Several days after fleeing, his mind was still occupied with thoughts about the shifting spirit. It was the first time he had encountered a different spirit that wasn’t the result of a spell. Orou wanted to return back and investigate the apple, the tree and from where the shaping spirits were coming from, but if he couldn’t find a way to deal with the leaves, it would be impossible.
That train of thought continued for several days as Orou went deeper into the forest. What made him almost completely forget about the shaping spirits was a site of a battle. Normally, Orou wouldn’t care and after a glance or two, head past it, but this time, he saw footprints, resembling that of humanoids. A single massive beast must have fought multiple of what Orou assumed to be beastmen. He didn’t see a single corpse, but the footprints of the beast and the trail of blood were enough for Orou to know where they went.
Moving stealthily through the foliage, he followed the trail of blood. He heard grunts and yelps before he saw the actual battle. Sticking his head out of a bush, Orou observed a fight between a tiger and six beastmen, all of them injured in one way or another. Although they were wounded, the tiger looked even worse, in fact, it looked like it was about to collapse at any given moment, the only thing holding it up was sheer willpower.
The tiger’s willpower was not enough as one of the beastmen skewered the tiger, driving his spear through the tiger’s head. The beastman’s gray fur was stained with blood and the red eyes filled with madness calmed down.
“There’s no time for rest, we need to make it in time for the sacrificial ritual. Take the tiger’s body as well as Thog’s body, he deserves to be buried with the rest.” A deep and guttural voice shouted out orders in a language different from that the humans spoke. He pointed his spear to a corpse with two long horns and sharp tusks lying near the tiger with various claw and bite wounds.
“Can we make it back in time? The full moon will be here in two days.” A beastman with completely white fur spoke in a soft voice, going around the battlefield and recovering still usable arrows. While it was hard to discern genders, Orou was pretty sure that it was a woman, though he could be mistaken. The language they spoke in relied more on grunts and growls not words, but this beastman was the opposite, relying more on words than grunts.
Three more beastman, two resembling a goat and one resembling a lizard, started begrudgingly dragging the two corpses as they started walking forwards. Orou started assessing the situation, wondering if he could take them on. They were injured and exhausted, but the two archers could get a few shots off as he fought off the rest. While he could defeat them all pretty easily, Orou’s plan was the opposite of that. He wanted to follow them to the so-called “village” and see what the difference between a human and a beastman settlement was.
The five beastmen got into a formation as they dragged the corpses behind them. Even while exhausted, they kept a guard up for any potential ambushes and didn’t slack off. After tracking them for a day, Orou compared these guys to adventurers he had seen it the forest. The beastmen’s weapons and armor had signs of wear and tear, having been used for quite a while, but they seemed experienced in combat and working in a group. The only men that could compare to them in terms of discipline were the guards he had seen up on the walls.
Leather armor and crude steel weapons made them easy pickings for Orou, but if they were equipped with magical armor, spears and enchanted arrows, they would be much better fighters than anyone Orou had met before. Of course, the fact that they didn’t have anyone with the ability to cast spells both relieved and disappointed Orou. He wasn’t making much progress on the beam of light spell and seeing a new spell would make his training much more interesting, but a mage could potentially detect him, and if that happened, he would have to kill everyone here.
A quick scan with his spirit vision showed that everything was normal in the surrounding area, as well as making sure that none of the beastmen had any surprises in store. They had bedded down for the night and Orou was out hunting for food. They ate rabbits and various small critters they found along the way, never touching the huge tiger they carried behind them.
Orou spent the entire night filling up his stomach. He had noticed that the further they went, the fewer beasts he encountered. It was getting to a point where Orou had to spend the entire night hunting, and even then, the results weren’t satisfactory. If this trend continued all the way to the village, Orou would have to seriously think about what to eat as he wanted to spend at least several days observing the village.
As the sun started rising, Orou made his way back to the camp. The beastmen had started packing, and the beastman resembling a wolf, Tjord, ordered everyone to pick up the pace so they could arrive in time. The rest of the beastmen solemnly nodded and started marching forward, not minding their exhaustion. While heading to the beastmen village was great and all, but because of that, Orou couldn’t practice his spellcasting. His mind was conflicted about which was more important, and eventually, he came to the conclusion that the beastmen village was more important, solely on the possibility of unique spirits and new spells.
Having made up his mind, he easily kept up with the beastmen. He snuck up to them, at a distance that some would call uncomfortably close, and spent his time observing each of the beastmen. All of them had some form of fur and they clearly had traits unique to the beasts they resembled, even if Orou didn’t know what beasts they originated from. Tjord had the highest position in the group, he was constantly giving out orders to the group and motivating them to move forward. The beastman with white fur stuck close to Tjord and from what Orou could observe, was Tjord’s wife. The rest of the beastmen had nothing but respect towards him, though their eyes were droopy, the mood solemn from the death of a companion.
After a long and arduous trek through the forest, they had finally arrived at a village. It had sharpened sticks for walls and a single grizzly guard. The guard looked questioningly at Fjord, to which he replied with an affirmative grunt. The guard didn’t seem like one for talking as after a few grunts and growls, he opened the gate to the city. As the group was about to enter, Orou contemplated on how to get in. Before they could completely walk into the city, he recalled the memory of Dawn and decided to test something out.
Letting the two beastmen with horns drag the body in first, Fjord was unsuccessfully trying to chat up the guard. Everyone stopped what they were doing when a soft light enveloped Fjord’s wife and she started screaming in pain. After a few seconds of screaming, she dropped to the ground, unconscious and potentially dead. Fjord howled in rage and turned around to look for the assailant, only to see a snake looking at his wife with cold eyes, turning its gaze at him.
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The spell that Orou cast was to try and heal the beastman. Orou had seen Dawn healing people and they were always grateful to her, so Orou wondered if they would let him in the village if he healed the beastmen. Unfortunately, he had forgotten about the side effect of his healing, the intense pain that came along with it. Although it did hurt, it was nowhere near enough pain to knock someone out, was it? As a result, the group along with the guard were murderously staring at him, drawing their weapons and preparing to attack him.
Deciding to try it one more time, Orou looked over to Fjord and started casting the spell. Orou practiced this spell every day just so he could get used to casting it, and because of that, he could get it off before he was shot with arrows. He used the spirits to draw the triangles in the air and a soft glow enveloped Fjord. He screamed in pain, but whether he was fueled by rage or he simply could take pain better than the other beastman, he continued to stay on his feet and charge at Orou.
The first volley of arrows was flying towards Orou and he didn’t plan on fighting them, for now at least. People reacted negatively when Orou tried to eat them and Orou still wanted to enter the village and not get attacked by everyone there, so he slipped back into the bushes, went a few meters forwards and hid in the leaves of the tree, looking down at the beastmen still charging forwards and trying to hunt him down.
Orou didn’t get it, he just cured their wounds, why were they attacking him? The pain was just a minor side effect for healing, was it not? After a few more minutes of searching, Fjord cursed and went back to his wife, carefully looking over her. As the sun started setting, they carried the two corpses and Fjord’s wife into the town, the wooden gate shutting behind them. Orou slowly dropped out of the tree and started thinking of how to get into the village. He could likely simply slither over the wooden wall, seeing that it wasn’t taller than him, though he didn’t want to get spotted.
As he pondered about his current situation, the sun had already set and it was then that Orou realized that something wasn’t right here. A weird tingling feeling travelled through his body, Orou’s eyes instinctively becoming red as he used his spirit vision. At first glance, it seemed like everything was fine, but upon closer inspection, the spirits were behaving weirdly. They were rapidly moving in the air, creating the illusion of the spirits standing completely still.
Orou also noticed that the surrounding temperature had slowly increased until it was as hot as standing under the sun during the day. Perhaps he hadn’t noticed in during the heat of the battle, but as Orou tried to heal himself, he found it much harder to make the spirits obey his will. While moving them as easy, completely stopping them was the hard part. To Orou, it almost felt like the spirits were excited about something, provoking them into this state of rapidly moving.
A soft light enveloped him and the usual pain that accompanied the healing was replaced with a burning sensation. His wounds burned under the soft glow as the pain he felt was even worse than usual. He bore through the pain and looked over to his wounds, completely gone from sight. As he was recovering from the pain, he saw a bit of smoke coming out of the village. The longer he spent thinking about what to do, the more the quantity of the smoke increased.
Orou couldn’t miss the “sacrifice” that they were talking about, what if it was related to the unusual behavior of the spirits? He started circling the village, looking for anything that would mask his intrusion into the village. After circling around it a couple of times, he decided to risk it and making his way to the side of the village, he used his tail as support and slowly slithered along the wall. His head peeked over the village, but his sight was blocked by a wooden house.
After making sure no one was looking, he rose to his full length and started to slowly slither over the wall and down into the village. The thought of how he would escape crossed his mind, but he soon forgot it as he remembered about the sacrifice. He stealthily slithered over towards the wooden building and poked his head around the corner, wanting to see from where the smoke was coming from.
The view towards the centre of the village was relatively unobstructed as he observed the beastmen preparing for the sacrifice. A massive bonfire was lit in the middle of the village with several more beastmen bringing firewood over to kindle the flame. A large number of corpses was piled up near the bonfire, whether it was wolves, tigers or rabbits or deer, they were all tossed in a single pile.
Six beastmen, all of them different from each other, were standing around the bonfire and singing a song in their own language. It was a song about the old replacing the new and the strong preying on the weak, about embracing the beastly side and letting yourself feast upon those weaker than you. The other beastman standing around let out feral howls, all of them joining in with the song in one way or another.
Slowly, the song faded only to be replaced with slow and solemn footsteps and the tapping of a cane. Each tap that hit the earth carried with it the rhythm of the song and Orou could still hear the voices of the beastmen even after the song had ended. The rest of the beastmen bowed their heads, all of them looking towards the sound of the tapping. Orou saw the cane before the beastman that was holding it. The cane itself looked ancient, the wood that it was made of was preserved through the ages and on the cane was engraved a single line.
Holding the cane was a four-meter tall beastman, easily towering over everyone in the village. His fur might have been golden once upon a time, but it was now a dim yellow mixed in with spots of black. His golden mane was in full display for everyone as if to declare his royal nature. His face was the epitome of pride and the scars on his face only served to emphasize it. His footsteps came to a halt as the only thing that could be heard in the village was the crackling of the bonfire.
“A night of full moon is nearly upon us. Let us feast on the remains of our ancestors and accept the feral blood inside of us! Let the night of feasting begin!” The beastman’s imposing voice resounded through the village and the rest of the beastmen let out savage roars, their eyes filled with feral madness. Resembling a savage pack of animals, each of the beastmen started rushing over to the pile of dead animals and using their teeth, they ripped into the animals and started eating their flesh and drinking their blood.
The moon had turned blood-red, dyeing the surroundings in a red shade. The four-meter tall beastman started waving his cane and in Orou’s spirit vision, he saw the spirits excitedly rush towards the formation forming in the air. The now red spirits formed a ribbon in the air and rushed forwards into the group of beastmen feasting on the flesh. The red ribbon passed through each of the beastmen and the animals they were eating, each time becoming slightly bigger and longer.
The ribbon returned back to the beastman who held the cane and the red ribbon entered his body. He looked ecstatic, his body was shivering from excitement, his eyes completely red. Drawing in a deep breath of air, he let out a roar which pierced through the air, prompting the rest of the beastmen to join in, forming an unearthly chorus of roars and howls.
Orou saw Fjord and his team also joining in on the feast, their usual composure gone and replaced with madness, taking pleasure in eating the entrails of the tiger they had slain. Their fallen comrade was also lying in the pile, but Fjord had no remorse on his face as he started feasting on his dead ally. Of course, Orou saw nothing wrong in this, so he continued watching with excitement, waiting for the beastman to do anything else.
To Orou’s disappointment, the ferocious-looking beastman didn’t participate in the feast. He spoke a few more words of encouragement before slowly walking back to where he came from, his cane once more tapping to a different rhythm of a different song. The beastmen didn’t pay any more attention to him, their mouths dripping with blood and their hands dyed red.
Orou watched all of this as if enchanted by the magical sight. He watched until the sun replaced the blood moon, the beastmen parted ways, saying their goodbyes by madly cackling and laughing.