The wind flung freezing rain into Hirc's face as they ran through the gloom toward the hidden foothills. The sound of the horn blast soon receded behind them. Rannur loped ahead of him, his body hunched over as he meticulously followed after scent trails and signs in the terrain, leaving Hirc to wonder what secrets lay hidden from his senses. His heart pounded in his chest, the sound echoing in his ears as he continued to follow. Then, the call of the hunt overcame him, and Hirc felt swept away by the ecstatic sensation of energy.

A thought came to him: "This must be what it feels like to be a predator on a hunt," as the sensations took hold. How long he had run, he did not know—but gradually, cooled by the rain and fatigued by the relentless pace, the sensation faded.

Suddenly, in the distance, a bestial howl filled the night.

"My father comes," said Rannur, his teeth flashing in the light as he redoubled his efforts. "Run, Hirc!" he snapped, and Hirc had to lengthen his bounds to keep up. They could hear no sound besides the noise of their own traversal, but the memory of the distant howling made the back of Hirc's neck prickle, and the dark face of the forest looked more and more like the welcoming smile of a friend. Rannur leaned low over the ground, nose flaring as he scented the path of the prey. Side by side, they ran down the long slope.

At last, just as the brilliant silver moon began to dip behind the hills at their backs, they reached the first line of trees, a cluster of slim birches—pale serving girls ushering visitors into the house of their dark master. The hunters passed quickly into tenebrous gloom as the trees rose up around them. The soft forest floor cushioned their pawfalls, and they ran silently as ghosts through the sparse outer woods. Columns of multi-hued light speared down through the branches, and the dust of their passage rose behind them to hang sparkling iridescently between the shadows. Hirc was tiring rapidly, sweat running down his face and neck in dirty rivulets matting his fur.

"How much farther?" he gasped.

"Farther, much farther, we must go. I remember you saying that you would give everything you had. Did I misunderstand? Would you not follow her to the very edge of the Cradle and back?" Rannur called to him as he slipped wraithlike between the trees.

"Before long, the path will become too twisted to move quickly, and the fading light will make it hard to see. Then we will need to rely on our other senses," rumbled Rannur. Hirc said nothing. He dug in his hooves, feeling his breath burn in his lungs. When Hirc finally slowed to an unsteady canter, Rannur slipped down to all fours and carefully checked the ground. The angling moonlight slid up the tree trunks around them, the forest floor darkening even as the upper branches took on shining haloes, like the colored windows of Nahrstrom's Cirice. At last, as the ground before them disappeared into the darkness, Hirc tripped over a half-buried stone; when Rannur caught him up at the elbow, he held on.

"Carefully now," the wolf said. Hirc slowed without a word, feeling the loose soil give slightly beneath him. A moment later, Rannur circled back after sniffing the immediate area. Crouching on his haunches, Hirc carefully examined their stopping place, noting every detail. They were partway down a small slope, at the bottom of which snaked a muddy streambed with a dark trickle of water at its center.

“Catch your breath and recover," he said, "I think we might just move there." With his finger, he indicated a spot slightly uphill where a great oak stood, its tangle of roots warding off the encroachment of other trees so that there was a stone's throw of clear ground on all sides of its massive, gnarled trunk. Hirc nodded, still laboring for breath. After a while, he dragged himself to his feet and moved with the wolf up the slope to the tree. Passing the tree, Hirc stopped and gasped. The forest seemed wilder, almost surreal. Flickering multihued lights and shadowy shapes phased in and out of sight among the branches.

"Do you know where we are?" Hirc panted. Rannur flicked his ears and stared into him .

"We have ventured far from the realms of the living into uncharted territories. You can sense the transformation within yourself: an undeniable, profound change. The longer we linger in this place, the more challenging it will become for you to make your way back."

"What happens then?" asked Hirc and Rannur, looking at him for a long moment before replying.

"You are lost and will become a tracker for the hunt until the end of days," Rannur delivered a blunt warning that punched through the firmament. “Best that you turn back now while you still can."

"I cannot give up now,” Hirc responded resolutely, the otherworldly predator’s caution dispelling his fatigue, “not when I am so close."

Rannur stared into his eyes, his expression unreadable. "Then we proceed," he said, before disappearing into the underbrush like a ghost. Moving swiftly on all fours, Hirc effortlessly weaved through the terrain, his senses heightened as he navigated with ease.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Lose not the scent lest you find yourself a wanderer in the murk of the First Forests; one can and many have lost themselves beneath those endless branches, never to see the sun again," Rannur cautioned him. Suddenly, he stiffened, his ears swiveling around. "Hurry now, they draw closer."

After a moment, he finally heard the faint howling that echoed through the forest and sent shivers down his spine.

"The wolves again," Rannur said, "but their howls are yet far off."

They kept running, the forest fading into the gloom behind them. He found himself carving through tall grass. Each blade bore a fantastical shade of blue that flashed and shimmered as he moved through the stems, humming musically in the wake of his passage. While he ran, it seemed like the terrain was changing around him. The desert sand hit him in sheets of pain; those bone-dry granules stole the breath from his lungs—and yet, he pressed on with his hooves sinking into the soft, scorching dune.

"Welcome to your desolation of empty covenants!" exclaimed Rannur with a pitiless laugh. "Perhaps you thought that, after the forest, the hunt would be easier?”

The spectral wolf shook his head in a mocking facsimile of sympathy. “Ho no—here, you stride through the wasteland of your failures—of your guilt. Feel the sand drawing the life from you; if you fall here, you will die and be left a hunk of desiccated husk fit only for the carrion birds." Hirc coughed, heat beating down on him. In the distance, the horizon shimmered in a heat-haze. But he could see the defiant moonglow of Imala and Kayla, somehow shining despite the daylight.

"Still, you persist?” stated Rannur in a pleased rumble before he headed off, apparently unphased by the heat. “Then, come; let us race the rising sun." For how long they ran, Hirc did not know. He felt himself withdrawing deeper into his mind, even as his body moved mechanically after Rannur.

The ground became rocky, and ahead rose a daunting slot canyon. When they eventually reached that channel in the rockface, Hirc gasped in relief, the shade like cold water on his fur. But Rannur ran on without pause, and so Hirc was forced to follow. The temperature fell with the fading light until, suddenly, the canyon opened into a blizzard that hit him with such force it left his mind spinning. Head bowed and body shivering, Hirc ran in the swirling snow.

All around him, ice pinnacles stood tall like jagged teeth, glacial winds howling through them. The orb of light shimmered, flickering in and out of view—the storm shrouding his only lasting reason for life. Rannur loped, flakes of snow and ice gyrating around him but never catching in his fur, melting before they could reach him.

"You have run to the far north, and still they elude you," he said, loudly enough to be heard over the wind. "Most would have yielded to the wild's call by now, yet you persist. The hunt is ruthless and uncompromising; how long will you last before your mind succumbs to despair and madness—before you embrace the wolf growing within you?" Rannur moved, wraithlike, through the snow.

Hirc, however, stumbled and fell, his front paws plunging into ice-water. He yipped and jerked back as the veil of snow parted, revealing what he had nearly fallen into.Long and shaped like a great spearhead thrust deep into the valley floor, the pool was blue like the midnight sky. Its face was still and unruffled.

Hirc paused before the mirror-smooth surface of the pool and gasped, for staring back at him was the reflection of a wolf. Drops of blood speckled the predator’s fur, beading on it like rain. The wolf's muzzle, which was a little shorter and broader than the usual, wrinkled with lips pulling back to reveal white fangs striped red. Its eyes were blue, rather than any proper lupine shade, and gleamed with demented awareness. It was only the faint stubs of caprine horns emerging from the back of his head that hinted he was anything more than a wolf aberrant.

Glancing back up, his heart pounding, Hirc saw Rannur sitting cross-legged on a flat-topped outcropping with his back turned to him. The ghostly figure had his gaze fixed on the blinding snowfields that blanketed the mountain's summit.

"See how far you have fallen?” rumbled Rannur. “Give up and return to your rightful place. You cannot outrun Raenir.”

"But the light, it's so close I can get there. I know I can!" Hirc shouted desperately.

At that, Rannur pointed a single claw toward the summit where a faint glow was visible. "There they are. You must go on alone to climb this last summit and prove yourself—but be warned, my father is hot on your hooves, and he will not hesitate to take from you all, which you hold dear."

Not hesitating for a moment, Hirc nodded and ran. His legs burned with an agonizing pain as he pushed himself across the rough terrain; he was determined to fight fate.

The ground rose into a steep and jagged incline. Moving across the rough scree, he climbed, stumbling and falling several times. But, eventually, he had to pause for breath. Looking down, he saw the lake, Rannur still waiting patiently upon his rock. Turning again, he glanced and saw how much further he had to go—but go on he did, fighting for every inch of rock as he pulled and pushed himself onward.

Soon enough, Hirc paused, steadying himself on the gravel slope. He stood, jagged stones beneath his bloody hooves; joints quivering, as if yearning to immerse themselves in the frigid waters of the crystalline blue lake at the base of the near sheer incline. A few meters above waited Imala, Kayla beside her, waving to and cheering him on silently.

Breaths heavy, Hirc moved with utmost care, his hooves and knees seeking sure purchase on the stones.

Just a little more. So close…

He could barely grasp the summit, his outstretched fingers mere inches from the top. Then, without warning, he tumbled down to a crash. Blarily, he looked up and saw the form of a massive wolf rise in a great wave of rock debris as if from the abyssal ocean. Imala and Kayla were clenched in his massive jaws. Suddenly, he registered nothing but pain as he was sent rolling again, feeling the sharp stones abrading his flesh away.

An anguished cry tore from his throat as he was flung out onto the lake and into its frigid waters, yanked beneath the surface as if by some unseen paws…