principle of freedom, Little-Brother,” he responds, nosing the dead ground to assess the tracks of any plantlings still stalking around this area. He’d guided me through the mountain ridge down to the edge of the forest, and had said that following this decaying river was our best chance of getting to the Fortress of Glumgavel within a week if we kept moving, using the dark to our advantage.

I have to admit, he’s a good tracker. And a good skulker when he had to be. I’ve begun to feel like my [Snoop] ability is nigh on pointless with this guy by my side.

“But it is not an easy thing to attain,” he continues as he tiptoes through the reeds in our way, avoiding straying near any trees, moving with total control over every hair on his shimmering white body. “None are born free. Deciding to pursue one’s own path is the first step on the road to true independence.”

“Huh,” I sniff. “We gotta choose to have a choice, eh?”

He turns his head to smile at me. “I didn’t say it was simple, Little-Brother.”

On the first night we are beset by rainfall so torrential that Swiftrunner suggested we take shelter in a rocky underpass that my [Snoop] tells me once served as a bear’s nest.

“He won’t be coming back?” I ask as Swiftrunner makes himself comfortable.

“Unlikely,” he replies, settling down but keeping his eyes on the shadows clinging to the forest’s edge. “Most animals we know in this area have long moved on. Or…” he let the statement hang.

“They’ve become like those green men,” I finish.

Swiftrunner shakes himself free of rainwater and throws a little yelp of assurance my way.

“Do not fear, Little-Brother,” he says. “I will keep watch through the night. You will not want for sleep while I draw breath.”

I spin around a few times to find the right spot before settling down myself and huffing into the cold, rocky ground. “Look,” I say. “I suppose I really should be thanking you.”

“I am doing my duty,” he replies immediately. It was almost like he predicted my statement. “When the clan asks, one must go.”

“That’s not what I mean,” I say through a yawn that might have just completely cuts through any attempt at making this sound genuine on my part. “What you said to me back in that tunnel – you were right. I was about to make a crappy choice.”

He says nothing, and for a few seconds it’s just the thundering roar of the rain outside that rings in our ears.

‘I bet that made you think twice about me,” I say, tucking my tail between my shivering paws. “I mean, if my prophesized hero not only looked like a coward, but actually was one, I’d be pretty annoyed too.”

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“You are not a coward.”

His tone is so serious that I can’t look back at him.

“You must have seen it in my eyes,” I scoff. “I was really thinking about it, you know – leaving you all.”

“But you did not.”

“Only because you made me think I could be better.”

‘Little-Brother,” he says, his nose prodding my shivering back and rolling me over like I’m some cuddly toy. “I hope you will not mistake me as being rude, but you are stuck in your own head.”

I look up at him from the ground, not bothering to even roll myself back over.

“You saw my Bonded,” he continues. “You saw her and would not leave her. You did not know how to help her, and yet help her you did. In the same way, you showed compassion to the fallen Lightborn and, though you did not know it at the time, gave hope back to this world.”

His smile is not only endearing, but infectious. Now I’m smiling like an idiot as I look up at him. Damn these wolves!

“Think not about how you see yourself,” he says as he goes back to his resting place. “Think instead of these actions – they are the actions of a hero, are they not? If a random thought of compassion is all it takes to save this world, maybe that is all a hero truly needs.”

I roll back over and shut my eyes.

“You know what?” I yawn. “I might have all these awesome powers – but you wolves have a way with words that I envy. The humans are idiots for not getting you involved in their politics.”

Swiftrunner shivers. “I hear stories of this. Of humans and their ghastly ‘politics’. We wolves may be good with our words – but I must admit that I am quite poor at lying.”

“You say that…like it’s a bad thing…” I say, before drifting off to the constant beat of the rain in the darkness of the outside world.

----------------------------------------

“Little Brother, Little-Brother! Please be waking.”

I bat away the gunk of restless slumber from my eyes.

“Wh-wha?”

“Movement,” the blurred form of Swiftrunner says. “We must be leaving.”

And like a radar sounding off in my brain, my ears perk up, nose sniffles, and tail shots out like a little spear:

[Snoop]

Hostile Prescence: 10ft. 12ft. 15ft.

They were moving.

How many? I think, trying to focus through the hailstorms still rocking the outside world.

Hostile Composition Detection unlocked at greater LVLs

Damn. Nuts to that then.

“Ok,” I whisper. “Lead the way!”

Swiftrunner wastes no time in assuming his stalking pose, keeping close to the ground, almost prone, and emerging from the cave with absolute confidence in his stealth. For my part I decide not to hop on his back – larger target, y’know? – and begin to mimic his every move. Snout close to the ground, eyes up, ever forward, edging out of the cave past the shield of reeds to bare witness to the new entities crawling around out there.

“By Lyca,” Swiftrunner whispers.

I peer through the reeds and see nothing. All I hear are the sounds of frantic scuttling about out there in the dark treeline – sounds of a struggle, perhaps? But without the eyes of a wolf I’m pretty much useless out here.

Then I remember – hey! I actually do have those now.

[Lycan Eye]

ACTIVATED

Effect: {DARKVISION} up to 20ft

My pupils elongate, narrowing to piercing slits and drawing a filter of blue light over my eyes. Only then do I see what he sees:

Three colossal spiders – thick, hairy, bulbous and…leggy - carrying one of their own kind over to a decaying tree and tying him up with their webs.

“Is that…” I gulp. “Is that what a normal spider looks like round here?”

Swiftrunner shakes his proud mane. “Look closer, Little-Brother.”

I creep warily through the reeds to get a clearer view, and the tell-tale signs of corruption begin to show themselves – blistering bark crawling up the body of the creatures, coating every leg and growing behind their blinking eyes. I can see the fury etched on their faces, mixed with a kind of forced grin that the vines growing up their faces have forced them to exhibit.

Then I see what’s happening to their trapped companion.

Covered in their webbing he struggles against their trap, flailing like the flies he probably once caught in a similar fashion. He looks at his comrades with his four dark eyes and I get the sense that he’s pleading, begging them to let him go free.

Instead, one of them secretes something small from his webspinning rear end, and tangles it round one of his powerful legs. From here it looks like a tiny bulb of green light, gyrating as though alive. Looking closer, beginning to feel queasy, I see the creature reach towards the captive’s skull, and the wrinkled ridges of the glowing orb begin to appear clearer. It looks like a –

“A seed,” Swiftrunner whispers.

I watch them tear open the skull of their still-living comrade, hearing his piercing cry of pain as the bearer of the insidious bulb begins to insert the thing into his head.

“What are they doing?!” I blurt out to Swiftrunner, edging ever forward despite myself.

“What the Darkseed commands of all its minions,” the white wolf replies gravely. “They are Seeding one of their own. Soon, they shall do the same to eachother. They are giving up what is left of their minds to the Demon-Flower, becoming nothing more than it’s braindead pawns.”

The captured spider gives a final cry of searing pain as the seed is inserted firmly into the inside of his head and the hole his friends made is plugged up with meticulous attention to all its bloody details.

“We must away now, Little-Brother,” Swiftrunner whispers, nosing me with his snout and nodding in the opposite direction. “While they are distracted…”

But I can’t help but look at them. At their drooling, mindless friend who falls from the webbed tree and stares blankly at them all with dull, dead, wooden eyes.

The non-seeded ones then turn to oneanother, knowing looks on their faces, as the head of the brood produces three more seeds.

“STOP!” I yelp.

A single second. A twist in the air.

Then three sets of four blinking eyes find me in the dark.

“Run, Little-Brother!” comes Swiftrunner’s cry.

And before I know it, I’m in full flight again.