15-13. The Trail
“Another one,” said Rakhan, kneeling amidst the rubble of a fallen building.
Elijah frowned and scanned their surroundings. The immediate area was nothing but shattered buildings and corpses, many of which had been ripped to pieces.
“How many people lived here?” he asked. Even with Soul of the Wild, he couldn’t make sense of all the body parts. There were too many pieces missing.
“A hundred or so,” one of the other hunters answered. His white-knuckled grip on his bow said that he’d visited the village before. “I tried to tell them to evacuate, at least until we dealt with the beast. But they didn’t listen.”
“They never listen,” said one of the non-combatants who’d come along to help harvest the beast once they tracked it down and dealt with it. She shook her head sadly. “It’s always the same story.”
Elijah tuned them out and focused on the feedback from Soul of the Wild. He received mixed signals, which wasn’t a surprise, given the chaos of the destroyed village. However, it was obvious that the attacker had emerged from the nearby river.
He stepped over the rubble and approached the banks.
They’d been hunting the beast for the better part of a day, and aside from a few signs of its passage, they had found nothing. Not until they’d discovered the recently destroyed village, at least.
The issue was that the entire region was covered in waterways. Not only did the braided river system cut a large swath through the area, but there were countless tributaries as well. Fortunately, most of those were too small to host their prey, but there were still plenty of options out there.
And unlike most such creatures, this beast refused to stick to a single territory. Instead, it roamed up and down the rivers, constantly moving like a living calamity.
Elijah surveyed the riverbank, noting the width of the trail emerging from the water.
“How long, do you think?” he asked when Rakhan joined him.
“Less than a day,” the Sikh hunter answered.
“It’s bigger than I expected.”
Rakhan only nodded. From the tracks, the beast was at least the size of a blue whale. Perhaps even larger, depending on its shape. According to Rakhan, the creature was a lot like a hippopotamus. Maybe that’s what it had been before the world’s transformation, and it had mutated with the injection of ethera that came with the World Tree’s touch.
Or it might’ve been some other beast entirely, imported from another world and left to its own devices.
Neither situation would be uncommon.
And in both cases, the danger was very real. After all, even before the world had changed, hippos were among the deadliest creatures on Earth. The larger size would make it even more dangerous.
“Have you seen it?” Elijah asked.
Rakhan shook his head. “No. Only the aftermath of its attacks.”
“Any idea why it would become so aggressive all of a sudden?”
“There are theories, but we have found no evidence to support any of them. I believe we will only know when we have killed it.”
Elijah sighed, but he didn’t respond, largely because he didn’t know what to say. The beast needed to die. Everything he saw pointed at insanity. For all that some beasts developed high levels of intelligence, they were rarely cruel. They would kill for food, to protect their territory, or to safeguard their young. But they didn’t just destroy villages and leave nothing but rubble behind. At the very least, the animal should have eaten the corpses.
But aside from being torn apart – probably more as a side effect of the attack than as the purpose – they had been left alone.
It reminded Elijah of the boar he’d killed outside Khotont. That guardian had been driven mad by its treasure being stolen. Was this hippo the same? Or was it something else? As Rakhan had indicated, the answer would not be forthcoming until they confronted the beast.
“We should move on,” Elijah said, glancing at the sun. “A couple of hours of daylight left.”
Elijah could easily keep hunting through the night, but the same couldn’t be said of the rest of the expedition. Some of the higher levels among them would probably be fine, but it would be incredibly dangerous for everyone else. None more so than the non-combatants.
Rakhan agreed, and they continued down the river. Every now and then, they saw evidence of the beast’s passage. A partial footprint here, some disturbed mud there. But no more destroyed villages.
As the sun dipped below the horizon, the expedition retreated from the river bank and camped about a mile away. They moved like a well-oiled machine, with everyone knowing their roles and their places. The hunters took shifts as guards, while the non-combatants focused on their own tasks.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from NovelPhoenix. Please report it.
Even as they gathered around their individual fires, eating hearty travel food, Elijah stood apart. His conversation with Sara remained on his mind, and despite giving it a lot of thought, he still didn’t have any answers. Obviously, he wanted to help people. But that had never been his primary goal. Rather, it was a side effect of having too much wealth and no real idea what to do with it.
Elijah had always been reactionary. So long as a problem stood in his line of sight, he would try to do something about it. But when it was hidden from him, he tended to forget it even existed.
He was sitting on a large rock at the edge of camp when Rakhan approached. The hunter joined Elijah on the boulder, but he didn’t speak. Instead, he just sat there, staring off into the darkness.
“Am I a selfish person, Rakhan? I feel like I am, but I try not to be,” Elijah asked at last. “Or not only that, maybe. I want to be better.”
“It is our nature to give in to Panj Chor. Vices. Kaam. Krodh. Lobh. Moh. Ahankar.”
Elijah understood the meaning behind each of those words, probably by virtue of the system’s translation feature. Kaam referred to uncontrolled desire, while Krodh was about anger. Or rage, perhaps. Lobh was greed, and Moh was attachment. Ahankar referred to pride. Or maybe ego.
“Doesn’t seem to be the case with you.”
Rakhan let out a long sigh. “I am as much a victim of the five thieves as any man,” he stated.
“And how do you combat it?”
“Through spiritual discipline meant to remind me that I am a part of something much greater than a single soul. Humans have divine potential, but our destination is clouded by ego. We are not evil. Just temporarily lost.”
Elijah didn’t respond. He was no Sikh, even if he respected the religion and culture. But he did find some merit in their tenets, specifically that humanity needed to guard itself against the worst parts of its nature. At its most beneficial, that was what religion provided. It was too bad that humanity had a way of corrupting that, too.
Eventually, Rakhan returned to the camp, but Elijah remained in place throughout the night. He told himself that he wanted to ensure the expedition’s safety, but in reality, he was lost in thought. Even when the sun eventually rose, he’d found no answers.
The camp broke quickly, and soon enough, they were back on the trail. The hunt followed the same pattern for the next two days until Rakhan discovered fresh tracks.
“Perhaps an hour old. Leading that way,” he said, pointing his spear to the west. That was where the river system converged into a single waterway that stood more than three miles wide. The current looked lazy at first glance, but that was just due to the size. It flowed as swiftly as any river from pre-transformation Earth.
“It could be anywhere in there,” Elijah said. “Any ideas?”
“I think we have found the creature’s home,” Rakhan stated. “It may hunt the smaller rivers, but it lives here.”
Elijah and the other hunters agreed, though that only raised other concerns, most of which stemmed from the fact that the river stretched on for thousands of miles until it reached the ocean. However, they also all agreed that the beast wouldn’t have strayed too far from its hunting grounds, narrowing the search area significantly.
In the end, Elijah volunteered to explore the depths of the river himself.
He knew he didn’t need the other hunters. Rakhan was the only one with any power, and he’d only barely reached demigod status. Judging by the power Elijah felt from the hunter, he’d probably never achieve deity status. Not unless something changed drastically.
Maybe it would.
Rakhan had the potential, but perhaps not the drive to reach it.
It was with those thoughts in mind that Elijah dove into the river and used Shape of the Primordial Deep. Behind him, the hunters gasped. It was not a surprising reaction, given that Elijah had taken on the form of an enormous and primal sea turtle hundreds of feet long. Fortunately, the river was both wide and deep, giving him plenty of room to maneuver.
He beat his flippers against the current, propelling himself forward. His hydrodynamic shape allowed him to cut through the water with ease, though the form’s innate mastery over water was at least partially responsible for that.
It came with a sense of freedom that he’d lacked since returning to Earth. For whatever it mattered, Elijah did not enjoy being saddled with other people. Especially not ones that needed to be protected.
Was that a character flaw?
Or just part of his nature?
Elijah wasn’t sure, and he had no intention of pondering the issue further. Instead, he focused on the feeling of gliding through the water in search of a vicious and deadly predator.
And it wasn’t long before he sensed it.
Maybe ten miles. Fifteen at most. But some of that perception was muddied by the sheer size of the thing. Even from afar, Elijah could tell that it was enormous. Maybe two or three hundred yards long and proportioned like a hippopotamus. However, from so far away, Elijah couldn’t get further than its basic shape and size.
Then, it moved.
The entire river shifted around it. Silt swirled and the speed of the current doubled. Elijah cut through it, only to find a gaping maw coming in his direction.
It almost seemed to move in slow motion. A trick of perception that came from its size, which was expansive enough that it could swallow Elijah whole. He’d been down that road before, and he had no intentions of revisiting that sort of situation.
Elijah beat his flippers, abruptly changing course. Even propelled by his inflated attributes, he barely avoided the closing maw.
A massive torrent of water slammed into the broad side of Elijah’s shell, sending him spinning off course. He quickly corrected his path, but by that point, the hippo had recovered from its failed attack.
For once, the Shape of the Primordial Deep was smaller than his foe. However, Elijah didn’t feel that the hippo was overly powerful. It was in the demigod range, but if he’d had to guess, it wasn’t nearly as strong as some of the beasts he’d seen in the Empire of Scale.
But Elijah wasn’t concerned about defeating the creature.
Not primarily, at least. Not before he had a chance to figure out what was wrong so he could hopefully cure its madness.
It would’ve been so much easier if the thing had been a monster. If it had been corrupted in some way. But as far as Elijah could tell, it was entirely healthy. That just didn’t fit, so he swam closer.
With a sudden head shake that sent a tidal wave of water splashing onto the river banks, the hippo managed to surprise Elijah. The blow sent him spinning across the waterway, but he righted himself a few moments later.
However, it was in that brief moment of contact that he felt something he hadn’t expected. Something that got his blood boiling in a way that few other things could. He’d encountered mind control back in the Tournament of the First Fang, and he’d dealt with the perpetrator accordingly. That had left Skahan a broken dragon, likely permanently crippling his psyche.
But what he felt from the hippo was subtler. More hidden.
And he’d felt that before, too.
Somewhere nearby was a Tamer, a detestable monster in human form who enslaved beasts and forced them to act against their nature. Elijah had beheaded the last Tamer he’d encountered, and this instance felt like it would tread a similar path.