One Day before the massacre of the Village on Stilts

The Great Wolf lay wounded in the sea recalling memories as the waves crashed over him. Memories involving a small room (small for the wolf, who stood thrice as tall as a man).

Humans in lab coats watched in from behind glass, where they pushed buttons that made gas enter the room with a hiss. Other small humans locked his paws to a massive section of floor designed for just such a thing. They locked his neck to a chain that retracted to the middle and they did tests with needles and fluids.

Some of the fluids burned, and others left him literally frozen in fright with ice around the entry of the needle, but all too often, they felt like hundreds of tiny hugs. That alone was enough to seduce any human, but Buddy's instincts knew better than to trust that feeling. That and he had been given too many of the burning ones to appreciate the addictive qualities of Elysium.

There is a peculiarity in the application of Elysium to an unwilling patient. In a willing subject, or even a subject that becomes willing through the addiction, lines of text written in black ink forms around the subject. A spidery flow letters that connect like cursive and offer no meaningful translation, no matter how many scientists and learned individuals try.

This text is not as simple as a tattoo, though. It emerges from one particular part of the body, often the heart or the head, but even from as inconsequential a place as the foot. Then, each individual thread of text, for each absorbed dosage, wraps around the subject and hovers over them. Like a tattoo on the subject's aura.

Subject 4652 (a.k.a. the wolf) had no such blemishes. Not a single time was the wolf willing to accept a needle, and it most certainly saved his life. Most experiments only survived three- five lines of text. Rare breeds survived seven or eight without 'other side effects'. Only the red-eyed scientist had ten. All ten circling in and out of his eyes. So small they couldn't be seen, but the wolf could see them.

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That night, they gave him a special concoction, one that the tiny humans with the clean white coats would come to regret. As the clear fluid filled 4652's veins, he began to feel... nothing. Nothing inside at all, but there was a feeling outside of him. A feeling where the men were, a feeling beyond where they stood. 4652 thought that it must be nice outside of that cage. The ground had to be different than the cage floor he slept on.

Soon, The Wolf's thoughts encompassed only that point in space where freedom began. He felt it as if it were himself, and then something miraculous happened.

He was outside of the room.

In a white walled hallway with common numbers above all of the doors. It could have meant anything to a simple creature. The corridor started another hallway at one end, but the other ended in an iron bared wooden portcullis tightly shut in chains.

Two white coated humans were still locked in his room with the giant chained collar crashing to the floor, but one tiny fellow was outside with 4652. He screamed bloody murder and took off down the hall to escape the wrath of the large beast. Across from 4652's door, a somewhat human face, but with one spiraled ram horn, gazed out of one of the numbered rooms in awe. The Wolf raked his paw over the door's lock, and it clattered against the floor. The door swung open wide.

The unlikely duo continued down the hall, unlocking every door along the way. Soon, a veritable army of man-made monsters rushed down the hallway. Freedom was inevitable, for what insignificant human would dare to face them?

Then, a team of armored humans rounded the corner carrying a wall of steel with which they blocked the hallway. Levers were turned on humanities side and wall expanded from sleek, oiled slots. It crashed ito the hallway's actual walls and sealed itself in place with a hiss. A second team placed another metal wall behind the first, and then the alarms began ringing. The Wolf slammed into the wall with the weight of an elephant, but the barricade didn't budge an inch. All hope was ripped away in an instant.

One of the experiments, an elongated human of easily twelve feet tall and features that seemed to have been stretched out to the point of decay, pointed a long arm down the other side of the hallway. Towards the ominous door covered in chains.

The pale-blue skinned human with hooves and a single horn was already rushing the massive door along with a beast made entirely of tendons as small and tight as filaments. At times it stood on four legs, but the lack of real muscle and bone gave its movements an erratic feel, like a hesitant contortionist. It stopped in place long enough to see the rhinoceros form that had once been the creatures only shape. Then, it was once again a spiraling mass of rubber-flesh barreling down the hallway, picking up speed and slamming into the out of place door. Splinters flew, chains went taunt, and the iron bar bowed inward. It cracked, and two hunks of metal slammed into the floor.

A smaller wolf came sprinting out of a room the half-faun had opened. It must've been one of 4652's brothers, but sniffing out a scent was impossible since the fur of the smaller wolf was enwreathed in hot blue flames. Even though the wolf lacked 4652's size, it slammed into the door, tearing itself apart in a fiery explosion, only to reform its animal shape and try again.

The humans had replanted their walls closer and were sliding nasty smelling canisters under the metal. Gas filled what little space the monsters had as they bashed their way into the mystery room. Steel snapped, wood splintered, and at long last, they broke through.

A somewhat thin man with an air of authority stepped to the back of the humans' shield. He sported a well-polished brown leather suit-vest strapped with vials of various color, a headset made from a collection of brass and lead monocles. The Man watched them enter with a smirk under two fiercely glowing red irises.

The humans spoke, but the animal only understood the callous disregard in the leaders voice, "Now seal the door back up."

"Shouldn't we go after them?"

"Never question me, grunt. If they survive, then they'll wish for their cages back, and we will welcome them with loving arms."

The monsters moved carefully down the stairs decrepit with char and rust. The staircase was lit with a red glow from a massive fire somewhere beneath. A landscape of broken rocks spread so wide that it almost didn't seem walled in. It was a cavern as long as the wall above it, as though they had stepped into the basement. At one end, the ocean was leaking in through pipes and cracks. The result was rivers alongside streams of lava. At the other end was a diabolical machine absorbing the lava, water, and steam from the strange tunnel.

The cylindrical machine shot into the floors above and bellow for miles out of sight in either direction. This level of the menacing device was in total disarray. The ends of tubes dipped in the streams of various fluid were frayed from the claws of large beasts trying to escape being sucked up and added to the fuel. The glass was stained nearly opaque from countless years of steam build-up. The vents that should have countered this had been clogged with rust, and the copper holding everything together was stained with blueish-green verdigris.

As they all watched, the machine began working overtime to gather energy through the tubes. The vents capable of shutting around the rust did so and everything inside of the glass lit up with a dangerous glow before being sent out of the top. The weapon shook the rocks loose from the walls as it fired some menacing energy into a sky they had never seen.

They made camp in a cave, all except Buddy could fit. Even a large hog with the face of a man and the tall slender one who had led them here could camp in the cave with a little bit of squeezing. They must have figured Buddy was big and strong and could last the night.

And he could,

and he understood,

but it was lonely all the same.

The little man with one horn came to the edge of the cave to watch the geysers of lava scrape the ceiling of the cracked land. Giant salamanders floated in both streams of fluid down below. Occasionally, they hopped out to walk further upstream and avoid getting eaten up by the machine; occasionally, they didn't and suffered the consequences of the tubes.

They exploded into brilliant bursts of fire and ice that swirled up inside of the glass, mingling with the steam.

"You saved us, friend wolf. I wish we could have made it outside, but this is better than a prison cell.

"I think that man, the one with the eyes, thought we would struggle down here, but the lanky fellow thinks we can eat on the giant salamanders. There are a lot of them, but this isn't freedom, not really. It is more free, though, and if that bastard thinks we'll abandon that, then he's in for another thing. Why is he so cocky though? Is there something else down here, maybe?

"Nevermind, of course you can't understand me. I miss my home in the woods of Valoria. You know we were in hiding there to, but at least we had each other. You would have liked it. It was the most wonderful place and the queen took care of us. She was as kind as can be and fiercely protective. You would've liked her."

The wolf only understood a smidge of his words, but something in his voice made him homesick. His thoughts drifted to a cave above ground where he had once called home as a young pup. Of a mother and siblings, a father that sat at the mouth of the cave like he did now. 4652 closed his eyes, and when he opened them, he was outside, near a cave in the woods. The same cave that he had spent his first year of life in, except now the hole was too small for him, and the Southern Wall he had just escaped cast its long shadow over the den.

Men in black and grey sets of armor and glass in the front of their helmets stopped dead in their tracks as they walked the perimeter of the wall. They were still very far away, but Buddy knew that didn't matter to humans with their boom-sticks and other devises. As if to remind him, two darts stuck in the ground at his feet.

Powerful legs swiftly delivered the wolf from danger, but the alarm already sounded all across Valoria. The lumbering wall, the symbol of his captivity, never fully shrank into a memory on the horizon, but it became a distant thought unless he turned around.

Taskforce jeeps followed across a disheveled castle corridor with mechanical determination. Pillars stood in various states of disarray, some having fallen over completely. Others still stood tall and proud, holding up what little roof was left above. They chased him across an overgrown corridor lacking all life save for the humans in gas masks and suits peering at him from the side rooms, distracted from their studies of ruin.

Trees and vines either held the place together, or tore it apart, 4652 wasn't sure. The wolf wasn't sure of anything, having led a full life in captivity.

The Great Wolf ran through the hall and flew across the courtyard. A red banner of the Valorian sword fell to his wind. The stonework of Valoria was second only to the dwarves and even they marvel at the way that stone was so smooth it turned grey into silver. Buddy leapt at a crack in the pillars of the circular room. The humans and their noise faded away as the woods consumed him.

Extravagant birds of silver colored feathers chirped and cawed out to their mates. A two-headed fox disappeared into the bushes at the passing of the Great White Wolf. Tiny things made shrill and clicking noises in places the eyes can't see. The Wolf stopped by a river of clear water. For a moment, he considered that maybe he wasn't far enough from the humans' wall filled with cages, but then he lapped a tongue at the delightful crystal water. One lick became two, and three became a gracious snout submerged deep in a pleasure 4652 had never even dreamed of before.

Glowing fish shaped like crystals with spikey fins swam and jumped from the water with energetic motion that left the newcomer in awe. Freshwater manta rays hopped around the rocky bottom with large fan-like fins. A small armored creature with claws for hands stared buddy down from the side of the water. Buddy leaned closer for a better sniff, but it snapped at his nose!

'Such bravery!' he thought.

From across the river, something watched them, something with an almost human smell. Whatever it was giggled at the wolf and crab.

Chatter came from the trees behind, a militant and cautious string of words that The Wolf couldn't understand past the tone. That tone made two things very clear; one, they were scared of the woods, and two, they were looking for him.

The watcher across the way motioned for The Wolf with a spindly hand. Friend or not, his captors lay in the other direction. So Buddy leapt across the river, hind legs splashing water as he went. It was difficult to maneuver the woods at first, and they only grew thicker further in. Had the wolf not been following the giggling stranger, he would have never made it.

It wasn't human like he'd originally thought. It only looked human, but had deep green eyes, solid aside from flecks of grey. Her wings were thin like that of a cicada, and half of her small form was still covered in a flaking shell of winter skin. Buddy saw through the deceptively human smell and found it was much more natural and pleasant. The fairy motions for him to keep following. Before he could contemplate, humans came rushing up behind.