A week later, and Avery was still claiming there was something outside at night. His wound had healed substantially, and he didn't appear to be showing any other signs of a fever. The group had each taken turns staying up with him, but they hadn't noticed any of the abnormalities that he tried to point out to them.
Aoife had continued to hunt the wolves, but the other tunnels had the same problem as the first, they were too narrow to fight effectively. She had also sworn she saw wolves, chased them down, only to encounter an unpassable passage, with no wolves to be seen.
That had set Avery's paranoia off again, and added a spark to Rowan and Nadia's. They had started barricading the archway to the base, effectively creating a sealed doorway using the rocks and mud from the stream. The main downside was that now the interior was pitch black, and without the light from their makeshift kitchen, they couldn't see more than a few steps ahead of them at any point.
Eating some of Nadia's jerky, Rowan rested, exhausted from his late-night training. He could now swing the without feeling himself toppling over, and he had begun to accustom himself to the way it moved, and how his body needed to move to control it.
It was his turn for a guard shift, and he found the time was best spent training in the main room, rather than sitting doing nothing.
'The jerky's not as good as the cooked meat, but it lasts a lot longer. With how scarce the wolves are getting, we might need to turn all the meat we can into this stuff.'
Taking another bite, he opened the door a crack and peeked through, scanning the perimeter around him for any movement or signs of wolves. He had called it late-night training, but the area outside was just as bright as it had been hours earlier, the crystals above still shining down.
Not seeing anything, he sighed, turning his attention back inside the room, ready for another night of boredom. Or he would have, had he not noticed a splash of black and white passing through the streets.
Scrambling to his feet, he readied his sword with his breath caught in his throat. Finally forcing it to flow, he sounded the alarm for the others, shouting as he kept an eye on where he had seen movement last.
Aoife was the first to appear, sword in hand, a tense and worried expression on her face.
"I saw movement, it was a mix between black and white, only a few streets down."
She nodded, and after seeing Avery and Nadia step into the room, pulled the door open and stepped outside. Rowan followed, already wearing his equipment, and pulled the door closed behind him.
"We should stick together. The wolves so far have only been black, this is likely something else."
Rowan nodded quickly, his eyes darting every which way. He followed a step behind Aoife, and like he had in the tunnels, watched their back, making sure the wolf wasn't trying to sneak up on them, or worse, had friends with it.
They searched in a sweeping pattern, trying to discover where it may have been hidden. They only spotted it after ten minutes of searching, and Rowan felt fear rise up in his gut.
A mix of black and white fur bristled, as the beast lay crouched, ready to pounce behind a house. Unfortunate for it, they had come the other direction and could see it from the side.
A snarl grew from its snout as it backed up, and Rowan flinched. It wasn't a new beast, but it wasn't much of a wolf either. The snout was shorter than it had been on the other wolves, and its paws ended not in claws, but in blunted nails.
Its eyes also lacked the same shape as the wolves he had seen up close, and the ears had shifted down to the side, rather than the top of its head. Aoife, cursed, as she too saw what Rowan was seeing. It was a blend between human and wolf, as if the two had been slammed together in a horrible mix.
Its eyes darted left and right before the growl turned into a bestial moan, which then turned into garbled words.
"Pl- ease. H-elp mee."
Rowan's eyes shook as the words resounded over and over inside his head.'What is this thing? Is it human? Wolf? Shit, I don't know. But if it's inside a hell, it's likely still a beast.'
Rowan steeled his resolve as he stepped forward, raising the sword high. The beast tried to scramble away, but its back legs were jointed in an awkward way, and it collapsed on the ground moments before his sword met it, severing its head.
His hands shook as he turned away, ignoring the now familiar sputtering grunts that accompanied the beast's last attempts to gasp for air.
He saw Aoife out of the corner of his eye, shaking. It seemed he wasn't the only one suffering with the idea of that thing maybe being human. He looked down at his blade as the realisation of what he had done set in.
He had killed something that could talk. Not a beast that was hunting them, not an animal. Something that might have once been human, that had asked for help before he had killed it. He forced himself to look towards the body, which was softly leaking blood into the ground.
"I'm... I'm heading back."
Rowan wiped his sword off with a rag as he walked, trying to distract himself from thinking about what he had done. Aoife now followed behind him, and looked over her shoulder towards the body.
'It makes sense, that thing was disgusting. I wonder where it even came from. Aoife obviously hasn't seen them before. Maybe there's another tunnel...'
"Do you think there might be a tunnel in one of the houses? We could check the tunnels for damages but I think I would have heard them by now had they collapsed or been broken through."
Aoife simply nodded, seemingly in a daze. Sighing, Rowan continued on the path ahead, deciding he would do a round of investigation before going back to sleep. At the base, Avery and Nadia were waiting for them, spears at the ready.
"I'm going to do a round of investigation, figure out how the thing got in. You guys keep a watch here, I'll scream if I'm attacked."
Leaving Aoife behind, he found it odd that she had been so out of it simply from one beast. It had looked human for sure, and it had sounded human... Rowan pushed the thought out of his mind, focusing on going from house to house in search of whatever passage the creature had used to get in.
'Maybe she's never seen a dead person before. They usually lie about for a few days in the complex, I guess they must have someone who cleans theirs away. Same as their Head chefs, gardeners, and who knows what else.'
Trusting his incorrect assumption, Rowan felt a tad more confident in himself. Yet his concern grew with each house he checked, finding nothing other than the familiar rocks. He began marking the houses, placing rocks in the doorways as he moved from house to house, after feeling like he was only moving in circles.
After some time, Avery came to join him, helping out and making the task a bit quicker. Reaching the end, Rowan's worry was beginning to reach its peak. They had checked the tunnels along the way, and they had still been filled with rocks, the same way that Rowan and Aoife had left them.
"How the hell did it get in? There's been no possible way for it to have gotten in, and I refuse to believe that it's just been living with us for a week."
Avery's voice held anger, though Rowan could tell that he was nervous, his fingers fidgeting with his spear.
"I don't even know. I'll start sleeping in the day and doing rounds when everyone sleeps, see if I can catch one coming from wherever it is they're getting in from."
Avery nodded, and he seemed relieved at Rowan's answer, patting him on the shoulder.
"Thanks, dude. It'll help us all sleep a lot better knowing you're out keeping an eye on stuff."
He hadn't chosen to do it as a selfless thing, though Avery certainly seemed to think otherwise. He had done it because he knew he wouldn't be able to sleep while failing like he was in danger, and Avery had seemed to only hear them at night, somehow.
'I wonder how he was even hearing them. His sense of hearing must be insane if he was able to notice the sounds when no one else was.'
Returning to the base, Rowan decided to retire to his room immediately, so that he would wake in time when the others decided it was time for them to sleep. But of course, he first had to wipe the blade, apply some special oil, and drag a weird grey rock over it.
Putting it all aside, Rowan closed his eyes and finally drifted into a 'relaxing' sleep, filled with wolf-human hybrids begging him not to kill them.