Chapter Seven: Call of the Wild

Ouch. For some reason Kariya ached everywhere. Severely. As if he'd been mauled half to death by a...

He opened his eyes and saw a snarling wolf right in front of him. A massive one easily twice his size. The man mentally freaked out, but his body didn't. That was a weird sensation, to feel terror but get none of the surges of adrenaline. Wait, no, those were there but had already been in effect. There were also a dozen other sensations tugging at him, though all felt like he was watching them.

"Here we go again." was the thought that entered Kariya's mind as he realized he was once again dreaming of his servant's past, just days after the former.

Which was good, Irisviel had been trying to encourage them to happen with magic to fish for clues as to Marrok's problem. This didn't seem like the right target time though, as Kariya noticed his apparent fight with this massive wolf was encircled by other wolves. This was before Arthur most likely, and probably before he became a skinwalker considering it was sort of implied he lived as a human after he gained those abilities. Kariya quickly noted there was no pull from his origin either as there had been before. This was way back.

The larger wolf towered over Marrok with body language and growls that meant, "Surrender, Bizuneh! I not lose a good hunter in leadership fight."

Bizuneh? Oh, right. Marrok had briefly mentioned he was also known by that name but threw it away. It must have been from his wolf days.

'Bizuneh' glanced over to a specific female wolf in the crowd and then snarled at his foe, "Never! You take us too close to humans. They hunt us because you go for the easy prey in the log shapes!"

Cows? In fences?

The larger wolf, called Canis, snarled back, "They hunt our prey so I hunt theirs! Fair!"

Bizuneh growled and drove. Canis went to grab the back of his neck in his fangs but Bizuneh had apparently fallen prey to that already and adjusted his lunging speed. The bite hit a thicker part of the neck than expected and could not find purchase. Bizuneh got under the big wolf and fought very unusually for a wolf from the few documentaries Kariya had idly watched. Instead of going for a front leg to flip the enemy, he went for a back leg, using his body to sort of lift the larger wolf up from beneath. It was sort of like a wolf form of fireman's carry, the larger wolf held up along his back. There he wiggled and tried savagely to shift his weight off, but Bizuneh was thrashing as he gnawed and tore at the rear leg, canceling the movement for the most part.

He was going to town on that leg too. Ripping and tearing like he was trying to eat it off of him. It would have made Kariya sick to his stomach if he had his stomach at the moment. It was ludicrous. According to those documentaries, these duels for leadership were usually not this extreme, as big injuries meant you were pretty much dead and the pack would lose a member over a dispute. They normally only went the minimum they needed to prove a point if they even fought at all. This was a death match. Kariya could feel it. Bizuneh hated this wolf for some reason that went beyond the desire to be alpha.

And after sifting through the body language of onlookers, Kariya discovered that Canis was Bizuneh's father. Didn't that sort of make Bizuneh a prince? Not that wolves had a system of inheritance through birthright. It just tended to work that way because the offspring of the best wolves in the pack tended to be the best wolves in the pack too.

When Canis finally got off Bizuneh's back it was because the wolf had locked a vice grip on the leg and thrashed in time with his struggle to throw him down. The leg was torn out of socket and Bizuneh proceeded to yank savagely at it as if wanting to rip it off completely. Canis' animal instincts steered him only to panic and yelp and thrash as his son pulled at the leg.

Body language and growls needed no mouth to communicate, "Yield! Yield or die!"

Canis was his father after all, though Canis proved that Bizuneh was weirdly far better spoken for a wolf, "No! You lead us to starve! You yield to man! I will not yield to you or man!"

Bizuneh ruined the leg and as his father howled he lunged for the throat and killed him without hesitation. Not a single wolf seemed to lament the death any further than having lost a good hunter. Kariya could pick up a little animosity from the pack there for Canis, probably related to how Bizuneh had mentioned humans hunting them for going after their livestock. Weirdly, in a way it had been Canis trying to change the ways of the pack and not the usurper Bizuneh. Kariya would have never pegged his servant as a traditionalist even with his knight-like devotion to Saber. That, and even though such brutality was not strange to animals fighting for their lives, Kariya couldn't help but think that the berserker class was more suited to the wolf that would one day be Marrok than he'd originally believed.

Bizuneh went over to that specific female he'd glanced to and licked her affectionately. She started to treat his wounds by licking them. She had not been the alpha, instead second fiddle to the last pack leader apparently. She was now though, because Bizuneh loved her. Kariya realized the she was the reason he hated his father. Was it common for wolves to develop animosity over love interests in the pack structure? Kariya had gotten the impression that Bizuneh was oddly intelligent already for a wolf, even though it did not seem his origin had awakened.

"I am alpha now." Bizuneh declared, "This is my alpha mate. So I name her, Rhymhi."

Apparently in wolf packs, or this one at least, only the alphas had names. However it was then that Bizuneh proved himself not to be a traditionalist after all, and he proceeded to name every single wolf in the pack that had successfully contributed to the hunt. Those too young were named by Bizuneh's opinion of their potential and warned to live up to it. A new rule was apparently that if you shamed your name you lost it.

Kariya felt himself trying to wake up, but this dream was being induced with magic. Instead, Kariya uncomfortably shifted forward in time. This time, Bizuneh was on a hunt with a small group of five from the pack, teaching two young ones to hunt. They had fanned out a bit to better sweep for prey. There was one such youth next to Bizuneh who was already as large as he was. Kariya discerned something from the string of emotions in his servant's heart. Something he somehow hadn't expected.

Bizuneh instructed his son, "Bardulf, stay low. There is another smell here.

"What that? Smell it around, but never see."

"It is wildcat. Small, quiet, and fierce. Never fight it, Bardulf. It will hurt you more than it's worth."

"I am stronger than Father. Can beat?"

"Maybe, but as I said, it is quite fierce. Not worth the risks. Focus on the deer we are after."

"Yes."

Kariya couldn't help but observe that Bizuneh's son had not inherited his intellect. He was ambitious though and good natured. He had Bizuneh's elevated emotional spectrum at least. The youngster was incredibly eager to prove himself to his father and surpass him, but there was clearly love in it. Not merely instinct to be alpha. Bizuneh felt he would be an adequate alpha someday, as he was physically and even mentally superior to most of the pack.

Suddenly, a deer was visible trough a break in the trees. The pair stalked closer (Bizuneh had to correct his son, but Bardulf was receptive and followed the direction well). However, suddenly the wildcat revealed itself by leaping out of a tree onto the deer's back, locking a vice grip with its fangs and claws onto the back of the deer's neck.

The deer thrashed, and bucked, and kicked. There was no getting it off though. It instinctively bucked its head back, doing an action that was the reason wolves could not attack the same area. A wolf was so large that the creature's horns would cut and impale it, the wildcat though was barely twice the size of a large house cat and Bizuneh assessed it was a super-dense 45 lbs. That little size and that much weight in a fairly sleek frame meant muscle not easily thrown and a body out of reach of the horns. A perfect attack for its anatomy. So perfect it was like nature had made a spot just for it. Nature had deemed that when the tiny thing attacked a beast easily ten times its size the prey would start stabbing itself in its panic. Bizuneh observed this, and found it a bit horrifying. He had also seen wolves try to take one before. Given the thing was mad enough to hunt like it was, you can imagine how that went.

The deer eventually tripped in its panic and the cat dismounted with surgical precision, going for the now ground level throat with such fervor that it practically devoured the poor beast's throat as it went. This was no simple cat. This was a natural born demon. A barely over three foot long nightmare on four legs.

"Hey! That our deer!" Bardulf darted at astonishing speed at the creature, "Give deer!"

"Bardulf no!" Bizuneh gave chase, but his son was much faster than him.

The foolish young wolf barreled headlong into the wildcat, who immediately went berserk in self-defense. It was like someone beating a dog to death with a weed whacker. It was ungodly. The thing tore straight into the throat of the wolf trying to bite it. The thing was mechanically efficient and ungodly quick. When Bizuneh got to the situation it immediately backed off a little and hissed at him. So he stopped, having noticed what it meant that the cat was not backing further from Bardulf. His son was out of the fight and done for.

Bizuneh growled, but took a warning stance rather than an aggressive one. He circled so that when the cat moved to keep Bardulf between them it would end up next to the deer. Much unlike a berserker, and perhaps much unlike a wolf, Bizuneh was compromising. He consciously knew that they were in the wrong and tempered his anger over his son's injury for the moment.

"Take deer. Let me have wolf back."

The creature seemed to understand that Bizuneh was not going to attack, but when he went for the barely breathing Bardulf; it hissed and stepped aggressively to defend its second kill.

Bizuneh answered in kind, "LET ME HAVE MY SON!"

The cat backed off and Bizuneh dragged Bardulf o a safe distance. There was nothing he could do for him. After all, wolves don't do magic or learn medicine. All he could do was lick the wound. When that didn't work, he tried putting something on it to keep the blood in, figuring out the whole pressure on bleeding thing through crude reasoning. The whole scene was painful to watch, especially given that it took hours for the poor thing to die. The wildcat was long gone by then and Bizuneh couldn't bring himself to kill his son, doing everything he could think of to save him. However, Bardulf died.

Bizuneh lay there for another hour, protecting his son's body and mourning. None of the hunting party came their way. It was then that a very large but emaciated wolf came strolling up. Bizuneh growled weakly, knowing that wolves are perfectly fine with eating other dead wolves. The sickly wolf did not threaten, it simply sat.

"I'm sorry for your loss." the creature spoke even more eloquently than Bizuneh with body language.

"What do you care? None of your kind understand this. They would tell me bring him back for food. I should... but can't feed my son to my family."

"I understand you fine. You love your son."

"What is love?"

"What you have always felt for your son when he excelled, and what made you never give up on his failings."

"I see."

"He is gone though. May I please have his meat as sustenance? I am too weak to hunt."

Bizuneh thought a moment, and started to refuse, but after another moment got up from his son's corpse, "You may. We don't need his meat, you will die without it. If he must be eaten, let it mean something."

"Thank you." the strange wolf went over and began to eat. He stopped when he noticed Bizuneh watching intently, "You are not averting your eyes?"

"I failed him, I will see him to his last. I watched his death, I will watch him save a life."

With that, there was suddenly what amounted to a smile on the strange wolf's face, "You... you are like me. I thought so, now I am certain."

"How so?"

"You are much smarter than the common wolf, you care more, and there is a trait that defines you. A trait so close to but not entirely awakened. I can sense it."

"What do you mean?"

The large wolf put a paw on Bizuneh's head, and suddenly he felt very strange. Stronger, more driven, more fulfilled. Like everything made sense when it hadn't before.

Kariya's body tried to wake up; but again it was, painfully this time, forced to stay in this state. Once again he moved forward in time, this time he was on the outskirts of a farm. Bizuneh gazed longingly at his mate Rhymhi, who had been accepted into the farm and was tending three pups. None of them were Bizuneh's. He turned and left quickly as the farmer's male dog trotted out of the barn and looked around suspiciously. Bizuneh didn't want to disrupt the life she had chosen. Life among man was peaceful after all. There she didn't have to worry about losing children to wild beasts. She could have all her young live instead of being lucky if even one lived. Plus, he expansion of man didn't matter if you were a part of it.

It made complete sense to leave her there. It was the right thing to do, and how close to home that ache struck nearly ripped Kariya's heart apart. Bizuneh was fortunate though. He had grown tired of the company of his species. None of them were more than normal wolves. Even the most clever were still guided by instinct and base logic rather than higher intellect. The difference between Bizuneh and the others had simply grown larger since that day long ago that he had lost his son and met the strange wolf. In fact, he had months ago simply yielded the position of alpha when challenged. He didn't feel fit to lead them anymore. He wasn't one of them. Rather than a blessing, the awakening of his origin had been a curse that tore his life apart.

It was not far to the den. Not because they chose to live only a mile or so away from man, but because there was nowhere left to go to not be relatively near a farm. When he returned however, he was met with a horrific sight.

His entire pack, torn to pieces.

Sniffing around, frantic, he found a strange scent leading into the camp. It smelled like deer, but something else was mixed in with it that Bizuneh didn't know. That scent led to a deer corpse. No... just the skin. There the strange scent got stronger. Something had been hiding in the deer he concluded. That scent was in a clump in the middle of the den near the largest amount of wolf bodies but vanished near a wolf body that was missing the skin. It was Jargo, the current pack leader. Whose scent trailed off from the body mixed with the strange scent. Something was hidden in Jargo, Bizuneh deduced, and he sprinted along that trail.

It took him hours to track the thing hiding in Jargo to the body of a wildcat. Missing it's skin. It took him another half hour following that trail to the body of a man that had gone hunting, probably not long ago. There was the body of a familiar hound next to it. The dog from Rhymhi's farm. The human, the man that had claimed the lands. A man Bizuneh would later learn was a minor noble on he outskirts of Arthur's lands. It was the man that was missing his skin. Something was hiding in the man.

Bizuneh knew where the scent would lead and ran as fast as he could... it would not be fast enough.

Moments later, despite all magical attempts to keep him in the linked dream state, Kariya woke, screaming, "NOOOOO! NOOOOOOOO! NOOOOOO!"

He frantically shoved Irisviel from him and clamored onto the floor, momentarily forgetting he was bipedal. The master cried out again and again. "NOT THEM! NOT THEM! THEY WERE HAPPY! THEY WERE FINE! I LET HER GO! SHE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE SAFE!"

Irisviel motioned at him, "Saber, restrain him!"

The servant did so. Marrok getting into his masters field of view to insure him that he was there. Saber was clearly unsettled, "What's wrong with him?"

"I was worried about this. The books say forcing the link to stay is risky, but three is the standard limit. Whatever he saw, he must have seen something horrible that resonated with him. He thinks he's Marrok."

Marrok made especially sure he was visible to his master.

Who calmed a little, muttering, "It killed them... not for food. Not even for their skins... it just wanted to kill them. It took that man's skin just to butcher everything he loved. Bizuneh saved the wife... saved the wife. She didn't deserve it though."

Irisviel was confused, "Who's Bizuneh?"

Marrok turned and barked.

Artoria elaborated, "That was his name as a wolf."

"Wolves name each other?"

"Not usually. He did though." Artoria shook Kariya gently, "What do you mean she didn't deserve it? Is that Marrok's ex-wife that betrayed him? Is that why?"

"No... no... Marrok didn't understand it when he saw it in the basement back then. That was his ex-wife... but he didn't know what the circle was."

"Circle?"

"The nobleman's wife, Marrok's ex-wife... she summoned the skinwalker back then."

Marrok sat down hard and froze, wide-eyed, before letting out a long howl mixed with sorrow and anger.

Next Chapter: Castle Under Siege