Claude dreamt again that he was an animal aside from the one he'd been forcibly born into.
He wasn't a Lupine of Romulus, the illustrious moon-born mystery. He wasn't a tiger either, as seen before when he was stalking the frozen plain-edges of Islandia.
He was a fox. A small dark furred stealthy woodland roamer. His grey tipped fur stood on end as he spun and flipped his way through a massive thicket of bushes. Adrenaline flowing through his thin limbs as the scent of larger predators loomed. He could hear them with his massive ears. In the dark, his slitted eyes expanded like that of a cat, swallowing the distant suns rays to maintain his vision.
He was running from them. But in that way only sensory based beings could.
They were chasing his scent. He was running from theirs.
They had at least a three mile spread between eachother. But he saw them. He saw them with everything aside from his eyes.
A pack of hybrid coyotes, wild-dogs and red wolves— the scavenger canines. They smelled off. Sour and musky from their matted fur and foul fangs. The new world was kind to them in the most cruel of ways.
While wolves were genetically similar enough to ninety percent of tangent-born canids and primal-breeds, red wolves, coyotes and even foxes, were not able to breed into the new branch of predators. For the most part.
They were culled. Only the smart, sensitive and most savage survived. And the few that could crossbreed were born sterile omegas. No pack. No power beyond their own. Until they found kin.
It made them more deadly than the average pitwolf.
They set traps. They had a crude written language. They didn't mark their territory with scent, they used the hides of rodents that they left to rot underground for months to kill the scent.
It worked in two distinct ways.
With their better perception based abilities, they could smell beyond the damp earth-scent on the hides.
And with Claude's intense hunger as a lowly fox, he would fall for the bait.
From a beast-tamers perspective it was brilliant.
It's like the lower canine breeds knew they were out of luck in the new world and leaned into their new crude living conditions.
They turned their homes into bait traps.
Claude ate their territory marker in his starvation.
Now they had a target on him that they alone could track for miles.
With their longer limbs and fresher hunger, they closed the distance.
When night fell and the moon rose, they only grew faster.
The world became a nightmare. Things howled and roared in savage combat.
Forest apes flung excrement and sharpened wooden pikes at packs of wild-dogs barking up their trees.
Massive saber-claw puma's stalked the surrounding mountain ranges, snatching up anything that touched their scarred stone homes. Silent titans.
Even the bats, divebombed solitary woodland creatures in shadowed swarms, sucking them dry before rejoining the black sky as it spread overhead in thick painted star-studded splotches.
Claude was full on sprinting. Hitting vicious corners and leaping across small ravines that went deathly deep. His thick tail spun and pivoted, forcing his balance to handle his adrenaline fueled sprint.
It smelled horrible. Everything was enraged and bleeding and hunting.
And despite being a predator, Claude was among the hunted.
He dashed through another thicket of bare bushes and found himself sneezing away the hideous scents of a pile of rotten berries, poisonous flowers and dead rabbits.
It killed his senses as the winds blew the foul mixture into his face.
It was so strong he fell and rolled backward with a yipping bark.
It was the animal worlds version of a stun grenade.
He was blind.
His ears rang.
His nose burned.
His eyes watered.
They came from the front even though he was running from the pack behind.
It was their play.
They were smart and coordinated enough to herd him— a single fox, from three miles away into another portion of the pack. And they did it with dead animals and poison berries.
The Coyote jumped over the pile with a snarl and landed on him, slamming him to the ground with a paw to his back.
Upon closer look, Claude guessed it was a coy-dog. A coyote wild-dog hybrid. One of its ears was long and floppy like a bloodhound while the other was sharp— like a coyote. It had blue eyes and dark brown and black fur with a jagged mane guarding its neck.
More circled in the near distance.
They wore animal hides over their faces, masks covered in oils, to hide the smell better.
Their furs stood on end. All colors. Mottled, stripes, brindle coats and dotted masks. They were terrifying unknowns who had to work a dozen times as hard as everyone else to secure their kills.
They bit and charged at eachother as they neared him.
Claude's human-mind phased in and out of focus.
The canids transformed in flashes from their usual forms to grinning Lupines of Remus.
And he, the little crafty fox, switched forms between that and himself in tandem.
His anger surged. His fear followed. The moon did the same.
The winds blew and split up the canopy, allowing the full moons rays to fall on him.
It burned, causing him to yelp and thrash under the coyote's hold on him. He was being burned alive. It drove him insane. The moons light was horrific. Both icy and volcanic as it soaked past his skin and settled in his bones.
Slowly, euphoric spasms split up the waves of pain.
His muscles bubbled. His bones lengthened with every snap, healing over as longer and stronger remakings.
In seconds he was twice as large. He thrashed again and the coydog was thrown off.
Even though it too had transformed under the moons rays.
They all had, rising up on two legs.
They were Lupines.
Lupines of hybrid origins.
Claude was some sort of fox-lupine with massive ears and a tail. He was smaller with cat eyes and curled claws.
The others were massive gaunt predators with pure yellow eyes and drooling maws.
The leading coyote looked like Jack with its oily fur and wicked sneer.
Claude charged blindly.
The coyote-lupine mixture sidestepped on long fatless legs in a blur and delivered a spinning slash to his back. Thick dull claws raked his spine purely driven in by brute strength.
He hit the ground face first. His clawed hands dug into the earth and he pressed, ready to explode upward and face their combined ferocity alon—
He blinked, the grass didn't feel so lush and nightly anymore.
It was hard. He blinked again and his hands twitched. He was still laying face down but it wasn't grass he was up against.
It was cold stone. A street.
No…
An alley.
He pushed himself upright and avoided throwing up solely because he had no food in his stomach to relieve himself of.
Quickly, he looked down at himself, wondering if the dream of a body beyond his own was still in motion.
No. He was himself.
The dream was over.
And now, he was in an alley. In a city. A city of tall wood and stone buildings absent of personality beyond chimneys spewing sparking smoke and caribou skulls dotting rooftops like spiritual ornaments.
"[What did you dream of?]" Arne asked cryptically.
"Coyotes and red-wolves."
"[What were you?]" Arne asked.
Claude stopped surveying the alley for a moment as Arne asked yet another perceptive question.
"A fox."
"[I see….]"
"What do you see?" Claude asked. "Aside from the city I've woken up in."
"[Its called the Romulean Dream.]" Arne said, "Every Lupine of Romulus— newly made, has a series of dreams that can last one night or even a month of nights. You dream of yourself as different animals. Sometimes even different people.]"
"Every Lupine has them?"
"[Yes. Packs usually had diviners of dreams in the forms of elders who could use them to determine things…. truths, about you. Fox dreamers were always... well, Nevermind.]"
"What?" Claude asked.
"[Weird. Fox dreamers were usually weird.They were secretive. Crafty. The fox in these dreams was usually a reflection of how the individual saw themselves. The fox is a dog with cat eyes and claws. It spoke a language unlike either and was alone aside from a solitary lover. They were enemies of many— victims of something. Lovers of few. Something unlike many Lupines I knew.]"
"So Lupines were arrogant doggish beastmen who hung around many and laid with more?" Claude asked.
"[….. sure. That works.]"
"I also dreamt I was a tiger. What does that mean?"
"[You're looking for revenge.]" Arne said.
"Not much else to say about that one."
"[Thats all that matters.]" Arne replied.
"How do you know? Were you an elder dream diviner?" Claude asked.
"[No. I had the tiger dream.]"
Claude thought on the response Arne gave him for a moment, wondering if he too awakened as a Lupine of Romulus after being bitten by a Lupine of Remus. Maybe that was why he was in Claude's mind. They were the same. Before he could speak on it, someone stepped into the alley.
A giant of a man. Over seven feet tall. He was wearing a mixture of knights armor, mercenary hides and a snow-lion pelt with a deep black hood. He had no weapons. Just empty sheaths and poorly fit gauntlets. Even so, he was intimidating as he stepped into the alley….. sniffing?
With him, he dragged a leather satchel full of clanking items that smelled of blood and fear.
Immediately Claude thought they were full of body parts.
Claude— who was hidden behind a dumpster, backed away slowly with his claws extend…..
His nostrils flared.
His mind panicked, "Where is Frosty?"
He suddenly remembered they could see through each others eyes.
The titanous mercenary was inching closer.
Claude focused, pulling at the mental linkings between him and his brother.
"Where are you?" Claude asked.
His eyes darkened. His world shifted as he placed his senses in his brothers mind.
He was suddenly looking at a dumpster in an alley.
The dumpster he was hidden behind.
"Wait…"
Claude stood up and found that he was looking at himself through Frosty's eyes.
"But that can't be right…." Claude thought.
Then the man stopped in his tracks, still sniffing. He pulled down his hood.
"….."
"[....what the hell is that?!]"
Claude's surprise was blended with elements of terror.
The man standing before him wasn't a man. That much was obvious even if he did have human skin.
He looked almost like….
"Dolion."
His bronze skin was sunkissed and spotless. His bones were unnaturally large, pressing up against his skin and making his muscles look somehow different. He was covered in Nordic tattooings up to his neck and his lips stick out from his massive canines that peaked out from under his top lip. He also had sharp elven ears.
Claude could've debated who it was— even with the visual swap if it wasn't for his long black hair.
It had one streak of pure white.
"Frosty…."
The brutish beast-man walked over to Claude and dropped the satchel at his feet once before dropping down into a crouch with his knuckles on the floor for balance. Just like a dog.
He huffed and nudged the bag closer to Claude.
The sight was so bizzare Claude almost fainted.