Jogging for quite some time was very different in the spiritual realm, we didn't need to worry about human hunters, we would need to worry about regular spirits if they were massive enough to ruin our jog, but those usually didn't stop us so often.

Stopping a couple of times on the jog, we eventually made it to a very smelly landscape. It hit us like a fog flowing through a forest morning. We rarely came this far east of our encampment away from the other wolves and our home territory. Switching back to human form, we got clothes on and walked the rest of the way. We were still miles away from a garbage dump, quite some ways, but the smell was intoxicating... and not in a naughty way. Whatever the smell was, it was years-old stuff that even the insect spirits would not take away.

The air represented up here might have been more or less at the strength it was in the material realm, but it certainly was pretty bad. It wasn't just day-old milk, it was years-old milk that didn't go away with the breeze, it was rotten food and everything else that even cleaning spirits couldn't fix.

Fox was starting up something in conversation, "Do you smell that boy? That is the corruption of Lado. Food and waste being rotted away from when Gaia formed it, till it would not be consumed and sits here to rot. Even the spirits formed to take this stuff away will not clear it without fear of being tainted."

I still didn't get it, "But alpha, Lado didn't make the food form here, it was brought here by beings of Nova. Humans made the wasted food here, Nova was the innovation that brought the food here to allow it to be corrupted. Lado did make this not just food, but creations of Nova rot, but the Nova creations were so strong here, Lado has not been able to do enough about it. Creatures and spirits of Gaia might be trying to make the best of it and Lado try to break it down so that it can return to Gaia, but the innovation of humans and Nova is the reason it is here."

Fox shook his head, "You just don't get it, boy."

Tree-shredder tried to help Fox, "Don't you get it, Runt...." Fox looked back at him and snarled.

T.S. tried to continue, "Well, what are we supposed to call him? What did the spirits name you? You won't tell us, so that is what we have to go by. Maybe we can pick another one? I'm sorry Runt but I can't call you boy all day. What did the spirits call you?"

The boy looked away and kept walking towards the center of the dump. He answered quietly, "I don't know, I couldn't hear them during the ceremony."

T.S. continued, "Yes you did, we all could hear our own name when they said it, it was as loud as the rest of the time. It must have been pretty bad if you'll take whatever it was over what we call you."

B.F. asked as nicely as he ever would, something that was said had changed him a bit, "Look Runt," also said in the least amount of vitriol than ever before, "we were just kids when we gave you that name, it was years ago, but we've grown a bit.”

Fox interjected, “Yes, it was just two years ago, you haven’t grown up much.”

Tree-shredder pushed on, “See? We understand that we don't often get the spirits and they might give us strange names, what did they name you? It has to be better and more true."

The boy shuttered and tried to hide it as he pulled his pack over his shoulder, "Just call me Runt, it’s the name you gave me, just...." He let the continuing of that sentence cut off, trying to portray the animosity he had felt. Knowing his name given to him by the spirits would drive a wedge between us all, and he didn't want to be the main reason for all that. I could try to lie to them and tell them a made up one, but I was a terrible liar, and they all knew it.

Tree-shredder and Brown-face lowered their heads, seeming like they felt the years of mocking within those next few minutes as though they were me.

After quite some time, he figured he had returned to Gaia, and since there were these new kids just learning how to do the traditional business, he had to be there to help.

He shook his head of the questions, he had a task and now he would get a spirit totem just like the rest of them. He was almost as happy as the rest of them but he knew I was ecstatic. That boy would hopefully gain so much more than the rest of them from all of this. He was stunted from his birth and needed a boost passed whatever had happened to him.

As we got closer and into the dump pile, it wasn't just a pile, it was an ocean of trash. It surrounded us quickly as we walked, a wave of discarded cans, plastic, and trash bags that were still bound but they shuttered with spirits inside them trying to break them down. Human packages and little spirits consuming old food were everywhere. Old food rotted, old torn apart clothes were fettered with the smell of the moldy yogurt that had spilled all over it.

This wasn't just a sea of putrescence, it was something else that couldn't be described. The material plane representation of this sort of thing was bad enough, in the spirit realm, it was never broken down or burned, it was chained to the area, and the area was covered in miles of toxic waste.

One path could be walked through the area, as though it was made for those that didn't live in the mound of sludge. CDs piled over there, nothing to be done with them, the materials weren't natural and couldn't be eaten, so they resisted destruction. Grown food rotted and spoiled in a mound next to them, out-of-date yogurt from some store or fridge piled and broken open in front of them. We walked two football fields into the amount of waste that would boggle the mind and the path stopped in front of another pile of trash that was riled with rat spirits. Fifty yards away from us and the rats saw us and scattered. Closer and closer we walked, seeing no other path, and the pile shifted again, something much larger breaking its way through.

A Rat, about our size in wolf form, but a big hump on its lower half, broke its way through the pile. Its body was covered in mold and food but it couldn't possibly smell any worse than the stuff around here. What fur wasn't matted to its skin was gray, and it had patched-grown hair, almost like me. I smiled at first, realizing the resemblance, then frowned when I realized the resemblance. Baby rat spirits clawed to its back watching the curious things going on.

A screech from the spirit, "Late."

Fox said as we walked up, "Sorry, we didn't know we were on a schedule. Nice home you have here."

The Rat spirit, a large rodent, looked at us with beady eyes and sniffed the air, "Corrupted spirits that way," its snout pointed over a mound that wasn't so nearly as high as the rest. It continued in its high-pitched voice, "Kill bad, bigger bad."

Fox replied, "Straight and simple, got it."

The spirit waited for about ten seconds, realized no questions were being asked, then it shivered and broke through the pile of trash behind it disappearing.

Fox called out to them, not so loud but there were little screeches and different voices all over that were taking up some volume. "Ok, so here we can go all out, but wait for a second to shift with me, I need to test something." Fox shifted forms into the mild-warrior form, growing hairy and stronger, waited a few seconds, and nodded his head. Then formed into the full-warrior form and coughed, then coughed again. He breathed slowly through his huge maw, and coughed, then shifted back down to mild-warrior. He nodded, "The warrior form's smell is too sensitive, we wouldn't be able to breathe and do the job. Wolf would likely be the same, just use the mild-warrior form here. If we need to go all out, hold your breath and try, but it wouldn't be for long."

Birds flew overhead, more hovering over the warm air of gas that was constant in the area. We were all warm there, our clothes very quickly drank in the gross smell of month-old everything. It seemed like a good place for me to get out the equipment. I asked T.S. if he wanted the interesting sword, he said it would be too strange to walk with it, plus he wasn’t so good with it yet, he’d just use his claws.

I pulled out a bow for myself to use and concentrated an extra thirty seconds or so to shift my form. When shifting forms, changing small things about the form took quite a bit of control. I was still getting the hang of it, but when using the bow in this form, it didn’t hurt my fingers as much. My claws decreased in sharpness and size, and they got to the point where they wouldn’t cut the bowstring.

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Brown-face let his staff form in his palm and used it not just as a walking stick, but he poked the pieces of trash in front of him as he was going to walk up a certain area. He had rested since he last fueled it so he had some spiritual energy to spare, so he added some more in. He didn’t have much else to spend it on right now, but eventually, he would be spending it on spiritual abilities and rituals.

Walking towards the pile, we initially stood there for about twenty seconds hoping it would do something mystical like part in front of us letting us walk on the ground, but no, we started climbing the pile of barbie dolls and moldy lettuce that some farmer threw away. As we climbed up, we broke through things of mess and mold with our claws and brushed them off on something that wasn't so grown over with slime.

Climbing over this pile and getting to the top, we got an actual view, not just a ground view of the pile. It was not just massive, we were looking at a literal ocean of miscellaneous trash. In some places, it swam and moved in view, could have been spirits moving around, or it could be the gaseous view playing tricks on our eyes.

I tried to get them on my side again, "Do you all actually think that Lado did all of this? The unused food prepared for too many people, the trash bags filled with prepared foods, the thrown away toys to pass the time, it is all due to Nova, can't you just see it?"

The others rolled their eyes and walked down the pile. It wasn't nearly as sturdy as we initially thought, Fox was ahead of us and slipped and slid down a few yards down the hill on the top of a trash can lid, an ironic plastic disc thrown away with a hole in the center. He bounced back up and continued down the hill.

He looked back for a second, "Missed opportunity for something to jump out at...." Perhaps he could've kept his mouth shut. Bursting through the trash came an oiled-up spirit, just a spirit plain covered in goo. It had a vaguely humanoid shape and it struck out at Fox who dove forward into a roll, or he would have if he was on leveled ground. He did more of a dive into a small dip in the pile and covered himself in a gross mystery film.

A swing with Brown-face’s new staff like a baseball bat bonked the creature on the side of what would be its head, which sunk into the form of the spirit and gripped the staff with limbs. When it gripped though, its limbs bubbled a little from some spiritual energy, having dealt a bit of damage. I got at a better angle to try to shoot the seemingly obviously corrupted spirit which took him a few seconds. Monkey-feet and Tree-shredder jumped forward, T.S. got to the creature first and dug in with claws, and his momentum kept him going down the hill, Monkey-feet struck next which raked across its back, dispersing it around Brown-face's staff.

After Fox stood in other miscellaneous trash, a film slimed its way down his face, he shook a bit from the uneasy feeling that he was just egged right in his face without the shell, but wasn't paying attention as another spirit behind him stretched up to strike. Fox felt something behind his back, two tentacle limbs wrapped around him to constrict him and made it hard for him to move.

Unable to be there for a shot on the first spirit, I let an arrow fly at the other, a direct hit that made it loosen its grip a bit. Fox used that bit of space to headbutt backward, which loosened the grip a bit more. The spirit however used its action to squeeze the wolfman a bit, dealing some more constricting damage. His tougher skin didn't help him much against that sort of pain, but it wasn't as much as he has felt before, he has certainly been through worse.

The spirit held on for its life, but the others heard the otherworldly screeching and took a few seconds to uneasily make our way sideways to the other spirit, jumping down was easy, sideways there was just too much to slip on. Another arrow flew past and it howled more, Fox was too constricted to get his arms and body released, but he did bite down on the spirit's limb. He spit it out saying it tasted like oil, but still got a screeching reaction from the thing.

Fox's muscles continued to bruise as the spirit constricted again, pulling his muscles tighter against his body. Fox could barely breathe at this point, but he was a sturdy being, he'd survive until the rest of us could help.

B.F. to the rescue, using his walking stick to test the ground, he leaped through the air as though he had practiced it and his staff came down hard on the top of the creature's head which dispersed the spirit, covering Fox and Brown-face in a brown mush. Seconds later, a few coins formed from where the spirits were, I was still in a decent place to pick up the other coins from the first and the others grabbed the few from the second.

The second spirit added more jangling coins in Fox's backpack, and it was starting to get unpleasant with them moving around, but we couldn't separate them yet without us having some sort of pouch, but he let me have the coins. He pulled out a pile and handed them over, away they went into one of the smaller pockets. In total as a group, we have gathered a good bit of each so far.

Fox said, "When we finally get our spirit totem, we'll be able to split those up, and you'll see what we are for, you'll be happy about it, some is just spirit energy that they accept in trade, some is spiritual cash. We'll go over it later." He had a smile on his face after losing the coins, he didn't jangle nearly as much. He did have them in his backpack, but they made noise rattling around even in a smaller pouch. I was happy as well, he hadn't been able to hold real money before.

The pack carefully continued our direction in the way the Rat spirit pointed and tested our footing along the way. Nothing jumped out at us just yet, but this was a desert sea of hiding nooks and crannies. Small insect spirits darted this way and that, a few flew close to the vigilant werewolves, but were batted away, a few gutsy tiny mosquito spirits dove in for a taste and got a few seconds of werewolf delight before they were slapped into a smear.

It took a few minutes for the damage to fully heal for Fox. He had sustained some tightening of his muscles and his ribs were bruised during the fight, but his supernatural healing stretched him back out to normal and he was back to better but not full health. Corrupting spirit damage didn't make things easy just by being one of them, it would take longer to heal some of the pain.

Eventually, we got to a more stable ground to walk on. It wasn't the ground floor, a huge pile of mulch was covering quite a distance and it was sturdy to walk on for the most part. We walked on that for a short time and turned a bit to see a small group of starving animal spirits, they were dogs eating something gross in a pile and looked up at the fresher-looking meat and attacked. A set of spirits, a bloodhound, a black labrador, and a chihuahua ran at us and attacked.

The lab had a bit of a headstart in going after the fresher meat so it struck first but B.F. was able to get his new staff in the way of its jaw, having it bite down on that and its bite didn't even scratch the wood. Its body swung down and B.F.'s foot went in with a kick, digging a chunk into the corrupted spirit. The bloodhound darted to the side and went after Monkey-feet, who grabbed its jaw and forced it closed when it jumped at her, she felt more comfortable doing that with the gloves, her larger nails digging in a bit on its snout.

The little spirit chihuahua was a menace and a speedy little agile thing. It dove after Fox and bit him on the thigh before going after Tree-shredder. As it dove for T.S., I tried to hit it out of the air with an arrow, but the shot missed. T.S. grabbed it out of the air due to the warning but it bit at his hand, its jaw taking a tiny chunk out and chewing it quickly.

T.S. called it a little jerk and slammed its body first into a set of rusted tools off to the side and its head and body jerked to the side. It hopped up and growled. This little rat dog twitched its whole body. it was smaller than some of the rats in the area that left us alone, much smaller than boss Rat.

B.F.'s work on the lab was new to him, his weapon helped him block the spirit from rushing in and he got the weapon in the way preventing its attack in general. A few hardy swings helped him control the fight well. M.F.'s bloodhound was giving her some trouble. Fox went over to try to help her, she was rolling around in the trash with its maw shut, and she wasn't strong enough to keep those teeth closed so that she could get a strike in. Her knee hit didn't do much but irritate it.

Fox came in and since he was on the outside of things, he swiped at the bloodhound's back when she rolled it on top, scoring a nice wind-up hit. The distraction of the hit swung the attention of the bloodhound toward Fox, which gave M.F. the option to bend her legs and scrape at the dog with her toes, which scored a grueling hit at the skinny gut of the spirit. She was sad at thinking about what this dog represented.

The chihuahua was too small of a target to try to shoot for me, I tried again even as it stood there growling at T.S. but it was just too small, it seemed to hear the bow string stretch and move toward T.S. to go in for a bite as I shot. I stopped trying for the little one but wasn't sure if B.F. would be ok with the help, and Fox and M.F. had the last being handled, so I waited.

Brown-face had his enemy under control, he spun the staff as though he had been practicing a lot more, perhaps not for years, but for at least more time than he had spent so far. One side of the staff smacked the dog's face, and a swipe of the staff pushed it to the side so that it couldn't get a good bite in. He was taking it seriously, but he was enjoying being a fighter here. The spirit slowed down after another few hits, and he took the opportunity to slam it across the back, dispersing it.

M.F. and Fox had theirs under control. She kept on rolling to an easy vantage point to have Fox dig in with his claws and when he did she twisted it to stretch the wound. The bloodhound nearly broke in half before it dispersed pouring oily goo all over her, she couldn't avoid it. She shook off what she could, but she was covered all over in spiritual energy.

Tree-shredder was dealing with the last little dog, smaller and harder to hit. Looking around he tried to see what was around that he could use to help, but mostly what he found wasn't so helpful, then his eyes fell on a metal trash can lid. Picking it up like a shield, the little thing jumped at him. It fit in the lid as it jumped, he tilted the spirit upside down and got it on its back as it hit the ground.

Keeping it down on the ground, it tried to roll over, but he didn't let it. The rusted tool set had a wrench in it, he was able to grab it as the small thing squirmed under the trash can lid. Its eyes glared red under the lid as it kept on pushing, but when it saw the wrench raised over its attacker's head, its head screwed up in a plea for mercy, it was meant to try to be innocent, but it had already done some damage and needed to be released, a few bashes to the head made it disperse back into the ground.

Coins had appeared out of each body, and they were scooped up and handed over to me for keeping. We were starting to get a good pile to split.