Chapter Fifty-Two: Strange Babies (Patreon)

The cubs are so cute it takes all I have not to just rush over, grab, and snuggle them into my neck while making ridiculous noises that would be better found in an anime than real life. They’re little bundles of fluff with supple feet and stubs of wings covered with the softest of down. They have teeth, but they look more like white milk teeth than permanent ones. Or maybe this species go through multiple sets of teeth – what do I know? Either way, they’re much smaller than Bastet’s fangs. In fact, the cubs are much smaller, period. They would each fit in my two hands cupped together, and only spill out a little.

When I first entered the cave, they cowered away from me. It’s not really a surprise – the poor things have been alone for a good few hours, maybe a couple of days based on the half-eaten corpses that are all that remain of the rest of their pack.

The raptorcats live, or perhaps I should say ‘lived’ in a slight hollow in the side of a hill that’s part of the mountainside, not dissimilar from Kalanthia’s den. It’s a natural outcropping of rock with most of the small area bare of all but a light covering of green. I’m no geological expert, but just from what I saw, I’d guess that there are several layers of rock and one of the softer layers had been eroded to the point where it became a sort of cave. The cubs were hidden within that cave.

Normally, of course, to get to them I would have had to fight my way through a sentry, probably hidden in a tree, then the main bulk of the pack, probably lounging along the rocks, and then the mother raptorcat herself. Not so this time. Six raptorcats had been torn to pieces. One near where that sentry would have probably been, four in a group on the rocks of the outcropping, and then one just in front of the cave entrance itself. I’m not surprised the cubs were afraid of me – they’ve probably been smelling their mother and other family members’ blood for hours or even days.

Fortunately, they know Bastet, and after she reassures them by going over and licking and rubbing her head over them, they relax a little. It still takes them a bit of time to be willing to approach me, but she encourages them to do so. Her visible impatience is well-deserved: we need to get out of here before something comes along to eat more of the bodies. Or worse: whatever killed the adults might come back to finish the job of exterminating the whole pack down to the littlest cub.

It takes me a few moments to work out how to move the cubs: they’re too young to just walk with us, but I can’t exactly put them in my Inventory… I suddenly have a brainwave. It takes a bit of time, mostly spent convincing the cubs to allow me to pick them up, but I eventually get them slung on my chest like strange babies. I bite my lip to stop my adoring noise from escaping my lips: they are just too cute, tucked away as they are in a shirt I’ve tied around my body with only their fluffy heads poking out of the cloth.

Glancing around the cave before leaving, I check to see if there’s anything I’m missing. No...wait. I spot something glinting ever so dimly in the back of the cave. Despite Bastet’s growing agitation, I walk over and crouch to peer into the shadowy depths, carefully moving in a way that doesn’t shove my knees in the cubs’ faces. It looks...metallic? Could there be metal there? About to creep closer, already starting to shift my position, my attention is pulled by a growl from the adult raptorcat.

Looking back towards the entrance, I see her crouching, ears back against her head and whole position very hostile. Not towards me, thankfully, but my stomach swoops as I consider what might have caused her to get into such a defensive pose. Forgetting about the potential metal for now, I creep towards the entrance trying to keep out of sight of whatever’s out there.

There’s something moving around for sure: even if Bastet’s behaviour hadn’t told me that, I can hear the creature shifting and the sound of bones crunching and meat being torn. It’s a bit sickening, actually. Though, it does seem a bit ridiculous that I’m fazed by such sounds when I have literally crushed ribcages and skulls, not to mention butchered countless creatures since I’ve been here. But I still have to fight back nausea as my imagination runs away with me. Perhaps it’s because in this case, my bones might be the next to be crunched.

I try to ignore the stomach-turning nature of the sounds to use them to gather something about the creatures making them without potentially exposing myself to view. Closing my eyes, I’m more able to concentrate on what my ears are telling me.

There are too many sounds for it to be only one creature unless that one creature is ridiculously active. All at the same time there’s the sound of claws scraping along rock, bones being broken, and meat being ripped. Unless it’s a creature with many legs and at least three heads, it’s a small group of animals rather than a solitary one. That’s not so good. In addition, the fact that I amhearing bones breaking is something else that makes my stomach feel queasy – if the creatures are capable of crunching through bones, my wooden mace isn’t going to be much of a match for them.

I suddenly wish with a strong desire that I had already made my bow so I had more of a ranged option than just the chunks of flint I still have in my Inventory. Or better yet – a grenade that I could just throw out there and be done with it.

Bastet’s looking at me expectantly. She sends me a picture of some – surprise, surprise – reptilian creature with a massive jaw, thick neck and bulky body. The image makes me feel even more weak-kneed – it looks as easy a target as a pit bull and about half as friendly. Could we outrun them, I wonder with a sense of hysteria creeping in, because I sure as hell don’t consider my chances to be very good against beasts like that.

I send the thought towards Bastet, picturing us getting the hell out of dodge. She seems to mull it over for a little, her head cocked to one side even as one ear is still tilted towards the cave entrance, clearly making sure we’re still undetected. After several moments which feel like at least ten minutes, but probably took less than thirty seconds, she responds.

It’s not hopeful. The sense I get from her is that we could outrun the creatures for sure, but that they would follow us. From the images and emotions she sends me, they’re extremely good trackers. They’re mostly scavengers and probably are only here because they smelt the blood from far off and realised there was an easy meal waiting for them, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t chase easy prey.

Then we’ll need to make sure they know we’re not easy prey, I decide, sending Bastet a sense of determination. She eyes me dubiously, but seems as resigned as she was when she submitted to me during the Battle of Wills – a feeling that she’s not totally on-board, but she can’t think of anything better to do instead so is willing to go along with me for now. Frankly, a typical cat.

Checking the knots holding the cubs to me once more – one or more of them dropping out during the headlong dash that is to come would not be good – I verify once more that I haven’t missed anything. About to leave, I suddenly have a thought, opening my Map and dropping a marker on this spot for later investigation. Then, looking at Bastet, I silently mouth a countdown from three. That she doubtlessly can’t either lipread or count is immaterial – the fact I’m doing it for myself is generating the right sort of anticipation for me to send to her. When I reach zero, we both explode into action simultaneously.

Dashing out of the cave, we clamber over the rocks in the direction of the closest trees. The creatures currently chowing down on Bastet and the cubs’ dead pack-mates take a few moments to realise we’re there, letting out coughing sounds of what I can only guess is surprise at our sudden appearance – and almost as sudden disappearance. As I run for the trees, I don’t hear any pursuit, but they may just be too surprised to realise that they should – I didn’t get the sense from Bastet’s images that these creatures are particularly intelligent.

As we run, I’m surprised to realise that I’m not all that much slower than the adult raptorcat. Then again, I did manage to survive a pack of them chasing me once, and she did say she’s getting old. What I do notice after a few minutes is that she probably has significantly more stamina than me. After perhaps ten minutes of headlong sprint, my stamina bar is bottoming out and I can feel the usual symptoms of exhaustion creeping in. Bastet is still going strong and when, my breath coming in ragged pants, I slow down, I notice that she’s not even breathing heavily.

Maybe that’s how raptorcats hunt if their ambush doesn’t work? Not all that fast, but significantly more stamina. A bit like wolf packs on Earth which weren’t the fastest animals around, but had the stamina to pursue prey for hours on end. My own stamina doesn’t seem to stack up well in comparison.

Then again, I was able to keep running at almost my top speed for about ten minutes. That would have been completely unheard of for me back on Earth, so I’ve definitely improved my physical condition.

“Do you think we lost them?” I ask Bastet when I’ve gathered enough breath to speak. No, she doesn’t understand the words, but as with Spike, I unconsciously project my meaning when I speak, so she understands that.

I get a wave of intention which I translate as ‘not likely’. I frown.

“Can you hear them coming or something?” I receive a negative feeling from her. “Then why do you think they’re following us? They’ve got lots of food where they are.” The words have barely left my mouth when I wince at how callous they sound. In response, I receive a slight pang of sorrow, but far less intense that I would expect. I interpret the images and emotions she then sends to mean that she’s doubtful we’ve escaped the creatures because of one specific reason: once they’ve locked onto prey, they don’t stop pursuing until either they’re dead or they’ve lost the scent, and as for the latter, they have extremely sensitive senses. I get the idea that even walking through a river would be little use as they’d be able to pick up our scent on anything we brushed past or from the other side if we didn’t walk for long enough in the water.

I lean against a tree as I consider the situation. I can’t lead them back to Kalanthia’s cave – she’d kill me if she thought I’d put Lathani in danger. Maybe it’s the time to try something out that I’ve wanted to experiment with for a while...