As noted at the end of the last entry, this scene played out privately over Discord. What follows is the writeup the player behind Leks provided for the rest of the group after the dust – rather, the snow settled…
An hour passes as Leks trudges along, maybe two. The monotony of the flurries threatens to dull his senses, but he presses on, and is rewarded when he discovers the first tracks in the two day old snow. They’re… lupine, for certain, but the size is… Leks shakes his head. That’s a bigger set of paw prints than he’s ever seen. His bushcraft is sufficient to tell the tale of the tracks pacing, and that the wolf is moving at an unhurried pace, more or less at right angles to Lek’s tracks.
Another hundred meters or so, Leks crosses the same tracks again. Again after the same increment. It’s almost a deliberate pattern. Predictable? Leks checks the wind. It’s still… nothing to carry his scent. For now. Leks looks ahead. Where would the next crossing of paths be? Gripping his spear tighter, he runs the math in his head, calculating if he can get ahead of his quarry and spring an ambush of his own.
The forest here is patchy, interspersed with rock outcroppings as the land rises into the hill country. The wolf appears to be skirting the perimeters of the less-forested patches, where a human might want to stay to have longer sightlines. Leks scans the horizon to the south. If he were limited to close combat weapons and was trying to set an ambush for someone stick to the open ground – there, where a limestone defile carves between two fir-dense bluffs.That’s where…
Some slight movement catches his eye, on the eastern bluff. A massive shape settles itself into position under the snow-blanketed tangle of a fallen evergreen. “Clever girl,” Leks thinks to himself… then frowns slightly, the outcome of his movie quote coming to mind. If the winds hold, he could reverse the trap the wolf is setting, approaching from behind. If he backs off, and makes the wolf come to him, he could choose a chokepoint of some sort and force the action.
Leks sinks into the vegetation. Breathes. Listens. Feels the wind on his face. It’s holding steady. He waits for the snowfall to pick up and begins creeping southeast. The minutes tick by, though only a secondary concern. He works his way up the base of the slope where his prey waits for him. It’s been more than thirty minutes of creeping, inching forward, and he’s moving up the hill, one foot and hand at a time. The ground hasn’t frozen yet, but it’s saturated with the past month’s heavy rain under the snow, and the mud somehow manages to be both slippery and sticky. When he finally regains line of sight to his target, he has to blink hard to focus. The wolf is huge – easily massing as much as he himself does. It’s hunkered down in the crater left by the fallen tree’s root ball, only its ears and nose protruding above the lip. By all appearances, it’s focused on the path through the defile below. It hasn’t visibly reacted to Leks’ approach.
Leks decides that he won’t have a better chance. He inches forward again, not staring, forcing his eyes to look side to side. Leks moves forward one step at a time, spear ready. The wolf tenses; Leks freezes. Then he hears it – the creak of a snow-laden branch shifting under weight. It’s as good of auditory concealment as he’s going to get. Trying to move without a grunt, he pushes his boots into the ground, checks his footing, and springs forward, spear raised.
Minka’s wolf-head spear lashes out, catches the wolf below the ribs. It’s twisting away instinctively, but too late. The spearhead drives deep and comes out trailing blood. Despite what should be a crippling wound, it whips around and counterattacks. It doesn’t manage to latch on, but its fangs tear a chunk out of Leks’ side just above his right hip. Blood trailing from the both of them, Leks circles, waiting for another opening in which to shove the spear home. The wolf dodges around the fallen evergreen. Leks feels the first crack start in the spear’s shaft as the blade deflects off the fir, but the blade licks another line of blood from the wolf’s shoulder.
Its maw crunches down on the shaft as Leks instinctively throws his arms forward in a warding motion. The shaft cracks off the muzzle, and perhaps that is what prevents the teeth from truly latching onto the wood. Spinning away, Leks at grins… at least the teeth marks might provide a good story, should he live to tell the tale.
The wolf circles, trying to stay on Leks’ wounded side. It rushes in, trying to get inside the spear’s reach, but Leks is faster. The rohatina finds the wolf’s chest and sinks to the crosspiece. Leks’ eyes blur as he staggers against the wolf’s weight and momentum. The massive jaws gape open but no sound emerges. The wolf’s gaze fixes on Leks. It cocks its head and nods again in an all-too-human acknowledgement… and acceptance. Then the light goes out of its eyes. “I am sorry, forest kin, for what I must do. Thank you for your sacrifice,” Leks murmurs reverently, turning with a wince to set about the task of hiding a beast with a hatchet.
It’s midnight by the time Leks returns to the firelit circle. Filip may well not have moved since the Estonian departed, still as a statue turned in the direction Leks approached from. He takes in the blood on Leks’ side and the wolfskin in his arms and nods solemnly. “You have hunted and been hunted, and you have prevailed.” A murmur arises from the ring of Bracia Wilków waiting beyond the firelight. Krzysztof steps into the circle. “You already had the wolf’s strength and resolve, brother. Now you will have his skin to match. Will you allow me to prepare it for you?”
Leks nods solemnly and holds out his arms presenting the skin. “Thank you. Guide me in what I must do.” Alicja and Zofia step forward. “Your blood hasn’t turned the wheel,” Alicja says, “but you’ve shed it in the hunt.”
“Pact’s third price,” Zofia rasps. Her eyes glitter in the torchlight.
Alicja nods to her twin and takes over. “First, we bind your wounds while Krzysztof prepares your wolfskin. Then Filip will introduce you to your wolf. After that – rest.” Leks winces again, gingerly shedded his overcoat and raising his shirt to expose his ravaged side.
“And tomorrow night, the pack welcomes you,” Filip says. He finally cracks a smile. “Well done, brother.” Leks nods, finally managing something akin to a grin. He gratefully accepts water and a little food, and after his side is bandaged, he settles down into some bedding to sleep.
As he closes his eyes, he feels movement behind him, and a hoarse whisper. “For warmth,” Zofia scrapes in her hushed voice. Leks grins again, and soon finds himself in a welcomed sleep, her arms draped over him.
He wakes after midday, groggy and sore. Zofia hides a smile from the others as he sees her tending the fire a few meters away. He sits upright and stretches, grimacing at the scabs on his side crackling and breaking. “Change,” she whispers, pointing to his side. Alicja appears as if summoned, and the sisters see to refreshing the bandages on his side. The smell of fresh blood tickles his nose, and Leks swears that he can smell the coppery tinge more clearly than he could last night. Another Bracia Wilków crunches through the snow, half dragging, half carrying a deer. Leks sets about helping prepare the evening’s coming feast, directed at most every turn by the sisters, who take delight in having a new recruit to boss around.
The feast begins before nightfall, venison and a stew, with some vegetables and a grainy bread, stale but flavorful. There is drink, water and a mead with hints of wild blackberries, passed around in various containers, from mugs to horns. Leks feel his shoulders nearly bruised at all the claps he receives on his back as the revelry welcomes him. In the course of the next hours, he speaks at least briefly with each Bracia Wilków present, and he struggles to memorize all the names with faces to them. After night falls, and the gathering winds down into one story around the campfire after another, Filip appears at Leks’ side and gives him a firm nod. They peel away from the group and walk outside of the campfire’s light. “Time to meet your wolf,” Filip nods, leading Leks to a copse of maple and birch trees.
“You have passed the test of prey, and will soon have your fur to wear. While you don it, you will have some aspects of the wolf. Which one, we shall see what your wolf gifts you with.” He kneels in the center of the small clearing, spreading out before him the prepared wolfskin from Krzysztof. A horn sloshing with liquid is thrust into Leks’ hand, and Filip nods for him to partake. Raising the horn, tip down as he was taught, Leks can smell the mead mixed with some sort of blood inside even before it touches his lips. He drains the horn at Filip’s nod, and closes his eyes as the warmth of the liquid flows down his throat. Leks feels and hears his heartbeat, heightened by the tapping of a small drum that Filip produces, in complete unison with Leks’ pulse.
Leks feels his mind slip sideways, this way and that as he feels his inner spirit being tugged by an outside force. He sees the forest nearby, senses it more sharply and from more refined senses than ever before. In a swirl of snow, he finds himself gliding along the tracks beaten through the undergrowth, loping along. The feel of wet snow and mud beneath, the scent of the trees themselves and the other living things nearby, the lingering taste of mead along with the tang of the blood, the sound of crunching snow and the breeze blowing through the snow-covered limbs, and the flora passing by him at an increasing pace. His muscles tense, and he just knows that the gentle lope he has chosen to settle in will chew up the space between him and his destination.
He leaves the forest behind, and files into a familiar trail. It is the trail he followed the night before, the large prints of the wolf he conquered, set by his own… only he realizes that there are only two sets of tracks, and both are paw prints. He climbs the hill where the battle took place, and comes to a stop as the large shadowed shape of the wolf sits where it had before, this time facing him, with a tongue rolled out in an undisturbed pant. The same self-aware nod greets him, and when it rumbles out a greeting, Leks finds that he can understand it. “Come. Sit,” the wolf spirit growls. Leks finds himself curling up in the same tangle of evergreen, as the wolf’s breath grows warm on his face.
The warming sun on his face wakes Leks, curled up in the indentation left by the fallen tree. There are still bloodstains in the churned snow. The swirl of the night before floods back into his brain, and he tastes something tangy and juicy on his lips. He knows that it’s blood before he cleans his mouth. He sits up, taking quick stock in his situation. His side still pains him, but he can feel the mending process ongoing. He knows that he should feel more chilled than he does, and only then feels the extra weight and warmth of the fur prepared for him, draped over his shoulders beneath his coat, insulating him against the cold. What happened, he cannot put a finger on. Glimpses of memories, flashes of feelings, all of it indecipherable as he tries to put human words and descriptions to it. Maybe in time it will make sense, but for the moment, he knows only that he has changed, and can feel that change in the world that is slightly different to him now.
Hours later, he trudges back into the Bracia Wilków camp. Filip, as always, stands facing the direction of approach, nodding to him as he approaches. Leks stops before him, and after an silent appraising moment, the elder man pulls Leks into a fatherly hug. “Welcome Forest Brother. You are one of us now.” Leks steps back after the embrace, his familiar toothy grin coming to his face, and Filip matches it. Slapping Leks on the shoulder, Filip leads him back into the camp for some breakfast.
As it so happens, I did not kill Leks off-screen. But it was a possibility. The Pact Wolf was statted significantly higher than a normal wolf NPC, and I didn’t fudge dice.