It had been a long time since I’d led a hunt. Since we had begun our journey in earnest, I had preoccupied myself with the less interesting parts of the journey, such as teaching the common tongue to the swarm, leading the direction we were meant to go, coordinating the ever more segregated sections of the swarm, and whatever else it was that occupied my daily life.

Suffice to say, I was happy to be simply leading the wolfstags on a hunt.

Different from the keelish, the wolfstags weren’t built to live in the mountains. At least, these Sea Wolfstags. Their large paws and shorter stature forced the pack to clamber awkwardly over tall rocks, step gingerly through thorny thickets, and struggle to stay together in dry washes. Additionally, in the thickets, it was pretty common for their horns, which came forward almost like a helmet, to find some tangle of vines nearly impossible to extricate themselves from. Watching them, a part of me wondered if I could somehow incite evolution within them like I had in most of the swarm thus far, most especially the unborn eggs. Of course, these wolfstags weren’t growing fetuses but nearly adults in their own right, yet I still hoped that prolonged exposure to my [Skills] and magic would allow me to further impel them towards greater heights.

With that in mind, I thrummed out a tune to the feeling of [Innervating Address], and felt the pack perk up behind me. I felt uncomfortable about trying to sing them some sort of song about how they should grow more powerful, so instead I simply hummed reassuringly as I outstripped their pace and led us further ahead. The more passive [Skill] of [Innate Leadership] involuntarily flared within me, and I felt myself better able to understand what the wolfstags were trying to do and communicate, and our hunt began to more smoothly progress.

Before long, my improved vision, under the influence of [Raptor’s Eyes], could pick out the shapes of a sort of mountain goat in the nearly sheer cliffs above us. I grinned, and turned to my furry companions.

“Can you shoot your water?”

…

It was the work of several minutes to fully communicate what I wanted to wolfstags to do, but eventually, they got what I wanted them to do, agreed to do it, and began the task of waiting for me to get into the position necessary for the plan to work. But, before too long, we all were ready, with the wolfstags spread out below and to the sides, in a wide, loose circle surrounding a flock of the goats of about twenty.

I whistled my signal, and immediately all eight of the wolfstags began preparing their magic, balls of water beginning to form between the jutting tips of their horns, just between their eyes. I waited patiently, noting the more aware goats that were watching and waiting to react to the wolfstags’ suspicious behavior, but at that point, it was too late.

In a powerful display of coordination, all eight of the beams of water unleashed at once, striking at the goats on the periphery of the flock. While the strikes weren’t enough to outright slay any of our prey, they were enough to wound and send the entire group into flight.

At the edges, the wolfstags made their presences known, loudly growling and rushing forward, forcing the panicking creatures to greater speed and flight, rushing up and away from the rest of their visible predators, up the nearly sheer cliff… up towards my concealed location.

When the first goat came bleating over the edge onto the slightly flatter ambush point, I lunged forward with one hand and buried my claws in its throat. It had been a long time since I’d used exclusively my hands and mouth in slaughtering my prey, and I didn’t sink into the impassivity of [Combatant’s Bloodlust] for this. Instead, I gloried in the shedding of blood as I effortlessly ripped the throat out of the massive goat.

Now that I was up and close to it, I realized the creatures were much larger than I’d expected. This one stood about 1m at the shoulder, and wasn’t the largest of the flock while still weighing at least 100kg. I didn’t think about it any longer, driving my claws in deeper, hitting the spine as my fingers were completely submerged in the heavily bleeding flesh of the goat’s neck.

Without further thought, I bodily hurled the goat into the next one, just behind it, throwing both down, off of the sheer cliff, and a part of me heard the meaty splat of two bodies on the ground about 50m below as I rushed to the nearest prey. With a snick of my teeth, a 10cm section of throat was missing, and the goat fell to the ground, twitching, as I swallowed the bloody, tender flesh of my prey and continued forward to the next while blood began to run into my eyes and turn my vision crimson.

Behind me I could hear escaping prey, but I didn’t care. Instead, I viciously whipped my tail at one just out of the reach of my hands behind me, lashing it hard enough to send it stumbling into another one of its comrades. I lunged forward, my arms, tail and jaws lashing out with deadly precision. It had been a long time since I’d engaged in a true hunt–all the creatures I had slain of late were strong enough to put up a fight, but these goats were only prey. The horns on their heads were nothing more than ornaments to me, and they instinctively fled only at my scent, much less upon viewing the carnage of this clearing, the bodies, flesh, and blood of their family painting my scales and the ground around me.

With every one of my strikes, another of my prey lay crippled or dead, and as the last of the fleeing herd made their escape, I couldn’t withhold my primal screech of victory. Around me laid strewn the corpses of five goats, and at least three more laid stunned or dying on the unforgiving stone below the cliff. Blood splatters flicked around the light stone, and blood pooled under my feet, and I couldn’t help but be consumed with the thought:

“Yes. This is how it should be.”