The small footsteps of a child pattered over the forest floor. He ran fast, panting with his breaths. “Iharu? Iharu!” Fangarus ran alone amongst the trees, having lost his sister from the very beginning. Still, he seemed no less determined to find her.

After a long while of running, he staggered to a stop. Hands on his knees, he breathed hard. “I know where you are, just I can’t catch up to you.” While he leaned over, one of his hands pressed up against the trunk of a sycamore tree.

His words shifted into a soft whisper. The truth-seeking quality of Past Insight allowed Val to listen in, no matter how quietly he might mutter beneath his breath. Even so, Val could not understand a word that Fangarus spoke. His words had shifted into a foreign language that sounded almost lyrical to her ears.

A pause occurred while Fangarus looked attentively at the tree.

Similar to how Tavras had explained that the rains could bring him information thanks to his Water Tongue, there were many other languages to communicate with the natural world. Fangarus must be Plant Tongued, based on the way he seemed to speak and listen to the tree.

A small smile drew across his lips. He said something short and sweet, then he closed his eyes.

Val could only watch and observe in her attempt to understand what was happening.

Leaves rustled all throughout the forest’s canopy. The entire forest surrounding Fangarus seemed to react viscerally. Most notably, the trunk of that thick, sturdy sycamore swayed under his little fingers.

“Now I’ve got you.” Fangarus’s eyes flew open.

A girl’s shriek sounded in the distance.

“Iharu, I’m coming!” He took off in a run once more, heading to where his sister had screamed.

In her disembodied form of the vision, Val followed him with ease.

When Fangarus broke past some trees, a jumbled mass of tree roots bulged up from the ground. Many more tree roots were exposed than could have been natural, not even by a natural disaster like an earthquake. The roots twisted upward and coiled together in something that looked like a systematic pattern. All of these roots came together into a sizable globe.

From within, Iharu was screaming in her human form. “Fangarus, let me out! You ruined everything. I was just about to kill a deer. That would have been my prey—my meal! Daddy would let me go into the forest all of the time, then.”

Fangarus looked on at her with a pitied look in his eyes. His gaze appeared quite complex for a kid of his age. “I don’t get why you want to kill things. That deer is a living thing just like us…. It is bad enough that we already have to kill fish to live.”

“I want to hunt!” Iharu said. The raspy tone which backed her screeches never seemed to let up. “Let me go. Let go of me! Let me go.” She kept repeating some variants of this phrase over and over again.

“Iharu,” Fangarus said calmly. “Iharu, listen to me.” He practically had to beg for her to let him speak. “Please just let me talk to you. I care about you. The forest…. It isn’t safe. I will let you go only if you come back to the beach with me.”

“No. No, no, no!” Once again, she would not let up.

The more that Val witnessed her breakdown, the more that her heart went out to Iharu. This poor, little girl was fairing so poorly on this island with nobody but Tavras and Fangarus for company. If only she were not looking in on the unchangeable events of the past, Val would have felt obligated to do something about her situation.

“I could drag you back by these roots.” Fangarus placed the words of his threat carefully. “Remember what Dad always says. We need to have a little dignity.”

“Dignity….” Iharu’s voice died away as she stared down to the dirt.

Since she had calmed down, Fangarus must have taken this as her acceptance of his terms. His eyes closed to focus on bending the nature around him.

The roots receded from around Iharu’s arms and legs. They slithered back into the earth like snakes. When enough of those roots had released her body, Iharu thumped against the ground.

One hand stuck out to her, Fangarus offering to help her up. The way that he had his eyes still closed from his effort in controlling the roots, he could not see that Iharu lunged at him instead.

The force of her leap sent Fangarus toppling backwards to the ground. “Ah!” she screamed. “You ruined everything. You’ve ruined everything!” Her fingers grasped around his throat, clamping down tight.

Fangarus struggled against her. First, he tried to lift himself up, but Iharu in her enraged state easily overpowered him. A stray hand, he managed to free from the way that he was pinned beneath her body. He reached up to bat weakly at Iharu’s face, hardly enough to make her blink.

Why did he not call the tree roots to come to his aid once more? As kind-hearted as he was, Fangarus was also a foolish child.

To amend her unkind thoughts towards him, Val remembered that he was just a child, after all. His upbringing with Tavras led him to having a range of abilities almost as good as her current skill set, even though she was over ten years older than him. Both her meager abilities and her ridicule towards a child put Val to shame.

At any rate, Fangarus started turning purple in the lips and blue around the face. Without her knowledge of Fangarus living on in the present, she might just think that Iharu would have strangled him right here.

Just as quickly as she had started, she also stopped. The reddened tinges of Iharu’s dark skin raced away in favor of a chilled complexion. At once, she released Fangarus and got up. “Let me hunt. Go back to the beach yourself if you’re such a chicken.” With that, she turned to go and took her transformation back into a wolf.

“Iharu! Iharu, no!” Fangarus sputtered and coughed as he tried to talk. Scrambling up to his feet, he followed after Iharu and tugged at the sleeve of her shirt. “You have to trust me. There are dangerous things in the forest. I can feel them—mean things, hungrier than you.” His voice trailed away into a shaky whisper. “We should get back to the beach.”

One of Iharu’s paws froze in midair. She turned back to look at Fangarus. Her pointy ears laid down against her fur. Then, her body became fluid once more to shift back into her human form. “You’re just scared. I’m not. Just head back already, Fang.”

“No, you don’t understand.” Fangarus balled his hands into fists at his sides. “I can feel it, one of those horrible beasts. It’s nearby. Dad is nearby too. I know this from my Plant Sense, but Dad might not be able to hold off the awful beast for long. We need to go.”

Iharu turned away from Fangarus halfway. “You’re just trying to scare me. It’s not going to work. Give up already and head back yourself—”

A tremendous roar came from the forest, immediately in front of them.

Iharu yelped from fright, especially as a massive beast, all muscle and horns, came barreling straight towards her. Tusks protruded from beneath its maw, which were leveled on a horizontal plane like jousting spears.

Val could feel recognition light up in her mind. It was the sort of thing that she had only seen in images of cave paintings and 3D renderings for documentaries. This animal would be the mythical creature of a behemoth, said to have gone extinct within the past thousand years.

“Iharu!” Desperation lit up in Fangarus’s eyes. By his will to save her, the entire forest whirred around him.

A nearby tree had its wood moan and crack as it became animated with life—moving life. A large bough of a tree swooped down and struck Iharu squarely like a baseball bat. Her body was flung to the side, limp and helpless compared to the force leveled against her. She struck the trunk of another tree hard enough to make wood splinter.

This left only Fangarus in the path of the charging beast.

Roots shot up from the ground and weaved into a net in front of him. With both hands up, Fangarus seemed to demand that the roots amplify in strength in this attempt to erect a wall in front of him.

The behemoth’s tusks pierced through the wall of roots. What with the length of those horns, one stabbed directly into Fangarus’s torso. Red stained around the site of penetration and discolored the behemoth’s ivory tusk with blood. Likewise, some blood oozed down from the wound.

His mouth opened with an inaudible gasp or perhaps a silent scream. Fangarus moved his hands to hold the air around his belly, so close to grasping that tusk which impaled him.

With a thrust and a twist of its head, the behemoth broke through the wall of roots and also tore through Fangarus’s flesh. Some cords of intestines spilled out, small just like the child’s body. As he collapsed to his knees, these, he held with his own two hands.

An oppressive darkness pressed inward on all sides of her vision. She could hardly see anymore, simply because Val felt too sick in watching this.

Violence was one thing when a struggle must be had for some just cause. In that case, grown men and women could knowingly participate in a conflict. This violence against a child was brutal and senseless, as a beast was defined by its savagery like this. On top of that, this situation could have been completely avoided, if only Tavras had been a better father to them.

Her fury mounted which only made her vision turn into a blur of colors—mostly green from the forest, but also tinged with some red. Right this second, she ought to terminate the vision and give Tavras a punishment raised straight out of the Netherworld. He was absolutely, indefensibly worthless.

It did not matter that Fangarus would somehow survive the encounter. The simple fact that any child had to experience such pain and terror because of Tavras’s oversight was unforgivable. Even if this had happened over a century ago, no amount of time could erase this event away from the past completely. Hence, Val was able to witness it now in all of the atrocity of the moment, and she was livid.

At the same time, she felt that she could not look away no matter how much her own insides twisted up.

With the behemoth looming over Fangarus’s body, all curled up, it took one step closer to him. The heavy, clawed foot landed against the ground with a dull thump. A deep, ear-cracking roar boomed from its open maw.

Val watched and waited for what would happen next.

Character Update

* All entries are based on what Val knows.

Fangarus Title: Brother Wolf Rank: God Attributes: wilderness Abilities Name Class Description Bend Plant combat, practical

- move plants at will

- can grow new plants out of the ground

Plant Sense tactical - can feel through plants to know who is in the vicinity and what they are doing Plant Tongue cognitive - communicate with plants and gain new information Unknown n/a - probably has a lot more abilities as a god in the present day