Author's update: This was the first fanfiction I ever wrote. This story came to me nearly a decade ago, and for two years, it tormented me endlessly to write it, while I refused. I eventually wrote part 1 and most of part 2, started posting part 1, and then abandoned it for 7 years. I am delighted that, despite my disloyalty to this project, it is finally completed in its entirety - parts 1, 2, and 3. I am pretty excited to have followed through with this original decade-old idea that insisted on being written. I hope that you enjoy it.

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Part 2 - Hircine's Hunting Grounds

After slipping from consciousness during the fight to protect her pack's home, Ylwa awoke in the most comfortable pile of leaves that she had ever experienced. She found herself in the middle of a forest filled with large trees. Her memory was foggy, and she sorted through her thoughts trying to determine where she was and how she arrived there. Suddenly, she found the right strand and everything came crashing back into her - fighting off invaders… falling in battle… Farkas and Vilkas. She felt an empty aching in her heart for them. Where was everyone? She jumped up and sniffed the air. This place smelled… different. The air was somehow thicker than she was accustomed to. It smelled of the hunt, and stirred something within her that could be described as almost a compulsion for the chase. She missed her boys, though, and needed to find out where they were. Since there was no breeze where she was, just the thick air, pungent with the odors that had been a constant part of her life since taking the blood, she chose a direction to travel in and took off. Despite the thick air, she felt like she had no limitations and could run for days.

The trees formed a dense canopy above her head, and the grass a heavy layer of cushioning below. Everything here was vibrant and seemed to drive her onward in her pursuit. If she were not so desperate at the moment, she would have loved to stop and enjoy the scenery. This place reminded her much of her home in southern Skyrim, but as she ran onward she also began to note more and more differences between this forest and the one that she grew up in with her pack. As no familiar sights or scents surfaced to give her any indication of where she should go, or even that she was in the same world as she was before, her run became less one of desperation and more one of growing frustration. She barreled onwards through the trees, running past several sabre cats. She didn't stop to pursue them. She put all of her thought and energy into running onward, surrounding herself with all of the anger and frustration that she could muster, knowing that as soon as she allowed those to drop, she would likely be overwhelmed with hopelessness and devastation and fear that she would never see Farkas or Vilkas again. She pushed back the thought that this might be the afterlife and instead attempted to go in the direction she felt her heart might be taking her, certain it would lead her once again to her boys.

Ylwa continued on this way for a very long time. She didn't understand why she hadn't become too winded long ago, or why her legs weren't screaming at her that it was time for a break. It was her empty stomach that finally did her in. She slowed to a casual lope and decided that her best chance at success would be to approach the situation with a clear mind, and for that, she would need a full stomach. She pushed back the nagging fear that maybe she had died and that her sweet sons would have to grow up without their mother. She told herself that they had to be around somewhere, and that she would find them just as soon as she had eaten. She sniffed the air to determine what was nearby. She caught whiff of an elk up in the distance. She began to run at an easy pace in the direction that the smell was coming from.

After following her nose for a time, she discovered the elk. She crouched down, crept as closely as she could, and sprung towards the creature. She just barely caught its hindquarters as it kicked her squarely in the ribs and then ran off. Ylwa waited a moment to recover from the jolt the blow had dealt her, and then began her pursuit. The pursuit lasted for quite some time. Ylwa was close to giving up and looking for some prey that she could get a little closer to when the elk swung around and ran back toward Ylwa. She wasn't sure what strange place she was in, but no elk that she had ever encountered would run back toward its pursuer. She paused, uncertain whether she should take this opportunity to lunge for the elk's throat, or whether she should take off herself rather than discover what had caused the elk to run back towards the predator it had been fleeing from.

Ylwa didn't have to think long about her question. As soon as the elk had run past her, giving her a small glimpse of the terror in its eyes, her skin began to crawl. She looked to the patch of trees where the elk had made the decision that Ylwa was not all that bad. Three large werewolves came stalking out from between the trees. She felt eyes staring at her from all around. She looked to her left, and saw another up on the ledge. Then two more to her right. They did not seem friendly. They were scarred and gnarly-looking, and had a hunger in their eyes that went beyond the needs of the stomach. They took a few more steps towards her, with no change in demeanor, and Ylwa decided that she should follow in that elk's footsteps and head back the other way.

Ylwa began to run, faster than she had ever run before. She heard the strange pack thundering across the earth behind her. She soon saw the elk up ahead, and veered to the left, hoping that they would go for the elk and forget about her. She listened closely as she and the elk parted ways. From the sound of their paws thundering across the lush ground, a few of them followed the elk, while the other few were still chasing after her. She dared a glance behind her and saw three of them pursuing her, gaining on her with a deadly look in their eyes. She pushed herself to go faster - as fast as her legs would take her, and faster than she had even realized she was capable of moving. She headed back toward the direction she had come from. Somehow she felt that she might be safe there.

Darkness had begun to fall before she dared another glance behind her, unable at this point to hear their pawfalls any longer. They were still there, but had fallen behind by a good distance. Ylwa then ran on and on, well into the night. When she reached the area where she had first awoken, she stopped and took in all of the information that she could gather. She detected no sign of her pursuers, but she did notice another scent, one that she recognized. It smelled like family. Her family was here. They must still be nearby then! If she could only follow their scent trail and find them, she could be reunited with Farkas and Vilkas and all would be well.

Before Ylwa had the opportunity to find her family, they stumbled upon her. More specifically, two distant cousins - one that she thought had died when she was just a pup, and another who seemed to be a part of the family, but whom she could not recall having met.

"Pup," said the one she had known when she was younger, but whose name she could not recall. "I think I knew you at one time. You must be new to the Hunting Grounds. Come with me. Quickly," he said, as the two led her off to the rest of their pack.

Ylwa's head was spinning. Hunting Grounds? But that's where you went when you died. She surely hadn't truly died, she thought. How could it be? And what did that mean for Farkas and Vilkas? Were they here also, or were they left all alone in the world to fend for themselves? Upon surveying the rest of the pack, Ylwa saw too many familiar faces that had passed on, and realized that it must be true. She must have joined their pack's deceased in Hircine's Hunting Grounds.

"We have another new arrival." her cousin announced. "What was your name, Pup?" he asked her.

"Ylwa," she mumbled.

"I guess you probably died fighting the humans just like most of the other new arrivals," he said.

"I suppose so," Ylwa replied flatly. She saw several familiar faces, even those that she was living in community with up until that very morning (or was it a few days ago now? Time passed oddly here).

"Well, I guess I'll leave you be then," the cousin, whose name still evaded Ylwa's memory, said to her.

Ylwa didn't respond. She just sat down on the outer edge of what seemed to be their current home in this place. She sat there for what was probably hours. She spoke to no one and no one spoke to her.

The pack's mood was very somber. The attack had sent a large number of her packmates prematurely to the Hunting Grounds, and each of them had someone on their mind that they had not been ready to say goodbye to. They were all hoping that the pack on Nirn would not be entirely wiped out by this attack. Periodically, some of the scouts that were sent out would return with another relative who either had run off in the wrong direction, as Ylwa had, or who had just now succumbed to their injuries. The reports brought back by those who died later were more encouraging than the initial reports, though. The remainder of the pack had made a clean escape from their assailants and were headed for shelter in the mountains.

It was near the end of the next day before Ylwa worked up the courage to pester one of the most informed arrivals for information on Farkas and Vilkas. She was assured that they had been with the group headed to the mountains and most likely had made it to safety already by this time. Ylwa thanked her profusely for this news and ate a meal for the first time since arriving in this strange place.

Over the next couple of days, the mood changed quickly from melancholy to business as usual. Business as usual, Ylwa learned, consisted mostly of organized hunts and attacks on rival packs.

This explains why those other werewolves wanted to see me dead, Ylwa thought to herself. At first, Ylwa had no desire to participate in any of the pack-sanctioned activities that seemed to stir up so much excitement in the others. She mostly stuck around the camp, and wandered in the wooded areas that were securely within her pack's territory. To step outside of those territorial boundaries, she was told, would mean to put your life at risk. She had no idea how you could risk your life when you were already in the afterlife, but she didn't feel the need to find out.

Ylwa quickly developed a friendship with Tala, one of the last to succumb to injuries from the pack's battle on Nirn. Tala was the one who had assured Ylwa that her pups would be safe with the remainder of the pack in their new home. She had gone further and comforted Ylwa's fears as to the pups' well-being. As Ylwa had always been one of Ralfina's favorites, the kind woman would surely take in and care for the young Farkas and Vilkas until they were old enough to roam around the pack freely, and Rezso still provided the pack with wise leadership. Tala did all that was within her power to help Ylwa rest easily regarding Farkas and Vilkas's well-being. And surprisingly, it was enough.

Ylwa didn't stop thinking about her two pups who meant the world to her, and she knew she never would, but she also knew that Tala could only offer her so many assurances as to how they would do without her around, and that her worrying wouldn't change anything. So she focused on accepting where she found herself.