Oooook, readers, here we go again! GrinWolf here's posting his 11th chapter... just hoping you like it...
and hoping you enjoy it as much as KingAzxoll9 shows to me...
Don't be scared to review and to tell me what do you think this far... As i had already said, I won't bite anyone!
Chapter 11: Slipping away
Other two months have passed by… Grin's childhood was merely a vague, distant memory, nuanced in what could be regarded a near perfect machine. During these two months, Grin, under the careful guidance of Valen, had become far from helpless puppy that he was at the start: although not very huge and solid from the physical point of view , he was able to develop a great muscle mass, enormously concentrated in his legs and in his back, due to his exhausting trainings. He become even able to run faster than Valen, the one who had surclassed him in the first race, who got to arrival point two minutes before him. He also developed, during next training month, a very sharp mindset, that led him to be able to deal with different situations by keeping calm, thinking under pressure to all the possible situations to get out of danger, learning to evaluate the possible escape routes , how to locate the weaknesses of his opponents and how to use his surroundings to his advantage. Now they almost reached the fourth and final step of their training…today was the day that a test would have sanctioned the transition from one step to another one…
After that race, however , Valen's conditions has got worse by the day, getting to the point that cough used to burst abruptly during their training, forcing him to stop whatever he was doing to catch his breath.
Grin, although at first didn't care much about these bouts of coughing, thinking that they were sporadic episodes, was starting to get seriously worried about his mentor's health.
Despite everything, Valen decided to put before essential training's continuation to his health issues, well aware that, sooner or later, his extreme old age would lead him to an eternal rest. It was a matter of days, at most months before life would abandon his body, but he had to hold on…at least he had to do it for him.
GRIN's P.O.V.
Valen was taking a quick nap, after that another violent coughing session pounded him, leaving him powerless.
Grin was watching him sleeping on the entry threshold…he was slightly bored…he thought of something to pass the time…then he finally found something he could do… he had to do.
Happy and peg away to surprise his master, made up his mind to use his knownledge to hunt down for something… to prove him that his teachings had been successful.
He then began to walk around the cold, snowy forest, certain to find something to catch. His breath produced a soft steam that vanishes in the biting winter air.
Trees could be seen without leaves lie inert, inanimate, but still standing, as in a desperate attempt to resist the icy chill that permeates the climate. He couldn't believe that the forest could change so much in so little time. It seemed like yesterday that green-yellowish leaves fluttered rhythmically in the air, torn from trees and dragged from a pleasant but intense breeze… and now it was possible to see only the bare tree barks and pure white snow blending harmoniously into the landscape.
Although it sounded desolate a barren ecosystem, Grin somehow liked it… maybe because he thought the white symbolized a kind of purity to him… and maybe because this environment was very quiet… perfect for taking a break from the hectic pace of the world
Grin continued to move forward ,while watching carefully his surroundings, sniffing here and there, in attempt to locate something.
"Got something!" He said to himself, quite happy to have finally found a track. "But this is just the beginning…" He focused again on that scent. He knew very well that scent, it belonged to a very common quarry in that park: elks.
He followed that scent until he got into a small clearing, surrounded by some not very high mountain peaks. He could finally have a clear vision of what was before him: a rather large herd of elk was grazing there… each elk was moving here and there, stirring up the snow to see if there were any herbs to browse.
"This is a perfect chance for me!" Grin exclaimed quietly.
He crouched in an assault position and he began to slowly approach the herd.
"First step: after locate the prey, do not reveal your location." He kept playing in his head Valen's training words.
"Second step: try to crawl as near as possible to it, and then wait for the most opportune moment to attack"
He was getting closer to them, but something went wrong: he focused too much on the words playing in his head, forgetting maybe the most important thing of all: keep his body under control.
When he almost reached a perfect point, one of his foreleg twitched, maybe in excitement, maybe for the adrenaline, and stepped on a sprig, snapping it, and blowing completely his cover.
Elks immediately stopped grazing grass, and tured their thier almost-all horned head to the source of the snap, almost immediately seeing him. But they turned their heads in the opposite direction, seeming to be attracted to something else.
Almost immediately after Grin noticed their attitude, a giant hairy creature could be clearly seen, high on his hind legs, towering over all the animals. He was mammoth , at least two meters high, it had a dark brown fur, bloodshot eyes, and could well be said to be extremely hungry, owing to its high quantity of drool dripping from the edges of its mouth .
Then, maybe ready to attack, made a sort of war cry, riving the temporary quiet of the clearing.
Elks, clearly frightened by the biggest predator, quickly assessing what the minor risk was, didn't think twice to run in its opposite direction, determined to trample everything that they would find before them, placed in between them and their salvation.
Grin was slighly frightened: he was indeed standing in a favourite position to begin his assault to elks, but he didn't think about a possible disturbance of another predator, so he was at a point between frightened and ready-to-move elks and the only way out of that clearing.
"Oh, damn…" Grin said, muttering under his breath, realizing that he was in a serious trouble.
Elk began to back up, and began to run in Grin's direction, resulting in a sort of heartquake.
Grin was rigid with fear: he could be trampled to death by elks if he had not taken immediately of measures to avoid that, and if he were not dead for the numerous squashing, that giant predator would have finished the job, maybe leading him to a even worse and painful death.
Elks were running in his direction, getting closer and closer to him, followed by that fierce and determined-to-fill-its-belly marauder…
He had to act, now.
VALEN's P.O.V.
I was litterally shaken off of my resting nap, woke up by an intense rumbling sound, coming from somewhere nearby. I put my head on my paws, not looking around, and said, still sleepy and fatigued, "Grin, what do you think it was all that noise,heh? Nature's having fun out there?...Grin?" He turned his head to Grin's usual sleeping spot, only to see that there was no trace of him.
After that discovery, fatigue left him completely, giving way to a clear concern for Grin.
"Where the he-… no, don't tell me that…" His thought did nothing but add further worries. "If anything happened to him…no… I wouldn't even think about that…I'd rather die a hundred times rather than lose him… And all for a my futile…inattention!" He stomped his paw over den's bare and soft ground, angrily snarling in anger, disbelief in being so careless…
His healt condition certainly not helped him… all that anger and stress were doing aggravate his breathing difficulties… He coughed heavily, putting a paw over his mouth, trying to calm down, but what he saw on his paw really surprised him: he noticed that a sticky, foamy, dense liquid flowed on his paw during his cough. Examining it carefully, Valen recognized it immediately… It was blood, mixed with some purulent material. He could feel his lungs burning for the excessive effort in coughing, he could feel his throat drying time after time, and could feel his body temperature skyrocketing…
"No…no,no,no,no…I have to find him, at any cost…" He thought, and exited from den, catapulting into the snowy landscape, beginning to search frantically for Grin… sniffing here and there, searching for traces… then he heard a rapid succession of sounds that he never wanted to hear:
A loud yelp… that had come to know very well…
A very strong familiar animal roar…
A repeated beat of hooves on the ground…
A loud crack from peaks that surrounded a rather large clearing…
Valen's eye widened, almost collapsing, for the shock of the whole situation…
"What…the…" Valen only managed to think partially, because his whole body, despite his precarious conditions, propelled with a supersonic speed, blurring through the bare trees and white snow, almost like a projectile, avoiding all obstacles with skillful and masterly skills and dexterity, directed toward the source of these sounds.
"Grin…hold on…i'm coming…" He thought, during his rush.
GRIN's P.O.V.
I tried to move… but it was impossible… I moved too late… the weight of all this snow over me is crushing me… I could only see near my left side dyeing red, due to a rather large gash in his right side, inflicted by that almost invincible monster… My energies are slowly slipping away… I can feel my rib cage slowly decreasing its up-and-down motion's pace… I'm starting to feel cold… not a normal cold, but a cold that sends chills through my body…If only I had not been so stupid..so unconscious…all of this would never have happened.
A single, almost frozed tear slowly left his eyes, in resignation of his inevitable doom.
Event of what happened shortly before were replaying in his mind…
Point-of-Death FLASHBACK
Few meters separed running elks from him. He then hinted at a retreat, but he thought that in a matter of seconds he would have been reached by the herd of herbivorous grazers, and suffered a series of unspeakable pain due to their hard hooves that would repeatedly hit his body.
Afteward, he came to the solution to climb some trees, and so trying to avoid herd's fury by placing in a higher position, but, although at first it seemed like a good move, herd was desperately trying to escape at that animal being, violently beating with every portion of their bodies whatever was in their outrush, including stones, tree barks , stomping into little ponds, plucking grass from the soil, raising a dense, dusty tide, resulting in getting his view completely blurred. He could only hear the continuous banging of elk's hooves, and and elk's impacts's noises against surrounding objects.
Some of them inevitably slammed themselves against Grin's climbed tree, causing it to vibrate violently, sending through it shock waves arriving at its upper portion, causing its branches to shake wildly.
Grin tried to maintain his balance digging his unsheated claws into branch's bark, but hind limbs's paw damaged branch's structure, compromising its hardiness, and so it cracked under his weight.
*Crack* He heard from behind him, and gravity began to exert its influence on Grin's body, dragging him down into a fall.
But indeed he had a sort of luck: elk's stampede seemed to come to an end, letting them to escape from the clearing and from that vicious predator.
As I said, it was a "sort" of luck: although he managed to remain almost unscathed from herd's get-away, just a few scratches from the fall, he found himself just behind that cogent, massive beast.
The beast seemed not to have noticed it, but now he had to face another great problem: this savage animal precluded the only way out of the clearing.
He thought he had to sneak out of the clearing, trying to circle him in the most soundless manner possible, in order not to let him become aware of its presence.
Grim jumped softly behind a tree, to seek a momentary shelter from its eyesight…He hoped that it was going to abandon the clearing and follow elk's heard… but he turned back, for some reason, and began to sniff the air, looking for something.
"Oh…no…don't tell me tha-" While he thought this, a fierce paw pierced almost entirely through the tree bark behind which he was hidden, making one beast's claw penetrate deeply into his right side, letting him emit a loud moan of pain that jangled firstly in every corner of the plain, and then flowed outside strongly extolled , as if the plain were a sort of sound amplifier.
Hit by that creature, he jumped back, leaving in the process a trail of blood… The fierce, unfamiliar creature issued a sort of war whoop, maybe glad that its blow had hit the target, maybe glad to have found an easy prey.
But, that it was the straw that broke camel's back. After that cry, it was possible to hear a loud crack coming from peaks of surrounding mountains. Portions of them broke off, also them being dragged by gravity's force, and Grin noticed that mountains's snowy separated portions were approaching them with a very high speed.
Grin backed up slowly, clearly scared about that scenario…He had never seen the manifestation of such a large force of nature…a cataclysm…an avalanche . He tried to back up faster, but pain in his side was greatly slowing his movements…
The fierce animal lose any interest in him, and began to think about its safety, and began to run to the exit of the clearing, but it was all useless…
The force of the avalanche overwhelmed them both, sending them crashing into a rotary, swirling, neverending motion, bringing them under a heavy blanket of snow.
After that… Silence reigned.
Unknown P.O.V.
"Oh…finally you're awake! You were just babbling nonsense all the time during your little…coma…" Said a female voice, excited a little.
Another voice groaned in pain. His eyes transmitted apparently sorrow and misfortune , but she could perceive that ,behind that facade, something fascinating and intoxicating belonged to him… something deeply hidden in him… something that in some way they have in common.
Raising his head, he spoke, stuttering lightly and looking a bit around in confusion : "W-where am I?... W-who are y-you?..."
"Shh…" she said "… and rest a little more, don't worry… i'm a friend…" She said, trying to calm him from his sudden shock.
He thought that if she wanted him dead, he would have killed long time ago…
After he thought that, he took a glimpse of her eyes… they were of a light lavender color… they were so mesmerizing… and he blacked out again.
Hope you liked it... GrinWolf here...over and out.