The Hound

Jondr River - October 22

I am Pryer, the Boulder Knight Errant, from a distant realm.

I come with two knights older than me. As we travel to Jondrforn, we find a travel party looking for an old woman who has been missing for a few days. She is well-loved.

We travel south and they travel north. We have not seen this woman. She likes to carry a pet rat around. Her name is Kira, and she tells us she is the leader of the travellers, a stocky archer.

Abran wants to go east, into the forest, to search for this woman. Kerensa agrees. I was only looking at the trees, uninterested in the conversation.

We cross the thickets of the coniferous trees. It smells damp. One of the horses starts bucking. They probably smelled something. A predator of sorts.

We see a patch of blood. Smeared on the trees. Branches broken to the size of a bear or a giant wolf.5

I proudly follow the trail. Deeper, I see flesh and some of the herbs the archer had described. Rat carcasses, skin. Dove with fangs eats it.

I think this is where the unfortunate woman died. We bury her. And we set camp.

The night is chilly in the fall evening. Feels like early winter. But it is calm.

We travel southeast first, trying to cross the forest towards the foothills. We head uphill until we reach a crest. We hear a buzzing ahead. Bees or wasps?

The buzzing gets louder, and we find a large honey farm. Hundreds of beehives. A cloud of gentle bees and some beekeepers.

We greet them and ask if they know of the beast we are tracking. A person not wearing the beekeeper’s clothes comes. We notice they are wearing fancy robes, although they have muddy feet and hands. Their voice is melodic, and he has seen us coming in the swarms.

I talk with him. He says he hears howling everywhere. We say we will not stay, and he offers a sizeable honey jar. It is a sacred honey that refreshes the spirit.

We reach the river in the afternoon. A slow-flowing and shallow river. We find an easy crossing. Just on the other side, we find a heap of torn remains. A deer.

The horses shy away from it. Kerensa seems compelled to touch them and smell them. They resist the urge.

Abran ties themselves in a rope. I tie the other end to my saddle if I need to pull him. Abran almost runs to it. They went at it.

The rope snaps, and Abran falls to the floor to smell the remains. The smell takes me as I try to take him away from this. I stumble on the ground, and I go towards it. I don’t see only guts and blood, but the entire structure of the image. I am seeing this carcass.

Then I look around. I see everything as they are. I see a bear up the mountain.

We leave the area and set up camp by the river. Abran leaves the tent to sleep outside. I have an urge. I take my clothes off, run and howl to the moon atop a hill. I howl until I am breathless.

The next morning, I see it all again. Beyond everything. As we search towards the south, we see shadows becoming bigger, darker, meaner. But the sun is up.

We don’t run from the shadows. We run towards them into a valley. It is drenched in darkness. I charge our company through the dark valley, and it’s cold.

I see a massive beast with wiry fur, snarling. Snarling at Kerensa. We dismount and charge the beast with our weapons. We are fatigued, but we banish the bestial hound.

We follow the Jondr river, but find no passage through. We travel south towards the Drier’s Pass. A marshland swallows a village. We decide to venture north.

At sunset, an icy wind picks up. It sounds like the hound we banished earlier in the day. We will dispatch it again faster this time. We decided to rest in the exact location as the previous night.

Abran shouts. Kerensa and I gallop at them. I see Abran running away from a hound of flesh. We engage this third beast.

This was the meanest of all. It envelops us, and somehow we find it hard to harm it. Some of us bleed.

I take some distance and charge with my own body towards the hound. All turns to black for a long moment.

…

I wake up with Abran caring for me. We are in the same spot. I am covered in flesh and teeth and blood.