-Elhorn, The Far North, somewhere in the eastern mountains, ???-
A figure wearing blood red armor with a Yellow Dog emblem on it growled at the information he just received from the unit that had been in the Gravity Gorge area hunting down a target. They had apparently lost the bait they were going to use to lure out Cooler’s faction in the western mountains.
He smashed a table with his left fist and it soon caught on fire, he pulled out a gun and fired a spray of bullets into the ceiling scaring the ones who delivered the news. He wasn’t about to shoot the messengers, but he might just shoot the teams that failed them.
“Through the fires of the underworld, the injustice that this white creature has done to the Wulfgar faction will see her burned! She was going to die anyway after we were done using her as bait, but the least she could do is die for a good cause… ours!” The yellow furred dog in the armor grinned as he clenched his right gauntlet scaring some of the minions Wulfgar sent his way. “Because here comes Carbuncle and Orthros Omega!”
A pair of large mechanical wolf heads roared behind the flamboyantly posing and grinning dog. He was holding his machine gun at the ready as he hovered on jets erupting from the small holes in his armor.
“If you guys can’t catch this creature, then this is sure to be a hunt, send the teams that failed back out there to meet me at the edge of Gravity Gorge!” Carbuncle howled out. “Let’s ride, Orthros Omega!”
The large mechanical two headed wolf flipped backwards and the two head split outwards and produced a tire between their chins, the wings loaded with rockets turned into fins at the back of the vehicle and the tail disappeared into the machine.
Sitting in the seat, Carbuncle roared as the tail reemerged as a seat belt. The large evil core infused transforming motorcycle reared up and shot out of the base heading towards the currently contested areas around the Gravity Gorge region with huge flames coming out of the back of it.
-Evening, western mountains, Frosty Checkpoint, Colleen-
“My team and I will be heading out to find your friend in that mess… she’s attracting just about every dog in the southern Yellow Dog territories just by existing, but most of them are refusing to enter that deeply into Gravity Gorge. Only the Wulfgar guys were crazy enough to continue chasing her in there, probably a direct threat from Wulfgar or his son Ulfgar themselves.” This Hunt was cute, but I had raised an eye at that. “I assure you that my mercenary team, The Retrievers, can extract her safely. I think she’s safe for the time being.”
“I’ll be going with you, a rocket pack would be useful for saving anyone if they get stuck floating around in there and I know how to use it.” I patted the yellow cylinder strapped to my back.
My rocket pack wasn’t very magic intensive when I last used it and that was almost my last, I was going to get more use out of it and I was going to try to become a real rocket knight… out of spite towards Axel Gear for calling me a loose end!
“Aren’t you helping the courier team you’re a part of with the negotiations though?” In answer to Hunt’s question, I pulled out my pistol, twirled it, and then sheathed it.
“Nicole and the translator for our group, Ocellus, has that situation completely handled. Could use a sword and some goggles though, the last time I used my rocket pack my eyes were exposed to the elements and I nearly got beheaded by Axel Gear when I lost concentration while trading blows with him.” I should really thank Ocellus and Dodo for saving my life again. “He’s truly as monstrous as they say, believe me I would know given he killed just about everyone in training during the rocket knight project Yellow Dog was trying to run. I was one of the ‘lucky’ ones, doesn’t feel like it when I only have acquaintances left alive.”
“Yikes.” Hunt cringed, he shook his head and then looked me in the eyes. “Okay, I might have some spare equipment you can use, if you don’t mind it being salvaged from a battlefield. We do have a lot of spare guns laying around if you want one.”
“I don’t mind in the slightest, I seriously want to help Pom even if the equipment you can spare is next to useless. I’d still go in there to get her out safely.” Sure she wasn’t around to have an effect on me, but I still remember what it was like to be in her presence when she was happy or calm.
“So… how good is this Pom at survival?” Hunt asked curiously while rubbing at his chin.
“Her friends say she’s lived outdoors for years without much contact with her people due to being thrown into exile by unusual circumstances beyond her control, Pom is quite capable and a lot stronger than she looks.” Now I was wondering if I should involve Smolder, Shanty or Ocellus in entering Gravity Gorge for an extraction. “I’ve seen it myself personally, I’m going to at least tell Ocellus and Nicole Beta about this before I leave.”
“She should be fine then, Gravity Gorge is dangerous, but survivable. If you look in the right places you can find food easily enough… though your diet is likely going to consist mostly of fish.” It seems like Hunt has been in there a few times before to know that. “You’ve got a day to prepare, we need a resupply on rocket tube ammunition and we’re not going anywhere without them.”
-The next morning, Location:???, Pom-
My eyes snapped open and I sat up breathing and looking around at my unfamiliar surroundings, a cold breeze had washed against my face.
Where… where was I? The last thing I remember is the giant heavily furred dog picking me up…
I wasn’t dead. I wasn’t shackled or in a cage. I had been under some blankets? I stood up and shook my head and looked at the light coming from the nearby entrance.
I had slept off my exhaustion at least, felt a hungry and a little bit thirsty… something was off as I remembered being wet, covered in mud and had an ample amount of moss on my hooves from that tunnel when I tried to clamp down.
I’m completely and perfectly clean, it felt nice even if I felt a little bit violated that the big guy bathed me while I slept.
Making my way outside I stepped through the snow and saw a mountain in the distance, I also saw the sun rise and bring warmth to my face. I close my eyes and smiled, inhaled the fresh air and sat down a safe distance away from the edge of the nearby cliff.
I spent the next five minutes just simply basking in the sunlight, before opening my eyes and looking over the edge to see… a sea of floating rocks below and all around me. Was I in the center of all of it?
I felt something tap me in the back and I nearly leapt over the edge in fright, a paw grabbed me as gently as possible and set me back down. I looked up to see the muzzle of the really hair dog, he motioned for me to follow him.
“Uh… okay. Give me a minute.” I yipped, I’m guessing he could understand canine and was vindicated when he nodded. He was a very big guy… almost bigger than even Big Mama the Canis Major was if she were capable of walking around on her hind legs.
I just surveyed my surroundings as best I could. Judging by the way the sun rose, I think the mountain I was looking at was to the east. I’m almost betting there were worlds where it rose in the west, it was strange enough to have visited worlds where the sun isn’t raised by Princess Celestia.
To the south I saw a hill as large as a mountain and beyond it two mountains where the pass was with all those exploding Recon Rabbits were. So we didn’t see this floating field of rocks in what was a ridiculously large gorge, did this place use to be a mountain?
I shook my head and went inside wondering who the mysterious large dog was and why he brought me up here. Upon entering I saw a stone bowl filled with a steaming liquid and the dog partaking from one of his own, he nodded to me and motioned to the bowl.
“For me? Thank you.” I sat down and blew on the soup and took a sip. Tasted like potatoes, but knowing Elhorn as well as I do... I looked around and saw what looked like onion shavings and garlic cloves lying around. “There’s no meat in this right?”
The silent dog shook his head no, but as he sipped his soup I noticed there were chunks of fish in it. Mine didn’t have any of that. A few bowls of the odd soup and was feeling good and full, the big dog actively added fish to his soup. There was just enough for the both of us.
“Thank you for the meal, but I should be…” I was silenced when he held up his right paw, he motioned for me to follow him.
I was led to an exit into the rock field, he gently lifted me from the ground and then leapt off. We started to zip downwards through several rings made of gravitational rocks until we were going horizontal and then slowed down to land at another cave island. He set me down and motioned for me to follow him.
As we entered the darkness of the cave he lit up a torch and took up a staff in his other paw, he held it out to the wall to show me something.
“Freshly painted after you found me I take it?” My surmising barks received another nod and he gestured at the wall art while holding up the torch.
It showed a white wooly creature, probably me, it showed a wolf painted inside of me and then it showed me being injured and the wolf getting bigger to encompass me.
“Okay… I don’t exactly get the meaning, but are you saying there’s a wolf inside of me?” He shook his head and pointed at me. “I am the wolf?”
He nodded enthusiastically while pointing at me and motioned back to the wall, the part where I’m badly injured and the wolf growing bigger.
“If I get seriously injured or if I’m in bad health…” I slowly stated and he motioned at me to go on. "I sometimes start acting aggressively like a wolf as a defense mechanism when in danger?”
He nodded and then motioned at something further down the wall, with my mind trying to come to terms with the revelation. It was pictures of me that branched, one shows me as normal in the middle, but injured, one show me turning into the wolf after being injured and the last one that was circled showing the wolf and me being as one without injury.
“You want me to… what?” I didn’t understand, he motioned at the circled version of me. “You want me to get stronger… to… be more wolf like?”
I was a bit frightened of the idea, but he shook his head no in an exasperated manner and seemed to emphasize the image of me in the circle that was healthy and the wolf was at the same size as I was.
“You want me to be in control?” I was wrong again and gave it more thought. “You want me to… be as one with my inner wolf? Is this a stronger together than apart thing, isn’t that a little cliché?”
He nodded and smiled in good humor, I just gave him a flat stare.
“I don’t like this on the same principle that I don’t like fighting all too much.” My barks were as eloquent as ever and he just rubbed my head affectionately. “This won’t change me will it?”
He shook his head no and pointed at my chest.
“I’ll always be who I am right down to my heart.” My confident statement was received with a bright smile. “What do I have to do? You’re obviously some kind of shaman… no? What about a sage?”
He nodded and tapped the butt of his staff against the floor and turned around to start walking. I guess I have nothing better to do with my time currently, other than whatever this guy wanted.
We eventually came to a stop and there were three passageways, off to the side was a bowl filled with some murky stuff. He lifted the bowl and turned to me, he put his nose close to the bowl and took a big whiff of whatever it was and then pointed at the three passageways.
“Let me guess, this trial is based on if I can track the scent and you had this all set up after you found me to... help me with get in touch with my inner wolf?” The dog didn’t say anything and sat down while holding the bowl out to me. “It’s going to smell horrible isn’t it?”
He nodded as he continued to hold the bowl out. I was in the middle of a place where floating rocks were the norm and a giant white dog that was apparently a sage and covered in an impossibly thick mass of fur.
I trotted forward took the bowl into my left hoof and took a vague hint of a sniff, my revulsion was immediate.
“Ugh, what is that smell!” It was quite horrid. The dog smiled at me mysteriously and motioned to where his eyes would be, he then motioned to his nose with a barely visible giant paw and the ways forward. “Also how did you inhale it that deeply without your nose coming off?! Look, you don’t have to gesture it again, you basically said see with my nose and not my eyes. I clearly got that.”
The snowy colored dog just sat there in silence looking in my direction, seeing not with his eyes… but his nose apparently. I closed my eyes and decided to go full stop this time.
I put my nose above the bowl and inhaled deeply, oh was my nose in agony afterwards, but something tickled at my brain among the cacophony of smells.
Yes, there were a lot of other smells in the bowl as well, pungent and foul odors permeated the stone bowl… but there was one smell in the bowl that was quite different from the rest and oddly out of place.
I took a few more whiffs of it, despite wanting to stab my nose off with a knife afterwards, and decided that I wasn’t crazy. The smell of Elhorn bananas was mixed in with all of the other smells?
“Not smell… many smells.” I closed my eyes, carefully placed the bowl off to the side and lowered my nose to the stone flooring to start sniffing.
There were two scents, one was the big guy and the other bananas. I sniffed the floor and the air around the three passageways. The left passageway was the correct one, the only other one with bananas.
I made my way down it following the smell, ignoring everything else as I continued sniffing right up until I stopped at the bananas in question under torches. Looking back at all the darkened branching pathways I just went past, the big dog came strolling along with a smile.
I hadn’t even noticed the many other passageways branching off while I followed that one smell.
“Next trial?” I barked calmly, he nodded as he walked past me.
I shook my head and followed, while sniffing the air every once in a while. I didn’t know that I could track like a dog… or a wolf if this was to be believed… so many weird and unfamiliar scents.
After exiting the cave system I was led to the top of what used to be a mountain, above the cave in which the shaggy sage lived.
The big dog sat down at the peak and motioned around his head and then gently pulled on my ears.
“A hearing trial?” I yipped, he nodded. I closed my eyes and opened up my sense of hearing to the world around me. What was I listening for, the sounds of numerous rocks colliding with one another, the wind blowing or… what the?!
It was faint in the air and it started growing loudly the more I tried to hear it. What was I hearing? It sounded like… a song? Was I supposed to sing that? I just listened to it until it repeated itself twice.
I howled out slowly and methodically, trying to figure out what the song was saying as I sung it. Once finished, I turned to see the big guy smiling at me. The song didn’t have that much meaning, but it sounded welcoming and sad at the same time.
“Was that right? It sounded oddly like... wait… was that the… huh…” I think I just heard the magic of nature singing and repeated its song in the form of all the long drawn out howling I just did.
That… would be an experience I don’t think I’ll forget, next to the burning sensation still going on in my nose.
The big sage nodded and even clapped his paws together in applause.
“Uh, thanks I guess, what next?” I asked, he motioned for me to follow him again.
It took a few hours to get back to where the big guy found me. I suppose this place was where the last trial would be, it was amazing how the sage could navigate entire sections of the floating rock fields so easily with single simple jumps.
Yes, we were back on the island he found me on in no time flat, we were in fact standing outside of the cave entrance where he picked me up. I now knew that this was the islands topside.
“What do I do this time?” I asked looking about. He motioned to himself, went to all fours and dashed around me with incredibly speed for someone of his size. “You want me to… chase you around?”
He shook his head no and raised a paw tilting it both ways.
“So for the final trial, you want me to follow you around and… what… learn things from you?” I received a nod and a so-so gesture of his left paw. This had me curious about what this ‘learning’ would entail.
I soon had the sage trying to teach me to focus my hooves on making markings on trees like a wolf would for territory, I eventually made three claw marks with one drag of my hoof and then look at it in confusion.
The sage made me practice with my front hooves until I eventually figured out how I was doing it, it was similar in principle to what Shanty was does… except I didn’t need to make a swinging arc to do it.
I could choose to claw or to not claw something.
I played tug o’ war against the sage with a vine using my teeth, until we managed to make it snap from the stress of both of us pulling on it. My bite strength was a little bit unreal given that I’ve almost tore out someone’s throat with my mouth, but what was unusual was the fact that I could even help cause the vine to snap at all when the sage should have been pulling me all over the place.
The next things we did was running, kicking off trees to make sharp turns and in general practicing movement on unusual terrain. The big guy could move pretty fast on all four paws, I was still faster than he was. I learned how to smelling things out quickly and while on the move to get a direction to head in.
This was all really interesting, but when would I need… oh right, I could use tracking back in Huoshan to hunt down criminals. I could probably smell something off with food if someone tried to poison me. I could hear things better if I concentrated, especially if something discordant was going on around me. I could see plenty of uses.
After doing a few more things, like helping the dog pick up some frozen fish from the nearby stream that circled the entire island in a constant flow, he had it all put in a huge basket he weaved as we wandered around and motioned for me to follow him back through the rock field.
Once we got back to the cave where he lived, he had one last thing to do with me.
He eventually pulled out a stump he uprooted, and placed upon it a piece of machinery. Specifically an elbow joint from one of those tall bipedal green machines.
I glanced at him with a bit of trepidation as he finally opened his mouth and barked. The stump was perfectly fine after that, the metal cracked, bent and ripped.
I blinked and thought deeply about what he just did.
“I take it that the bark you just did is a specific frequency that doesn’t work on living beings, but certain specific rigid materials?” I was guessing here and he nodded with a smile. “That’s… quite useful if you need to break armor someone is wearing… or a weapon… or 'evil core' machines. Given the machines on this world, this isn’t a trial is it… you’re teaching me one of your own techniques you taught yourself how to do.”
He shook his head no, I wondered why. He motioned for me to follow and he went to the back of his cave and reached into a bag to pull out a small golden ring.
It didn’t look like it would fit on any of his digits, except maybe the tips of his claws. He flicked it into the air where it expanded and grew in size to show an image.
The image was me, a few years younger, I was bark blasting a moderately large snake away from my beasties and the others came together with me and scared off the snake. Big Mama needed to sleep off the poison after that incident.
“You… learned to make that technique from watching one of my first Bark Blasts?” He nodded, grabbed the ring and turned it, the scene within the ring changed. It showed the village we arrived in the portal opening and me slamming into one of the Gedol lizards that was about to kill... Melphina. “Does this ring show the future as well?”
He shook his head no, he drew something on a wall that represented a window that could only see the present and the past. The magic ring apparently wasn’t a doorway to said places either.
“Can it... see another worlds present?” I felt some elation when he nodded, I received a curious glance. “I want to see how my wife is doing.”
One turn... I saw Tianhuo sitting in a park with Blighter resting their head in her lap, while my four favorite god-puppies played.
She was... looking at… a... a picture of me.
I put my hoof against the window sadly, my friends from the HCD were there to.
“Thank you!” I cried a bit. "There's something I wish to know... about a place called Mobius..."