The Hunt

When I was 7 I started a stupid and ugly fight against a few other children older and stronger than I was. If wasn’t for the healing spells of our village teacher, my mother, and a few other adults, some people could be catting long lasting injuries because of that incident. Or maybe even worse, who knows, medicine in this Medieval style world has never reached the Germ Theory threshold. Not proper antibiotic beyond some natural herbs and domestic recipes.

Perhaps they don’t need any additional science. Since they do have the basic healing spelt that avoid further complications if used in time.

Besides, humanity in my former world survived dozens of thousands of years before the Pharmaceutic Industry start selling antibiotics and vaccines. And up there we didn’t had magic.

Anyway, that incident changed my life drastically. Because the conclusion my father took from it was that I had the same problem in control my anger that he and some other people in his (or ratter our) family has. He had struggled with all life. I was surprised to know that, up to this point I had never imagine him as a violent or short-tempered man. Apparently, he was just good in hiding it.

I could no say my problem was just excessive mana accumulating inside my body, because I had suddenly stopped to practice spells.

Since I had to stop practicing magic, to reduce the risk of being caught. In this world people born with memory of their past life in some other world as considered dangerous Demons and killed on sight as soon as they are found. Extraordinary magic talent, beyond human limits, is one of the distinctive characteristics of those Evil Monsters.

I may very easily be Evil, a monster and a Demon from another world. About that I am still on the fence to be honest. What I know for sure is that I do not wish to die immediately or in the near future. That’s why I gave up the self-taught magic, and am planning to fake complete incompetence in that field.

Just, this decision left me with no argument to convince my father he is wrong about my angry issues.

I was curious to see what his strategy to deal with my supposed problem would be.

Common sense dictates that when someone has angry issue, tends to fall into episodes of **** disproportional to what the situation demands. The right way to act is disarm this person and make it weaker and more defenceless, so any new episodes of **** will not put people in risk. You also talk, a lot. About feelings, and respect for the space of others, and for the feelings of others, and about the hidden causes of all that hate. Because endless talk is the right cure for any problem in life that involves ****. Specially when the violent people are men.

In direct opposition to that intuitive prescription my father put a weapon in my hand and started to obsessively educate me into how to use it, in the most effective way, to hurt and kill people. He also escalated to another level our daily physical exercises. Seen that I got to practice hand-to-hand combat every day. Under watchful supervision of warriors tested in real conditions of combat. Like he was, himself.

He also started taking me to hunting, what was not a recreation for our family. That was the main way he had to put food in our table. Economy was worse than ever, process were skyrocketing practically every week. What we could not get by hunting or trading by other goods we had to learn to live without because money was unreliable now.

Despite that, my father took the extra weight of teach a child how to furtively hunt animals in the increaselly more dangerous forest surrounding our village. This told me something about how seriously he was taking his role as a father. Also, how seriously was for him that anger issue subject.

When I as not hunting with my father, or training my fighting skills under the attempt vigilance of some warrior, I was now working.

I got the job of deliver messages, on foot, and my father absolutely insisted that I had to do the job running. Not walking.

He was not shy about his reason. According to him my most important obligation in life from now own was to burn stamina. To keep myself so tired all the time that I never had energy to spare, to do anything by impulse. Every day ever since I recovered from that fight I reached my bed at the end of day too tired to ever remember how I managed to take my shoes of. Frequently I would awake in the morning still wearing my only pair of boots.

My younger brothers showed pity when they looked at me. My mother was sad about this as well. She would never criticize her husband in our presence but I noticed the signs of disagreement. In her eyes he was exaggerating.

I suppose children do need free time to play and do nothing, sometimes.

Not such a big deal, in my case, because I had the mind of an adult inside the body of a child. I had played enough as a child in my past life, presumably. Even if I do not remember my childhood on Earth much.

Nothing to do with being isenkied after ****. As an adult on Earth I seldom though about my childhood. Don’t think it was bad, no long-lasting trauma, children are cruel with each other but that is only a big deal when goes beyond certain limits and I don’t think ever happened with me. No bulling problem to write home about. On the same time, I don’t believe my time as a child in the past life was particularly happy either.

Was a relief to finally earn my place in life as an adult and let Neverland behind. Hardly any reason to look back, lingering in nostalgy.

I cannot say for sure if all that fuel for magic spells in my system was doing anything for me. My body was answering well to all that punishment and intensive training. My strength and my reflexes improved along with my capacity to keep focus in one single task. The fighting techniques practiced by my father were not just mechanic repetition, they involved some attention to breathing and some exercises of visualization. Maybe call it “meditation” would be too much, was all very simple and grounded in practice, but it was present in the daily practice.

There was nothing super-human in my strength and speed, nothing that you could credit to supernatural energies operating. My stamina, after two years of this daily routine, was something that started to be object of comment. Neighbours would joke about my mother having extra-conjugal adventures with a waarg now. Because of how long would take for me to slow down and need to catch my breath.

My father would laugh out loud of those jokes. He was very though and stubborn himself, and I was a young boy, with strong blood and a hot temper. Not at all rare traits in our family.

Still, even him admitted with pride that I was the most energetic pupil he had ever seem in training. If my body continued to grow stamina at that rate, he would be in risk of run out means to keep me tired. That, I don’t think was a joke.

However, that extra energy was not entirely unwelcome. Because I was using all the moments I still managed to save from the physical training to became familiar with the sort of geometric calculations they do in this world. Math is a bottomless pool, is hard to get it at first but once you grasp the rules is only a matter of repeat the process without lose focus, and keep learning new rules. A bit like swordfight, and a lot like spellcasting.

In addition to that, I wanted to learn something of the language we used, beyond the necessary to live my life as a farmer. Some literature, some History. Get familiarity with the few maps we had access to in class.

In the hunting I learned how to clean an animal, and how to prepare its meat. Cooking is another area where one can invest infinite time and never came close to master everything that exists to learn. However, the basic for survival and some basic enjoyment of life is simple enough to be learned in a couple of months, well enough.

My father and his friends though me how to make a hunting bow that I was barely able to bend, and my own arrows. My father told me he would teach me how to make a war-bow one day. When I had the strength to use such a weapon. He practiced with his every day, when he was home. Never carried it outside, unless he was leaving to work as guard for some merchant house. Never used the thin for hunting.

However, after my 9 birthday we had an incident. A heavily guarded caravan was attacked almost at the gates of the village, some 5 kilometres from our home. There was footprints of waargs everywhere, and no one survived.

After that, my father carried his bow and the arrows with heavy heads of steel with him during the hunts. He would not use the war-bow to hunt, despite the power of the weapon granting it considerable advantage in range. According to my father is necessary to respect some traditions even if they don’t seem to make sense. There are tools for hunting and tools for deal with enemies, one should avoid misplace those categories.

Waargs are clearly not prey, in my father’s mind. They are enemies. Like most monsters capable to use magic, and the majority of non-human people.

“A waarg looks more like a wolf than like a bear, but is a huge and heavy build wolf. Larger than most horses, big enough to carry a ridder five times heavier than me. Wearing full plate armour.

Some of them can talk our language, most of them only talk their own orckish dialect. Then can think, some can even read, a little, but they lack fingers to write or do other activities that require hands. They are fast, faster than wolves or horses running, and their resistance is beyond normal for natural beasts. They are magical monsters, capable to learn spells, but fortunately for us most are too stupid to learn anything.

The wild ones are dangerous and cruel, but the ones that are really dangerous are those slaved by orcs, gobblings, forest elves, or some other enemy race. Few human tribes use those monsters as mouth and they are about as bad as the non-humans.

Of course, not all non-human races are enemies, and some waargs are even almost decent. You have to keep the exceptions in mind, but don’t let them distract you from the fact that you are far more likely to find the rules in your path that the exceptions. So, do not low your guard when waargs are around!

We are hoping those that are rounding out village are wild ones. Free waargs. Nothing was stolen that needed hands to carry away. There was no sign of arrows or axes being used to kill the merchant caravan. If they are wild, that means we have a problem but one we can deal with without external help.

If they are the advanced warriors preparing a invasion, we must hope the capital send us help fast enough. Because we don’t have any chance to hold our ground in this village for more than a couple weeks, not against a serious enemy invasion.”

I took the opportunity to satisfy a curiosity.

“When they see me running, some neighbours say mother must have had an affair with some waarg. Is that really possible?”

“Your mother? No!! You are a mirror image of me when I was your age, boy”

“No, I don’t mean that. I mean…”

“Yes, of course. Waargs are big, nasty, talking wolves. However, they are magic beasts still. All living races capable to speak and learn spells can crossbreed. Orc men often get waarg females pregnant, and the result are larger, uglier, furry orcs with Waarg heads, or some other mix. The half-blooded are despised in ork society, since they see waargs as their natural slaves, but those half-bloods are also valorous warriors and often used for the most dangerous activities behind enemy lines.

Half-human with waarg blood are common enough. Too common, in my opinion ,since one of them in this world would be far too much.

Magic is a good thing, but all good things have some sick, perverse, collateral effects.

Just like all Evil things give birth to roses, some now and them, along their way”

I was amazed by those revelations. And by such deep metaphysical, poetic images. Coming from a man from whom I didn’t expected anything more sophisticated than jokes about soldiers and prostitutes.

That was his point in that comment, by the way. We should expect nuances. All easy moral true without ground for interpretation is at very least a half-lie.

We didn’t crossed the path of those waargs that day. Or any other day that year. We do walked into an ambush, but not one set by waargs and orcs.

One day by the middle of Autumn, in that same year when I reached 10, we were tracking a screaming-panther to its layer. The animal looks like a black jaguar but its head carries some resemblance of a bat, and it has a sort of high-frequency scream that can kill people at close distance. Its fur is very valuable, and the parasites that usually grow in their digestive track are even more valuable. Since they are necessary ingredient for a number of magic elixirs and normal ****.

Catch the animal at night is virtually impossible, they are all but invisible then, only way it to find the layer and kill them in their sleep. Dangerous, but the reward compensates the risks.

We moved slowly, heads cover by helmets of wax and leather to have some protection in case the animal was alert enough to use its main weapon against us before we could kill it.

Neither of us could hear anything, we communicated by gestures, so when my father dropped his bow to push me out of the way I protested, a moment before realize he wasn’t listening.

When I found my feet he was already with his sword in hand, fighting someone. Not any sort of big cat, clearly.

I saw the hole in the tree behind the spot where I had been standing. Whatever spell hit it, would have killed me immediately. I would have died before hit the ground. My father was still fighting someone, he was holding his ground, but by the way that person moved it was not a fair fight.

Our attackers had some sort of magic in their advantage. This person was fading in and our view, and moving too fast for a human.

I cursed the wax in my years that prevented me from hearing the incantations being spoken. Also, the lack of practice that delayed my reaction. Had I kept my exercises of spells, maybe we could have a chance.

That’s a fine thing about Medieval Fantasy settings. The fictional ones, I mean.

All the time, whatever the setting is called, we have warriors and thieves. Each with their own specialities and they are always capable to do the most epic prodigies.

They may not be able to teleport or throw fireballs, but they can endure a fall from 30 meters and cut a dragon in half with one swing of their sword. Run on water or up a vertical wall. All sort of things obviously beyond the possibilities of natural biological beings. All that despite supposedly not having magic.

Because wizards, warriors and rogues, or thieves, are character classes and they need to be in some sort of balance in relation to each other. More or less.

There is no balance here, and without plot armour hard work only take you so far. Against actual magic, that’s not far enough I’m afraid!

I wasn’t caring a sword but took my hunting knife and run to help dad. My feet seeking a way into this fight, while my brain was trying to remember what spell I could use here. Anything!

Then something hit me in the shoulder and I was on the ground. A moment before I lose conscience I recognized something familiar hanging from a tree branch couple meters above. It was my arm, the hand was still holding my hunting knife, apparently.

Everything around was silent, and I felt cold. Should be losing a lot of blood very fast. “We lost!” was the only idea in my mind.