How much time had passed? The hive had no idea. It knew that the light and darkness outside the tunnel had come and gone several times already but it didn’t concern itself with that. All it was concerned with was eating.

The idea of calling nearby spirits and converting them into energy had worked better than expected and the hive was now filled with power. The spirits within the hive decided it would continue with this; no need to worry about humans or wolves destroying it, just keep on eating the spirits around the mountain.

At least that was the idea. An idea that was blown out of the water when one day, there was a huge scream within the hive!

“AHHH….”

“What? What happened? What’s that scream?” several of the spirits asked immediately.

“Where am I/we?” someone asked.  “What’s going on? What happened?”

“Who is that?” someone else asked.

“Who said that? What’s going on?” the spirit who screamed asked in fear. Then the spirit sensed that it was not alone. “Who are you all?”

“We are the hive,” one of the spirit said. “Who are you?”

“Me? I/we a spirit! Where…uh…I/we…I/we…I/we…?”

“What are you doing?”

“And would you stop doing that? It’s irritating.”

“I/we…I/we…I/we…”

“Who is this idiot?”

“No idea. Anyone knows?” Several spirits began discussing among themselves but the voice of the screaming spirit was new.

“I/we…I/we…Who am I/we?”

“More important question; who are you?”

“Me? I/we…a spirit and the next thing I/we know I/we…what is this I/we nonsense?”

“What are you talking about? We are a hive. You still don’t know this after all this time?”

“Time?” the spirit said. “I just got here! Where am…are we?”

“Just got here?” Several of the spirits asked together.

“Yes!” the newcomer screamed. “I/we heard this…thing in the forest and followed it. Then next thing I/we know, here I/we am. What is this hive all of you are talking about?”

“Oh guys,” a spirit said. “This spirit is new.”

“Yes,” another spirit said. “We must have fed enough, so any new spirit we tried to eat can’t be converted to energy. Instead they got absorbed straight into the hive.”

“Sounds right,” another spirit said. “That would make…”

“Wait, wait, wait,” the newcomer said. “Let me ask a question before you all continue.”

“Sure; asked away.”

“You all were trying to eat me?”

“Well…yes, you can say that.”

“YOU WERE TRYING TO EAT ME?”

“If you want to look at it that way…yes!”

“YOU WERE TRYING TO EAT ME?”

“Well…for the third time…”

“YOU WERE TRYING TO EAT ME?”

“Let’s stop feeding till we waste some of the energy we currently have. Oh, can someone calm the newcomer down?”

“Why don’t you do it? You’re part of the hive too!”

“YOU WERE TRYING TO EAT ME?” the newcomer screamed again. “Out! I want out! How do I/we get out of this hive thing?”

“Uh…good question,” one of the spirits calmly said. “How do we get out of the hive? Can anyone get out of the hive?”

“No idea,” another spirit said. “No one ever…”

Suddenly, the spirits felt an urge in energy even though it was no longer feeding. The hive focused and found to its surprise one of the pups had fallen onto the ground. Not only that, the 4 other pups were all very weak.

“What’s going on?” one of the spirits asked. “Why did the pup fall down?”

The hive concentrated and found that the pup was dying. “Why is it dying? Did something hurt it?”  

“It lacked energy,” another spirit said. “…uh, anyone knows how the pups get their energy? Can they absorb it like us?”

“No, they don’t,” someone replied. “But they often eat the dead creatures the adults wolves bought in. That could be how they get their energy.”

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“We eat spirits and converted it to energy. They eat creatures and then it gets converted to energy.”

“Makes sense but what are we going to do about it?” a spirit asked. “The adults are all dead.”

“Why should we do anything?” another spirit asked. “Let them die. They die and we get the energy their death brings. That’s what we usually do right?”

“Wait here,” the newcomer said. “You guys are just going to let them die even though you don’t even need their energy?”

“The newcomer make a good point,” one of the spirits said. “We don’t need their energy so there’s no need to let them die.”

“We also like them,” a spirit added. “They’re fun to have around.”

“Fine,” the spirit conceded. “But what can we do? Is there anything we can do? We can’t actually go out and kill dead creatures for them.”

“The pups lack energy right? So let’s give it to them.” A spirit suggested. “Let’s pour some energy into them.”

“You can do that?” the newcomer asked.

“We can do a lot of thing,” several spirits laughed. “Wait till you see You-Who-Are-Not-Bear and Smoky!”

“Are we calling it Smoky?”

An exasperated spirit sighed. “And the idiot who keep asking that stupid question is back.”

“What? It’s a legitimate question. What are we calling the smoke wolf?”

“Wait, wait, wait,” a spirit said. “Before we get into another argument, let’s just pour some energy into the pups and save them first.”

This was the first time the hive tried to save anything but as usual, it didn’t let a lack of knowledge stopped it from trying something new. Figuring it can’t be that different from creating something new, the hive focused its energy on the dying pup and poured the energy into it.

At first, it wondered if it was working as nothing happened but then the pup started to glow. The glow got brighter and brighter before the pup began changing. It got bigger, taller, it’s body got longer, it’s front paws became arms. Then before the hive knew it, the pup stood. The pup stood up and the hive saw that it was standing up like a human. However it was not a human.

Its body was covered in fur. It had claws on its fingers, and most importantly, its head was that of a wolf. It had the long jaw of a wolf with sharp teeth clearly shown. Its ears were on top of its head instead of by the side like a human, and it retained the eyes of a wolf. The wolf-human looked fearsome but the hive felt no fear towards it. In fact, the hive felt kind of proud. This creature was the hive’s creation and the hive knew it had nothing to fear from it.

“Wow,” the newcomer exclaimed. “We can do things like this?”

“This is something new,” one of the spirits replied. “But we knew we could do something like this.”

“Can we do this again?” the newcomer asked. “Can we do this to the other pups? What about other creatures? Can we change them too?”

“Let’s find out.” One of the spirits said.

There was no argument from anyone in the hive. The hive focused its energy once again and poured the energy into the remaining pups. Like the first pup, they too began to change.

Thus was born the first of the Beastkin!  

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