Deep within the forest a gentle breeze blows over many creatures hugging them lightly in a motherly embrace. The cold moonless night beneath which life appears to be asleep.
At the second half of the night August, sitting on a rock showing no sign of being tired as he was just some hours ago. A short nap felt like taking away his tiredness in an instant.
While others were asleep, in that darkest of night he was carrying a hint of tension, some kind of stress.
Some sort of uneasiness that doesn't seem to leave his chest.
Fixated like a lump in his throat, a rock over his ribs —a different kind of anxious feeling that wasn't easy to explain. As though it seemed to grow stronger suddenly but the fact he wasn't able to deny it was there. Every time he laughed or even made a chuckle —he felt it. And now this feeling was rising like a wave in his abdomen, and like a blanket on his brain.
Snapping out of thoughts of that still lingering uneasiness, he thought of taking his mind off of it and concentrating on something else. Maybe that could make his mental pain ease a bit.
Spinning the wheels of his brain, thinking about other activities like sword practice, movement, stance and mana stabilization one thing came to him as he was reminded of struggling against his own self previously when he faced the wyvern, Valmunt.
The power he felt was limitless. But the fact still remains that he doesn't know a thing about how it operates let alone control it.
How does that even activate?
He thought through and through about what he felt when the power was active. Thinking about that alone made August sweat profusely as though he was doing some physical work. But he was not. So what could have been making him feel like that, just by thinking?
The questions were infinite and somehow he knew that the answer exists deep within his conscience.
Ten, twenty then thirty minutes went by. Muscles stiff, his body reddened with some skin colour patches remaining. For about an hour, he felt all that. The heat, sweat pouring down like water, the strain in his muscles. At first he thought it like meditation. But this wasn't, it was different. Like mind and body are working together.
Mind working physically and simultaneously his body was also working mentally. His senses grew stronger in that trance. He was able to feel the cool breeze onto the very last cell of his body, he was hearing the distant noises of creatures. How far the next layer of forest was, he could tell by the sense of smell. It was like all of his five senses are Uniting and giving rise to a sixth sense.
Moving more deep into his consciousness he felt some disturbance in a distance but suddenly was sucked by this conscience. He felt like swimming in a vast ocean of power as well as knowledge. A dark dimension of vastness in which there were some hundreds or thousands of distant colourful light sources.
Like stars shining in a moonless night.
For an instance, he thought as though watching a dream but somehow knew that wasn't it. August in here felt like both an all knowing being and a toddler who knew nothing even about his own existence.
It was something he knew existed in his consciousness but couldn't put a finger on. Just like the time when he manipulated gravity to bring down Valmunt. At that time he didn't knew what he was doing but somehow he knew how to do it.
He had an idea of controlling vast and immense power but couldn't bring himself to imagine the results. He knew what to do but what that might do he didn't know.
The situation was paradoxical.
Suddenly in that vegetative state of thoughtlessness, his gaze fell upon the closest red glowing star. No matter how much beautiful they all were, the ominous feeling of their existence wasn't a fading one. Even it seems to grow stronger when August approached that thing.
Red, it was glowing at it's full strength but still doesn't seemed to leave it's mark on the infinite darkness.
Like a child being attracted by shiny things August was resisting his own desire to touch that thing. He somehow knew it was dangerous. Despite of that he did it. A spark of red lightning made its way to his brain along his index finger.
The moment it was about to reach his brain, some knowledge ...some insights came to him. Some strange and yet familiar words like a memory of distant past or near future.
[THE PULSE OF AGONY]
His blood vessels were about to burst with the sudden surges. Painful surges making their way from head to toe and then repeating the motion. With that sudden pain August was snapped out in the reality.
Although the surges stopped after two of them passed away through his body. It was like being hit by many massive boulders altogether. Pain across his body felt like being stung by many poisonous insects leaving behind the feeling of millions of ants crawling all over his body.
As the bile rose in the back of his throat, he tried to support himself but the numb grown limbs refused to do anything. He threw up. The dinner he had eaten was on the ground. A sudden backlash hit him like thousand whips as he threw up again.
This time a mouthful of blood.
For about ten minutes he was lying in there like a lifeless corpse. The mind was awake but his body refused to obey. Slow and steady, his limbs began to respond.
It was about time for the first ray of sun to appear. While August was struggling to even stand up. But he seemed to recover quickly this time. After feeling well again when he looked behind, to his surprise there was nothing but ashes remained.
The rock on which he was sitting as well as grass around it was wiped out of existence in a circular fashion.
'Yes I was right. If I can somehow endure the effects of pulse of agony then I can use this power whenever I want.'
Controlling something which seeks to control oneself would prove a difficult task. August knew it by heart.
He wasn't someone to make decisions without thinking about consequences.
———
The snow on the distant mountain tops was glowing like crystals being struck by the rays of sunlight. The night was fading and day was coming into existence.
"Good morning", Renier walked out of the tent while rubbing her eyes, "you're up early"
"Good morning to you too" August replied with a polite smile "just felt like waking up, nothing serious"
Thinking about possible excuses while he looked at the rock which was now turned to ash. But their attention soon got turned towards a sudden source of movement from the bushes.
August was reminded of the disturbance he felt before diving deep into his consciousness.
Reneir, immediately draws out her daggers. Red also was alerted coming out of the tent holding the weapon in his hand.
"He really is a skilled veteran adventurer" August whispered in Renier' ear "I thought all he did was eat, sleep and laze around."
"Don't let his actions fool you" she replied, whispering "he does nothing but laze around all day"
August let out a chuckle followed by Renier smiling and Red seemed confused, they both looking at him.
Moving closer to the bush followed by careful footsteps of Red. Noir also came out, less by the unknown danger but more from his disturbed sleep. Rubbing his eyes and yawning in silence.
Carefully approaching, Renier moved aside a flexible branch of the small shrub revealing the source of it's movement.
Behind the bushes, a wolf-like creature was lying down in the pool of its own blood. Without a doubt they recognised the creature as the leader of the wolf pack.
His body covered in fatal wounds. Judging from his broken hind legs and the marks left behind it was obvious that he dragged himself all the way here. And the question was why.
"It's clear" Red coming out of the trees behind "he's alone. His pack is not here."
"What could be the reason?" Reneir said "these beasts aren't nocturnal, hence they don't move out at night or even this early morning. What could have been his reason?"
"Can't we heal him?" Noir said as he stood watching his injuries with concern "he looks in pain"
"No we can't" Renier replied putting up a hand on Noir's shoulder "his injuries aren't something that could be healed by simple spells. Even if we knew high tier healing magic, he is already a lost cause."
As they stood there contemplating the reason behind this sudden visit from an unexpected guest who was himself at death's door. There was a sudden jerk that made the beast twitch. Well he was not dead. Yet.
The beast moved his head in the direction where they were standing. Trying to move his broken jaw and staring straight into everyone's eyes as though pleading for something.
Reneir, on the other hand saw his movement as a good sign and was about to cast her healing spell on the beast that she considered dead, previously.
But when she could even begin to cast the spell, two words came to all of their minds at the same time.
'PLEASE. HELP'
With that, the beast used remaining of his life force as a medium to relay his message to the ones standing in front of him telepathically.
"Help?" Red said scratching the back of his head "how can we help when he's already dead? Was he trying to tell us to save his life? By giving up his life force, How does that even make sense?"
"Yeah" Noir added "turns out he was not as intelligent as we thought he would be"
"No!" Renier said putting her daggers back "it has to be something else"
"Something else?" August said thinking deeply "or more like someone else"
Everyone understood in that instant that the beast was pleading them to save his pack.
"Are we doing it or not" Red asked "we don't know what we are up against, we have to think about it carefully"
"You're right Red but he sacrificed himself and asked us for help" Renier said looking into Red's eyes "the least we could do is respect his last wish."
"Yeah we could do that" red said with realisation
"but how do we even find his pack in this vast wilderness?"
"We can" all the eyes turned in his way as August pointed at the blood "we will follow the dragging marks"
————
The dragging marks left behind by the pack leader, lead them closer to a rocky hill. The vast mountain seemed like a part of wilderness as well as a foreign place. Few trees that had grown by struggling against the rocky hard terrain to stand tall were either broken from the stems or worse fallen into the deep trench at the other side.
"Looks like an aftermath of a fierce battle" red said with serious expressions "what kind of monstrosity would've had attacked them?"
"I know I'm a dragon" noir added "but this suspense is still scary to me"
There were signs like smaller rocky caves judging from which one could easily tell that this was the home of that whole pack.
"Apart from these broken trees" Renier said looking left and right judging the situation carefully "we haven't even found corpses of other beasts."
Further walking a few steps ahead August reached at the edge of the cliff. Looking down was the moment he realised and called for the rest of them to see for themselves.
"—Oh! God, this is way too much—"
"—you said it—"
"—this is way more scarier, even for me—"
Around forty of the lifeless corpses of those wolf like creatures fallen down from the cliff into the deep trench. Piled up on one another soaking in the fresh blood. Some of the dead bodies torn into halves and stuck at the rocks protruding perpendicular to that horizontal surface.
Eyes, tongues, insides of brains and intestines scattered like a mess. The rocky surface of the trench was bathed in red.
"How? How did they die?" Noir asked being shocked to see whole pack died which seemed like without a cause "did they fell in the trench altogether"
"No!" Renier said staring down looking for a clue, any other creature or anything that could've harmed those beasts. But there was nothing. "There has to be some reason——"
Cutting her speech in the middle a huge roar covered the atmosphere followed by sudden disturbances which felt like earthquakes of great magnitude. Noir, who was about to fell in the trench was caught by Renier on time as they all held the rocks nearby tightly to avoid being fallen down from the cliff.
They watched as the caves in front of them collapsed by the force.
"Ahh! That sums it up" Red said closing his eyes "those pitiful creatures"
"What? What happened?" August asked not knowing what happened "what do you found?"
"This earthquake" said Renier as she stood up.
"What about it" asked Noir.
"This isn't a normal earthquake" Renier said as she realised "we are standing on a living creature, who just moved"
The revelation wasn't something he hadn't heard or read before. But despite of that, it came as a shock for August. He knew that the huge creatures like wyvern and dragons existed. He had seen them before. But to think a creature huge enough to make its back seemed like mountain, exists.
"Tell me one thing" August asked as the land was now stable "those beasts probably knew about it. So why did they chose this dangerous location as in the back of a huge creature as their home?"
"There are two reasons" Renier replied "first is that there are caves here probably built from this creature' shell. A home in the centre of forest which beast would refuse that? As for the creature pretending to be a mountain doesn't move frequently. Just once in few years. It wants to sleep you know."
"Yes that seems logical enough" August said picking up a rubble from the nearby collapsed cave "pity, they got caught up in all that. And their leader probably knew we couldn't do Anything to save his pack. Which makes me wonder." Walking into the only cave that took least damage followed by his companions "that's right, he wanted to lead us to this"
A giant flat, heavy rocky shell fallen on the center of the cave. Beneath it lies a brown-white wolf holding a bleeding white as snow pup close to her chest between her arms. It's snowy white fur had gone dark red around the coagulated wounds. The pup was nearly about a week old.
"Oh! god" Renier gasped at the sight with a mixed expression of sadness and shock "it's a Velvian"
"Velvian?" Noir asked scratching his chin, "what's that?"
"A child born from the purest of mana" Renier replied
"As a hope of a bright future for this whole pack"
"Absurd!" Red waved his hand in denial "that's just an urban legend. A fairy tale."
"For god's sake" Reneir said rolling her eyes "this many years of experience as an adventurer and hence you fail to recognise a mystical creature? Are you for real fatso? Can't you tell by looking at his pure white fur, that he had indeed born with purest of mana."
Picking up the small white seemed to be a furball August left the cave with his companions in a rush as the huge creature moved again to shift its sleeping position resulting in a mighty earthquake and sudden collapse of the caves, left behind.
—————