I opened my eyes to see the trees of the forest surrounding me and the faint scent of blood still drifted in the breeze. I took stock of my surroundings and noticed that the boar I had left for the large cat was nothing but hunks of meat clinging to bone and viscera scattered nearby. The most notable thing however was the fact that I wasn’t alone. The panther sat on a nearby tree limb watching me with an intensity only a true predator could muster. Before I could do anything else, the cat dropped from its perch and walked closer towards me and a window appeared in my vision.

QUEST: EYE OF THE PANTHER

Not only have you impressed Shadow Stalker Panther with how well you hunt, you showed honor and respect towards him by offering him your first kill. Shadow Stalker Panther now wishes to return the honor by sharing the joy he feels as top predator during a true hunt.

OBJECTIVE: Join with Shadow Stalker Panther as he hunts his rivals tonight and learn the ways of a predator.

REWARD: Ability- (Beast Bonding) More easily understand the emotions and intentions of the wildlife

I smile as I read the window. “Why would I want to miss out on such a rare quest?” Without hesitation, I accept the quest. I feel a wave of power surging over me that seems to be coming from the panther. I can barely stand under the pressure of it. Without even meaning to, I look towards the panther and our eyes lock. An eternity seems to go by and the power surrounding me solidifies on me. There is a wrenching feeling on me and I totter in place as a wave of vertigo surges through me. I blink. Only to suddenly find my eyes are open… That’s odd. Isn’t that me standing there in front of… me? What the hell. I try to shift myself only to find nothing responding. I. well the me standing in front of… me. Falls to the ground unmoving. I feel a dull ache on my sense as I watch my body faceplant into the dirt, doing nothing to break the fall. I may not feel actual pain in the game, but I still wince internally at the impact. That HAD to hurt.

My eyes blink and my head turns and looks around. Now that my body is moving on it’s own, I come to a realization. I am a lot shorter now. I become aware of more things as my body moves of its own volition and I feel muscles and limbs moving in ways I am not familiar with. I am a freaking cat now. Wait. that’s not right. I’m not a cat, I am just inside the body of one. I don’t control anything, I can’t even do so much as wiggle a single hair on my own. I’m just along for the ride inside the Shadow Stalker Panther.

I try and calm myself down and pay more attention to my surroundings. While I was having trouble with my internal debate the panther had wasted no time on me coming to terms with the circumstances, as it was already sprinting full speed among the trees and through the undergrowth. As I pay attention, I notice more and more things. Smells are so much more vivid than before. Pardon the pun, but as a Catkin, My sense of smell was nothing to, well… sniff at. I could distinguish a trail in order to track prey easily enough, and if I really tried, I could figure out all sorts of stuff that was happening in the area. This however, was on a completely different level. I could smell the slight rotten smell of leaves on the ground stirred up as we ran across the loamy forest floor. The sweet fruity smell of a berry bush about 30 feet away as I blew past it. Even the scent of the dozens of forest critters in the immediate area. I was a bit overwhelmed by it all. After that, The next thing I noticed was the absence of noise. No, the sounds of the forest were still there, I could hear frogs and insects chirping the night away, the lack of sound I was referring to was the sound of my own passage through the forest. Even though we must have been going fast enough to easily outpace an olympic athlete going full sprint, I didn’t hear a single leaf rustle, nor the snapping of a twig under my foot paws. It was complete silence. The next thing I noticed was I could feel the mind of the panther, powering everything in this body. Making snap decisions purely on instinct alone. As I noticed that I could feel the panther’s mind focus on a smell that seemed a bit earthy that seemed to be coming from in front of us. The panther glanced to the right at a tree just before the location. As I neared it the panther leapt at the tree and, without breaking momentum, braced all four of its paws on the side of the trunk and with a surge of power, leapt off the trunk of the tree over the spot the smell was coming from. As I glanced down I saw a couple deer that had bedded down for the night and we sailed over them, landing on the other side of the clearing and continuing onwards into the forest. I listened carefully, but never heard a cry of alarm from the deer as they slept, completely unaware of the danger that passed within mere feet of them just moments ago.

At that moment I released a shout of joy. Well, a mental shout of joy, since I had zero control over the functions of this body. Nevertheless, The panther took note of my excitement and increased his speed. Exhilaration surged through me as trees passed by as a blur, bushes whipped past my ears, and the ground seemed to throw me away from it instead of simply running over it. Without realizing it, My mind blended with the panther’s. The panther wasn’t just going through the motions as I observed. WE moved through the forest like a wraith. WE stalked the night in search of our prey. WE. Became. ONE.

As I fully immersed myself in the thrill of the moment a long, sonorous howl broke through the nighttime music. We stop in our tracks and listen carefully to the sound, zeroing in on the direction and there is a single feeling emanating from the panther’s consciousness. Hunger…

There is a long silence in the forest as the howl fades away. Without warning the panther bolts forward in the direction of the sound and I recall something. Didn’t I get a quest to take care of some Dire wolves from Donavan? What else in these woods could possibly be a rival to apex predator of the area? I feel a thrill of excitement when I realize I could possibly take down two quests at once! As I run deeper into the trees, I try to guess at how far we’ve run. I have to be able to loot the pelt off the Alpha wolf in order to actually fully complete the quest requirements for the Dire Situations quest. I don’t think that’s something I can do while riding along in the panther’s body, so I have to be able to find my way back to the bodies when this is all over. Thinking about the distance we have crossed it feels like we’ve already run over 3 miles now, maybe 4, and it’s barely even been 5 minutes! It would take me an hour to go that far moving through the forest. I couldn’t help but feel a pang of jealousy now at how the panther makes it all seem so effortless.

After another 10 minutes or so of travel the panther slows down drastically. I was wondering why, when I noticed that he was focusing on a singular sent in the air. It was hard to pinpoint exactly what it was. It had a pungent musky smell to it that made me think of something like… a dog?... wait… shit. At this point the panther slowed to a crawl and went full stealth mode, and I got to see the true capabilities of a Shadow Stalker Panther.

As the Cat crept forward, the shadows themselves seemed to boil and move towards me. I felt a slight chill crawl up our body as the shadows seemed to swallow us whole. After a few seconds the chilly sensation vanished. Of course the cat didn’t waste time inspecting its own body. Why would it when it has lived with this body it’s entire life? I tried catching glimpses at the corner of our vision as we moved and I might have seen something, but I couldn’t be sure. It was like the shadows themselves moved and separating the shadows from darkness itself is a hard enough task when you are looking for it. When I couldn’t even control the direction my eyeballs were moving, it might as well have been impossible. I could only hope that we were hidden well enough to not be noticed by the Direwolves.

As we crept slowly through the undergrowth, I noticed that there was a pervasive silence that hadn’t been present before. The normal sounds of nature that had been so abundant previously, was now very obvious with it’s absence. The dead silence gave an eerie feeling to the atmosphere. Trees that seemed so healthy and vibrant before now had an ominous presence. Seeming to loom over me as if to say ‘you aren’t welcome here’. Despite the sense of danger, the panther pressed onwards without hesitation and I, of course, had no say in the matter.

As time went on, I started to hear growling and yipping in the distance and the iron tang of blood hung in the air. Closing the distance brought other noises into hearing range. The occasional cracking sound, being loudest was the first to become audible. Soon enough though, other noises became audible. It sounded like tearing and ripping of something mixed with a cacophony of various squishy sounds. All this blended together with the smacking of jowls and it became obvious that the direwolves had already made their first kill and were now currently feasting on their prize. The panther; didn’t stop as the noises grew closer, but was careful to move downwind and slowed down until he reached a break in the trees. I recognized it right away as a road, but didn’t have to chance to learn much more than that before we focused on our targets and what they were eating.

If I had been in control of this body, I would have retched right then and there. The area wasn’t just a scene of death. It was a scene of destruction. There was a wagon stopped 20 feet away from my position. It was small enough that one horse was all it took to move and it was packed with various trade ingredients such as flour, sugar, farmers tools, and other such commodities. I knew this much because the contents of the wagon was scattered everywhere in the area. Bags were ripped open and tools had their handles broken. It was like special attention was paid to making sure nothing survived. Then my gaze shifted to the Direwolves. There were 7 of them and their faces and paws were drenched in blood as they tore into the carcasses at their feet. I could see the body of the horse half hidden at the front of the carriage. A man lay on the ground next to the driver’s seat his neck at an awkward angle. A rusty sword lay a foot away from his hands as a wolf was ripping the flesh from the man’s face. Despite that gruesome scene, that wasn’t what made me want to vomit when I first saw everything here. A small body dangled out of the back of the wagon. One of its legs was hung up on something inside the wagon so the body dangled upside down arms splayed awkwardly in the dirt as the head was just high enough to swing freely. The blood trailing across the face from gaping wound in it’s throat did nothing to hide the tears and the look of utter terror on her face. She couldn’t have been more than 10.

The panther had been waiting patiently, observing the wolves as it planned its attack. That gave me plenty of time to collect myself as I took another look. The scene of carnage seemed to tell a story all of it’s own. A lone merchant was traveling late at night, probably hoping to reach the town and get a good night of sleep in a comfortable bed. When the wolves attacked, they hit the horse first. If not, the horse would have bolted on it’s own instead of waiting for it’s own death. With the horse down, the man had no means of getting away and instead he made the girl, most likely his own daughter, hide in the back of the wagon as he defended it. I couldn’t be sure how long he held out but with the horse down and the man holding them off some of the wolves must’ve gotten frustrated or bored and circled around the wagon. They found the girl and pulled her from the wagon and ripped out her throat. When she screamed as she fell, it distracted the man long enough for the other wolves to pull him down from the high ground and they clamped down on the back of his neck breaking the spine.

I reflexively tried to swallow down the imagined bile working it’s way up my throat only to find nothing happening. Oh right. Not my body. I settled for offering a prayer to the dearly departed. They may have only been NPCs, but no matter how you look at it that is a horrible way to die. I gathered my wits just in time as the Panther started moving along the edge of the road staying just within the cover of the forest edge. I was starting to wonder what the panther’s plan was when I saw we were focusing on one of the wolves that was a short distance away from the other wolves feasting on the horse as the others tore into the humanoid bodies and the wagon’s contents. Our gaze flicked upwards, focusing on a branch overhanging the road, and I grinned internally as I realized what the panther was planning. The panther leapt onto one of the lower branches of a nearby tree and took a moment to center his balance before leaping into the canopy of the taller tree we had set our sights on. There was a faint rustling of leaves that couldn’t be avoided as we landed on the branch. Some of the wolves stopped eating and looked in our direction at the noise we had made. Thankfully the wind decided to pick that moment to gust and stirred the leaves of the surrounding trees to disguise the noise. After a few seconds the wolves went back to their meal, and the panther went back to it’s task. Easing out on the branch, I marveled at how perfectly balanced the cat was even as the branch swayed slightly in the breeze. There was never even a tremor in it’s muscles as it maintained its balance with the movement, and very quickly the panther was in position to strike its mark. The direwolf wasn’t directly underneath us, so the panther would have to leap out a few feet, but that probably work better for us since that meant the cat could put more force into its descent.

There was a moment, not one of hesitation, but of preparation. As the cat tensed its muscles and readied itself to strike. Then it happened. One second I was poised to strike with the panther, the next the panther was already impacting the wolf. Teeth clenching around the spine just underneath the head. The wolf barely had enough time to let out a yelp before the panther wrenched its head it a weird but smooth twisting motion and there was an audible crack as the direwolf’s neck was broken. Even so, the cat didn’t waste a single second gloating over its victory. Instead, whipping around to face the rest of the wolves, the panther ran towards the closest direwolf. We didn’t go for a vital since the wolves were already on guard now, instead we swiped a claw across a wolf’s shoulder, hoping to cripple it and give us an edge in the upcoming battle. Before the other direwolves could surround us, the panther sprinted back into the trees and shadows with the wolves right on our heels.

We were hard pressed to maintain distance with the pack chasing us. There was very little it terms of barks or growls surprisingly. The chase itself consisted of panting lungs and breaking branches as the pack plowed through the underbrush after us. After a while, the pack spread out a bit, as faster runners pulled ahead and the slowpokes fell behind. The panther decided to take advantage of this by slowing down enough to allow the fastest wolf to close the distance. When the wolf was about 10 feet behind us, the panther leapt straight at a tree and landed on the side of the trunk like before when he jumped over the deer. Except this time, instead of using the tree to get additional height, the pather used the tree to completely reverse direction, charging straight at the wolf and catching it off guard. They tumbled together into a mass of flying fur as they tore into each other. Neither gaining ground when trying to seek out one another’s throats. Unfortunately for the wolf cats had one distinct advantage over wolves. Their claws are much sharper the a wolf’s claws. The direwolf tried desperately to scratch at the panthers hide, but made little progress in terms of damage. As they struggled in the forest loam the panther latched onto the wolf with its front claws. That is when the real danger was brought to the battle. The panther pulled its hind legs up and pushed them between itself and the direwolf and with a quick shove, his claws turned the direwolf’s underbelly to ribbons. The cat repeated this 3 more times before breaking off and getting distance as the other wolves finally closed the distance. The wolf we had just attacked shakily stood up on its legs. For a moment it seemed like the wolf would be able to still participate in the fight still. Then with a disgusting *shlick*ing sound, the wolf’s guts poured out of its ravaged belly. It then collapsed onto the ground, doomed to a painful and inevitable death.

Taking advantage of the momentary distraction caused by their packmates demise, the panther dashed forward and swiped a claw at another wolf’s face managing to claw it’s left eye and blinding it on one side. As that wolf fell back from pain, another wolf pounced and we spun to face that wolf as it charged.

After that, things happened so fast it was hard to keep track of everything going on. Fur was flying and the wolves gave as good as they got. Even as we latched onto one wolf’s skull and bit down, crushing it, another wolf took advantage of the opening and chomped down on a hind leg, yanking it out from under us. We whipped around a swiped a claw at it. It reflexively let go and reeled back but that only exposed it’s neck to the blow and we sheared through one of its arteries dooming it to bleed to death. Now there were only 2 wolves before me with one bleeding from its left eye. The next exchange of blows was brief, but explosive. The panther took advantage of the one wolf’s blinded side and snuck a heavy pawed blow from that side into it’s head knocking it off it’s feet and disorienting it. Instead of going to finish it off we switched targets and went for the last wolf standing. This caught it off guard as it expected us to finish off the weaker target. The panther quickly darted around it’s guard and finished it off by severing the spine with a bite to the back of the neck. We turned to face the last wolf who was just now standing. It looked at us and, realizing it was alone, it lay on the ground and rolled onto it back trying to beg forgiveness by being submissive. Without hesitation, we walked towards the prone wolf and ripped out it’s throat. Savoring the bloody chunk of flesh before swallowing it whole.

As we were about to celebrate our victory, snapping twigs broke us from our reverie. Looking towards the noise, there was another direwolf limping into the clearing. It was the one we had initially attacked after the first kill and lamed it during the initial exchange. It had just now arrived at the battlefield and was surveying our carnage. Looking more closely, I realized this wolf was bigger than the other wolves. This must be the alpha wolf the quest mentioned. I smiled to myself as the panther readied itself for battle by crouching low and tensing its muscles in preparations to leap at the last wolf.

With an explosive release of energy we surged towards the wolf, closing the distance to victory. There was nothing in the way. Nothing to stop us from annihilating the enemy. The next instant was an explosion of pain. We collapsed on the ground as what felt like electricity made from acidic fire surged through our body. Wracked with pain, I could do nothing but thrash on the ground. Where did this pain come from? Why does it hurt? Why won’t it stop? Please! Make it stop! I looked at the wolf, wondering if it was the cause of this misery, only to see it take a step back with a look of confusion on its face. If not him, then who? After some time even those brief thoughts were banished in the midst of this new agony. Only catching brief images of the leafy canopy or the loamy ground as my body thrashed randomly in its efforts to escape the torment. Just when I thought I couldn’t take any more of this before my mind broke, I saw the alpha direwolf looming over me. A moment later and the pain stopped. As darkness enveloped my vision I couldn’t help but thank the wolf for stopping the pain.

“WHOOOOOO! YEAAA!!! GO! GO! GO! YES! YES! YES! TOOOUUUCH DOOOOOOOWWNN!!!!!” Evan leapt out of his chair as his team won another touchdown, screaming in celebration over the adrenaline rush of the play he just witnessed. “That was SO epic! That is going in the fucking highlights!” Evan danced around the room until he was able to reign in his energy enough to clean up the mess from the popcorn bowl he had knocked over as he leapt from the chair. “Shit! That was so worth the mess!” Evan grinned to himself. “It’s a shame Riley doesn’t like sports as much as I do. The only thing that could make this better was if I could watch the game with him.” Evan finished cleaning up his mess and was just sitting down when there was a huge crack of lightning that caused him to leap right back out of the chair. A second later, there was buzzing noise as the lights flickered then went dark, taking the TV with it. “Aww come on! How the fuck does this even happen nowadays!” grumbling at missing the game he spends two minutes fumbling around in the dark to find his palm drive. When finally finds it in his pocket of all places, he unlocks the screen and activates the flashlight function. Now that he can see he turns and heads down the hallway towards the circuit breaker to see if there is anything he can do to get power going so he can get back to his game. As he walks past Riley’s room though, he stops and sniffs the air. “Is that pork I smell? Geez Riley, I know you love those ribs but you don’t need to bring them into your room, it’s enough of a mess as it is.” Stepping into Riley’s room he takes a quick look around from the doorway with the flashlight looking for a plate of bones. He steps into the room to get a better look around, waving his light around the room. As the light passes over Riley’s Virtuo pod, Evan freezes mid-step and his heart skips a beat as he notices smoke billowing from the machine. “RILEY!!!!!” Evan lunges for the pod dropping the light to the ground in his haste. He grabs the lip of the device and tries to open it only to find the lock is engaged. Evan panics even more and with a surge of frenzied strength, he puts his whole body, no, his very soul into the effort of freeing his younger brother. There is a hissing sound as pressure is released from the cavity, followed by a cracking sound as the lock gives way to Evan’s brute force tactics and the lid if flung open. The smell of pork increases and mixed in with it, is the smell of burnt hair and plastic. Evan reels back from the overwhelming smell before gathering his wits. He grabs the flashlight he dropped and with shaking hands, rushes to his brother’s aid. When the light falls on the interior of the cavity inside the Virtuo pod time seems to freeze for Evan. The light drops from his limp fingers and a moment later Evan drops with it. “...no…” His voice, barely loud enough to even qualify as a whisper is still loud enough to drive the point home. Evan notices the smell of pork in the air again and immediately vomits. Violently retching on the ground from the shock of the images the smell alone conjures, Evan only has enough wherewithal to grab his palm drive as he crawls back out of the room. Leaving a trail of tears and bile as he goes. A corpse lays inside the pod, skin blackened and a horrifying grimace locked on it’s face. The door closes, once more hiding everything in darkness.