Chronicles of the Wolf III: Brotherhood of the wolf

Chapter 1

I crouched down and looked at the trail before me. I looked at it closely. There was another one. I had been hearing rumors about the forests of Lemuria. That there were these things that Lemurians were calling them werewolves.

“Werewolves?” I had said.

What the hell was a werewolf I had thought?

I had found out that this word apparently meant “man-wolf.” When I learned this, I started to pay attention. It had been about 4 years since I had left my home, Kyzlbrama, I had often wondered if they had been sent off somewhere, or if there were any others like his kind. This thought of "werewolves" existing, here on this planet, had gotten my attention. They allegedly were creatures that turned from these fur-less things to full blown creatures like me.

“So?” Walker asked as he suddenly appeared in front of me.

I looked up at him, and back down at the track.

“It's hard to tell,” I said looking back at the print. “It could be a regular damn wolf print for all we know. I mean I don’t even know what wolves are like on this planet.”

I was trying to remember of situations where I was maybe looking for someone back home. I couldn’t remember any such case. I remember my father had once said that you mask yourself so that other tribes wouldn’t know you were there. If that is the case then we could be looking for something folly.

“It might not even be my kind we are dealing with,” I said. “My father made it common place for one to hide one’s own scent when doing a hunt, even go as far as erasing tracks.”

“So, the fact that there is one of these things there could mean that it’s not one of your kind then?” Walker asked.

“It could mean that, but it could also mean that it might be a pack of young ones.” I said looking around.

I didn’t know what to think. The descriptions of these so called “werewolves” sounded how some other race would describe my kind. They were between 8-12 feet tall with an extremely lean yet muscular built. Usually they would be described as having either brown, red or black fur. Though recently gray furred werewolves had also been seen.

I remember that to the far north of Kyzlbrahma there was a tribe of red Beghrest that were called the Krasnyy, I had never seen them, but the fact there were red furred “werewolves” running around really did not surprise me.

“The fact that the reports are strange also do not fit well.” I said.

I had seen the reports, of these “werewolves”, supposedly people had seen people turn into these creatures. Now, this would have sounded ludicrous to me however when I considered my situation, I could think of it. I suppose a pack of Beghrest could have belts like my own that turned them into these fur-less creatures, and then somehow people saw them change back to Beghrest. This all apparently had been witnessed particularly on days of the full moon.

As ludicrous as that sounded. It made more sense than there being some sort of magical creature that can change between a wolf and a furless creature. That however still did not explain whether we were dealing with Beghrest or some sort of other creature.

“Anything?” a voice said as I looked over at her.

It was Eva and her group of females. Wearing that strange suit of theirs with the strange helmets. I got up and shrugged. It was weird because I had seen those helmets so many times that I had grown numb to the fact that for whatever reason they were shaped like a face of a fox.

Kitsune...I think was what she called them. Apparently named after this nine-tailed deity that took the form of a fox. If Hanuman was a walking talking monkey creature, I did not want to meet a fox looking one. Though if I did in the future I was not really going to be surprised.

“I can tell you there was definitely something here,” I said.

I pointed at nearby tree.

“It came from a predatory stance by that tree.” I said then I turned over to where the paw print was. “This looks like it’s back left leg and the way it indented here it looks like it was mid stride.”

Then I pointed off into some slightly jostled bushes.

“It took off in that direction, chasing something.” I said.

“The report said it was chasing a sort of antelope,” Umberto said as he was looking at the bush I had pointed at. He had been off looking randomly at other things trusting this strange device in his hands. I would have thought he would trust my senses over those stupid things.

“Antelope?” I asked.

Umberto sighed and he tapped something on that device and showed me a picture of a deer…well it looked like a deer, but it had swirling horns and a strange orange and white coat.

“Well at least that’s good for something,” I said.

I walked over to the bushes and felt around it.

I could picture this “antelope” jumping through the bushes and run away from whatever was chasing it.

“There are more,” I said.

“You can tell?” Umberto asked c*****g his eyebrow.

“The antelope seems to be a young one,” I said.

I noted how there was two entrances to the bushes one was from above, which I was thinking was from the predator the smaller one was clearly for the prey. I crouched down and rubbed at the ground and sniffed at it.

“Definitely smells like prey in fear,” I said.

“What the hell does prey in fear smell like?” Umberto asked.

“You ever been afraid?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Umberto said.

“Next time you are really afraid take a deep breath on yourself,” I said as I got up. “On creatures that naturally are always being hunted by a predator, they have certain sweat glands trying to deter the predator. It’s a sort of defense mechanism.”

“Who knew so much about prey?” Umberto said.

“So, what do you think Hunter?” Eva asked putting her hands to her hips. She looked like she was expecting me to figure this out on my own. Typical, I thought. They had all these bells and whistles and had to let me figure this out.

“Maybe there is a solo wolf that strayed away from its pack ages ago and is now running rampage.” I said.

“If that’s the case we need to hunt it down,” Umberto said.

“Fat chance,” I snorted.

“Why is that?” Umberto said looking at me.

“If I am wrong and this is in fact a Beghrest we are dealing with they would leave false positives,” I said.

“What the hell is a false positive?” Walker asked.

“It means something that they could have had one of the younger ones douse themselves in the scent of the prey to throw not only the prey itself but also rival predators.” I said.

“So, it means we could be chasing ghosts?” Umberto said.

“Essentially,” I said. “I could see it that they could have killed the prey somewhere else and got a young one to roll around in it and act like this was where it had pounced.”

“Fine let’s go back then,” Umberto sighed.

It had been an interesting time since we arrived on this new planet. The third damn different planet I had been on ever since this damn adventure began. Vega was way different than Rho and Saffar. For one Vega had a lot of forests, and they were not far away from the big cities.

Not that those other worlds did not have forests, this planet was almost a lot like my own world. Complete with the blue hue plants that I grew up in. It was so strange seeing that weird green stuff all over the place in Rho and Saffar. The lush blue fields, the massive blue trees and the rippling blue leaves on them, that was what I was used to.

Then there were the cities of Vega.

The one that we had been around the most was Lemuria it was the capitol of the North of the planet. Now the interesting thing about Lemuria, was that it was it as the only city I had seen so far where the residents called themselves by the name of the cities. By which I mean Lemurians, that’s what they call themselves.

There were other cities. One to the west was called Selgna Sol, I had not been there yet, but they called themselves over there Selgians. There was another city to the east that was called Kroy Wen, people there called themselves Kroywenians, and there were others that named themselves after the cites that they were in. I found all this very interesting.

“I think we should head back,” I said the rest nodded and we headed home.