Lotus

The last rays of sunlight vanished into the night, allowing several wolves to peel themselves away from the shadows. She had only ever seen wolves from afar, their attention directed at a full moon, but now their attention was directed at her. The fear only lasted for a second.

Today's events had changed her understanding of what it meant for her to live in the forest. She had become an apex predator, unparalleled among the inhabitants of the forest.

Could their teeth even pierce my skin?

Lotus had used her body to wage a war against the forest today, and her body won. She doubted the wolves could inflict anything she hadn't already tried on herself. She had the confidence to face dozens, if not hundreds, of wolves and walk away without so much as a scratch.

And yet…

This was her first night alone in the forest, darkness closing in all around her with no one to turn to for comfort. Her primal fear of the unknown took precedence over what she knew to be true. Without turning her back on the wolves, Lotus found a large branch, a casualty of her earlier activities. She folded it while crushing it within her palm, releasing a shower of dry splinters. She gathered the larger pieces on the sand and used one of the branches to start a fire, hoping to keep the wolves and the dark at bay.

The wolves didn't attack despite the river being shallow enough for them to cross. They simply paced back and forth, ears perked while watching in curiosity. When she lit the fire, they cautiously retreated a few steps.

Then a soft growl came from the trees behind the pack, in an intense pitch so all-encompassing that Lotus felt it more with her chest than heard with her ears. As if commanded, the wolves fell back into the darkness, yipping.

The wolves' cries were replaced by the sound of a new set of footsteps and the rustling of trees. The steps weren't loud, but the sound made by each step suggested that they carried an immense weight. Even without seeing anything, Lotus was starting to feel the pressure, ready to flee down the river at a moment's notice.

From between the trees, two ice-blue orbs floated in the darkness like cold lanterns, suspended at an absurd height. Behind them, the figure materialized—a giant wolf four meters tall stepped clear of the treeline. It was cloaked in a wall of pitch black fur, shadows drifting off its coat like smoke.

Air evacuated her lungs. Her heart, which beat steadily through the chaotic morning, repeatedly slammed against her ribs. She’d been prepared to throw herself at the smaller wolves if it came down to it, but what could she do against something of that size?

The words surfaced from her father's bedtime stories.

Primordial Beast.

He had said there shouldn't be any on this side of the Towering Mountains, but Lotus couldn’t see how the Towering Mountains would pose any sort of obstacle for the creature before her.

The giant wolf leisurely crossed the river as if it weren’t there. The water, shallow as it may have been, barely reached the tops of its massive paws. The smaller wolves streamed after it, nipping and jostling at its heels, as if they forgot Lotus was there.

As the giant wolf slowly approached her, it lifted an enormous wet paw and brought it down squarely on the campfire.

What little remained of her confidence was extinguished along with the fire.

Lotus launched herself down the riverbank before she'd finished the thought. The sand blurred beneath her feet and the cold air hit her face in a continuous sheet. She was moving at her top speed, and with nothing but open riverbank ahead of her, she let herself believe that speed alone was enough.

Lotus could have continued for another half hour at the same speed, but her leg clipped on a sturdy boulder along the path, and she spun in the air for a couple dozen meters before landing face down on the ground. She slowly reoriented herself, preparing for another sprint when she heard a loud whine from behind her.

The giant wolf looked down at her with its luminous eyes, as though it had simply been waiting for her to stop. Lotus stumbled back onto the ground, despair gripping her. The wolf had surely marked her as its prey, and its agility was even greater than her own.

The rest of the pack was nowhere in sight. They'd been left behind somewhere along the river, unable to keep up. It was just the two of them now.

The wolf began to circle her, each footfall making a soft, deliberate impression in the sand, its nose working in long, slow sweeps as it moved. Lotus stayed very still, tracking those ice-blue eyes as they passed over her. Up close, the shadows that drifted from its coat didn't behave like smoke—they moved against the wind, curling inward, as though reluctant to stray too far from the body that made them.

Then the wolf moved away, heaving a few times, deep shudders running down its spine. Then it lowered its great head and deposited a pile of meat onto the sand in front of her.

It turned back to Lotus and regarded her with patient eyes, its tongue licking its snout.

Lotus was speechless. One moment she thought the wolf would devour her, but in the next it seemed as if it wanted to feed her.

Seeing that she didn’t move, the wolf snorted, then picked up a single piece of meat from the pile and dropped it directly on top of her head, bringing Lotus back to her senses.

"Eww, gross!" Lotus grabbed the slimy slab of meat on her head and tossed it to the side, using her arm to wipe away the wolf’s saliva.

The wolf didn't seem moved by her complaint. It lowered its enormous muzzle, breathed in a long breath, and let it out in a puff through its nose, a warm gust blowing into Lotus’ face. Then it dragged its tongue over Lotus’ body in a single stroke.

"Stop it!" Bewildered, Lotus let out a jittery giggle, trying to shake the saliva out of her hair. "I'm not eating that, I’ll get sick!"

The wolf made a low sound in its throat, soft but unmistakably firm, like a mother gently scolding their child. 

Lotus looked at the piece of meat. It was sitting in the sand now. Raw, glistening, dropped on her head like she was a pup too young to know what was good for her.

“Why are you doing this?” She was fairly certain that the giant wolf meant no harm, and the meat seemed like an invitation to join the wolf’s pack. What she didn’t understand was why. Did it see her crashing through the forest earlier, looking like a helpless pup? Or was it something deeper, did it detect the trident through its Primordial bloodline?

Regardless of the wolf’s motives, she was slowly coming to the realization that she needed a mentor to help her adapt to the forest. The giant wolf could probably take her down in a heartbeat, and if there was one Primordial Beast on this side of the mountains, there might be more. For now, she needed to focus on staying alive.

Hunters need to work together to survive.

She looked down at the meat again, her stomach already turning. “Do I really have to eat this?” As if it could understand, the Primordial Beast licked her again in encouragement.

The other wolves had finally caught up, dashing towards the large pile of meat the large wolf had regurgitated earlier.

Lotus watched them, then picked up the meat in front of her and took a bite before she could think about it too hard.

It wasn’t the worst thing she’d eaten, the acorns she’d put in her mouth as a child were far more bitter. Thanks to her strong bite she was still able to bite through the stringy tendons, but its texture and dull, metallic flavor drained all enjoyment from the process. She could just barely tell that it was venison, vaguely reminiscent of the meat that her father had roasted on the fire. The wolf watched her eat, tail gently wagging back and forth.

She finished it and met the giant wolf’s eyes. It held her gaze for a moment longer then watched the wolves finish devouring the meat pile.

Once they finished, the giant wolf walked towards the trees across the river, shadows trailing after it like a second coat. The other wolves, clearly acknowledging the giant wolf as their alpha, followed its lead.

The alpha stopped and turned its head back to look at her, ears cocked forward, ice-blue eyes catching the starlight.

Lotus stood up and brushed the sand from her clothes, falling in line with the pack.

The other wolves didn’t mind, some of the younger ones walking over to sniff her briefly before returning to their original positions. Lotus paid little attention to this, her eyes fixed on the giant wolf, chasing its silhouette into the dark.