My Werepanther System: Starting with Nine Lives
Chapter 74 STAIN

Chapter 74: 74 STAIN

Victor ventured into the dark frozen forest with nothing but his own body. Not even clothes. The cold steady snowfall blanketed his nakedness, melting into water droplets with the steady forced pulse of electricity. It was all he could do to stay warm.

And ready.

His mind raced.

"I have a limit. Like short circuiting— and it happens when I absorb too much electricity or overuse my abilities. I don’t know my limits, but storm clouds.... All it takes is one. And for the next hour plus afterwards I’m toast. I can barely sense them." Victor looked around.

If he was new to Fauve living, he wouldn’t know them.

Them.

They stuck to the shadows. Faceless and soundless like distant horrifying concepts with eyes that reflected the crystal-frost snowfall.

Some had stripes— most did, but due to genetic splicing and enhancement, some looked.... different.

They stilled and bowed their heads, letting the great beasts scent and source them as something other than the enemy.

It didn’t take long as a monstrous roar shook the forest in the distance and left them sprinting north.

Krysta shivered in her crystal form and pushed onward. Victor followed.

As they walked, the forest became more lined with gore.

Goblinoid corpses hung from trees, partially eaten and entirely maimed. They must’ve rode in on giga-rats and Lion-possums because their corpses also hung from objects in the dark. Their drip-drop of blood echoed through the silence, growing louder as more of the silent destroyers killed and added to the collage of death.

It was disgusting.

It was genius in a truly disturbing sort of way. A way Victor didn’t think about until recently.

One ran past the path they walked on.

A tiger.

The family animal. A massive black furred beast with silver stripes and burning orange eyes. It’s maw was a mask of blood. A mask of dripping rage— thirsting for the vengeance of its slaughtered and stolen cubs.

As it dove into the thick frosted greenery in the distance, a Goblinoid hunter was barely able to let out an exhale before its windpipe was turned to giblets.

The beast of vengeance.

One of the few animals other than humans that had a concept and motivation centered around revenge. They could and would track their opposer for miles. They’d wait for hours. They’d learn their routes and preferences and use them in their hunting strategy.

Victor’s gene-father always told him he needed that sort of attention to detail and fierce intensity to wield the tiger flame.

But he saw it for what it was now.

The tiger was a slave to its purpose and instincts. A living game— unknowing of the player that controlled its movements.

Sure, the tiger was doing no wrong. It was saving and avenging itself and it’s cubs. It’s home. From the perceived threat of goblins and their disease filled mounts.

But who brought the goblins?

The issue wouldn’t exist if they weren’t captured, stolen, spliced and stuck with chemicals to hunt and kill an enemy they’d never seen before.

It was a metaphor.

And as victor looked into the eye a tiger at the end of the trail, all he saw was himself.

He’d never been angrier.

They pushed on. His aura of lightning became more thunderous— as did his mind, as he led Krysta into the heart of the hunting strategy.

Vincent believed it was man’s duty to handle and manipulate biology to their— and the worlds, benefit. That led him to trying to make tigers better— a sort of hobby. He said the streak— tigers sometimes hunted in, was an aspect of the past.

In making them large numbered pack-hunters, not only had he made tigers smarter and more successful as hunters, he’d made his own breed.

They were called Fauvean Tigers.

He found them by the flow of their bio electrical pulse. The same way he sensed everything. They ran more intensely, making the beasts stand out in his minds eye.

Krysta bumped into his back after another mile of walking due to his sudden stop. She was confused until a Gnoll stumbled out of the forestry and onto their path.

The beast was eight feet tall with the mutated head of a husky and the body of a fatless giant made of pure muscle. It’s stone and leather armor was trashed. Exhaustion gripped the creature ten times over.

It hesitated as it saw them.

Before they could engage, a flash of black burst from the frosted woodland and slammed into the Gnoll.

The doggish armored monster was suddenly sprawled out under a Fauvean tiger. Black fur. No visible stripes ran along its grotesquely muscled body. A body that completely abandoned any structural integrity for running. It was built more like a gorilla or baboon with its thick shorter back legs and massive longer fore-limbs that held the Gnoll down as it ran its tusked fangs into its chest and tore through three ribs.

The males were the ambush predator. Hulking. Tusked. Thicker skinned and boned brawlers.

But they were nothing compared to the females.

The Gnoll snarled and pushed the brute off as blood gushed from its midsection. It got up— high off its own adrenaline and ran.

The tiger stood up and roared. In seconds, another three tigers appeared. They were very different. Taller and slimmer—built more like cheetahs with broader shoulders and longer heads. They surrounded the male tiger, licking and scenting the blood and gore stuck to his tusks. They were purring. Loving eachother in the midst of a mauling.

The blood scenting continued.

As the females did, the manes of fur along their necks raised up into jagged spikes of hair. Their eyes went full red. Their once floppy—bloodhound like ears, sharpened and went flat against their heads. Their lips peeled back as their jaws extended with the mutated addition of another joint placed above their molars.

In seconds they transformed into frenzied razor backed killers.

They took off in a blur and ran down the Gnoll with the scent of its blood fresh in their minds.

It didn’t take long at all. It’s what they were built for. They fed off of eachother. The males initiated and broke down the prey. The females ran it down in its weakened state as they grew stronger. Better yet, the females had an enzyme in their saliva that when injected into the flesh of their prey, it became a sort of natural steroid that the males could process due to the presence of specific germs and fluids in their digestive tract.

They were a nightmare of biological manipulation and team based effectiveness.

Victor cringed as he listened to them tear apart the Gnoll with the help of two males.

"Those creatures used to give me nightmares as a child." Krysta said.

"Yea."

Seconds later and the male appeared, dragging one half of the Gnoll through the forest.

It approached Victor and dropped the corpse at his feet.

The females came in after, dragging the other half to drop at the feet of the individual standing ahead of them.

He was of average height and build. He wore a white cloak comprised of tech-leathers and animal furs. Underneath he wore a simple Kevlar vest and not much else. A sword was sheathed at his hip and in his right hand, he held a bow.

A mask of pure white glass covered his face. With his free-hand, he removed it, revealing the man they knew it was.

Krysta stood at attention.

Victor did the same, begrudgingly.

"My family, welcome to the wild. The first battlefield." Vincent Fauve said to them.

He didn’t tell them to stand at-ease. He soaked in his dominance. He observed Victor in his nakedness like one of his tiger lab experiments.

His long hair blew in the wind. Platinum blonde to the point of being silver. It revealed more of the scars on his white-bearded face that told Victor he’d been in his fake forest for a deployments length.

Months.

He did that often.

As Vincent studied Victor, he looked down at the half carcass at his feet and his jaw clenched.

"Victor, you’ve grown half as much as is required of you. My kin should be fully subservient to their new leader. Yet they refuse to release my command. Fully, at least." Vincent said.

"I’m sorry I failed you." Victor replied.

"We do not fail." Was all Vincent said before waving off their stances.

They relaxed.

"The world is changed." Vincent went on. "You have changed with it, Victor."

"How is Wayne?" Victor asked. Not really caring about the world.

"We do not fail." Vincent said again, answering Victor’s question passively.

Victor’s jaw clenched in irritation as Vincent approached him with his frenzied tiger mutated sat his flank. As they padded through the snow, their fur turned white.

He stopped right in front of Victor. So close that Victor could smell the wild on him. The raw meat on his breath.

"What has become of the Tiger-Flame?" He whispered.

Victor opened his mouth and was immediately sent flying backward with a front kick to the chest executed so quickly he didn’t even see it happen.

He was left in a daze due to smacking his head against Krysta’s face of crystal. But, he came to his senses quick.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t quick enough.

Vincent and his tiger mutants were back in the shadows.

"Don’t anger me, child!" Vincent spat as Victor got to his feet with Krysta.

"How do you keep falling for this?" Krysta mumbled.

Before Victor could respond, Vincent continued.

"Throughout history, the greatest men had their greatest moment not during spoken word but in the midst of performed action. Achilles avenging Patroclus, Christopher Columbus’s great mistake in the fourteen hundreds, Cleopatras alliance with Caesar! You stall humanities progress choosing to just speak! Do not tell me what’s happened to you, Victor! YOUR BROTHER IS DEAD! Fragments of his memories and experience will be absorbed and amalgamated into you. There is a Drift-god that has a taste for you. Don’t tell me how the world has changed— show me how you’ll change it again!"

Without a word, thunderclouds began to form in the forest dungeon.