Chapter 44
The Prodigal
Gray:
For days and nights, I trained under the luminescence of the moon, honing my skills for revenge and reprisal. I was going to give all I had lost to Clyde and his pack. Speaking of Clyde, I wondered if Mirian and Elliot had released him when they realized that I was not coming back for them or if they had left him to die a miserable death by starvation in a rodent-infested dungeon. The thought of the rats nibbling at his feet furiously made me feel so satisfied that at least he would die having experienced the same shame that I had lived with. As for my loyal followers, Mirian and Elliot, I prayed that they found a better path to follow. I was a lone man now because I needed to oversee the process to my victory and glory all by myself. My plan was highly incompatible with mistakes, and I could not afford the whimsicalities of partners or subordinates that could easily tip over my plans.
It was a new month, and the full moon was weeks away. I was going back to my pack to search for Clyde to catch a glimpse of his rotting corpse, and from there I would trace the whereabouts of Jason and bring him to his knees. Jason’s pack was now officially the strongest pack, although they had no Orhert. A pack without an Orhert? It must be so easy to infiltrate and destroy them, or so I thought. On the third day of the new month, I took my leave of the small shack I had lived and trained in since the conclusion of the war and the defeat of my pack. I left with a few wild fruits and a little water, as I was sure to pass a lot of streams and rivers, and I would also have a lot of chances to let myself loose and hunt.
It took me a total of five days (nearly a week) to reach our pack, and the desolation I found nearly brought me to tears. The buildings were destroyed, and the only signs of life were the nests of birds and the paw prints of wild life. If Clyde was actually there, there’s no way he would have survived such complete Isolation. Our pack was a pack that was full of life and exuberance. I felt a pang of guilt trip me; I had played a huge role in the destruction of our pack. But no, I was not the one who should have felt sorry. If I had been treated well from the beginning, our pack would still be standing firm as the strongest and most formidable amongst all. I only tried to take what was rightfully mine, and I was still going for it. I was not relenting until I got it all; I did not care what or who had to be lost in the process.
On the fifth day, I hunted on a hill that marked the boundary between our pack’s territory and the Fawnhide’s territory. I disguised myself in a black cloak to avoid anyone recognizing me, especially any refugees from my pack—tthey should have known by then that I had a major hand in their downfall. I wove my way around all the boundaries and finally got to our pack, and I headed straight to the dungeons to seek Clyde. I had instructed Mirian and Elliot to lock him up in the same exact cell he had locked me up in to induce the full effect.
To my surprise, I got there to find his cell empty and the bars broken. To make sure, I checked and double-checked all the cells in the dungeon, but they were all empty. The whole pack residence was empty, which confirmed that the elders had not called for a council meeting yet. After a war, the Elders called a council meeting to decide what happened to the defeated pack and their resources and land, and before then, nobody from either the losing side or the winning side was allowed to make use of the land or the resources. I thought of the Elders as selfish old men who allowed war simply because they were going to profit from it. Long ago, war between the same type of supernaturals was never heard of, but as time grew, so did avarice—ssome packs went on pointless rampages, destroying every pack lesser than them and taking what they owned. Even the richest of packs would bring a blossoming pack to dust, and the Elders kept silent about it because they knew they had major shares of the spoils of war. Our world was slowly decaying, and we were the proponents.
After I was done checking for Clyde within our territory, I went on to search for him in the neighboring villages and packs. There were a bunch of rumors about his whereabouts, and I began to suspect that they were intentionally spread by him to effectively conceal himself. Without further paths to follow, I picked up the most plausible rumor and followed it—the one about him going to the city to seek his love, Clarissa, in the city. I hiked to the city in two weeks, hunting all the way to gather strength. Among the numerous rumors I had heard, I also heard that humans were no longer as weak as they had been and that they had now devised powerful means to bring supernaturals to their knees. I also heard that some vampires and mermaids had been caught and used inhumanely for experiments and sometimes for the sheer fun of it. So I had three formidable enemies in my way: Clyde, Jason, and the humans.
On getting to the human territory, I was struck with surprise at how small their bodies were and at how huge their territory was. They seemed to think that their existence alone made them superior to other life forms; they lived in unnecessarily tall buildings, and their roads glistened under the tall lights like water. Their oxygen was also stiff due to the inadequacy of nature around them. I walked down the streets with awe; they were so much like grains of sand, and it was hard to tell one person from the other. As I walked, it became more evident to me that I was lost. All the information I had gathered so far was not going to help me navigate the vastness of this place. My Job was to find wolves amidst thousands of humans. One thing I also found surprising about humans is that nothing they had was free; you had to pay for the basic necessities of life, and I had to work for money if I was going to survive long enough to reach my goals.