To Lyger 0: That would have been a really good idea… if Gaston had actually slept at some point in the last 36 hours!
Felix gritted his teeth in frustration, shading his eyes and scanning the countryside around him carefully for any sign of Dhuan. The rolling green hills of Wales spread out in front of him, the little village of Lllweknalekn-whatever behind. The moment he had gotten off the phone with Bri after finding the fur and imprint in the ground at the base of this hill, he had returned to the village and searched it from top to bottom, without any luck. No one in the village had seen Dhuan since he left that morning. No one had so much as looked in the direction of the hillside all day. Aside from Dhuan's fur, Felix had nothing to indicate that there even was a problem! And yet, Dhuan was nowhere to be found. Felix sighed heavily, throwing his head back and letting out a loud groan. He was stuck here in Wales, hunting for a missing Dhuan, exactly the wrong place for them to be when Bri was back in London dealing with whatever lunatic had blown up her flat and tried to kill her!
Emerging up out of the ground and moving to hover beside Felix, Barkk drifting another meter higher into the air, shading her eyes with one paw and rotating around in a complete circle. "There's nothing in the hill but dirt," she reported. "But where could he be?"
Felix shook his head, growling. "If we don't find him in an hour, I'm calling Pegasus."
"Maybe his drones will be able to find a clue you can't spot," Barkk agreed, humming.
Felix shrugged. "Maybe…"
Barkk turned to stare at him with wide eyes. "You aren't thinking about leaving him here, are you?" she demanded. Felix quirked an eyebrow with a heavy sigh. Her mouth fell open. "But you can't just give up on Dhuan!" she protested.
"But what about Bri!?" he retorted hotly. "She could have been bloody killed last night and I'm not there!"
"But she wasn't, because of you!" Barkk dropped lower and stared him in the face. Felix leaned back slightly, his eyes crossing. "I'm worried about her, too, Hound," Barkk told him. "But she's with Anne and your mother. Meanwhile, Dhuan is lost somewhere, alone, without any backup – someone might have hurt him. He might be in danger!"
"Or if he's not in danger, then he's gonna be…" Felix muttered darkly. He groaned, kicking the dirt at his feet. "Fine. So what the bloody hell am I supposed to do!?"
"Find him," Barkk told him shortly.
Felix let out a low growl, rolling his eyes. "Just like that."
Barkk raised an eyebrow. "We can find him. You can find him."
Felix shook his head and climbed down the hill, picking through the tall grass until he found the narrow slit in the dirt that he had found with the tufts of Dhuan's fur. Sighing, he dropped to one knee next to the disturbed grass and dirt and gave Barkk an annoyed look. "Fine." Carefully, he leaned back and to either side, studying the slit from every angle before poking it with his pinky finger, feeling the perfectly-straight edges as the disturbed dirt bunched back together. Running his hand along the ground around the spot, he paused, his finger finding a drop of something brilliant red. "Damnit." He shook his head in annoyance, turning and looking away from the spot. With a sigh, he turned back, leaning in closer to the ground and sniffing the soil and grass closest to where the slit had been. He cocked his head, his eyes narrowed in concentration. There was a faint whiff of something…
"What have you found?" squeaked Barkk, her eyes widening curiously.
"Could I–" Felix's eyes shot wide open. The miraculous improved his senses significantly… "Barkk, Ears back!" Even before the light of his transformation faded away, the Hound rose to his feet, forcing himself to breathe slowly in and out, his heartrate slowing as he centered himself. Closing his eyes, he took in a deep sniff, pondering the scents for a long moment. Dhuan had told him to focus not on the senses themselves but to push past to something beyond, something deeper than what was obvious on the outside. Bringing back to mind the same smell he had gotten from Dhuan yesterday, he concentrated on that, trying to extend his senses to locate it again. The scent of the grass and clover, the tang of salt, all nearly overwhelmed his senses. But behind that, faint, almost vanishing into the background, was that same hint of something else.
The Hound's eyes shot wide open, and he immediately took off at a dead sprint, following that smell of musk and sweat, mingled with something older and greener. The scent seemed to be all around him, a part of the countryside though faded. Off to his right, out to sea, he could smell something. But there was a stronger source of that sensation, off in the distance directly in front of him. Over hills and around them he raced, barely paying any attention to where he was going. The Welsh countryside passed by in a blur, all his focus on the scent that grew stronger with each kilometer that he ran. Frowning, he narrowed his eyes, studying the ground below him. He must have covered most of the distance they had traveled yesterday by now, almost all the way back to Cardiff, which was almost exactly the direction in which the figure seemed to be heading. A pair of tire tracks stood out in the soft mud alongside the path, leaving behind deep depressions where a vehicle had passed. Finally, with the city only a couple kilometers ahead of them, he crested another hill and looked down on an ATV making slow but steady progress through the valley between two hills. A strange figure, wearing a suit of silver medieval-style armor with the helmet down, sat in the driver's seat. And tied to the back, bound hand and foot. rested the half-human form of Dhuan.
The iron tang of blood tinged the scent that the Hound had followed; a matting of blood covered Dhuan's half-furred head. The Hound's eyes narrowed, studying the vehicle, the knight, and Dhuan himself carefully. As he was examining them, Dhuan looked up at the Hound as he made his way up to the top of the hill, and he shouted, "[No! Leave me! Save yourself]!"
"Quiet, monster!" the armored knight growled, not turning his head away from the rolling hills in front of him.
"Only monster I see here is you!" the Hound called, his eyes narrowing further into thin slits. The knight started and turned toward the Hound, his head cocking to one side as the ATV's wheels skidded. Tensing, the Hound drew his leash from its place around his waist, giving it a testing twirl without taking his eyes off of the knight.
"What are you doing here!?" the knight demanded as the ATV screeched to a halt, throwing up clods of soil in all directions. Dhuan rolled off the back of the ATV and fell down onto the ATV tracks. Rising to his feet, the knight twisted around in his seat and hopped off the ATV, dropping into a fighting position and placing a hand on the longbow held in his sheath.
The Hound's eyes narrowed, studying the knight carefully. "Yeah? And what are you doing with my friend?"
"Your… friend." The knight cocked his head to one side, gesturing toward Dhuan. "You think that this foul monster that I found terrorizing the countryside is your friend?"
The Hound folded his arms. "I would appreciate it if you returned him."
"[Protect yourself! Don't let him take the miraculous]!"
The Hound shook his head, his eyes not leaving the hologram. "Not happening."
The knight turned back and forth, his gaze shifting between the Hound and Dhuan. "You mean to say that you understand this babble? Then you must be bewitched." The longbow seemed to spring into his hands faster than the Hound could follow, and he drew the bow back. "I am sorry, Hound."
The Hound had no more than a moment to react as a red arrow streaked at him from the bow, materializing from the empty quiver at the knight's side as the knight fired. The Hound dove to one side and rolled down the hill, and the arrow struck the hill behind him, vanishing the moment it embedded itself into the soft soil. Another arrow came straight at the Hound, and he spun his leash into a shield. The arrow hit the shield and seemed to disintegrate against it, the pieces vanishing into nothingness as they reached the ground. Carefully the Hound approached, still spinning his leash between himself and the archer, taking in his surroundings carefully with his peripheral vision.
Dhuan struggled against his bonds, which creaked and groaned as he fought against them before, very suddenly, he let out a feral roar and his upper body completed the transformation into his bear form. The ropes strained as his arms expanded outward and torso shifted to hunch forward, pulling taut against his arms and chest, and slowly the strands began to snap.
The knight stepped back, away from the ATV, his aim shifting quickly back and forth between the Hound and Dhuan. "Fide!" he called, holding his bow sideways as he lay a trio of red arrows along the string. With a quick look at the Hound, he fired all three at Dhuan, striking him in the chest just as he completed the transformation. The arrows bit into his pectorals and vanished instantly, leaving behind a thin trickle of blood that wept from one of the wounds.
Dhuan let out a pained bellow, throwing his head back and roaring, and dropped down onto his front legs, shaking his torso and shoulders in protest. The bellow shifting into a low growl, he slowly lumbered across the clearing toward the knight.
With a snarl, the Hound sprang into the air, interposing himself between the knight and Dhuan, and lashed out with his leash as a whip, cracking it against the knight's helmet. The knight raised one arm to block the blow and shifted his grip on the bow in his other hand, swinging it in a sweeping slash at the Hound's chest. The Hound jumped back away from him, narrowly avoiding the blow, and the knight charged after him, swinging the bow with both hands at the Hound's shoulder. The Hound spun his leash-shield at a slight angle, knocking the bow away, and twisted into a follow-up kick that caught the knight squarely in his chest. The knight stumbled backward, and the Hound backed away from him, his eyes constantly roaming around the countryside. Thumbing a control on his leash, he muttered, "Pegasus, are you there?"
"What is happening?" came the prompt response.
"Need a quick evac," the Hound reported breathlessly. "Dhuan was attacked. Open a portal maybe… two meters east of my position?" The knight cocked his head to one side, drawing and nocking an arrow, raising the bow, and aiming down the length of the arrow. There was a soft whooshing of air behind the Hound, along with the sound of grunting and scoffs, and the Hound's lip curled into a smirk as he jumped backward through the portal to find himself in the Heroes of Paris Headquarters, Dhuan behind him, looking up dumbly at Pegasus standing beside the portal. His last glimpse of the knight was of an arrow nocked on his bow as the portal vanished. Finally, the Hound let out a relieved breath.
"What was that about?" Pegasus demanded, before glancing at Dhuan. His eyes widened in shock, and he immediately backed into his lab, emerging moments later with a first aid kit open in both hands.
"No idea," the Hound mused, as Pegasus ripped open a gauze pad and pressed it against Dhuan's chest. Dhuan shrank back to his normal form, wincing. The Hound let out a breath. "But there was definitely something familiar about him…"
"[I do not know what he wanted]," Dhuan informed them, rolling his shoulders and nodding his thanks. "[I was trying to use my ursine senses to locate the outpost, when that person assaulted me without warning]."
"Well, whatever he wanted, we can't exactly worry about that at the moment," the Hound told him curtly. Dhuan cocked his head to one side. The Hound's mouth set in a thin line. "We need to get back to London now: Bri's flat was bombed."
