The surroundings sat barren around Jake. The group had long passed any remains of the Largo Forest, and all that remained was the ruined plains—a reminder of the destruction wrought by The Corruption. Lana had remained quiet throughout the group’s trek, occasionally looking around with a slack jaw and a look of utter incomprehension on her face.
Leopold throughout the group’s journey had maintained a stream of chatter that acted as background noise for the group’s procession, cracking jokes and telling small anecdotes recounting stories of his and Lana’s childhood. All these stories were inconsequential, mostly highlighting embarrassing moments or fights between the two during their childhood. The stories did serve to rouse Lana from her spellbound horror for moments at a time, however, as she would let out a chuckle or add on to his narratives.
At one point, Jake moved over toward Lana, intent to try and strike up a conversation only to catch Leopold's eyes. He gave a discrete shake of his head before continuing his ramblings, distracting Lana. Jake moved back away, leaving Lana alone. He wasn’t sure if now was a good time to try and strike up a conversation, but decided it would be best to move back after seeing Leopold's reaction. He let her be and moved back, walking alongside Rick.
The group walked in silence for a while before finally making camp atop a flat hill. No foliage surrounded the campsite, and nothing seemed to exist beyond the pitch black that surrounded the group. Jake was grateful to stop walking. In truth, the group hadn’t walked nearly as far as Leopold had planned, having been interrupted by the sudden attack of the wolf, but said attack and the cleanup following had left Jake feeling exhausted both physically and mentally.
The group ate a fairly quick dinner of roasted wolf, harvested from the portions that could be skinned and cleaned from the wolf corpse after it was fully drained. The body of the wolf had been in rough condition even before Jake killed it, so even though the kill itself was clean, the extent of the damage the wolf had sustained left large sections of meat inedible.
What was edible still tasted fairly foul. Jake had grown used to the unseasoned meals he enjoyed with the trio during his time traveling with them, but the wolf was particularly nasty. Maybe it was because of the condition of the corpse before Jake could begin butchering it, perhaps the body had started rotting while the wolf was still alive? Maybe Jake had simply screwed the butchering up, he was by no means an expert. He wouldn’t even consider himself a novice.
Whatever the case was, the meat tasted foul. But the trio still bit into it without care, and Jake joined them in their reckless abandon to consume the disgusting flesh. Even a disgusting meal was better than no meal, slowly starving curled up on the rocks or in the sands.
After dinner, he was allowed to sleep first, with Rick and Lana keeping watch. Though he was grateful for the chance to rest he found it hard to fall asleep. At first, it was because every sound in the dark around him had him on edge, but after a while knowing who was watching over him, he was able to drift off into a restless sleep. He couldn’t remember much of what he dreamed, it hardly felt like he dreamed at all. When he woke up, all he could recall was it felt like he was drowning, slipping beneath the surface of an unending black ocean.
Jake had sat up suddenly and looked around, spotting Rick a few feet away from him. A knife was held in his hand, raised in a clear show that he was preparing to toss it into the dirt next to him. Seeing Jake awake though, Rick just gave a nod before walking over and lying flat on the dirt. Jake stared at Rick for a moment longer, wanting to voice complaints about the violent morning routine but finding doing so harder now he’d experienced the feeling of being targeted in his sleep firsthand.
With a sigh, he pulled himself up from his bed and looked around the camp. Lana was also now lying down to sleep. Leopold meanwhile was sitting on one of the bags the group had packed. He wore no armor and wore a rather bored look on his face as he stared off into the darkness, occasionally pocking into the dirt with the tip of his sword.
Jake moved a little ways from Leopold and sat opposite the main prize he’d won from the wolf attack. The skinned pelt of the wolf lay across from him. It was in terrible condition, falling apart in several places and still covered in matted patches of black blood. Jake's rough job skinning the creature hadn’t helped in any way the rough condition its pelt had been in before its death, and now it resembled trash more so than fur.
Usually, following the successful skinning of whatever prey Leopold or Rick would drag back to camp, the pelt would be thrown into the fire unless it could be stripped and turned into crude leather. This was because, according to Rick, the black blood that stained the fur sat like tar, crude and unremovable, and rendered any pelt worthless. Despite knowing this, and despite the less than subpar condition the pelt was in Jake had requested to keep the pelt of the wolf, having dragged it inward from the forest into the plains.
It wasn’t out of sentimentality that Jake kept the fur, the rotted piece of fur and skin disgusted Jake. He kept it for one simple reason. Sitting down and looking forward he stared into the remaining eye of the wolf. It was glassy, any sort of life gone. The mouth of the wolf hung open in a horrific snarl as it sat had died mid-leap, poised to attempt and rip Jake's throat out. The muscles of the wolf’s face still screamed with fury and madness, and still seemed to echo its instinctual desire to hunt.
But its eye lolled glassy and dead, the look of the predator that hunted Jakes being gone from them. He forced himself to stare into the wolf's eye, ingraining the look of the lifeless predator into his soul. Even now, looking into its eye, some part of him still froze in fear. The longer he sat, staring into the beast’s eyes the more he could imagine the pain that had enveloped his body, blood pouring from his back and leg. He shook his head clear before he got lost in fantasy and focused again.
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His fears were not important. Staring into this lifeless shell wouldn’t magically cure him of what haunted him, he doubted he’d ever truly be free of the predator stalking his soul. Jake reached forward, and with disgust grazed his hand over where his knife had embedded itself into the monster’s skull. By skill or by luck, it truly didn’t matter in the end. He was still alive, and the predator was dead.
Jake stood up from his seat and stepped back till he was a few yards away, positioning himself to where he would have been when the wolf rose to attack him. With a deep breath, he closed his eyes and recalled it, the glassy eye staring at him. Replaced the fury-driven, instinct-bound killer in his head with the lifeless corpse across from him. Opening his eyes, any sense of fear was gone as wordlessly he began to throw his knives forward into the tattered pelt across from him.
He continued like this for a while but soon found he was having no real challenge hitting the wolf across from him. He was too high up and the wolf's pelt lay too flat to the ground. He was basically pitching into a large, flat blanket. The target he was giving himself was too easy to, easier to hit than the tree he’d been practicing with so far. After some time, he sat down on the floor and began throwing his knives again. This narrowed his target down to one spot, the tiny sliver of the wolf's skull still remaining, and made his practice feel near impossible.
Jake didn’t care, focusing only on throwing the knife he was currently holding, ignoring everything around him. When he’d started, he hadn’t planned on zoning out so much, it was meant to be something to do while also keeping watch. But the longer he went on, the more he focused on the head across from him and soon he completely forgot to keep watch at all. The only time he ever lost focus on the skull sitting directly across him was when he’d be forced to march and retrieve his discarded blades.
The longer he went on, the closer he felt he was starting to get to striking the head. Occasionally the knife would scratch the fur, or would just barely miss embedding into the face before landing in the darkness beyond. Frustration boiled in Jake at these failures and near misses, but he ignored it all, focused only on trying to achieve the goal in front of him. He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, mindlessly throwing knives out into the dark but he only stopped when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“You're supposed to be keeping watch, kid.” Jake turned to see Leopold standing above him, arms crossed and a look of mock confusion on his face.
“You already killed that one. Shouldn’t you be looking somewhere else, I don’t think it’s getting any deader.” His look of mock confusion broke into a smile, and he laughed to himself.
“Sorry,” Jake said, turning back from Leopold and staring at the wolf across from him, “I just wanted to try and practice some.”
“Ahh,” Leopold said, with a wave of his hands, “It’s fine,” He sat next to Jake, legs sprawled out behind him as he leaned back on his arms looking rather relaxed. “Truth be told, and don’t take this the wrong way, but I doubt you could notice anything charging us in time to be helpful.”
Jake opened and closed his mouth a moment before asking,
“How is there a right way to take that?”
“Oh. I guess there isn’t a right way to take it, is there?” Leopold said before snickering to himself. When he finished, he added,
“Don’t feel bad about it, though me and Lana help keep watch to give him a break if anyone’s going to notice something sneaking up on us in the dark it’ll be Rick. He’s probably listening in on us now.”
Leopold and Jake turned around toward where Lana and Rick were sleeping. Silence greeted them in return. Leopold let out a laugh before saying,
“Aww, he’s being shy.” Jake was prepared to see a knife fly through the air and impale itself between Leopold’s legs in warning, but no such attack came. Either he was really asleep or had been with Leopold so long he was numb to this sort of thing. Thinking about it Jake found both possibilities equally likely. Looking back at Rick, Jake thought a moment before turning toward Leopold and asking in a whisper,
“Why isn’t Rick… why isn’t he a Swarm?”
“Ah, he really did tell you everything huh kid? You should feel honored; you’re maybe the fifth person he’s told the story to? Depending on how much he told you, you may be the third to hear all the Gorey details. In truth kid, I’m not one hundred percent sure. Me and Lala both have thoughts on the issue. From what she told me when they healed him he screamed in pain, not like when you were healed mind you, he screamed in pain when he was being numbed. Maybe he was exposed to enough magic in time it burned The Corruption out of him before any symptoms could manifest.”
“Is that possible?” Jake asked, thinking back to the shambling husks of The Swarm or the mad animals wandering around and wondering if enough magic could be used to purify them somehow.
“In theory, yeah?” Leopold shrugged before saying “Lala talked to me about it a long time ago, and I never focused on the magical aspect while in the military so don’t quote me. I’d ask her or Rick about it later.”
Jake nodded, looking out into the darkness toward the tattered wolf pelt before asking something that had been on his mind a while now since they’d exited the forest in favor of the plains,
“Leopold, if the forest that once grew up around here is gone, and we can barely see out around us, aren’t we lost?”
Leopold laughed and shook his head saying,
“We were always going to end up exiting the forest eventually kid, the Largo kingdom is surrounded by plains on all sides. The trees may be gone but the overall geography hasn’t changed to a degree where I don’t have a rough idea where we are going. Not to mention we have Rick. Where still moving in the right direction.”
Jake gave a nod, it was all he could do. He had no other means of navigation to suggest, really he was just curious.
“I’d give the wolf a break and lay back down for a bit kid. I can keep watch on my own for a bit. Well, be moving on from here in a bit.”
Jake gave a nod and laid back down but found himself unable to fall back asleep. He didn’t have long to try and sleep anyway, before he knew it the rest of the group was up and about, packing to continue traveling across the desolate plains surrounding them. Jake moved to, packing his bag and helping the others gather their gear as much as he could.
When everyone was ready to depart, they did so carrying everything with them save for the rotted fur of the wolf. Jake chose to leave it behind, though he never successfully landed a hit to its head he figured continuing to haul the corpse forward would be a bigger detriment than any training it could offer. Stopping by the monster's body one last time, Jake bent down toward the beast and wrestled his hand into its Jaw.
It was cold and wet inside, but with a shudder and some effort Jake was able to quickly snap the wolf's four canine fangs free, letting them roll loose in his hand. Looking down at the collected fangs, he balled his hand into a fist before hurrying to join the group, leaving the defanged wolf behind to rot, his retreating form reflected in its glassy eye.