The Hunt for Peace

Chapter 9

The snarling sounds of a war-mutt is one no golem ever wants to hear. A young one, anyways, especially if they're in a pack. Long rows of sharp fangs one after the other, moving as a singular pack ready to shred everything in their warpath. Well, that's assuming the dogs don't tear each other apart instead. On the occasions where the mutts do obey, they rush through the earth as a horde of destruction, cleansing it of all life. It's often said how a singular dog won't ever pursue a lone figure that doesn't flee, and finds a feeling of invincibility as a pack. How much could it be for them?

Rakni didn't have enough time to think about it at all, as his arm-turbines roared, blasting wind along the ground and thus propelling himself forward. There was once a distance between them, and it lasted for a good half hour before their presence started to never leave his line of sight whenever he looked back to check where they were. Their jaws, some of which were stained with red and black fluids, bit the air and barked. Rakni could feel his heart race, and his side began to sting with an unexplainable pain. His muscles are screaming, and the gears along his arms heat up. He could feel the cold wind on his sweaty skin, said wind blowing through the rocklands north of Gale, creating an odd choir of whistles and howls as the approaching winter season clashed with the general windiness of the continent's western half.

The dogs continued to chase him through the rocklands, between stone walls and over other rocky obstacles. Some of the dogs trampled over the other whenever he makes an agile swerve, many more make up a pile as the wide horde forces itself through a narrow pathway between two enormous masses of rock. Rakni hissed as his own clashes with the rock walls created gashes on his skin. He could feel his turbines shake unevenly, and the biometal it was composed of began to heat up more and more. He looks overhead, at the top of one of the large rock formations, where he sees another golem lad about his age also soaring. The war-mutts chased him there too. He swerves along the edge, tricking the rabid dogs of war to slip or push eachother off the cliff and into the ravine he was moving straight through.

Actually, it wasn't really a ravine he was moving through. It was more like a fissure, just a narrow crack along the rocklands. Every meter or so the two walls of earth beside him got closer and closer. The barking behind him never ceased though. He daren't look, not when his arm-turbines continued to shake wildly, beginning to buzz as it heated up. As the fissure narrowed even further, Rakni then quickly propels himself upward, leaving the dogs behind as he quickly begins flying beside the golem from earlier.

"Lieutenants said no flying upwards," says the golem, with silvery hair and milky skin. Rakni snickers, "they're not here, so I don't care." The two just share a smile before quickly moving to the left side of the elevated rock. The wind that blew out of their arm-thrusters blasted the rocks scattered along the earth towards the horde back to them. It was roughly the only thing keeping the dogs at bay. Even then, the mutts pursued them tirelessly, like an insistent nightmare that refused to die. The dogs leap the narrowing gap between the eastern rock and the western rock, maintaining chase.

"Are they getting faster or are we getting slower?!" asks the golem lad. Rakni looks at him, "enough, Eliseo. We have to save our energy. We're almost at the beach." Just then, a war-mutt lunges, sinking its jaws into Rakni's ankle. He screams in pain before letting out a huge burst of wind which forcefully rips the dog off of him. The scent of blood furthered the frenzy of the mutts, who now seemed to accelerate at an extreme rate with the presence of a blood trail.

"Rakni!" Eliseo cries out, "damn it!" He looks at the war-mutts, who now held bloodshot eyes and their vigor suddenly renewed with the scent of fresh blood and fuel. Eliseo lets out a powerful gust of wind to blow them back, the rocks tearing through the dogs' flesh like shrapnel, but it was no use for the dogs to quickly run past the cloud, quickly closing the distance once more. Eliseo looks up to the sky, only to see an older golem flying nearby, observing them.