The god in the Woods

January 6, 2023January 6, 2023 by Babry Gernah

Chapter 1

The beast within growled approval, a shot in the arm for Damien as he neared the forked stream. Like all caged beasts, his leopard was a restless creature by nature. It had always clawed hard whenever Damien resisted his primal urges. But this was different. His leopard had gone feral since he caught that scent.

A most deliciously beautiful scent. The most delicate, yet, compelling scent Damien had ever sniffed out in the woods, and apparently, his leopard agreed. Not that they agreed on much.

In-fact, growing up, Damien had in many ways become somewhat used to his leopard lashing out, yet, he had never felt it fight this hard to break free of his skin. It was completely set on taking control, and it would certainly have, except, he was inert. He was physically unable to shift into his animal form, like the other skin walkers of his family. Even under the pressure of the full moon.

Though, he still possessed the superhuman strength, healing, speed, agility and senses possessed by the shifters in his family.

He could even hold his own against any of them in human form. Once he had ripped the door off a Hilux truck, clean off its hinges, back at the family estate and smashed one of brothers in the face with it. But that was before his brother shifted.

Once they shifted into giant leopards, the size of small bulls, he was no match for any of them. Not even on his best day. Not even to his baby sister Anna.

‘He should not keep on,’ he tried to remind himself, as he shot past tree after tree. Running down the slope of the Mirkwood in quick long strides and leaps that would have made an antelope jealous. Guided by the strength of his nose.

Mid stride, Damien took a leap. A long leap that put almost twenty feet of the forest floor and half as many trees behind him.

He landed on his haunches on a small bedrock, on the bank of the forked stream. Still on his haunches, Damien waited. He shot a quick look left and right, sniffing at the air, his nose pointed to the sky.

Down below, the forked stream flowed peacefully on the edge of the Mirkwoods, running smoothly on the border between the forest and the plains.

Damien wanted to turn back, but his leopard would not have it. It clawed even harder, thrashing and lashing at the walls of his mind. Urging him on relentlessly.

Damien inclined his head and listened. The entire plains in the shadow of the Mirkwoods came to him, or at least most of it anyway. He could hear the spring water bubbling upstream where the gorge was deeper, from nearly half a mile out. He could hear the birds cawing up ahead in the clear evening sky stretched over the plains. Rodents clawing at holes in the ground, keen on returning to their homes. Insects, scorpions but he could hear no wolves.

Damien waited. ‘He should not keep on,’ he thought. Again. He knew the consequences of crossing into the plains. The plains below were wolf territory, but it would seem his leopard did not care.

Today, the beast’s only concern was for the sweet scent of beauty Damien had sniffed out, trying to stalk his brothers, who were currently on the hunt. Damien shot his head backward one last time. Trees spread in all direction. And as if premeditated, he heard a deep reverberating roar come from deep in the forest behind him. It was a call. His brother Axel, the head huntsman of the family was calling out to his siblings to regroup. Axel must have just made a fresh kill, but he was too far out for his nose to tell.

The roar came again. Thick, deep and confident. Like the sound of an old chain saw starting up and then briefly going off.

This time, three other leopards roared. The sounds rising into the coming night from different parts of the Mirkwood one after the other. Filling the quiet air with dread and territorial warning. But since Damien was not part of the hunting party, he was quite contended to ignore the call.

His concerns rested far off in the opposite direction. Ahead of him. Deep into wolf territory.

Knowing his leopard would not let him rest until he had sort out the source of the scent. Damien threw caution to wind and stood to his feet. He took three preparatory steps backwards. Then coming back at a much faster pace, he leapt clear across the forked stream and landed on the other side of the calm flowing water. In the plains.

Chapter 2

Damien heart skipped a beat, realizing he was in wolf territory now. And it wasn’t something he knew just because he had crossed the forked stream. The border between the two territories, but even the air in the plains felt different. Smelt different. Fowler. Maybe because it was thick with Wolf scent.

Damien felt his beast cower momentarily. But only for a minute or two. He felt his leopard tuck its tail and recede into the darker corners of his mind.

Though the leopards were physically bigger and stronger than the wolves, and going back generations, his family at the height of their might, had managed to force all packs in the country into a loose pact, that the Agogo’s now policed with a heavy hand, the wolves outnumbered them sourly. And they were far more vicious. Not to mention they hunted in very large packs that would easily tear any leopard to bits, if they fell on it alone.

Like he was now.

Had Damien been human and not a Skin-walker, he would now be sweating profusely. His hands would feel clammy. His heart would be pounding with painful thuds and he would generally be an inch from a heart attack. But Damien was a Leopard. Even if he was inert, he was still a Skin-Walker.

Skin-Walkers don’t sweat. Though that did not put them beyond the reach of fear. Damien could feel all the hairs on the back of his hand, back and neck stand painfully. Goose bumps spread all over the back of his hands and his pupils were dilated so badly it was starting to affect his vision.

For the first time that evening he thought of turning away. Of heading back into the Mirkwoods without his leopard protesting. But that was until he sniffed at the air. The action meant to check again, his proximity to any nearby wolf party. But instead only that delicious, beauty laden scent, his Leopard was so dead set for him to follow filled his nostrils.

He sniffed again and felt his leopard leap out of hiding into a broader space in his mind. Then he found himself turned to the direction thickest with the scent, and spurred by the beast within, he had already started following, running precariously towards the direction of the scent, before actually making up his mind to follow.

It took only a few minutes of running heavily, as he soon came to a small clearing in the plains and stopped. The scent was thickest here. He sniffed, then continued to follow gently, letting his leopard guide him by the nose.

The leopard led him to a thicket surrounded by thin tall bushes. He stopped and sniffed. The scent was strong. Very strong.

He stooped low sniffed quietly and squinted. There in the thick of the bush he saw what he was looking for. A girl lying almost lifeless admits the shrubs. He reached for the girl fearing that she was already dead, even though there was no smell of death in the air. Gently he turned her over and was immediately struck by her beauty.

His nose had not lied. He stared. Even passed out and sprawled there in the bushes, dirty and bloodied. The girl was in the simplest terms… Breathtaking!

Damien felt his Leopard growling approval as he studied her dried and parched lips, ghostly pale face, and sunken cheeks. He stooped closer, crouched over her and sniffed. A leopard eyes could be cheated by a lot, but not its nose.

Maybe he should not have taken so much time studying and sniffing her face. Because when the angry wolf growls and snarling seeped through his besotted senses, the wolves were almost upon him. Heavy paw beats drumming the ground, closing down on his position as the great beasts raced from everywhere across their territory in his general direction.

His leopard roared. Not a challenge. An almost catlike meow to remind him of the urgency of the moment.

Quickly, he raised the unconscious body of the girl and slung it across one shoulder, not minding that the weight was sure to slow him down significantly! And he sprang towards the stream, running as fast as he had ever done. Listening.

He could hear the paw beats hasten. Closing down quickly. At least thirty wolves were closing down on him, faster than he was making for the stream. He doubled his efforts, constantly adjusting the unconscious body slung across his shoulders.

Without it, Damien would go faster. But a pretty face does to a leopard-man the exact same thing it does to a human-man.

Chapter 3

Whole minutes later, Damien made a quick turn at bole of one tree and the stream came into pain view at last, but so did the wolfs at his back. He shot his head back furtively, still running and tried to redouble his efforts.

They were at his back now, taking jaw snapping bites at thin air. Missing him only because on two legs he could dribble around far more efficiently, and the wolves themselves, now too anxious to get a bite of him, kept getting in each other’s way.

When he came to the edge of the stream, he leapt with all his strength, but with the extra weight on his shoulders, he did not go so far before, and instead crashed under the weight of the girl a few feet away from the Mirkwoods. The girl falling from his shoulders beside him.

He smiled. Wolves did now do water very much. Besides they would not dare cross the boundary. But they Did!

Though at first it did not look like it, as the wolves came to a stop in a mad scramble at the edge of the stream. Daring not set a paw in the water. Gnarling and snarling at him. Then something uncharacteristic of the wolf kind happened.

A jet black wolf, with heavy fur and red eyes glowing like hot charcoal, under the pale light of setting sun started coming through. Damien could easily tell this wolf was the alpha. It was evident in its majestic strides. In the way the other wolves were paving way and bowing their heads in reverence. And he was overall, the biggest of pack.

When the wolf got to the edge of the stream, he stopped and stared at Damien, its bloodshot eyes, feral and glossy. Even without the snarling and growling that was characteristic of his kind, this wolfs anger washed over and hit Damien like a tidal wave. Then it howled.

First, it was a single wolf, a grey wolf with white markings on its furry tail, that took one menacing step, as though tasting the water with its paw, then it steeped into the stream. Then another stepped in right after it. Then another.

Damien’s eyes went wide with surprise. Struggling back to his feet, he quickly reached for the girl and pulled her wet limp body to him. He stood to his feet and slung her effortlessly to one shoulder. Then he quietly, he started to back away from the approaching wolves. Knowing it was a monumentally bad idea to show your back to a predator. Especially this close. He lived in a house full of people who could turn into leopards.

So instead, he slowly started backing away, eyes fixed on the wolves, his feet unsteady in the water.

When his feet’s made contact with dry land, the wolf sprang towards him. He pulled the girl firmly unto his shoulders, and tried to leap away, but the wolf was already on him. It pounced from the water and Damien felt the weight of the girl drop from his shoulders, as he sank to knees on instinct and raised both hands over his face.

He watched the wolf coming down at him, claws sharp, all ten of them, pointing down at him, teeth bared, dropping like death from above.

Crouched there on the edge of the stream, Damien waited for his last moments. Then there was a roar that drowned out the horrifying growl of the blood thirty wolf descending on him. Even faced with certain death, Damien recognized the roar. Though, it was at the deepest and the angriest he had ever heard it.

It sounded like a mighty oak branch breaking off. Then everything else that happened, happened in the space of a heartbeat.

The heavy paw beats coming from his side, a massive Leopard shooting from the same direction like an arrow. Its pounce intercepting the wolf coming down on Damien in mid-air, and the huge leopard, huge, even for a preternatural beast, landing on its paws many paces from where Damien was crouched. The ground shaking like a felled tree had just hit the ground under its weight.

Damien looked up and saw the wolf that had been baring down on him hanging limply, its neck twisted at grotesque angle in the jaws of the leopard that had just saved him.

The huge and powerfully built leopard trotted back to where Damien was crouched, with the neck of the carcass still in its huge jaws, the rest of body dragging between its powerfully built front legs.

The leopard stopped and looked down to Damien. Then it turned away from him and flung the dead wolf clear across the stream, the motion almost too easy for him.

After, he stepped between Damien and the remaining wolves and gave another powerful roar that shook the woods, the trees, the leaves on the floor and reverberated even on the water flowing in the stream below, throwing small ripples across the surface.

It was a mighty roar, worthy of a beast the size of him.

Chapter 4

“Silver!” a feathery voice called at the massive leopard, from across the stream. After taking to human form,

“Black Hand!” Silver responded, taking to human form. Though it to him longer to shift back into a man.

“You look weary!” Black Hand said.

Silver looked at him squarely, then his eyes shifted meaningfully across the stream, to where his beast had flung the carcass of the dead wolf.

For a man who shifted into a beast the size of pre-historic proportions, Silver was a regular sized man, with lean muscles, a broad nose and a thin round head. Standing there stark naked in what little light left was left of the setting sun, that was seeping dully through canopy of leaves up ahead, Silver smiled a thin smile that caused black hand, a much bigger dark skinned man, with huge beards to frown.

“The pup sort this out.” Black Hand hissed, “He crossed into our boundaries and claimed something of ours!” Black Hand added, pointing to Damien and the girl at his side.

“And now he longer stands there” Silver responded, his voice strong, despite his somewhat greying hair.

Black hand frowned. His eyes thinned with dark purpose, but before he could say or do anything else, Damien’s brothers came pouring out of the woods. All of them in their leopard forms, but none of their leopards even remotely as big as silver’s beast had been.

Seeing that he was bitterly outnumbered, Black Hand paused. He hesitated and then smiled a thin mirthless smile.

Chapter 5

Dressed in all black, Nyssa emerged from the helicopter, the strobe light of the chopper picking her out in the vastness of Rantia plains, like a spot light does a solo act on center stage, as the helicopter whirred above her and ascended at an inclined angle, and then disappeared back into the night skies just as suddenly as it had appeared.

Clad in a long black over coat, black gloves, high heeled boots and skin tight jeans trousers that hung to her body like yoga pants, she crouched on one knee and studied and the ground. Then she reached into the pockets of her long coat and produced a small flash light, switched it on and pointed the bright but small piercing beam at the paw print she had found in the ground.

She put the small flash light in her mouth and with her free hand she removed the gloves on her left hand.

Then she pointed the flash light back at the rather large paw print in the ground and patted print with her naked hand, tracing lazy line on the paw print. She turned the flash light about her and studied more of the paw prints. Then she stood to her feet and started for the same direction she had concluded that prints where headed.

She was a tall woman that waked in slow and sure footed strides. Despite the terrain and her outfit.

She got to a small thicket of shrubs and stopped abruptly. She sniffed deeply. The action so deliberate it screwed up her cold, pale face. Staying still, she savored the intake but when she let the air flow out her longs and opened her eyes, they had become red. Blood red.

She pointed the small beam of light into the thicket, stooped to her knee studied the ground. Someone had been here. And just as she had perceived, there was blood. Blood stained grass everywhere.

Nyssa plucked a single blade of the grass stained with blood and studied it. She brought it to her lips and tasted the blood. Again she savored the taste, eyes closed and then stood adruptly to her feet.

Then she reached into her other coat’s other pocket and got out a cell phone. She punched a few times at the device’s screen and pressed it to one side of her pale face. As she waited for the line to connect, she turned the thin beam of light, studying around her. eyes peeled on the paw prints that ran through and past the thicket towards the heavy shadow of the forest up ahead.

“Nyssa!” a thin metallic voice came on the other end of the line.

“Yes!”

“What is it?” the voice asked,

“I have found her” Nyssa said,

“What! Where?” hissed the metallic voice,

“The Mirkwoods”

For moments the voice stayed silent.

“What madness drove her to the Mirkwoods?”

“I don’t know!” Nyssa hissed, “Just send word to the Necromancer, tell him we have found his price!”