The hunt

The hunt

"NOOOOOO!"
Those words echoed in my ears as my father lay on the damp ground, breathing heavily. I looked at my soaked paws with worried eyes, as they were not wet from the rain, but from the crimson blood of my father. I barely remember the events leading up to that moment, but they are clear enough to haunt me to this day.
That fateful morning I woke up and felt the cool, moist breeze blowing across my crimson and azure fur, tickling my wolfish body. I am a humanoid wolf standing just shy of six feet, medium build, and a tail that barely touches the ground at my hind paws. But this morning, my father decided to finally take me with him on a hunt, I have been on many hunts on my own or with other pack mates before, but now I have the honor of hunting with my father. He was a maroon red wolf standing at roughly five feet nine inches with his tail missing from the knee down because of a child-hood fight with another pack mate, akindol.
"Come here Rei," he called from his room in the den, "we need to discuss the hunt's plan today."
"I’m Coming." I responded
As I slowly moved into the room, I see my mother, a beautiful blue wolf by the name of Morania, sitting under the cloth, clinging to my father. She shifted slightly under the cover before rising in her purple silk bathrobe to give us privacy for the "talk"
"Son, do you know why I am taking you on this hunt today?"
"I don't know why, but I am honored and proud that you would ask me to accompany you."
"Don't be proud son! The only reason I asked you on this hunt is because I want to make sure you are a true wolf in this tribe, and not just a child anymore."
I was speechless at this, for the first time in my life, I thought my father had cared about me, but I was sorely wrong.
"Fine father! I'll prove to you that I am a part of this tribe, and I'll make you see that I am a full wolf and make you proud of me."
"Fine fine, Egany, whatever you say." He knew I hated my birth name, so why he used it then baffled me.
"DON'T EVER CALL ME THAT AGAIN! Call me Rei. I despise the name Egany. It's because it brings views of you to the minds of my pack mates." I hated being referenced to my father, and only having the reputation of being his son, when others learned of my name.
"Alright, Rei, I'll never call you by Egany again if you're that ashamed of me and your past."
"I'm not ashamed of my past exactly, it's just that I want to just live my own life under my own name, NOT under the reputation of yours."
I stared at my father for a moment before we started to discuss the plan for the hunt this day. We were supposed to catch the group of humans that have been invading our pack's territory and hunting our food source to near-extinction.
"We must drive the humans away from our territory before we lost our prey and have to hunt the humans themselves for food."
"But I don't see what they are doing to harm us, we have been kidding the deer and cattle on our own, but we blame the humans. Where is the logic in your view father?"
"Now is not the time for your logic! We MUST act now, before you, Morania, and I must leave Akinda forever. Do you wish that upon our family?"
Reluctantly, I agree with my father, I do not want to leave Akinda or my mates Ichando and Ulasa. I could not ever see living without them, especially Ulasa. She is a beautiful silver wolf with just enough build to not be overly strong in her appearance. She is the one I wish to be my real mate for life, but she does not know it yet.
So both my father and I gathered up our respective war gear. An eleven-inch dagger and a leather vest for myself. A three-foot long sword and the same leather vest for my father. I preferred to just use my own natural given claws to hunt, seeing as I wished to break away from the human influence in our past. Choosing to revert to the ways of the feral wolves we came from.
Step by step, my father and I set off into the surrounding forest in search of our prey. For the entirety of our stalk, not a word was said between us, only intensifying the tension of the stalk. I see my father's face, gleaming in the morning light, but his rough, scarred exterior cannot hide the fear in his eyes. I had never seen him with even the slightest glimpse of fear in all of the years I have known him.
"What are you thinking about?" I questioned.
"I was thinking of how you have grown up to be who you are. I remember you being half my height, and playfully chewing on your own tail."
"I remember that also, but that was long ago, and I choose to mostly ignore that time in my life."
"Well I just was thinking of how I might miss seeing your pups like that, as I am advanced in years and may not be around to see them."
"Don't say that father, you are drunk on the emotions of the task ahead."
A noise near us ends our conversation suddenly as we both become alert, teeth and fangs bared, and muscles tensed. I prepare my claws as my father blinds me in the un-sheathing of his weapon. We both part ways on the path, waiting in the shadows for the prey to approach.
Creeping slowly down the path in the wood, two human males, one about five and a half feet, the other about six feet, move in-between my father's and my hiding places. My muscles relax slightly when I notice the human closest to me is only armed with a small dagger and his ordinary cloth shirt. My teeth begin to drip as I see my father preparing to attack, giving me the practiced signal to wait.
The time spent waiting for my father’s signal seemed to last for years. Only preparing for the counter-attack from the human was my course of action for killing the time. The humans crept slowly, not seeing us in our coverings, but being cautions just in case.
As they moved to the gaze between us, I began to think of my plan for attack, which would be to attack the man’s leg, immobilizing him. My father on the other side let out a bone-shilling howl, signaling for the attack. This time it had caught me off guard, leaving my father to fend off both of the humans for a short time.
Brandishing my own claws, I rush out to get the taller human, starting our own personal fight. The human turned towards my deafening howl as I approached from the shadows. He tried to cut me down with his weapon, but I block the swing with my own dagger and come swinging with my claw. Moving with a speed unknown to me, the man dodges my attack as I lose my balance to the momentum. Recovering from the fall, I double back to slash the inferior being. But as my arm begins to fall on him, he catches it and prepares to slash my muscle.
But when he brought his weapon to my art to disable me, I slice at his arm with my claws, spurting his warm blood on my paw to mix with the rain that has begun. As I watch him stumble from the pain and surprise, I bring my paw to my lips and taste the sweet crimson flow as I move the fur from my eyes.
As I attack again, I hear a loud yelp from behind me. As I realize what had made the yelp, I received a new purpose to end this fight quickly. But I hear the humans signaling each other in an unknown language. I cannot help but think they were yelling about my father. The human I had injured, still spurting blood from his wound, tried to help his companion. But I cannot allow that to happen. I chased him, knocked him to the ground, and jumped on his thrashing body, pinning him to the ground. He tried to slash at me with his futile weapon, which I knocked away to save myself. I bring my snout to his head
“Why do you come here day after day?” I snarl.
He speaks in a confusing tongue. “ANSWER ME you pig!” Again he speaks, but not the way I understand. So then I draw my dagger and bring it to his neck and say, “Answer me now, or you shall die by my knife.” He sites silent, he had died from the weight. I slit his throat, spilling the crimson liquid on the fresh grass.
I turn my eyes to the direction of my father’s fight and my heart sinks. I see the man standing over my father, with his weapon held in preparation for the final strike. I bound towards him, the sweat, blood, and rain clouding my vision. My emotions rushing as I howl against the human as I tackle him in mid thrust of his weapon, knocking the weapon from his grasp. He tried to get up, but I thrust my hind paw into his stomach, knocking his breath from his chest.
As he lay there, gasping for air, I see his eyes shining with the flash of lighting. I see beyond his own life, to that of his family back where he is from. I almost feel sorry for the beast, until I am reminded of my father’s body lying motionless behind me. I raise my paw in the darkness of the storm to deliver the final blow to the quivering human. But before I started the swing, I heard in my native tongue “Don’t do it Rei.”
I lowered my paw, searching for the source of the noise, but I could not see into the shadows through the rain. “Who are you?” I scream into the shadows.
“I am the man you are about to slaughter at your feet.”
Looking down at the man, my heart stops for a moment while I ponder how he knows our wolfish language, let alone my name. But the time for thought of that type is over. I question the man. “Who are you, why do you invade our pack’s land, and how do you know my name?”
I found out too late that it was just a distraction for him to gain the upper hand in our battle. So, eyeing his moment, the man swung his feet around to knock my legs from under me. He grabbed his weapon, and held it at my throat before I could rise to face him. “Any last words wolf?” He stated in my language.
“Not that I can tell you.” I said sheepishly. For by that moment, my father had regained enough of his strength to grab his weapon in order to inflict the moral wound upon the human, showering me with the blood of my enemy. But the human did not just die like a normal mortal, he decided that with his final bit of will, to injure my father by thrusting his sword into the side of my father, before falling dead to the ground, twitching slightly post mortem.
My father stumbled back, wincing at from the pain of the wound before falling to the ground. I run to him and place my paw swiftly on the hole that was left by the human’s foul weapon, trying to stop the river of blood. But I could not lie to myself; nothing could be done to save my father.
“NOOOOOO!” I screamed hauntingly into the air.
I looked at my paw in disbelief as I crawled next to my father to tell him that nothing could be done to save him at this point.
“I know son. I know I will never see you, Morania, or your pups again, but I now know you are a man in this tribe and…” With those words, the eyes that had been lovingly gazing into mine slowly closed as he went limp in my arms, and died slowly, leaving me in the rain holding my dead father.