Chapter Eleven

‘Easy now, easy!’ I whispered to Akela.

Hungry. Want to eat! Now. Akela directed his thoughts at me.

‘He’ll notice you. Again. Be more stealthy!’ I scolded him.

Fine. He huffed.

He slowed down, moving more carefully between the trees while bombarding me with his thoughts of indignation and impatience.

The unigoat wasn’t far; it hadn’t noticed us yet, and I hoped that wouldn’t change.

I might have spoiled Akela a tad more than it would have been healthy — he sometimes didn’t care if the creature noticed him because he knew Mana-Armor would protect him from the sharp horn of his prey. This was my mistake, and I was determined to correct it. But it was difficult to get it through that thick skull of his that rushing carelessly at the lethal defenses of a unigoat wasn’t the wisest thing to do. Not to mention, it wasn’t the way of a proper hunter, with or without Mana-Armor. Stubborn wolf.

Akela approached the unigoat as quietly as it was possible for him. He was careful with his steps, but he was no cat. I shrieked inwardly at every rustle of every dead leaf and twig he stepped on. It wasn’t enough to alert his prey, thankfully. The unigoat was munching peacefully on some shrubs, some ten, maybe twelve meters away, unaware of its approaching doom. With only a few trees between us now, I saw it more or less clearly.

Akela stopped, crouched down behind a bushy plant and stayed still. He eyed the creature through the leaves and branches. The wolf breathed slowly, his muscles tensing, ready to jump out and charge.

Soon.

‘Yeah! Soon.’ I agreed.

I didn’t know if wolves back home understood concepts like time: now, later, soon and such. Akela did. He was by far the most intelligent and self-aware creature I’d ever encountered, save for the members of my former race. He could plan, he could stick to his plans, or he could change his plans. And his plan — as almost always — was Mana.

Strong teeth! He demanded.

And I obliged, my decision of not spoiling him thrown out a window in an instant. I opened my Mana-pool for him, and he drew on it. Mana flowed along the Essence wires to the appropriate node in his soul, and he willed it to gather in his jaw and on his teeth. He could bite through steel with my help, of this I was sure, and if he managed to surprise the unigoat this time, it’s neck would snap like a twig.

‘Patience!’ I told him.

Fine. Relax. He agreed reluctantly.

Unfortunately his patience depended on how hungry he was — when his stomach growled, he had to be reminded of what patience was and why it was useful. Even if my tenties all had fingers, it wouldn’t have been enough to count how many times he missed a meal because he couldn’t wait.

The unigoat inched towards us, searching for more of the flowering, green berry plants its kind liked so much, oblivious to the pair of red eyes watching it.

Now!

Akela jumped up, shooting forward like a bullet from a gun, and if anyone knew how deadly those were, it was me. I made ready to activate Mana-Armor just in case. By the time the poor unigoat realised what was happening, trying to position its horn to impale the charging wolf, it was too late. Akela reached the unigoat in a matter of seconds. He slid the last half a meter, ducking under its head and horn, and bit into its neck from underneath. The unigoat let out a gurgling scream that was not at all goat-like, and then it didn’t have a throat any more. Akela spat out the bloody chunk, bit again, dragging the animal to the ground. And that was it. The unigoat was dead.

‘Well done!’ I said as I stuck one of my tenties into the soul of the dead animal.

Hmph! He huffed.

That “hmph” used to be “I know. I’m me.”. These days he just huffed whenever I complimented him, as if I was stating the obvious. I couldn’t deny he had every right and reason to be a little prideful and arrogant about his achievements as a hunter — he sort of understood the concept of pride in his primal, animalistic way. But as any good friend would do, I tried to hammer some humility into him. It wasn’t an easy task and I’d given up on it several times.

Akela went about the gruesome, bloody business of chomping and disemboweling, and I went about the much cleaner and faster business of consuming the unigoat’s soul.

I wished I could taste the meat. Unigoats had beautiful, red meat, more like beef than goat-meat. Oh, the steaks and stews and pies I could make. Sometimes I had no choice but to lament the unjust nature of spiritual existence.

On the other hand, we made a rather good team, Akela and I. I could safely say the two of us together were the single, deadliest predator of the island, one that even the few wolf-packs avoided these days.

***

Akela ate as much as he could, leaving three-quarters of the unigoat for me to store, and he was as happy as a well fed kindergartener waiting for his midday nap. I pulled the bloodied remains of the animal into Jack’s Room. If there was one skill of mine Akela considered his favorite, this was it.

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For later! He reminded me that the unigoat was his.

‘Yeah. Are you done? Can we go?' I asked.

He stood, stretching his legs a bit, and I thought we were ready to go back to camp, but he called out to me.

Voice!

I knew that tone of thought. I knew what was coming. But I asked anyway.

‘What?’

Belly rub!

‘Wash first! You’re covered in blood.’

Hmph.

‘No wash, no belly-rub,’ I said.

Fine. He relented.

It didn’t take us long to arrive at one of the brooks that criss-crossed through the forests, flowing into the river. Akela stuck his snout into the water first, then he slowly walked into the stream, immersing himself. I didn’t think this was something wolves normally did, but I always made sure the reward was worth the trouble. Unigoat blood painted the water pink as it washed off the wolf. He climbed out of the water, shook himself almost dry, laid down on the narrow, grassy bank of the brook, demanding that I give him his reward there and then. I called Mana to thinly coat two of my tenties, and I gave him the best belly rub a wolf could want. He made some soft, growling noises I could charitably call puppy noises.

Good! He complemented my efforts.

'Glad you like it you lazy mutt,' I grumbled at him, but I kept rubbing and stroking him. And I watched the sky through the gap the stream cut into the forest canopy. Dark, grey clouds were gathering fast, obscuring the blue sky of an otherwise nice spring day.

‘Another storm is coming, I think,’ I said. Akela didn’t acknowledge my musing, he simply enjoyed the wonders of a good belly rub. ‘We should go back to camp before it starts raining.’

Camp? Fine.

***

The island didn’t have to bear the brunt of the storm, or at least I didn’t think so.

It rained constantly for the next couple of days, and a number of trees around our camp took up the flying lessons the winds were offering. I’d seen worse over the last two years.

We didn’t do much during the storm. We had a nice little alcove, almost a cave, in the midst of some rocky outcroppings in the middle of the forest, perhaps halfway between the foot of the Rockies and the beach. Akela enjoyed being lazy, eating the rest of the unigoat whenever I brought it out of Jack’s Room.

The unigoat gave me a whooping eleven-thousand EXP, and I reached the threshold for the next level.

At Level 21 I managed to grow my six tentacles to almost a meter long: a proper arm’s length. My body was now slightly larger than a tennis ball, maybe eleven to twelve centimeters in diameter.

My primary Essence Pool had a capacity of 53, the secondary Essence Pool 24. My Mana Pool had a max capacity of 29, and Jack’s Room had 13 spaces. This wasn’t bad, more than enough to protect and help Akela for prolonged periods of time, although it was rarely necessary.

Wensah kept taking her share of Essence as always, three or four EP at a time,

I needed over six-hundred-thousand EXP for Level 22. It was a large and intimidating number. It would take some time, but based on my experiences of the past two years, time I had in abundance. Time was the only thing I had.

***

After two days the storm passed.

My little hunting buddy was sleeping, probably dreaming of tasty meat, and I was peering at the outside through the entrance of the alcove. With some of the trees gone, I even saw a couple of stars in the small stretch of the sky I could observe from the inside. The hooting of some owls filled me with nostalgia, and the rustling of the undergrowth made me wonder what kind of hunters and what kind of prey performed tonight’s dances of life and death.

Life was simple. Peaceful.

As peaceful as the life of a predator could be. I had gotten used to it; humans were nothing if not adaptable. But it was also … boring.

Having nothing but time on my tentacles I was thinking a lot. Mostly in endless loops about inconsequential thing. The big questions I’d been asking had lost meaning a long time ago.

Why was this happening to me? Was there a meaning or purpose to it, to my life? What or who was I?

I was invisible, intangible, had tentacles and an appetite for souls, but I had a soul of my own, and it was a human soul. Therefore I was human, no matter what I looked like.

I’d heard people say “know yourself” or “discover who you are”. At least back home, the two biggest providers of ready-made answers were there to help you: religion and the internet. But not this place. Here, I was alone, I had no-one to ask, no-one to discuss it with. And given that the most intelligent creatures of the island considered their next meals and belly rubs to be the big questions of life, all my internal rumblings were moot. They didn’t matter. For all practical purposes, what mattered to me was Akela. He didn’t have anything as bothersome going on in his head as I did, and I really liked that about him.

As it had been the case with Jack, with Gladys, I didn’t know how old Akela was, or for how long he’d live. But I was going to stick with him. Perhaps he’d find a mate. Perhaps he’d have pups of his own, and then Uncle Kevin would be there to protect them and to babysit.

I had not been built for eternal solitude. Everyone needed a friend, and I had Akela.

***

The morning sky was finally blue again. A few, small clouds lingered here and there, the world resuming the springtime the storm had so rudely interrupted. The trees were dressing up in their various green garments, and the denizens of the forests were out and about, conducting business as usual.

Akela stretched, then walked over to the opening of the alcove, stuck his nose out, sniffed the air and complained.

Hungry.

‘You ate just yesterday,’ I commented.

Hungry. Should hunt.

'Alright, alright. How hungry are you?’

I didn’t hear his stomach growling — when he was hungry for real, I could always hear it. He was just bored. Then again, for a lone wolf without a pack, boredom and hunger had the same solution. I wasn’t against the idea of going shopping.

I didn’t have a particular destination in mind for our hunting trip, and neither did Akela. He walked and walked, slaloming between the trees, sniffing and listening for things that might be good prey. We covered quite a lot of ground: the forest between the Rockies and the sea stretched for at least six or seven kilometeres, and we were getting close to the beach. Akela followed the Thames Junior — yes, that’s what I had named the river — hoping to catch a boar or unigoat as they came to drink. But we had no luck for the first half of the day.

We wandered closer and closer to the coast, and by mid-afternoon I heard Akela’s stomach growling. Then, out of a sudden he stopped, flicked his ears forward, sniffing the air.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

New prey. Strange prey. He thought, and I felt his confusion.

I was taken aback: these were thoughts I had not heard from him before. On this island everything was simply prey. Good old regular prey. To hear him think about new and strange prey was, well, new and strange.

Akela didn’t move a muscle as the rustling and bustling of shrubs grew so loud even I could hear them. Footfalls. They sounded … familiar, somehow.

We waited.

Akela waited to see what kind of new prey the island suddenly had to offer, and I waited because I recognised what I was hearing. I knew exactly what creature it was that produced such a noisy and familiar rhythm when running.

It took only a few seconds before the creature came into view between the trees, and holy shit I almost jumped off Akela’s back when, for the first time after two, long years, I saw a human.