Tuesday Afternoon September 17th, 546 ALW. Fennur's Maw, Center-South Glacial Regions. ….
It had been three days since Konan and the sabertoothed cat went on their journey to find family— kill red eyed people, and overall find the outlet for their anger.
Anger was a strong driving force.
It had to be for them to be running and hunting for so long.
Two things Konan was only getting better at.
He moved faster than he had in the past two days under sunlight, leaping and bounding up a frosty hill in explosive gusts of white. His golden eyes were hard on the flank of a polar-moose. He could smell its natural musk and hear the exhausted hammer of its heart. The pop of its bulging knee joints from overuse.
Konan pressed on, driving the antlered beast up the hill only to come tumbling down the other side.
It was there at the apex that Konan landed after a final jump and yelled out, "Nuwe! Now!"
The sabertoothed cat burst from the nearly snowed in cave entrances beneath, just as the polar-moose came tumbling down.
Without a fear in the world, Nuwetara charged, latching onto the rolling beast with fang and claw.
The two tumbled down the hill, leaving patches of fur and spurts of blood in their wake until they hit the bottom with Nuwetara holding the moose down by the torn out throat.
The feline huffed in satisfaction.
Konan came down the hill soon after and nodded to his friend, "Good."
Nuwetara purred and hopped off the moose.
With speed and deadly efficiency, they tore it apart and got to eating on the spot.
After a few bites, Konan sat back, chewing thoughtfully as Nuwetara watched him.
He nodded, "Good."
The feline purred and continued licking her chosen femur bone clean.
Nuwetara.
He heard it in a dream— spoken to a great panther of a similar dark coat that only appeared in the collection of thunder clouds spawned when Lycan peoples of a jungle tribe flipped and rolled around under full moons.
The name felt good to Konan. He liked good things. So the application seemed only natural.
And she liked the name.
He was learning the name and function of many things with the steady flow of visions and memories. He just had to follow and decipher them. Some were harder than others.
Some were still too traumatizing.
Some were impossible—
A far cry echoed across the white expanse. Unified by many and amplified by things he didn't understand.
The sound sent shivers up his spine. Familiar— terrifying, equally and somehow unknown.
Quickly— with the moose only half eaten, Konan and Nuwetara dug a hole in the iced over grounds and buried their kill.
Somehow, the snow he sent flying into the air as he dug, only fell over the bloodstained trail leading down the hill.
Thus, the majority of their tracks and evidence of hunting was covered.
With nothing left to do, the pair took off.
As they'd been doing the past couple days.
As Konan had been doing since he first awakened.
They ran from the howls.
They ran from the howls because the howls brought the spirits and the spirits brought the visions of death, destruction, decay and desolation in a million ways.
Another handful of hours blew by in high speed sprints across flat glaciers, slides down steep hills and treks through shallow slush-rivers.
Night was approaching. The evening sun set— and the further south they traveled, the harder it became to see.
Finally, they came to a much needed rest at a stone overpass revealed from within a partially melted glacier leading into an iced canyon. Familiar runes and iconography were etched into the old shaped earth.
Konan sat, catching his breath and lifting stones to his lips to drink the water droplets off of them.
Nuwetara did the same by licking the grounds as he laid on them.
Konan's leg muscles burned. He tasted blood in his saliva. His heart hammered against his chest like it wished to be free of him entirely.
It was in the burn of his legs that he noticed another burn.
One on his skin. Sprinkling against his shoulders and scalp. It had him tucking into his itchy Berserker hide cloak and looking up at the sky.
The clouds were black. Not in the way they naturally became at night. But truly black. Like collections of ink-dust blotting out the sun and turning the snowfall grey.
The snow burned. Acidic and foul smelling.
Konan could taste it on the rocks.
He could feel it in the warming atmosphere.
Nuwetara groaned and shook off the caustic frost.
"Not good." Konan mumbled.
In the silence, he pulled the Eye of the Explorer out of the tendon belt lining of his hide skirt.
At the touch of his finger, the holographic map bloomed. They were closer to Bio-Foundry Seven.
But not close enough.
Another howl echoed across the darkening foul-skies. Closer than before. Somehow.
Konan swiped the light show away and stuffed the eye back into his belt lining urgently.
"More running." Konan said as he stood up and started their spr—
Another howl.
And for the first time in days, it didn't come from behind.
It came from in front of them.
Konan snarled as they stood on the stone overpass. Nuwetara hissed and crouched with her fur beginning to stand on end—
From behind them, a distant pop went off followed by a spinning whistle.
Before Konan could react, his left leg— above the knee, exploded as a metal projectile ripped through it at unimaginable speeds.
Three more pops.
Too fast to react. Too stunned to fully perceive.
Konan simply stumbled backward from the thudding in his shoulder chest and stomach.
His blood splattered on the rocks.
His legs gave out and he fell, eyes focused on the distant sillouette of camoflauged bodies on a hill.
"Red….. eyes."
Nuwetara roared and threw herself over
Konan.
Another series of pops went off.
Nuwetara hissed and jumped at the bullets shredding the stones before biting down on Konan's cloak and dragging him across the stone overpass.
The responding howls from their front came again.
Reminding them that they were trapped.
The feline improvised and dragged him down into the glacial canyon. The process was rough— violent, as they tumbled down ice slopes and jagged declines until they came falling to the grounds where Nuwetara dragged him underneath a frozen ledge where they could hide.
They both bled as they breathed.
Nuwetara was covered in graze wounds.
Konan was bleeding from four bullet wounds and chunks of his skin hung off from the explosive impacts of the high precision shots.
Silently— gently, the ancient feline licked around his less egregious wounds in between angered snarls as they hid in the canyon of ice.
Back to where he started.
An hour of called and responding howls echoed, followed by gunfire and projectiles whizzing overhead.
Nuwetara growled and flinched at the sounds of war.
Konan fell out of Conciousness and into distant dreams.
He wasn't a physical being. He was a presence. Both connected to the real world where wolves howled and explosives shook the ice surrounding, but also active in a plain of memories and visions. Some were familiar. The only other place he knew aside from the ice.
Like the spirits.
Only they weren't chanting his name anymore and shoving horrific visions into his mind.
They were riding wolves as large as warhorses with thick manes and sabered fangs. Their coats shimmered under the moon with a lusciously primal edge. Their eyes were an otherworldly smoky blue that invoked feelings of frost just as much as fire.
Lightning raced and snaked through thick thunder clouds above them. Mountains in the distance split and spewed lava. Ocean tidal waves rose and fell at their cries.
It was all so much.
All reduced to the wayside as he found himself hovering over one wolf in particular.
Her fur was grey and wiry with dark highlights and sigil shapings that glowed with a living pulse. With the thunder and lava and tsunamis ascending.
The cloudy eyed wolf howled to the skies— where Konan was no more than a presence.
But in the wolf's howls, he heard spoken word.
"Return, Golden-Child."