THE REALM

Chapter Fourteen

  I couldn't even see the beast we trailed anymore, but its blood lay dumped out on the ground in a trail that was unmistakable to see. There was just something about this that I did not like, but the desire to understand what was going on had me urging the big female to go a little faster.

  The amount of blood grew less and less and then I knew that I was dealing with something beyond the physical realm. Under natural circumstances no animal of such great bulk could go on with so little blood left in it.

  "El Elyon help us!" I said, as I urged my increasingly reluctant steed to continue on.

  A half-hour later the bulk of the beast we had been trailing came into view. It had run completely out of the valley and was laying upon the parched sands of the Wastelands.

  Creatures of the valley rarely if ever left it, as what value was there in roaming the Wastelands that had little to offer in terms of food. That said, why then had this fallen order beast run so far to reach this desolate spot?

  There wasn't even a blood trail anymore, which was perhaps most eerie of all. Something had driven this animal beyond even the limits of its obscene killing abilities to do the impossible.

  It was windy outside of the valley and sand tornadoes were kicked up here and there all around us.

  I quickly saw that the sand in the air had hidden the real reason for the monster's desire to bring us here. We were completely surrounded by Saber Cats!

  I felt a quiver course down my spine at the sight of so many of them. I had thought that Kuri and I had killed them all, but I had been wrong. Very wrong, as we were literally being encircled by hundreds of them.

  These must be the leftover pack remnants of all those we'd spent a full year killing. They closed in from all sides; an unbroken wall of unnatural teamwork on full display.

  It was normal for these big cats to run in packs of 30 or more, but never so many as this. They were united in purpose to kill me, one of the perpetrators of their demise within the valley beyond, which they had once ruled.

  Although they had the appearance of other big cats such as lions they were partly something else. It was not sure what that was. Their unnaturalness also lay in both the size of the packs they kept and their most obvious feature which were the elongated canines that came down from their upper jaw and went a long way into giving them a ferocious appearance.

  For all the fear the oversized canines evoked, they were absolutely useless. The canines were so long that the cats couldn't open their mouths wide enough to properly bear down on anything and the teeth themselves were very prone to breaking off, which was the saving grace for many of the creatures.

  With canines in place they couldn't get a good bite on anything. Even though they were larger in size, they couldn't win by themselves in an upfront confrontation with a lion of smaller stature because they couldn't use the power of their bite.

  Their way of coping with the limitations imposed upon them by their teeth was that they ran in very large packs and would attack en-masse. They had killed all the other big cats and high order predators in the valley over time with their large pack mentality. Only in the higher ranges of the mountains did a few scattered and much smaller numbered packs of lions continue to survive.

  Those lion prides were coming back down to the valley now as our war was not with them, but rather with these freaks of nature all around us that had hunted almost all of the smaller prey within the valley to extinction. They, like the Evanik dogs, never had enough to eat.

  Now, as I looked around, I realized that I had been set up by forces beyond any at work within the physical realm. I stared into the faces of the encroaching Saber Cats and knew a moment of anger the likes of which I'd never experienced before.

  The knowledge that these animals were being used by demonic forces to bring about my death because of my beliefs and faith in El Elyon was material for my rage to burn upon. Something of my intense anger telegraphed out of me into the big Trican beneath me, who began to grunt aggressively and stamp its feet.

  Under normal conditions the Tricans were under no threat from the Saber Cats because of their tough armored hide and aggressive herd instinct, as the Tricans held together under a Saber Cat attack and charged on them instead. But one Trican against so many was a doubtful thing.

  It didn't matter. I cared less about living right now than I ever had before. The urge to fight out against this pressing darkness that destroyed all that was well and good was overwhelming.

  I had no more arrows so my bow was no longer of use to me. I unhooked my bowstring and tied it off to my spare bowstring. I then tied the one end of the elongated string to my belt. Turning I tied off the other end of the string to one of the bony projections of the female's neck frill.

  Tether now in place, I pulled the sword that Kuri had helped me make out of its holster which lay along my back. One hand holding onto the sword and the other on the neck frill of the beast that I rode I cried out, "Let's ride!"

  The big Trican half reared up for she seemed infused with the same killing passion that I was. She came down with crashing force and took off at a lope for the wall of snarling Saber Cats.

  My intention was not to escape. No, my intention was to do war with the unnatural forces at play within the misguided flesh which surrounded me. The Sabers let off with a concussive roar and lunged forward toward us.