Harvest 3, 855
Rumours had circulated for months about a monster travelling with the Thaven troops. Lurking among their ranks, barely contained and hungry for blood. The stories said it could take on an army all on its own. Looking at the creature before him, easy to mistake as a particularly large mongrel, Buu couldn’t align the story with reality.
With a slowness as inevitable as a cut tree’s fall, the dog turned back to face Buu, a low growl building behind a row of glistening black teeth. The creature took one paw and pinned Buu to the ground, putting an uncomfortable amount of weight on Buu’s chest as it continued its inspection of him.
Buu turned his face away from the thing’s rancid breath and squeezed his eyes shut. Whatever this thing was going to do to him, he didn’t want to see it. Voices floated to Buu over the grass, casual and unconcerned. Opening his eyes, Buu spotted a light, bobbing towards them. A pair of soldiers on patrol, a torch shared between them, completely unaware of their dead general laying ahead.
Cursing under his breath, Buu tried to struggle free of the wolfdog’s grip. He had only just avoided whatever fate the general had planned for him; he had no interest in being executed by soldiers for the murder of their superior. Worse, they might give this animal whatever command it had to do the killing for them. If Buu had to die, he much preferred the idea of a clean blow with a blade to being shaken and ripped by those glossy teeth.
The wolfdog decided to let him sit up, using the opportunity to give the other side of Buu a thorough sniffing too. Buu did his best to ignore the beast, hoping that if it hadn’t attacked him yet, it wasn’t planning on doing it at all.
Squatting by the general’s head, he took two fistfuls of the corpse’s uniform and hauled. He budged the body by a foot or two before exhaustion rushed back into him from wherever it had gone. Grip faltering, Buu slipped, landing heavily in the grass, face growing hot with anger and shame.
Buu glared at the body of the general. This was his fault. Buu had just been minding his own business until this man brought his troops to Red Birch. Buu would have been taken to be with the other villagers if this man hadn’t stopped his escort. He would be cozy in the sawmill basement if the general hadn’t decided to… do whatever he had been going to do.
Eyes growing heavy as his bruises reasserted themselves, Buu watched the torch bob closer and wished that the stupid body would just get up and hide itself. He giggled at the image, the edge of desperate hysteria bubbling out of him. He had just enough time to wonder if madness was a symptom of something before the corpse moved.
It trembled, spasmed, then brought its arms together under its chest, pushing itself onto its hands and knees. With jerky movements that seemed to ignore an entire lifetime of practice, the deceased general hobbled, hopped, shuffled, and dragged himself to the tree line. A few steps in, the body toppled itself unceremoniously into a bush, its boots sticking up above the leaves.
The wolfdog stared at the departing departed, then back at Buu, brow bunched with confusion. The animal’s nose twitched as it sampled the air where t he general had stood, daintily at first with each breath growing in intensity. It followed its nose back to Buu, once again prodding him ungently as it smelled every inch of him, whining all the while. Buu blinked dumbly after the general, ignoring the dog as the soldiers came upon him.
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