Beasts Beyond The Wall - Part 4

And I drank his blood and it burned like fire. It coursed down my throat and I could feel it seeping into every part of me. It hurt more then anything I had experience or imagined before. My body which was mostly unable to move before contorted in agony. Twisted and turned in ways that caused untold agony. The coldness that I had previously be feeling got scorched away. I could feel my entire body, feel every single motion that I made and it hurt. Every part of it hurt.

It felt like an eternity and it must have actually took most of the night. I still remember the golden lion watching me and then walking away as the agony continued saying, “Live little pup, live and become strong.”

When the pain finally stopped I realized that the light of the sun had begun to fall upon me. However it felt different, beyond different, more wildly different then it had felt before or anything had felt before. I could still feel the blood burning inside me but it no longer seemed painful. It seemed natural. I stood up and looked around the place that used to be my home. I could see the corpse of my father still laying on the ground next to me.

I felt an immense sadness but it was different then before. It felt more primal, a deep unquenchable sorrow like I had lost something irreplaceable. I felt the truth without any human filters. I screamed out all my sorrows. Then it was gone. I was left empty, it was all gone, all that pent up sorrow. I could still feel some light sadness but it no longer seemed to weight on me.

I looked over the ruins once more. I knew that my mom was dead under the collapsed basement somewhere but I couldn’t bring myself to unearth her. The ruins around me represented all that remained of my previous life. Odds and ends, pieces of what existed before the place was destroyed. It all seemed less important. With my parents dead everything else was secondary.

I decided to leave the place and go someplace, anywhere else. This place now only had bad memories to me. I wandered for a while. The house was outside of town closer to the Wall then many of the other houses. I went toward the Wall. The lion must have come from the Wall, that was where beasts came from however how he managed to get over the wall without getting stopped by the Hunters I didn’t know. However that lion was not like any beast that I had expected to exist. As far as I knew beasts were not supposed to be able to talk. They were supposed to just be violent monsters that normal people were not able to fight and that lived in the jungle beyond the wall.

I found myself off in the area beyond the town. However I had noticed something else. I was surrounded by people. I could see them through the trees at a distance. They seemed to be the same type of people who had been attacking the lion back at my former house. They had there guns and they seemed uncertain. I realized that I looked bad. My clothes were torn in all sorts of places and there was dried blood over what remained of my clothes.

They also seemed so weak and while they carried guns those they seemed so worthless on these people. They were part of the reason mom and father were dead. Had they not been attacking the lion then my house wouldn’t have been destroyed and my parents wouldn’t have been killed. Anger began to bubble up inside me and I wanted to punish these people for what they had done to me. The blood burned inside me and I leapt into action.

I don’t know exactly how I did it but I moved fast, faster then I had ever expected to me. I zipped through the trees and the soldiers had only moments to respond. I felt the burning in my hand and there was a shifting feeling in my hands and a crunching sound as my hand changed, fingers lengthening, nails hardening, turning my hands into claws. The man screamed as I slashed at him and blood sprayed from his shoulder forcing him to drop his gun. The others had barely had time to react before I have gotten out of the way and was on to the next one.

The blood and screaming I remember. These people were no match for me. I could feel the strength welling up inside me filling me and letting me defeat these weaker creatures. It was so easy and they were so weak. Even with their guns there was nothing they could do to me. I was strong and they were weak. Then I felt another beast, one like me, somebody strong. He was taller but still skinny. He wore a white lab coat but I could feel that he was much stronger then these other people. He would be a challenge.

Yet I still felts that I was stronger than him. Sure he had strength but I knew that I was stronger, that the blood burning within me was far stronger than his. However it would be fun. I rushed at him and then I felt pain as my face smashed into the ground. He hadn’t been faster than me or stronger than me but somehow he had avoided my attack and grabbed me and used my own force against me to force me face first directly into the ground.

I began stumbling to my feet but before I had a second to respond he smashed his shoulder into my back slamming me back to the ground again. I growled pushing against the ground. How dare he hurt me, couldn’t he tell that I was stronger than him, more superior. However the beating continued. Several minutes later all the pain that had vanished from before had returned again. He had his knee in the middle of my back and I could barely move without suffering immense pain. Then he was shoving something in front of my face. There was a hiss from the small canister and then an awful, revolting smell filled my lungs and moments later I passed out.

Yaju - Meeting

The door to my cell opened. I glared up at the door. It wasn’t often that somebody enter the room. Unsurprisingly it was Stolas. In my initial encounter with him he had felt weak but in the years since then I had learned that he was anything but. He may not have had many of the same capabilities as I did but he knew how to fight and I had never managed to beat him… yet. However surprisingly there was somebody else, another Hunter, young too. However he was weak… even more so then Stolas.

Stolas spoke, “Hello Yaju, how are you doing today?”

Such a pointless question, “You asked me that every time you see me and the answer is always the same. How can somebody is a position like this possibly be good?”

“I believe that the first couple of times I asked you the question you responded differently.”

“Attacking you if effectively the same answer.”

“I told you I was working on finding a way to let you out of here didn’t I? A way to help you control your instincts.”

“You said that. But you have been saying that for years.”

“Ah, but this time I finally have a solutions, or at least the attempt at one.”

There was a flicker in my emotions, a small ting of hope. I tried to ignore it because I knew if I accepted it and then it was smashed then I would be angry. Very angry. “Oh? And what you that be? Don’t say your just going to get me some more books. You know I find them incredibly boring.”

“No, I brought part of the solution to your problem with me?”

I examined him looking for unusual things he might have brought into the cell but I didn’t spot anything. This caused my ire to begin to spike. “I don’t see anything.”

“Why it is the person I have brought with me.”

I returned my attention to the other person which I had almost forgotten about. I tried examining him but he just seemed like a rather weak hunter. I couldn’t see anything about him that would have anything special to do with letting me get released.

However then the boy spoke, “You feel skeptical about whether I am actually useful. While I am uncertain myself about whether this plan is a good idea I can certainly say that I would be capable of doing my part about it. Also you shouldn’t jump to anger so quickly before at least hearing what the plan involves.”

There was a moment of confusion which was just long enough for the anger that was beginning to build up to start to fade. As it did the boy said, “See? Isn’t that better?”

I looked back at Stolas as said, “Who is this?”

“This is Kirk. I’m sure you can tell but he is also a Hunter, if a rather inexperienced one.”

“I would hardly call someone with blood that weak to be a Hunter.”

“Yet still his blood is awakened and his talent is useful. As you may already be able to tell his senses are highly accurate. Not only that he can quite easily make out other people’s emotional states from subtle tells. He seemed to be able to detect people’s emotion sometimes even before that person consciously realized they are feeling that emotion.”

“Humph, and what use would that be to letting me go free.”

Stolas say, “He is one of two parts of the solution. He will be able to detect your instincts possibly before even you do. He can use that to help keep you under control. The other part is another hunter near your age that will be strong enough to subdue you while your instincts are still controllable. Together they should be enough control for you to be able to experience, well maybe not normal life but some semblance of it.”

There was much about the plan that I thought was a terrible plan. I began to get flooded by emotions. Anger that this was the best that Stolas could come up with, annoyance that I could have to control myself, happiness that I could finally have a change to be free again. The boy, Kirk, nodded and looked at me, “Don’t worry, I want to help you. You don’t want to continue to stay locked up here do you?”

I looked away from him feeling kind of annoyed that he so easily read my emotions. “What about this other Hunter? Do you really think they could possibly control me when I got angry?”

“When you are ever controllable when you are angry?” Said Stolas and I could feel my emotions breaking and my anger rising again, “However,” He continued, “The expected plan is prevention. If you are restrained early then that will give you a moment to recover your calm. Normally it is difficult to know when such a moment is happening. Even I usually move into action too late. Restraint by non-Hunters however will probably be ineffective. However a Hunter with reasonable strength but someone able to detect the warning signed much earlier would be an appropriate measure. And then even if they were incapable of completely calming you together they would be able to create enough time to evacuate the area.”

“Then….” I said.

“I have managed to get permission. At least initial permission. There is a trail period. The officials I managed to get to approve this won’t let you get into any highly populated areas but I did get permission for several out of town sites which can be easily monitored. However this didn’t come without at least a minor price.”

“What?”

“If you are given these privileges when you must was like any other Hunter.”