Thirty to Fifty Feral Hogs

by Matthew J. Barbeler

  This house was in the same direction as the stench of death that floated on the wind. There was no harm in investigating it, after all. All Neil needed to do was talk to the man.

  Neil set off to the east, towards the smell of death.

  Chapter Five - The Cabin in the Woods

  There were signs of strange happenings around the little cabin that Neil found. There were trails trampled through the grass, where it looked like a horde of something traveled regularly. The death stench came from an innocent-looking cabin. It wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Appalachians or on the banks of a lake.

  The simple log cabin was rectangular in shape, with a stone chimney at one end that billowed gray smoke into the morning air. A wooden bench sat on the porch in front of the cabin, and the door leading inside was open. Neil smelled the air, but nothing he saw matched the smell of rot and decay that filled his senses.

  The person who lived in this cabin probably wouldn’t take kindly to a wolf appearing on his doorstep, so Neil activated his Skinwalk ability again.

  His skin, covered in black fur, suddenly became one size too big for him. It split and fell off his muscles in angry red and black chunks. He stood back on two legs while spitting out lupine fangs that were pushed out of his head as his human teeth repopulated his shortening jaw.

  After the change was complete, he was happy to see that his equipment had been re-equipped automatically, just as Malphis told him it would. The change this time was nowhere near as painful as the first and went much quicker.

  Soon the change would feel as natural as walking.

  Neil’s hand went to the hilt of his sword as he walked out of the tree line and towards the cabin.

  He was just going to talk to this man. That’s all his quest demanded of him.

  “Hello there,” Neil called out.

  The sound of movement.

  Heavy booted footsteps on stone.

  A massive man bounded around the side of the cabin with a shortsword in one hand. He wore an apron, which was covered in fresh blood.

  “What are you doing on my land?” the stranger demanded.

  Neil decided to play it dumb. He lifted his hands away from his weapon to show this man he meant him no harm. “I’m just a simple traveler. When I saw the smoke rising from your chimney, I thought that I’d come and introduce myself. It’s been days since I’ve had a decent meal, you see.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “The Everwood’s teeming with food. You can’t catch it yourself like the rest of us?”

  “Unfortunately I find myself without a bow and arrow,” Neil said. That, and the lack of skill to use one, but he would keep that fact to himself.

  The man huffed. “I s’pose I might be able to spare a little. But I’m in the middle of something, so you’re going to have to eat and then be on your way, you understand?”

  “Of course, thank you,” Neil said.

  It as strange that this place felt so foul in his wolf form, but that smell of rot was completely gone now. It was as though someone had cut off his nose, and in doing so, taken a rich and complex layer of the world away from him.

  “I’m Neil, by the way,” Neil said as he followed the man in the bloody apron, who grunted in response.

  “I’m Mack,” the man replied. “Mack Nabb.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mack.”

  Another grunt.

  “Come ‘round the back. I’ve got a feral hog roasting. Been there all night, so it should almost be done.”

  Neil’s mouth watered at the smell of roast pork as they rounded the cabin’s side. The fire pit out the back of the cabin was massive and deep. A steel container with a hinged lid sat in the center of the pit, with coals burning beneath it. The container was on a chain and pulley system for ease of retrieval from the fire. The sound of sizzling flesh reached his ears, and his watering mouth made his stomach rumble.

  “Oh, that smells amazing,” Neil admitted.

  So far, this guy didn’t appear all that bad. Grayfang said that he was an apex predator. Top of the food chain. But maybe he just meant that he was a good hunter. There was absolutely nothing wrong with that.

  Mack grabbed a long-handled poker with a hook on the end and used it to pry open the lid off the roasting container. The wonderful aroma of roast pork washed out over the pit as Mack raised the lid. The sight inside wasn’t all that appetizing. The pig inside was gutted, but intact, complete with hooves, shriveled eyes and yellow teeth.

  “This is one of the only things these bloody feral hogs are good for,” Mack said and spat into the fire.

  “Are feral hogs a problem around these parts?”

  Mack narrowed his eyes as though Neil had just asked the dumbest question imaginable.

  “They’re a problem all right,” Mack said. “Thirty to fifty of the bastards can show up in three to five seconds while my children are out in the yard! How am I supposed to deal with that many before they attack my children?”

  Neil’s eyes widened. “That’s a lot of pigs.”

  Mack shook his head. “They’re not pigs, mate. Pigs are what you buy in markets in the Four Kingdoms and keep in your back yard to feed your scraps to. These are feral hogs! They’re savage, move in packs, and leave nothing but devastation in their wake. The big one, their leader, has tusks as big as swords!”

  “Yikes. And there are how many of them?”

  “Thirty to fifty!”

  “And they’ve attacked your children?”

  “They’ve tried,” Mack said and motioned to the feral hog roasting on the coals. “They don’t know who they’re messing with.”

  “Is this a regular thing? Do these feral hogs have it in for you or something?” Neil asked.

  Mack shrugged his shoulders. “I might have hunted them when I first built this place. Back before I realized that they could hold a grudge. Now they come back every couple of days. Sometimes they just root around in the forest at the edge of the clearing here, but the big one? That hog just stares me down whenever it comes. There’s something unnatural about it.”

  Mack took the end of the chains in his hand and pulled the roasting pan out of the fire. He let it come to rest on the cold ground, which sizzled under the heat. He took a knife out of his belt and passed it to Neil.

  “Cut however much you want,” Mack said.

  Neil took the knife and cut a slice of slow-cooked pork. “So what’s the plan, then? Are you going to stay here, despite the feral hogs?”

  “Of course, I am! This is my home! I’ll defend it by any means necessary.”

  Neil took a bite of the pork, and the flavor of it made his eyes roll back into his head.

  Mack grinned. “They’re a pain in the ass, but they’re damn fine eating.”

  Neil chewed. “Where did you come from before this?”

  Mack’s mood darkened. “Why?”

  “Oh, no reason,” Neil said and waved the comment away. “Sorry if I offended you.”

  “I take no offense, but a man’s private affairs are his alone.”

  “Right you are. My apologies.”

  “Pay no mind. Just eat your fill and be on your way. I have duties to attend to.”

  “With your kids?” Neil asked.

  The question was innocent enough, but Mack’s reaction was anything but.

  “I’ll ask you to stop digging into my business,” Mack said. “I’ve extended you the hand of hospitality, but that doesn’t mean we’re friends. Eat your fill, then be on your way.”

  “It’s just that I haven’t seen your kids, and-”

  “They’re sleeping!” Mack roared.

  Wow, even talking about his kids was a touchy subject.

  The sound of a piglet screaming came from somewhere nearby.

  “Whoa, what was that? Are the feral hogs back?” Neil asked.

  Mack stormed over to a nearby tree stump which he’d turned into a chopping block and grabbed the axe that was embedded in the top of it.

>   “They might be,” Mack said. “You’ve got a sword on your hip, so I assume you know how to use it?”

  “I have a vague idea,” Neil said.

  If there truly were thirty to fifty feral hogs coming, then Neil figured he’d be better off shifting into his wolf form and getting the hell out of there. What could two people do against thirty to fifty feral hogs? There would be no victory.

  When they reached the front of the cabin, Neil stopped in awe of the biggest damned pig he’d seen in his life. Its snout rose almost to the height of his shoulder, and the tusks that rose from its jaws were actually the size of swords. Mack wasn’t exaggerating. It had a scar that ran down across one whitened eye.

  The piglet’s squeal came again, but this time, it came from behind Neil. From the other side of the cabin!

  They were being surrounded!

  The massive feral hog stamped a foot in challenge, and that’s when Neil saw the other shapes moving in the dappled light of the forest. One of the feral hogs surged forward and joined the massive scarred hog, and then the rest came.

  In three to five minutes, the front yard was filled with feral hogs. It was just lucky that Mack’s children hadn’t been playing in the front yard at the time!

  Mack raised his axe over his head and let out an almighty roar. “You remember what happened last time you tried something? I’m sure you do! The last hog that tried himself against me is roasting out in my back yard!”

  The big scarred hog took a step forward and blew a breath out of its nose. It lowered its head, stamped its foot, then charged at Mack.

  Mack lowered his center of gravity and waited until the hog closed the distance between them. Neil held his breath and let it out at the very last moment before impact.

  Both the hog and Mack moved so quickly that Neil’s eyes barely caught what happened.

  The hog squealed and stumbled as the blade of the axe sunk into its flank. Mack ripped it out of the hog’s flesh and went back for another strike, but the huge hog pulled itself to its feet and rejoined the horde waiting at the edge of the forest.

  The hog was breathing hard as it turned back to face Mack. There was something strange about that hog; like it was smarter than the average pig. Like it was out for Mack’s blood for some reason.

  It snorted, then turned and trotted back into the forest.

  Neil released the hilt of his sword.

  “They’ll try again before the day is through,” Mack said and spun his axe with a flourish. “I really need to thin their numbers. If only I had some kind of automatic assault axe to adequately protect my children. It won’t be long until the rest of those hogs get as brave as the big one. Say, you might be able to help me with that. Are you interested?”

  A quest update notification appeared in the bottom of Neil’s view.

  Quest completed: Top of the Food Chain

  You have received 100 experience points!

  Quest available: Whole Hog

  Assist Mack Nabb in thinning the numbers of the feral hog horde that is threatening his family.

  Kill 30 – 50 Feral Hogs

  Reward: 300 experience points

  Do you wish to accept this quest?

  Well, he’d only just started playing the game, and a good old-fashioned grind-fest was a rite of passage with most other massively multiplayer online role-playing games, so why the hell not? The big one was already injured, so there would be no better time than right now to strike.

  Neil accepted the quest, and Mack grinned.

  “Thank you, my friend! Now go and thin their numbers before they find their courage again.”

  Neil waited until he was back in the forest and hidden from Mack’s sight before he used Skinwalk to change back into wolf form. Malphis was right – the change was getting easier with each shift.

  Neil raised his canine nose to the air and inhaled deeply. The trail of the feral hogs was easy enough to pick up, and he immediately gained another level towards his Tracking skill.

  The overwhelming stench of rot and decay that he’d smelled earlier was still there, but it wasn’t coming from the direction that the hogs retreated to.

  It was coming from Mack’s log cabin.

  Chapter Six - Whole Hog

  Neil didn’t even need his nose to follow the pack of feral hogs. They made enough noise that even in his human form, he would have been able to track them without a problem. His wolf form allowed him to travel through the forest much more easily, though.

  The changing of perspective from bipedal to quadrupedal wasn’t as jarring this time around. The massive pine trees that rose into the heavens still looked like skyscrapers, and the forest floor seemed to stretch out into infinity with so many sights, sounds, and scents. This forest was teeming with life, and Neil’s human form was so dulled that he’d barely even registered it.

  Something wasn’t sitting right with him about this whole situation, though. That enormous scarred hog was smarter than the average pig, and Mack was hiding something.

  His log cabin smelled of death, but there was nothing Neil had seen on the outside that gave any indication that a slaughter had taken place. That said, he hadn’t seen inside the log cabin, where Mack’s children were allegedly sleeping.

  Surely Mack wouldn’t keep the rotting carcasses of slain feral hogs inside his house. Not with kids around, anyway. But this Crematoria Online game was touted as being dark fantasy, and a lone man living in the woods with his children was a recipe for the beginning of a corrupted fairy tale.

  A juvenile feral hog lagged behind the rest of the pack, and Neil slowed his approach. He tried to remain as silent as he could. Killing one little piggly-wiggly now would mean twenty-nine to forty-nine less that he’d have to kill later. His Stealth skill ticked upward as he remained hidden and in pursuit of the juvenile hog.

  The little pig was covered in hair, which was mostly a light caramel color, with stripes of darker brown running across its back. No tusks grew from its snout yet, but they would come when it got older.

  Well, if it got older, which Neil had no intention of letting it do.

  He crept forward as silent as a shadow until he was ready to strike. He lowered himself to the ground and took aim.

  Then suddenly, the brush next to him exploded with movement. A sharp tusk slammed into his side, hooking under his front leg. Neil yelped as white-hot pain exploded under his foreleg. Then he was in the air, spinning around. He lost all sense of direction as he plummeted back to the ground.

  When he righted himself, he came face to face with the scarred feral hog! It stared down at him with its good eye and stamped its front hoof. It was getting ready to charge again!

  The rest of the hoggish horde appeared behind the big one and prepared to watch the inevitable bloodshed.

  Now that Neil stood face to face with the monstrous feral hog, he realized that it was far too big for Neil’s wolf form to do any damage to, injured or not.

  There was only one thing Neil could do that might be able to stop the feral hog’s attack. He used Skinwalk to turn back into his human form, and the scarred hog became very still. Neil approached it with his hand outstretched as he activated Wild Aspect.

  If he could connect to the boar, he might be able to talk to it like he talked to Grayfang.

  His soul reached out, but he felt nothing back from the hog.

  Wild Aspect failed!

  Neil swallowed. If the hog’s soul was cut off from him, then there would be no bond.

  The hog moved, but not to attack. It lifted its head as its jaw re-shaped itself. The savage tusks fell away, clattering to the ground. The hog’s hooves split themselves apart, revealing umber-skinned fingers forming from the gore. It rose onto two legs as the change continued. The milky-white scarred eye remained as the hog turned into a striking Erwysh woman with a thick brown mohawk. She stood as naked as the day she was born, and she didn’t seem one bit uncomfortable about that.

  “Why are you following us, oldblood
?” she asked.

  Neil swallowed. “I thought you were a feral hog.”

  The woman scoffed. “Feral hogs? Is that what that murderer is calling us?”

  “Yeah,” Neil said. He suddenly got the feeling that he’d gotten in the middle of something he didn’t want to be caught up in.

  “He is the one who murders our children for favors from the Celestials!”

  “Okay, look, I’m clearly sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong. Mack asked me to come and kill a bunch of you, but I thought you were just hogs. Are you all Erwysh?”

  The woman shook her head. “I have given up life as a human. I live with my passel, as their ward and protector.”

  “Okay, I feel like we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot. My name’s Neil. What’s your name?”

  “Averil,” she replied.

  “What did you mean when you called him a murderer? When I walked as a wolf, I smelled something terrible coming from Mack’s cabin.”

  “He is a haruspex.”

  Neil shook his head. “I have no idea what that means.”

  “He takes our children and spills their innards to tell the future. He watches the rot, and the maggots whisper to him of things to come. He uses those glimpses into the future to further his own ends. He was run out of the Four Kingdoms for his unholy practice.”

  “Oh, gross,” Neil said.

  “We fear for what has become of our children that he keeps alive in his basement. That’s why I confronted him earlier today.”

  “Why did you stand against him alone? With your numbers you could have easily destroyed him,” Neil said.

  “You do not know of his monstrous servants,” Averil said. “If I had continued my assault after my injury, he would he summoned them forth and laid waste to my passel.”

  “What servants?”

  Averil looked uncertain. “He stitches together the corpses of the slain and reanimates them using unholy magic. He calls them his children.”

  Then it hit Neil. That’s what Mack was talking about, and probably why he was so upset when Neil mentioned them. His children weren’t his children at all!