I have slunk and snuck and hidden and stealthed and ... other things that I have done to not be seen. The night is good for these things and, more importantly, I have not been followed by Second.
The hidden den remains undisturbed. Colder, darker, but untouched by the other pack or the Unmoving tribe.
I cannot expect my alpha to strain herself more just to secret food for me. My pack weakens, but I will not be the source of further strain.
If they cannot hunt, then I shall hunt for them.
Yesterday, I watched as Yellow Red crept out of the den and waited with Ambercrown just outside the barrier. I bristled seeing Ambercrown standing over her, almost preening with contempt for my alpha's weakness. Were I strong enough, I would have challenged her right then, but... I am not.
Not yet.
Even so, I watched to make sure she wouldn't try anything. After her display a few days ago, I cannot trust that Yellow Red's magic is as complete as it once was. It... leaks... and some of the others seem to be slowly breaking from her magics.
Still, I felt some relief when I saw Whiteflower and Dirty Sap come trotting up to the two, displaying no fear whatsoever. I am proud of them. Even when our alpha is so weakened, they were willing to bluff their way right up to Ambercrown... fearless as if she were no more dangerous than a random bud.
I watched until I was sure they had left Ambercrown's sight... then long enough to make sure she wouldn't follow them. She may be a wolf of unusual strength, but I cannot trust her to follow the chain of authority in our pack. She has already shown her vicious and traitorous nature and I won't have her hunting my pack just to 'find' them all dead later.
Thankfully, she went out to stalk the Unmoving.
Our Unmoving.
And so, my day began.
If she was going to steal from our pack, I was going to take from hers.
I followed her, creeping through the brush and hiding in the grasses. Following her with all the stealth and tricks that Yellow Red and Whiteflower had taught me.
I stayed low. I stayed quiet. I hid when there were open places and I relaxed when she lingered too long in a glance about her.
More than once, I fell to pieces just in time to avoid being seen.
She was a skilled hunter, no doubt having skills learned over a long and brutal life, but she was a coward and a brute, two things that my pack will always be able to overcome.
While she 'hunted' the Unmoving, all she truly did was threaten them and beat them into submission. She would growl at them softly, making clear her intent and the promises of harm if they refused. Then she would spin on a claw and strike before they could so much as drop a branch in defense.
I watched as she ate their young, smiling the whole time while her victims stoicly remained standing... too cowed to resist.
It was disgusting.
All this, and more, she did. Time after time. Slowly stalking the herd like some dark blight, culling their young and leaving nothing but weeping trees in her wake.
She was even worse though.... she refused to even kill the buds, instead choosing to take only one or two lives and dragging the others away in strange things made of more Unmoving corpses.
Cruel beyond words.... but I followed her nonetheless. If she had become this powerful, powerful enough to resist my alpha, she must have a secret.
I was glad I followed her. After most of the day, she collected her ill-gotten spoils and piled them all into a huge thing and begun dragging them away. It was even more difficult to follow with her speed, but I refused to lose sight of her.
Finally, just as she looked to be prepared to return to the den, she used some of her own magic and opened another tunnel outside of the den!
Into the darkness she went, time and again, dragging the young bloated Unmoving from the light of the Phoenix Eye and into the dark of the place beneath.
I watched and I waited.
And when she had taken the final bunch inside, come back up, closed the tunnel, and left, I slunk over and tried my claws at the magic I had learned from Yellow Red.
And the tunnel opened into the darkness of the place beneath.
It was dark, dark enough that I had to brighten my eyes, but when I was certain I was alone, I crept down into the beneath and what I found made me wonder how wicked Ambercrown truly was.
Hidden away, secreted from even her own pack, Ambercrown had stashed hundreds... hundreds of hundreds of hundreds of the Unmoving.
There were too many to take, too many to make any kind of noticeable loss, simply too many of the Unmoving buds to do anything with.
I couldn't bury them all.
I could hide them all.
And there was simply no possible way to end them all.
Ambercrown's deception was simply beyond anything I could imagine.
I might not like her pack, and I certainly couldn't feel secure around them, but a pack is a pack. You give to your pack and your pack gives to you. A pack works together to survive... to flourish and take root. If one steals, the others suffer. When Yellow Red couldn't give me dark damp, she gave me buds. When Whiteflower didn't find enough of the Unmoving Corpses, Yellow Red made sure to bring more of Evil's stash to feed us all. If Dirty Sap couldn't.... well, Dirty Sap did something, I'm sure, I just don't know what it is. But whatever it is, if she couldn't do it, we would help her.
That is what a pack does.
But Ambercrown... Ambercrown was willing to starve not only us, but her own pack.
I decided if I couldn't cripple them all, I would take the best, the most precious, the most deliciously tempting buds, and leave her with an aching pith that she would have to fill some other way.
It was only fair... these were our Unmoving that she was stealing from.
And so I prowled the place beneath and sniffed out the most delectable among them.
Ambercrown, for all her trickery, had remarkably good taste.
I found them, piled and kept separately, huddled in a corner in thing after thing, a towering mass of strangely colored buds that smelled of wet and hot and bright and something else. As I approached them, I felt a thrum, a positive crawl that raced along my branches and twigs, a feeling of something wholly other.
And when I stole the first, it was as if the den had shaken.
I could see the buds, their waiting sprouts and roots. I could smell their leaves, curled in their tiny stems. I felt the sweet bitterness of their cores and I loved every moment of it.
And I couldn't stop with just one.
The first was gone before I had even noticed it. The second and third, a moment later. Soon, the pile had lost enough that one side slid and fell to the ground, the buds fleeing in terror before me.
I watched as they scattered, watched as they cut glowing trails through the dark of the place beneath, and watched as they came to rest at my claws.
I don't know how many I ate, but when I left the place beneath, I knew that Ambercrown would know something had found her cache.
I hoped she would lose sleep wondering if it were the Predator.
As much as it frustrated me, I knew I could do little to destroy Ambercrown's cache... it was just too large. Surely, I could foul the buds, but that would bring little good amongst all the harm. Food was food, no matter how it was obtained. When food was wasted, it was still a waste.
So I had left the place beneath, raising my leg to dust the tunnel, and slunk out into the night. I planned to make a lap of our territory, our herd, and return to the hidden den, secure in the knowledge that the Unmoving would not rise against us this night. And yet, as I passed a line of the Unmoving, I saw something strange... a glow coming from the ground.
A moss? A fungus? Some kind of insect that I might give to my alpha to reignite her magics? I didn't know, but the closer I got, the greater my need to find it.
I had an... urge, a want for it, whatever it was, and when I was finally within a length or two of it, I knew it had to be magic.
The ground was glowing, but nothing on the ground itself. The faint light seemed to be seeping up from the dark beneath, coming up in faint wafts of tantalizing spores and fragrance. I could almost taste it, almost hear the sinking roots and feel the leaves unfurling from the glow.
I had to have it.
And so I dug.
My roots tore through the dark damp, scraped over the hard cold, and pulled up the bits and pieces of the Unmoving that had sought it out. I dug with the need of the wet dark on a hot day in the long dry. I dug with the need of the cold after the phoenix brought the fires.
And then, I had it.
It was a thing, a tiny little thing, no larger than one of my barbs, but it glowed with the light of cloud lights and tasted as the lifeblood of the Unmoving.
I couldn't help it. I ate it, and I loved it.
Something had been missing. Something terrible and wonderful and entirely needed. Something that was just so, and could be no other way, and had been forgotten and had returned.
And as I looked around in the dark of the night, in the unending herd of our pack's Unmoving, I saw other places where the ground glowed faintly. I charged off to find them.
If I could feel this good from one small sliver, what might my pack feel if I could bring them the rest.
I spent most of the night stalking the slivers and chips in the ground, and by dawn, I had amassed a small pile that I dutifully carried in my mouth.
It was a constant temptation, a fight not to simply swallow the feast, but I knew my pack needed them more than me.
I chased them around the herd, finding them hiding, always under the leaves or in shallow graves only claw deep, but I found them.
And by dawn, the glow faded until I could barely even see it.
But when I came to the stone pile, I stopped.
Here, the ground did not just glow; it blazed. If the moon was to the phoenix eye, so were my slivers to the stone pile.
Even in the light of the dawn, I could see the brilliant searing gleam of the feast upon and beneath the ground. Here, they were no slivers, they were logs and trunks as thick as the Predator's own. The amount here could surely have cured my alpha, if not my entire pack, and i almost spat out the feast in my muzzle to claim a log instead.
But...
I... couldn't.
As much as I wanted to, as much as I could see the feast before me, I could not push myself to cross that patch of barren ground.
Grasses waved. The scattering of the nearby Unmoving taunted me. The blue of the sky and the fresh breeze of the field promised great things. And yet, I knew that this place was not safe for me.
No matter how peaceful, no matter how pleasant or tempting, something howled at me with the ferocity of the dire packs themselves, that if I were to tread there, a blight and rot would be upon my heartwood before I could hope to seed.
I knew forbidden soil.
And so I returned to the den, our pack's den, and placed the feast near where Yellow Red's magic sky hole was, and ran back to the herd to remain hidden.
And as I looked back, I saw the watchful gaze of Second from the sky hole... the only witness to my return.
I will have to be more careful. She could still warn them and she may know of Ambercrown's treachery.