by David Burke
She tilted her head to the side again and then asked hesitantly, “I have your leave to take the lead?”
Kyle couldn’t say where it came from, but the words sprang from him before he realized what he was saying, “Yes, female. Don’t make me repeat myself.”
He felt guilty as soon as he said them, but her tail wagged, and she grinned before jumping to her feet.
“Keep up if you can, pack leader!” Then she was off and running.
Kyle only had a second to admire her very feminine, fur-covered legs and the way her shorts hugged her backside when she took off. She didn’t move like a sprinter, upright and pumping her arms. She almost loped, lower to the ground than he expected. Still, she ran on two legs, but leaned forward with the top of her body almost parallel to the ground. Everything about the way she moved cried out that she was a hunter.
In that second as he stared after her, Kyle realized that if he didn’t get moving, he would lose her in the dark. So off he went. She was more agile and quicker than he was, but he was far stronger than her and able to parlay that strength into massive, bounding strides as he ran.
They wove around the paths they were allowed on, but before long Kierra veered off into the wheat fields and then headed for the wall. Kyle didn’t hesitate, but followed right after her. He had been a rule follower, for the most part, on Earth but if he was going to be the war god, he figured he’d have to make his own rules here.
As they neared the wall, Kyle heard soft voices. He caught up to Kierra and motioned for her to slow down so they could find who was all the way out here. His experience this morning had him on edge, even though he didn’t sense any danger. When they finally got to the wall, they found one of the guard posts.
Kyle assumed that they had extra guards on duty, but he only saw one man standing at the post.
There were no torches there, but a faint blue light radiated from a lantern. It gave off enough light to faintly illuminate about a thirty-foot radius without ruining the night vision of those inside the lantern’s dim glow. Then he heard it again—some rustling a couple rows away off into the wheat field, just beyond the edge of the blue light.
He and Kierra snuck carefully around the edge of the lit area. Well, truthfully, he moved as quietly as he could, considering he was still wearing his gladiator costume. Kierra may as well have been a shadow, though, for all the noise she made.
The rustling continued and at first it sounded like a struggle. Whoever it was, they were making more than enough noise to cover up his less than silent approach.
Then came a giggle, followed immediately by a breathy sigh. Kyle had heard that sound before. It was the sound of a woman having a particular type of fun, even if she felt that she was doing so in an inappropriate place. More than one girl had made that exact same sound when they’d ended up under the bleachers with him after a baseball game in high school.
When they finally got close enough, he was able to see the other guardsman, though he was only in half his armor. From the waist down, he was clearly bare—fortunately, Kyle was spared having to see the other man’s junk hanging out as one of the household’s slave girls straddled his legs. Her gyrating motions left no doubt as to what the two were up to.
Kyle grinned and signaled for Kierra to back up, though he did make sure to take stock of who the guard and girl were. It was funny, because he recognized the guard. It was Liam, the guard who’d been sent to bring him from the arena—the same one he’d put the fear of god into.
Well, good for Liam. Internally Kyle thought, “Get some, boyo.” But he also noticed that, at least based on the markings of the slave’s toga, she was one of Lady Meeka’s personal servants. He knew she was most certainly not supposed to be having dalliances with the guards.
He wondered how he might turn this to his advantage, when Hilde’s voice interrupted his thoughts.
“Is it normal where you come from, for one man to cheer on another who is taking a potential mate away?”
Kyle could only snort softly to himself as he thought about her comment. “There are plenty of fish in the sea. I know you seem fixated on me bedding every woman who is a potential ally, but trust me, there is such a thing as having too many women. In my experience, bat shit crazy is a tame descriptor for a woman who finds her man dallying with someone else.”
“Perhaps when you were a mortal, but no longer,” Hilde replied.
“Hush now,” Kyle thought, as he realized he’d lost sight of Kierra.
Catching sight of the tops of the wheat pushing the opposite direction of the wind, he suddenly realized that she was going to leap the wall. It was only about twelve feet tall here, but the space between the blue lanterns hanging along the wall was not all that great—there was just a tiny patch of darkness where the glowing circles didn’t quite overlap.
Then she was running, and with a single leap, she landed atop the wall on her feet. She didn’t stop there though, as she used it as a springboard. Flipping forward, she disappeared into the darkness on the other side of the wall an instant later. Kyle couldn’t hesitate if he didn’t’ want to lose her, so he took off.
He pushed hard and covered the ground in three long strides before leaping upward. Instead of landing on it, though, he soared thirty feet into the air and landed on the other side of the wall. Extensive practice under Saber’s tutelage had prepared him to land softly, or at least as softly as someone his size could possibly manage.
On the other side of the wall, he felt a form slide right up against him. Kyle almost lashed out but at the last second, he realized it was Kierra. “Careful, I almost took your head off.”
She grinned without making eye contact. Her sharp canines flashed white in the moonlight. “You are truly an alpha. You are like the grand sire, I think. You jump and expect the mountains to move as you go by.”
Kyle wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean, so he asked, “Grand sire? Are you calling me your grandfather?”
Her silent laughter stopped almost immediately. “Grand sire is what Beltarkus, the fiend who formed our clan, insists we call him. He is an archfiend… or so he claims. I only met him once, but he was terrifying. Not until I met you, had I ever seen anyone with such an aura of power.”
Kyle silently told Hilde that they would need to talk about this later, but that for now, he needed to focus on Kierra. “Do your people worship him?”
A low huffing sound came from Kierra as she said, “My people fear him. He gave us power, but he also made us into monsters. Because of him, the other clans of the tundra will have nothing to do with us. We are called lycan to our faces, but hellhounds or fiend spawn behind our backs.”
“Perhaps then, it is time that someone taught this Beltarkus that he cannot simply do as he pleases,” Kyle said, although he wasn’t quite sure what made him say that.
Something about the fear she’d expressed, moved him to want to protect her. That must be it, he thought. She was a part of his team and he would stand up for her.
“I fear that can never be. He has ruled the tundra for over three hundred years. He is strong and has many places of power. It would take a god—or a grand celestial at the least—to defeat him. But if he fell, then my people would be in an even worse state. We would still be hated for what we are, but we would no longer have a patron that others feared,” Kierra responded.
Kyle wanted to assure her that it would be okay, but to do so would be to lie and he was not one to whisper sweet nothings. Instead, he stood there patiently and waited as she struggled with her thoughts. His presence must have provided her with strength because she finally looked up at him.
“If any could do it,” she said, “I believe it would be you. There is something about you. I smell something… different. I don’t know what a war elemental is supposed to smell like, but there is this sense of unspent violence that almost hovers around you.”
“There is much about me that even I don’t know,” Kyle adm
itted, then he reached out to her. He placed his hand on her shoulder, and she shuddered briefly before bracing herself.
“Don’t worry, I would never force anything on you. When we understand each other better, I will loan you the strength that you need to make a new destiny for your people.”
She wasn’t one for idle words either, so they again stood there in companionable silence.
Finally, she said, “If you want to learn about my people, the first thing you should know is that we are hunters. But it is one thing to say that and another thing entirely to experience it. Now, if you can keep up, we shall hunt together. Follow my lead and I will show you the ways of my people.”
For the next hour, they hunted through the forest northeast of Thena. Kyle later learned that this part up of the forest, up to and beyond the river, was set aside as a preserve for the nobles to hunt game in. Kierra remarked that the hunting here was too easy.
So, they moved to the river. Hilde informed him it was called the Ice Wash, because the water ran frigid even during the heat of summer. It was about two hundred feet across and filled with rapidly moving water that came down from the icy tundra.
Kierra had planned to swim across. She assured Kyle that she had done so on more than one occasion since they had moved to the Avarda estate. When he asked why she didn’t escape if she was so easily able to get out here, she simply held up her wrist, showing him the magical manacle on it. That was all the explanation that was needed.
“I don’t really feel like a swim now, so I think we shall jump across,” Kyle said.
“How will even you do that?” She asked. “And, even if you can, I certainly can’t leap a couple hundred feet.”
“Do you trust me?” Kyle found himself asking that question more often of late, than he ever had before. He never realized how gratifying it could be to know that others believed in you, not just to play some game, but to actually do things that mattered.
She lowered her head and then nodded once. Before she could change her mind, Kyle scooped her up in his arms and took five running steps at the water. He could feel her tensing as they got close, but he had timed his strides to get him as close to the water as possible before he crouched down and then burst into the air like a rocket.
As the ground was left beneath them and they began flying over the water, Kyle pushed out War Essence. He thought of using it like jet propulsion. This was not like anything that Hilde had ever taught him, but he knew that War Essence was his to command.
It wasn’t like the other types of essence that he had to learn how to identify with. War Essence was, at its core, an extension of his will and being. This was simply what it meant to be the War God.
In that one moment, he understood better than he ever had before just who he had become. Deep in the void, Hilde cried out in panic as the mantle trembled. Kyle felt her shock and fear but was too focused on his battle with the river; he would not be defeated by it. Today, Kyle willed that he would not get wet, and he bent his will and his power to that purpose.
Three seconds later, they landed on the other side of the river. The impact created a crater, but somehow—at a subconscious level—Kyle absorbed all of the force into his own body. He felt his constructed form strain as the kinetic energy surged through him and he fought back with War Essence, making his body stronger and more resilient. His control was far from perfect, but he was able to respond at an instinctual level.
Power had flooded into him and his body seemed almost to be glowing. Hilde was calling out, but it sounded like her voice was coming to him from a great distance. Finally, he set Kierra down and heard Hilde’s words.
“What did you do? The mantle just shrank. The walls are solid, and all the little cracks are repaired, but the throne room is half the size it was before.”
“I don’t know, but I think I might really be the war god,” Kyle thought back. He thought with a breathless feeling.
“Of course you are. I’ve been telling you this since you got here.”
“No, I mean for the first time, I actually believe it. I just willed the world to shift around me, and it obeyed. I don’t know that I can tap into it on command, but now that I know it is there, I have to learn how to control it. I’m willing to work harder than ever for this,” Kyle said.
He looked at Kierra. He hadn’t noticed it at first, but her fur had gone from a dark gray to the purest white. She was positively radiant, but not just because she was gorgeous. She was easy enough on the eyes, but her lycan features were not what Kyle would have called classically beautiful. Instead, she was radiant because her fur was luminescent.
For her part, Kierra couldn’t stop staring at her hands. Faint wisps of white power drifted off of them.
“What is this?” She asked with a trembling voice.
Kyle initially had no response for her, but then Hilde explained it to him.
“You’ve done it again. You imparted a portion of your divine power into her—just a sliver, but it isn’t complete. It isn’t activated because, once again, you did it by accident, instinctually from your emotions, rather than by conscious intent.”
He looked at the trembling lycan.
“It is the blessing of war,” he finally said. “A portion of my power has leaked into you, but the connection is incomplete. I still don’t know how to do this correctly, and honestly, I hadn’t intended to do it now.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I can’t say as I regret it, though. We are teammates and anything I can do to help you is good in my book.”
She stumbled to her knees and with a tremor in her voice said, “I didn’t think you were serious about sharing your power with me. I feel stronger and faster. I don’t know what you did, but if this is incomplete, then I will do whatever you ask of me to have you finish it.”
Then she stood and jumped around. She bounced into the air and was clearly much stronger than she had been before. He didn’t know if it was appropriate, but he asked her how her stats had changed. Once again, she lowered her eyes; but this time he could tell she was focused inward.
A moment later she looked up and said, “My Strength went from five to eight, my Agility from eleven to fourteen, and my Constitution from nine to ten.” After a momentary pause she fell to her knees again and clutched Kyle’s leg. “Thank you pack leader. You are truly great. I am yours to command or yours to take.”
It just kept getting harder to form honest connections. Back on Earth, he’d felt like his wealth and celebrity status had made it difficult for him to know whether a woman was actually interested in him, just for him, or if she was only attracted to his fortune and fame.
This was the same problem, but on a whole new level. He now had three women throwing themselves at him because of something that he could barely control and hadn’t fully accepted until just moments ago. Worse, he had another woman who couldn’t seem to decide if she wanted to kill him or sleep with him because of the same thing.
“Stand up, Kierra. We are teammates—or packmates, if you will. I won’t lie and say that I don’t find you appealing, but I will never take you because you feel that you owe me something. If we get to know each other and you still feel like you want to be with me, then we can discuss it again. For now, though, we are only packmates,” Kyle said, firmly.
She looked up at him, staring into his eyes for the first time since their sparring match. “I will prove myself worthy to be your mate. I will bear you litters and make your clan powerful. But as you wish, I will say no more of it till the time is right.”
The moment was tense, but just then, a creature stepped out from the tree line and Kierra’s attention was immediately diverted to it. The thing was big, at least the size of a Canadian moose, but had a ram’s curled horns and the broad shoulders of a water buffalo.
Once it was clear that it saw them, Kyle expected it to flee. Instead, the beast snorted and then bellowed a challenge. He crouched, ready for a fight.
Kierra cri
ed out, “It is going to charge! It will be a glorious hunt for two to take on an elg. Judging from the size of its horns, it is an elder—just know that elg’s only grow stronger as they age.”
Then the beast was charging at them, and Kyle bellowed his own defiant war cry.
Kierra yelled, “Circle around it. We will attack its flanks. When I draw its attention, you attack it. Then, in turn, as it focuses on you, I will attack.”
She moved even as she spoke, and Kyle had to dart forward and to the side to ensure he didn’t smash into the beast’s charge head on. Truthfully, though he was certain he could have slain it with a single blow from his soulbound weapon, he remembered he wanted to learn about Kierra’s people. So, they did it as she’d suggested, and hunted as lycans do.
They took turns tag teaming it. When it turned on Kyle, he would dodge its lowered horns and Kierra would rip into its hide which had to be as tough as oak, given the shallow cuts her claws left in its flank. In turn, when it went back after her, Kyle lashed out at it with the dagger he kept on his belt. The wounds he made were deeper, given his strength, but they were single slashes, rather than the tracks of wounds left by the lycan’s claws.