The Hungering Saga Complete

by Heath Pfaff

  My body hurt so badly that I could barely focus on what he was saying through all the pain. What more, I wondered, could they possibly be doing to me. "No more." I said, the words coming out weak despite my best effort.

  "I'm afraid so." Lucidil said, and then his knife flashed. I felt a terrible pain in my right ear, an agony unlike any I'd felt before, a brutal penetration of the very core of my being. I knew what the final change was. Like Lucidil and some of the others, I was to have the keen, wolf-like ears as well. The world went blank for me again, and this time the darkness stayed for a long while.

  I found myself jolted roughly back into awareness. After looking about for a moment I was able to discern that I was on an improvised stretcher, being dragged across the snow by Weaver, or at least I guessed it was Weaver, since I could see Silent walking a few feet behind the stretcher. Silent took notice of my sudden alertness and called out to the person pulling me. I could see the black-eyed warrior's lips move, but heard nothing at all. In fact, the entire world seemed to have gone quiet.

  "I can't hear." I said aloud, thinking I might somehow hear my own voice, but despite the fact that I could feel the vibration of my words in my throat, not a sound reached me. I wanted to reach for my ears, knowing they had been replaced, but even that action was denied me. My arms were not my own. The place where my shoulders met the alien flesh burned and ached, and I thought I could feel a faint tingle somewhere below the shoulder, in a place where my arms should have been, but I couldn't be certain it wasn't just a phantom sensation. The litter I was on lowered to the ground, and suddenly Weaver's red eyes were staring down at me. His lips were moving, and he smiled, but there was no sound.

  "I can't hear." I said to him again. At least, I thought I said it, but without being able to hear my voice, I wasn't absolutely sure that I had said anything at all. My heart was beating fast in my chest, panic welling up from within me. It was alarming to find oneself armless, legless, and deaf, when not long before one had possessed all of their faculties. I had to concentrate on relaxing my breathing.

  Weaver just nodded and mouthed a few words that I couldn't distinguish. He made a short show of pretending to close his eyes and sleep, and then pointed at me. I realized he wanted me to rest, and with little else to do, I decided I might as well. I closed my eyes, and found myself in darkness all the deeper for the complete silence that accompanied it. I worried that I might never hear again, or that my arms might never function again, or my legs. I knew that many of the other Knights had gone through similar things and turned out fine, but still I felt a seed of doubt. What if, I wondered, I did not heal as the others had, and I was forever broken? A tingling fire shot up through my new right arm, telling me that such would not likely be the case. I tried flexing the first finger of my right hand and nothing happened. I felt that something should have happened, could envision my hand closing with absolute clarity, but nothing responded. I knew that I needed patience. Given time, I would be able to use my new limbs, the new portions of my body.

  I felt a strange pang of loss at that thought. My new body. Slowly I was becoming less and less a human man and more some other creature entirely. Would my new limbs change me further? Was I to become more like Weaver with the passing of time, a thing of purpose, with no compassion for those around me? "Kyeia, what am I, and what am I becoming? Would you still love me if you knew me now? Could you still care for such a fallen creature?" I thought the words into the great void, knowing they would never reach her, but needing to project them out anyway.

  Since she had died, I had spent many nights wishing the world had been a different place, and wondering what my role was to be in it, but never had I felt so very distant from her as I did at that point, trying to rest, caught somewhere between humanity and monstrosity. She had believed in me, even when I had not, and that had been a driving force behind my ability to move forward. Despite all of her belief, I was in a position of little importance. I had lost faith in my king and my country, and no longer trusted those who claimed to be my brothers in arms. I wanted one person that I could turn to, that might help me make sense of the things that were happening about me, but with the passing of Kye, and the fall of Fell Rock separating me from Malice, there was no one left to turn to. My thoughts were truncated by a stabbing pain flashing through my head, from my left ear straight through to my right. I almost called out in shock, but thankfully I did not.

  "...really think he will listen to our side of things?" I heard Silent's voice, quiet at first, but steadily growing louder. My ears had begun to work again. I kept my eyes closed, and found that I could, with some considerable effort, shift the direction my ears were picking up the clearest sound from. It was a process that made use of sets of muscles I hadn't previously had, but the effort paid off.

  "He is like-minded, Silent. I've talked to him much over the past few weeks, and I've seen the demons he hides in his soul. He is like me." Lucidil was saying, his voice softened as he went on. "He loved the girl, you know, and she loved him as well. It's in the eyes. The bond is stronger in those who share an emotional connection, and it comes through in the eyes. Have you ever seen brighter than his?"

  I was shaken by that revelation, almost to the point that I gave up on my feigned sleep and entered the conversation, but I realized immediately that I would learn more by maintaining my illusion of deafness. My travel companions didn't suspect that I was awake, and certainly didn't think that I'd have my hearing back yet. Those were advantages I couldn't afford to cast away so easily.

  "No, I haven't." Silent admitted. "I remember when I served as his guard Kyeia use to sneak into his room every couple of days. I knew she wasn't supposed to be there, but those two were at their happiest together, and I wasn't going to be the one to keep them apart. Lowin had not another friend in the world, except perhaps me. Malice drove him harder than I'd ever seen her push a pupil, and the other Knights kept their distance, as they always do with the new trainees. Every single day I wanted to tell him what was coming..."

  "...and that is why I bound you to silence, my friend. You would have given everything away in a moment if you'd been allowed to talk." Weaver cut Silent off in mid-sentence. All around their words danced some secret truth, eluded to, but not directly spoken of. Silent's poignant memories of Kye, and our time at Fell Rock, stung the way only fresh emotional scars can. I felt a mix of anger and a grudging respect for Silent. I was angry that he had kept the secret of Kye's fate from me, even knowing how we felt about each other, but I respected him for allowing us our time together. The quiet dark-eyed Knight of Ethan had been, as hard as it was for me to admit in the face of the lies and half-truths he'd told me recently, a good friend to Kye and me.

  "I suppose." Silent spoke, just above a whisper, and then louder he added. "You took a huge risk by pushing him against a Fell Beast so soon after his rise to full Knight. It could have killed him, and sending him into the deep interior..."

  "You have such little faith in your old companion." Came Lucidil's sardonic reply. "He is driven. Sending him against anything less than the most powerful of the Fell Beasts would have been doing him a grave disservice. What, do you think I should have brought him to the drake-kin? They are slow, and weak. Do you think he would have thanked me for giving him such a weak blood bond?"

  Silent sighed. "Would he have thanked you if he'd been killed?"

  "If he had been killed by a Fell Beast, would he have really been the type of person who would do us any good?" Weaver's answer to Silent's rhetorical question sent a chill down my spine. As passionately as Weaver spoke, in the end his reasoning always came back to his driving purpose. I knew not what his goals were, but whatever they were; he never lost sight of them. He would use whatever, and whoever, he needed to in order to achieve his ends. When Silent didn't answer for a while, Weaver continued. "It had to be done. Lowin needed to kill the beast himself, to form the bond of blood, and it needed to be a powerful creature. When he is back on his feet, he will
thank us."

  "We are creating quite the monster, Lucidil. I hope you can control it." Silent said.

  "We're all monsters, Silent, but there are monsters much worse than any of us. This one is fearsome, and growing more so, but he will serve our purpose well. The one we must worry about is the monster who wears the golden crown, and feasts on the lives of his underlings as though they were naught but cattle. He is the real beast." Weaver replied, and I realized with a sudden lurching in my stomach, that my situation had just become much more complicated.

  "Lowin, can you hear me?" The calm voice of Lucidil woke me from the sleep I'd been enjoying. I was still being dragged on the litter through the snow. I was aware that if my red-eyed companion was talking to me, that meant he suspected that I was reaching an appropriate time for my hearing to be back. I didn't know how long I'd slept, but I guessed it had been several hours since I'd been awake. My hearing was now quite acute, the smallest sounds coming to me, crystal clear, from distances I wouldn't have imagined. What was more, I found that my new ears almost automatically honed in on sounds as they occurred, twisting and adjusting to funnel stray noises with no effort from me. I was uncertain why, but my healing was coming along at a much faster rate that Lucidil seemed to think it should.

  "Yes." I decided to answer him. I could have tried to hide my hearing for a longer time, but with my new ears constantly twitching and tuning into different sounds, I risked giving myself away.

  "Good, you're healing fast. You may have difficulty hearing things clearly for a while, but that should be cleared up in a day or so. How do you feel?" He seemed pleased that he was able to talk to me again, happy at my progress in healing, at least. If I had not heard him speaking of my "purpose" earlier, I would have thought he'd simply been concerned for my wellbeing. As things stood, I was nettled by the question more than comforted.

  I took mental stock of myself, lightly flexing my muscles and stretching areas I knew to be injured in order to see what condition my body was in. My stomach was healed entirely. My new arms and legs were full of pins and needles, as though I had slept improperly on them, and they felt a little numb, but I could move the claws on my hands and flex my wolf-like feet with little effort. My ears were, of course, working quite well. I quickly made the decision not to share all of this information with my travel companion.

  "I can't feel my arms or legs, but they burn sometimes." I told him, remembering how my arms and legs had felt when I'd last been awake.

  "Excellent. Your body is adjusting far more quickly than I'd anticipated. By the time we reach the camp, you will be ready to start taking your first steps using your new body, and we'll be there by tomorrow evening." His voice held an excitement that I didn't share. I had realized, after hearing Weaver admit his hate for the king, that I was in the hands of "the enemy" I had so often heard about. At least, that is what I believed. If it was true, then I was not heading to the camp of the Knights of Ethan, but to some other place entirely. I knew nothing of what waited for me, but I suspected it would not be to my liking. "Silent has gone ahead to secure us passage to Howling Wind, a boat from one of the local tribes. I don't want you to be alarmed when we get there."

  "Why would I be alarmed?" I questioned, suddenly on guard.

  "The local tribes aren't human, they're Shao Geok." Weaver explained, as if it should have been obvious.

  I tried, probably unsuccessfully, to hide the surprise in my voice. "Silent is negotiating with the Shao Geok?"

  "Of course. They're intelligent, and if you have something they want, any intelligent creature will negotiate." The red-eyed traitor explained.

  I should have known that he had come to some agreement with the Shao Geok, but I was still assembling all of the information I'd pieced together into one coherent picture. The first attack on my life, back before my training began, in the carriage with Kye and Tempest, had been carried out by the Shao Geok. If Lucidil really was "the enemy," then I should have known that he had connections with them. The only question that remained unanswered for me was what had changed that made me an asset to Lucidil instead of a hindrance? He had tried to kill me before, but now he was going out of his way to insure that I survived my trip south, and indeed, was stronger for it.

  "Pardon me for not trusting them, but they were not exactly hospitable last time we crossed paths," I offered, interested to see what Weaver would have to say regarding that.

  "I heard about your run in with the Shao Geok on your way to Fell Rock. Thankfully Tempest was able to hold them off until backup arrived. There is no need to fear these, though. They have been well compensated, and the Shao Geok, the vicious flesh eaters that they are, have a code of ethics that will keep them from backing out of our arrangement." His voice held a tone of assurance that didn't waver.

  I wondered what sort of "arrangement" had been made with the monsters. I couldn't begin to guess what they would want so badly that they would be willing to serve a Knight of Ethan, even a fallen one, like Weaver. "In that case, I suppose my fate is in your hands." I replied. There was no denying the truth of my words. Though I didn't trust Weaver, there was little else I could do but let myself be guided by the red-eyed warrior. My body was still adjusting to its changes, and until it finished I would be unable to fend for myself. I suspected that if I had to, I could walk on my new legs, but it would be a risky endeavor.

  "Don't worry. We're already through the worst of things. By this time tomorrow we will be in our camp at Howling Wind, a warm meal before us, and a warm bed ahead of us." He again spoke in tones of reassurance.

  I thought for a moment and then said, "I hope many of our fellow Knights have made it there safely."

  "Who knows?" Weaver replied, but his voice had lost some of its good cheer. "Tomorrow will see the world in a new light. Until then, let us not worry." We traveled on in silence, and for that I was just as happy.

  Lucidil plodded on all through the night, dragging the stretcher - and me on it - behind him as if it weighed nothing at all. In the morning, I saw the first signs of civilization. We passed a crudely fashioned mud hut just past dawn, and all around it ran the Shao Geok. The young - and I assumed they were the young for they were smaller than the adults I remembered seeing so long ago - were nearly as large as a man when they stood erect, though they generally romped about on all fours. There were five or six of them rolling around and playing together like children of any culture might. As we approached, their attention turned to us and their fierce, wide-spaced eyes took on a burning light, noses upturned to catch our scent as we approached. With our cloaks on, Weaver and I were both difficult to see, though I was lying on a stretcher, and that went a long way toward breaking my illusion of invisibility. A sharp bark emitted from one of the children who was soon joined by the others. In answer, another of the Shao Geok emerged from the mud hut, crawling out on all fours through the small door and coming to stand fully erect as it exited. The creature's thick furred chest was lined with midsized breasts, four per side, for a total of eight. Its lip curled in a snarl at the sight of us. I guessed it to be the mother of the smaller beasts. It barked - a deeper, more resonant sound than the younger creatures had made - and the little ones quickly filed into the mud building. The mother took her place in front of the door and watched us, I thought with a look of suspicion, as we made our way past. Weaver did not slow on our course.

  "You see, they know we are about business and will not bother us. They fear us more than we fear them," Weaver's voice was calmly confident. I had heard that saying before, "They are more afraid of us than we are of them." It was something that all mothers told their children when talking about the wolves of the woods, or the great bears that sometimes came too close to the cities. I had never believed my mother, but I found that I believed Weaver. It wasn't his words that convinced me, but the actions of the mother, concerned for her cubs. I was forced to reassess my view of the Shao Geok. They were terrifying, and perhaps dangerous to humans, but they were also just
another creature of the world, trying to live their lives as they saw fit.

  "If they are monsters, what are we that we are feared by monsters?" I asked Lucidil, though the question was more to myself than him.

  His reply came after a short chuckle. "You worry too much. We are what we make of ourselves. That's all anyone can ever be."

  His answer was simple, but poignant. Perhaps I needed to worry less about what I was, and think more about what I wanted to do with what I had become. I was changed. I could feel it, but I was also the same Lowin I had always been. At least, I believed I was the same Lowin I had always been. I was stronger, faster, more dangerous, but I still felt like myself. I could use my new power for the betterment of the world if I could only figure out how.

  I flexed the muscles of left arm and clenched my fist. The arm answered my call immediately, the pins and needles gone from it. I could still feel some weakness in the limb, but it was fading fast. The night had almost completed my healing. I was the only one aware of that so far. While that remained true, I was at an advantage. I was, however, still greatly disadvantaged by the fact that I had never used my new limbs, and would likely be uncoordinated with them until I'd had some time to adapt. Still, I was already formulating plans of escape. I would need more time, at least another few hours before my body would be fully ready, but once the healing was done I would only need a small opportunity to make a getaway. I felt confident that if I could just get a head start, Lucidil and his ilk would never be able to catch me. Of course, I didn't have any idea where I would run to, or what I might accomplish by running in the first place. I wanted to sigh in exasperation, but I didn't want Weaver to hear and start asking questions. I would need to bide my time and think. Escape was pointless if I had no plan to follow it. The smell of sea air pulled me from my doomed circle of troubles. My ears twisted and caught the sound of ocean surf crashing against a shore. We were nearing our destination.