Harvest 3, 855
Night had long since fallen when the grimm spotted the general. Tuag grunted as he saw the small figure bundled in his master’s arms — a twiglet of a human, bound to be sick or injured. Tuag paced, growling and agitated that once again his master had cheated him of a real chance to go home.
When his master stumbled, falling to one knee and placing his passenger on the ground, Tuag grinned, eager for even the smallest misfortune to befall the mortal that dared hold his leash. When his master fell bodily to the ground, Tuag sat up, smile growing wider as his tail began to thump.
But when the smell reached him, his face fell in disbelief, tail freezing mid-wag. Home. Stronger than he had ever smelled it in the mortal world. Without heed for his leash or his orders, the grimm bounded from the treeline. The tether that bound him tightened, hauling him back to the brush, but he fought it, struggling with all his might to get away.
The bond held, keeping him in check with merciless force. Then his master’s body fell still, the leash evaporating so quickly that the grimm tripped over his sudden freedom into the dirt.
Not pausing to polish off his dignity, Tuag scrambled to his feet. The smell of home had already faded, but he gave chase anyway. He followed the trail, expecting it to lead him straight to his master’s body, but to his surprise, the scent came from the twiglet — sitting up and very much alive.
No, not ‘very’ alive, but certainly more alive than any dead person the grimm had ever encountered. To Tuag, the boy looked like any other sickly human child: small, weak, and angular. But something else clung to him. The grimm relaxed his eyes, allowing the local ghosts to float into his vision.
Four ghosts circled the boy, watching him with the same hungry need that Tuag felt, tight in his chest. They stood close enough to brush his skin with their presence, but like all humans, the boy didn’t seem to notice. The rapt attention on their faces looked wholly at odds on the dead.
The grimm stepped silently behind the boy, the ghosts backing away timidly as they saw him. The child jumped as Tuag began his inspection in earnest, sniffing him all over to try and find the source of the coveted scent. When the boy shoved his face aside, Tuag froze.
In battle, weapons flowed through the grimm without hesitation, leaving no trace of their passage. His prey felt his teeth, his bite, his claws, but their blows fell through shadows only, never gaining purchase. He chose when mortality could affect him, or he it. He chose when to be more than a shade.
This boy touched him. More than that, this boy shoved him with nothing more than disdain.
A low growl built in the Tuag’s chest. If any other human had so much as looked at him with that little concern, he would have sunk his fangs into them without a second thought. But the boy touched him, and somehow killed his master. He seemed to have noticed his mistake — eyes going wide with horror, his scent growing sharp with fear.
Too curious to see the boy dead just yet, Tuag turned back to his investigation, pinning the boy in place with one paw. Submitting, the boy lay meekly, face turned away in an appropriate display of contrition. Better.
Home. The smell clung to the boy, not his odour of woodsmoke and pine, but overlaying that, as if he had touched death’s door and brought some of what he found there back with him. It didn’t make sense. A living boy, smelling more of death than a corpse not two feet from them, freshly deceased and passed over.
As the boy began to squirm, Tuag allowed him to sit up, using the opportunity to check the boy’s back for any possible clues to his mystery. Hauling and grunting, the boy attempted to move the general’s body, budging it slightly before sliding onto his haunches, sweating. The grimm sat as well, considering this strange child and wondering if he had made a mistake in identifying the now faded smell in the first place.
Then the dead general moved, pulling himself to his feet and shambling off to hide from an incoming patrol. The grimm had seen thousands on thousands of dead in his long existence, but never one that could walk. He turned to follow the newest mystery of the evening when the smoke and peat perfume came again, tantalizingly close.
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