The village at the foot of the mountain road was small. A handful of houses, a well, a narrow street that turned to mud when it rained.
Rayan stood in the middle of it with two other officers and listened to what the villagers had to say.
There were four of them talking at once. An older man with a walking stick, two middle aged women, and a young farmer who kept looking over his shoulder at the tree line as he spoke. They had been reporting missing people for one week — a hunter who hadn't come back, a woman who had gone to collect firewood, a young boy from the next settlement over. Three people in 7 days and no bodies found.
Rayan listened to all of it carefully and asked questions. He asked about the times of day, the locations, the directions people had been heading. He asked the farmer what he had seen specifically that made him think it wasn't a regular animal.
The farmer hesitated. Then he described tracks he had found near the tree line. Large, four clawed, pressed deep into soft ground.
Rayan crouched and looked at the rough sketch the farmer drew in the dirt with a stick.
One of the other officers, a younger man named Pell, looked over his shoulder. "Level five at most. Probably a mountain stalker that came down from the upper forest."
Rayan didn't respond immediately. He studied the sketch for a moment longer. The stride length the farmer had described was long. The depth of the print meant significant body weight. And three people missing without a single trace left behind suggested something that hunted efficiently and didn't leave evidence.
"Probably level 8 or 9," Rayan said. "Mutated wolf. Possibly displaced from higher up the mountain." He stood. "They don't usually come this far down unless something pushed them."
The other officer looked skeptical.
"The stride length is wrong for anything smaller." Rayan looked at the farmer. "How long ago did you find the tracks?"
"Three days," the farmer said.
Rayan nodded. He turned to the villagers.
"Stay inside after dark. Don't go near the tree line until we deal with this. If anyone else goes missing send word to Ashvara immediately."
He turned to his officers. "We follow the mountain road up at first light. If it's a level nine it won't be easy but it's still manageable." He glanced at the dark tree line at the edge of the village. "We find it before it comes further down."
________________
The creature watched him quietly from between the trees with its pale amber eyes. Aarav didn't move. He stood in the middle of the road and looked back at it, keeping his breathing steady.
'Shit!' Aarav cursed to himself.
On his back Meera had gone completely still, her face pressed into his shoulder. She was scared but silent. He was grateful for that.
He assessed quickly. The creature was low to the ground based on where the eyes sat. It had been following him for some time without attacking, which meant it was either cautious or waiting for the right moment. Running was not a good idea — he didn't know how fast it was and movement might trigger it. The road ahead was open but that meant nothing if the creature was faster than him.
He had one free hand. The knife was within reach. Slowly he moved toward it.
The amber eyes shifted at the movement. He stopped and waited. The eyes settled again. He reached once more and closed his fingers around the handle.
The creature made a sound then. Low and rough, not quite a growl, something he had never heard before. Whatever it was, it was nothing from his previous world.
Then it stepped out of the trees onto the road.
Aarav got his first proper look at it and his grip on the knife tightened.
'Of course. Of course it had to be that big.'
He took a slow, deep breath.
'Alright. Calm down. Calm down. Deep breath. Never giving up. Figure it out.'
It was roughly the size of a large wolf but its body was wrong for a wolf. The limbs were too thick, the shoulders too wide, and its head was flat and broad with a jaw that looked capable of crushing bone without effort. Its fur was dark and patchy, almost like it had been burned in places, and along its spine a row of short rigid spines ran from neck to tail. Its amber eyes were fixed on him with steady focused attention.
'What is this thing !!.' Aarav thought. 'This world really has no mercy.'
It wasn't charging yet. It was reading him the same way he was reading it, deciding whether he was prey or a threat. That gave him a few seconds.
He used them.
Meera on his back was a problem. He couldn't fight properly with her there and he couldn't put her down in the middle of the road with this thing three meters away. He needed distance and he needed cover.
He remembered the road. About thirty meters ahead there was a section where large rocks sat close to the left side of the track, remnants of an old rockslide he had passed during his scouting runs. If he could get there he could put Meera behind a rock and have something solid at his back.
The creature took one slow step forward.
Aarav didn't run. Running would bring it on him immediately. Instead he began moving backward, slowly, keeping his eyes on the creature, his knife out and visible. He wasn't sure if this thing understood what a knife was but the instinct to present a threat was universal.
The creature stopped at his movement. Its head tilted slightly.
'That's right.' Aarav thought. 'I'm not prey. I'm something you haven't figured out yet. Take your time.'
He kept moving backward, steady and slow, closing the distance to the rocks without making it obvious that was what he was doing. Ten meters. Twenty.
The creature followed at the same pace, neither closing the gap nor letting it grow. It was herding him almost, which meant it was smarter than he had hoped.
His heel touched the edge of the road where the rocks began. He had what he needed.
He spoke quietly over his shoulder without turning his head.
"Meera. I'm going to put you down behind that rock. You stay there and you don't move no matter what you hear. Can you do that?"
Her arms tightened around his neck.
"Av—"
"Yes or no."
A pause. Then quietly: "Yes."
He crouched slowly beside the largest rock and Meera slid off his back without a sound. He looked at her once. She was pale and her eyes were wide but she sat down behind the rock and pulled her knees to her chest and didn't make a sound.
"Don't worry, everything will be fine."He turned back to the road.
The creature had stopped when he crouched. Now it was watching him again with those amber eyes, its body low and tense. It had recognized the change in situation. The thing on his back was gone and now he was standing alone on the road with a knife in his hand.
For a moment neither of them moved.
Then it charged.
It was fast. Much faster than its body size suggested and Aarav had barely a second to react. He threw himself to the right as it came in and its shoulder clipped him as it passed, sending him stumbling but keeping his feet. He spun around.
The creature had already turned. It was quicker on its feet than anything that size had a right to be.
'Alright.' Aarav thought, steadying himself.
'Direct confrontation is not the answer. I'm strong but I'm still in a fourteen month old body. My reach is nothing. My knife is small. I can't match it in a straight fight.'
He needed to use the terrain.
He looked quickly at what he had. The rocks to his left. The trees on both sides of the road. The road itself was narrow here, barely wide enough for a cart. The creature was big — wide shoulders, low center of gravity. It relied on its charge and its jaw. That was how it hunted.
A plan formed fast.
The creature charged again. This time Aarav didn't dodge sideways. He ran directly toward it and at the last possible second dropped low and rolled under its snapping jaw. As it passed over him he drove the knife hard into the underside of its left shoulder, dragging it as the creature's momentum carried it forward.
The creature let out a sharp sound and skidded on the dirt road. It turned and he saw the dark line of the wound on its shoulder. Not deep enough. Not nearly deep enough.
But it was bleeding.
'Good.' he thought. 'It bleeds. It can be hurt.'
The creature was angry now. Its earlier caution was gone. It came at him faster and lower this time and Aarav ran. Not away down the road but toward the trees on the left side. He needed the terrain to work for him and out in the open it had every advantage.
He reached the tree line and ducked between two close growing trunks taking advantage of his small frame. The creature came after him and immediately its wide shoulders caught on the trunks, slowing it, forcing it to push through rather than charge freely. Exactly what he needed.
He moved through the trees quickly, staying just ahead of it, leading it deeper into the narrow spaces where its size worked against it. Every few meters he changed direction sharply, using the trees to break its sight lines and force it to track him by sound.
'Come on.' he thought. 'A little further.'
He had seen what he needed about twenty meters into the trees. A shallow gully, barely visible in the dark, running perpendicular to the road. The far edge was higher than the near edge, a drop of about a meter into rocky ground below.
He ran straight for it.
Behind him the creature had broken free of the narrow trees and was closing fast. He could hear its breathing, rough and heavy, getting closer. He didn't look back.
He reached the edge of the gully and jumped across it easily, clearing the gap and landing on the higher far side. He spun around immediately and dropped into a low stance with his knife raised.
The creature hit the gully edge at full speed.
It was too committed to its charge to stop. Its front legs went over the edge and it dropped hard into the rocky gully floor with a crash that shook the ground. It let out a sound that was somewhere between a snarl and a cry, its legs scrabbling on the loose rocks below.
He jumped down into the gully from the side, landed on the creature's back before it could right itself, grabbed the ridge of spines along its spine with his left hand for grip and drove the knife hard into the back of its neck with his right. Once. Then again. The creature thrashed violently and one of its legs caught him across his left forearm with enough force to send a bolt of pain shooting up to his shoulder.
He held on and drove the knife in a third time.
The creature went still.
Aarav stayed on its back for a long moment, breathing hard. His left forearm was burning badly. He looked at it. The creature's claws had caught him across the outer forearm — three lines of torn skin, bleeding freely in the dark. Not deep enough to be dangerous on its own but bad enough.
He climbed off the creature slowly and stood in the gully. His arm was throbbing. He could feel the adrenaline beginning to fade and the pain coming up properly behind it.
'I won.' he thought. 'Damn this world. My arm really hurts.'
He looked at the creature lying still on the gully floor. Then he looked at his small bloodied hand holding the knife and felt the full absurdity of the situation settle over him.
A fourteen month old child had just killed a mutated mountain predator with a bone handled knife and terrain manipulation.
'Previous life me would not believe this.' he thought.
He pulled himself out of the gully and walked back through the trees toward the road. Every step made his arm pulse with pain. By the time he came out of the tree line Meera was already standing beside the large rock, not behind it, with her eyes scanning the darkness for him.
When she saw him she went very still for a second. Then she ran to him.
"Av!" She grabbed his good arm with both hands and looked up at him. Then she saw the other arm and her eyes went wide. "Av hurt."
"I'm fine," he said.
"Av hurt," she repeated, more firmly, as though he hadn't understood her the first time.
"I know. I'll deal with it." He crouched down to her level and looked at her. She was still pale, her eyes were teary.
"Are you hurt?"
She shook her head.
"Good." He stood back up. His arm was bleeding steadily and he needed to wrap it before they kept moving. He reached into the supply bundle with his good hand and pulled out one of the cloth strips he had packed. He looked at it then looked at his injured arm then looked at Meera.
"I need you to wrap this around my arm," he said. "Tight. Can you do that?"
She looked at the cloth strip then at his arm. She nodded seriously after clearing her eyes and took the cloth from him.
She was not gentle about it. She wrapped it with the focused intensity of someone who had decided this was the most important task she had ever been given and was not going to fail at it. He said nothing about the tightness, just let her finish and tie it off in a knot that was frankly more secure than he had expected.
"Good," he said when she was done.
She looked up at him. "Av okay?"
"Yes." He picked up the knife from where he had set it down, cleaned it on the grass at the road's edge, and put it away. His arm throbbed under the bandage. The bleeding was slowing at least. "Let's keep moving."
Meera didn't argue. She came to his side and took hold of his good arm with both of her hands as they started down the road again.
He let her.
The forest was quiet around them now. Whatever had kept other animals silent during the fight had not lifted entirely but the quality of the silence was different. Settling rather than waiting.
He walked on through the dark, his arm hurting, Meera holding his hand, the road stretching ahead toward the base of the mountain and whatever came after it.
'Still alive.' he thought. 'Still moving. That's enough for now.'