Page 44 of Destined to the Lycan
Worse still, I couldn’t pick any scent that might identify the interloper. All I perceived was Amara’s scent and the one from our horses. My mind raced as I mentally reviewed the limited number of creatures I knew that either possessed no scent orexcelled at masking it enough to make it nearly impossible to detect. All of them were dreadful.
I rushed into the forest, following what lingered of my woman’s distinct aroma. Traipsing through these cursed woods always felt like diving into a concentrated pool of evil. To my dismay, I couldn’t see any sign on the ground of the horses’ hooves or of my mate’s footsteps. A part of me began to wonder if I was under the effect of an illusion making me think I was actually following her scent. But I didn’t feel any magic directly affecting me.
Could the creature who took her be winged and flew a short distance above ground?
Without slowing down, I glanced up at the trees overhead. There were no signs of any broken or disturbed branches that might indicate something big had flown through them. Each branch was so thick and long they almost created a canopy overhead. Only smaller creatures could fly by without the risk of crashing into one of them.
And then her scent vanished altogether.
I stopped dead in my tracks and sniffed the air in vain. Heart pounding, I backtracked until I picked up the scent again. To my dismay, it was now leading me in a completely different direction than the one I had been following. Five or ten minutes later—I couldn’t tell anymore as time seemed to have lost all meaning—the same thing happened again. Rage, confusion, and growing despair had my chest so constricted I could barely breathe as I retraced my steps until I picked up her trail again heading in yet another direction.
By then, I no longer doubted that I was trapped in some sort of illusion. The question was which type. As I still couldn’t feel any magic being used on me, I could only speculate that I was either being physically controlled by a creature or a plant, or that a powerful mystifier had taken control of me.
Was I even moving in the real world or just standing still like a statue? Was I being wrapped inside the cocoon of a fiendish creature? Was a beast eating me alive even as I wandered aimlessly in this nightmare?
Whatever the case might be, I had to keep moving forward. Giving into despair would guarantee my demise, and with it my mate’s as well. If only for her, I couldn’t fail.
I shifted back into my human form before climbing on one of the trees to get a better long-range view of my surroundings. To my shock, I spotted what looked like a cozy wooden house in the distance. The light smoke rising from the chimney indicated that a fire was burning inside.
This house shouldn’t exist.
My every instinct told me it was a bait to lure me into a trap. But I had nothing else to go on. I jumped down from the branch I had been perched on, intent on turning back into my wolf form to race towards my new destination. However as soon as I hit the ground, an acute pain stung the back of my leg. I stumbled forward. Just as I was about to regain my balance, thorny vines wrapped around my leg yanking it backwards. The ground rushed towards me, and I barely managed to throw my hands in front of me to avoid face planting.
Sharp cutting pain stabbed every inch of my body as the vines continued to wrap around me like a boa constrictor, with countless sharp needles stinging me with their numbing venom.
I couldn’t believe an Arraphilon would attack me. Those wretched creatures looked like a four-meter-long centipede whose cylindrical body resembled a thorny branch covered with leaves. Its upper body had a few extra limbs that could almost pass for two sets of arms without hands. It had no eyes to speak of or even anything that could be deemed a face. If not for the series of horns around its head, the latter could have belonged to a lamprey with its circular mouth filled with needle teeth.
Most people would be oblivious to the creature’s presence as it usually lay flat on the ground, often around the base of a tree. It would lie in wait, wrapped in a way to look like a pile of fallen leaves or just random greenery in the underbrush. In my desperation to get to my woman, I’d neglected to pay better attention to my surroundings.
Still, that creature never should have attacked me. It could smell the toxin in me. And yet, it continued to sting me with its thorns and even gave me a couple of bites in its impatience to feed. I didn’t waste time and energy trying to fight it in my human form. Although the Arraphilon and I possessed comparable strength—mine likely a bit greater—I would sustain far too many wounds from its thorns and be slowed down by its numbing venom if I tried to pursue this fight like this.
Instead, I immediately shifted into my wolf form. Not only would my fur provide non negligible protection from the thorns, but I also regenerated faster as a wolf. Furthermore, my bigger size in that form made it harder for that creature to constrain or crush me. As expected, the Arraphilon soon loosened its grip to avoid being ripped apart by my significantly wider girth.
I swiped my claws at it, splitting it in half. The creature’s shrill screech had my ears painfully ringing. From the pain and shock, the Arraphilon released me for barely a couple of seconds, which sufficed for me to escape its clutch. However, the creature would never be defeated so easily. Both halves thrashed on the ground for another beat before chasing after me.
My skin tingled from the numbing effect of my attacker’s paralytic toxins. Thankfully, they weren’t strong enough to truly impede or incapacitate me. But sustained exposure to a greater amount would eventually leave me in a vulnerable position.
To my dismay, the ground started moving all around me with many more Arraphilons coming out of hiding and springing into action. I cursed inwardly that I should find myself in such atrap. Granted, even with my heightened sense of smell, detecting their presence was extremely difficult as their scent matched too closely that of other plants and vegetation in the forest. The fact that most creatures never bothered with me due to my condition had also made me a little careless and overconfident when it came to my own safety while wandering in dangerous places.
Two of the wretched fiends leapt at me, one of them landing on my back. I jumped, contorting midair while swiping my paws at it to keep it from successfully wrapping itself around me. Although I didn’t split that one in half, I managed to inflict a long gash one-third of its body, which was enough to make it fall and writhe in pain. With a few leaps and evasive maneuvers, I dodged the other assailants. However, that wouldn’t work for much longer. With so many of them chasing after me, the combined effect of their paralytic venom would guarantee my demise.
I hacked and slashed at them, clenching my teeth through the pain of the successful bites they managed to sneak in. Although their attack made no sense, they would need to ingest too much of my blood or flesh before my toxins kill them. By then, it would be too late for me. I would need fire to eradicate them all in one fell swoop.
Even as I began to weaken, a thought suddenly sparked in my mind. I veered east, running as fast as I could while fighting off my pursuers. While searching for my mate, I remembered seeing a patch of bitter morels. Less than thirty meters from my salvation, a sharp pain in my right leg made me lose my footing. An Arraphilon had savagely bitten my Achilles tendon, and it felt as if lighting had struck me there. I crashed hard on the ground, even as my assailant used its frontal limbs to climb on me.
Leveraging my momentum, I rolled with the fall to get back onto my paws. My right leg wasn’t fully responding, but I ignored it. I reached for the creature crawling over me with myfront paw and viciously stabbed my claws into it. This time, I didn’t attempt to cut it in half but tore it right off me. I cried out in pain as its thorns ripped me to shreds and tossed the creature with all my strength into the patch of bitter morels. It landed with such force in their midst that it crushed a few of them. The morels spit out their toxic spores, and the Arraphilon screeched in agony. It tried to slither away but barely moved more than a few centimeters before it began writhing, its thorns falling to the ground, and its leaves darkening and withering.
A second Arraphilon lunged for my throat, but I caught it with my maw and flung it in the same general direction as its fallen companion. Within seconds, it met the same horrendous demise. I half-ran, half-limped closer to the patch of morels, but not so much their spores would affect me, and turned to the other creatures that had been chasing me. To my shock, they were all gone.
And so was my pain.
Instead, I stared at a handsome doppelganger standing less than ten meters away from me. He was leaning on his forearms against the doorframe of a charming wood and brick cabin. Intricate wards, the like I’d never seen before, adorned the entrance of the dwelling. I didn’t need to be an arcanist to know they were powerful enough to keep at bay the foul creatures that haunted these woods.
It shouldn’t be here. When I surveyed the woods from the tree branch, the cabin had been located in a different direction and at a much greater distance than the one I covered while escaping the creatures hunting me.
“Not bad, pup,” the doppelganger said in a mocking tone. “You can think creatively and have decent situational awareness.”
I straightened as I shifted back into my human form.
