A small hunt

As I leave the gathering of "small folk" and head out into the forest we were surrounded by I can't help but think about my current situation and how life is going to go from here.

I was still the "me" from earth but at the same time, I was also a battle brother serving the emperor in his crusade against the demons of the warp and all other xeno blight…and a lone wolf of the spacewolves

Which is weird again because when I think of the emperor now, it's not worship I feel…..respect maybe?, I'm not sure but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't rip anyone who badmouthed the emperor in half now, before that would have be seen as heresy but now it just seems normal to me.

Still got a mild case of xenophobia though, not bad enough to want to purge this world of any non human sentient species….but I don't think I should be near any children of the forest any time soon…even thinking about them makes me want to march north beyond the wall and stomp them into herbal paste, so yeah going to need to deal with that probably unneeded aggression eventually.

I was so caught up in the moment before I got here and wanted to leave that I didn't think about how I'd changed a bit from my "battle experience"…..to be honest I'd rather just head north and live amongst the wildlings free and unburdened by all the petty noble politics and bullshit that's going to follow in the coming years..

But I've committed to this so I might as well make the most out of it and build a home for myself and the people who follow me, with what I know I should be able to make myself and lands fairly wealthy without much trouble..

But if that bitch Catelyn Stark tries to whisper into her husbands ear about I'm getting to wealthy or powerful, I'll have to sort her right out…

Don't get me wrong I like Ned stark well enough…..not enough to grovel in servitude, as that just isn't in me, but enough to listen to suggestions if they are his own and not his manipulative wife trying to keep her precious wolf pups as leaders of the north.

I honestly couldn't give a fuck about who rules the north, or who sits on that metal monstrosity they call a throne in the south as long as they leave me alone.

But I'm also not naive enough to think I won't be involved a tad in everything considering how things are going to play out, not to mention wildling and ironborn raids that are sure to happen, which doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would…

Im not really looking to change cannon, not due to it being scary to not know what's going to happen, but more of the fact I really don't care anymore how things play out, but that could change in the future in my interactions with people, even though "I" fought a war with those people I don't really have any attachment…..so we'll see how things play out…

Hmmmm, isn't there an iron born rebellion in a few years? I'll be called in to help with that I suppose, hopefully I can set up my land my lands well enough by then.

While absentmindedly figuring out how to move forward I seem to have found my "prey"…. There it is….a decent sized buck just grazing without a care in the world.

I do a quick pat down of my body to checks for weapons and find a large knife attached to my hip and that's it….where are my valerian steel axes?

Oh right, the inventory… almost forgot about that….

I don't bother to take them out due to not actually needing them and just unsheathed my knife at my waste...I call it a knife but it would more or less be a sword to anyone else..

Stalking from downwind of my prey with silent footfalls I make it 10 yards distance from the buck before it's ear twitches in agitation and tries to look up in a sudden urgency.

But before it could even gets a fraction of the way I'm already on top of it with my knife in it's skull, an instant death with no pain, it couldn't even muster a whine before it's death

I pull my knife out and wipe both sides of the blade on the now dead buck to clean the blood off my blade and place my hand on the buck as it disappeared into my inventory, I'll have to take it out before I get back to the group so they can bleed and butcher it properly, not that I didn't know how but I'm going to be hunting a little more before I head back to camp….I've still got some time and I can smell a boar roughly 2 kilometres west….

But just as I was bout to move out I suddenly smelled something else, something familiar…..but different, and mixed in with that scent was blood…..a good amount of blood…

So without much thought I moved toward this interesting smell and before I found out what it was… it was a rather large wolf… pure black….. clearly female and laying in a small puddle of its own blood with clear claw marks down its side, from a rather large bear if I had to make a guess.

It's breathing shallow and laboured as she slowly turns her head to look me in the eye and I can see it, acceptance at her death but also regret for something…. I can probably guess, I can smell them hiding behind that bush 30 yards south

*YIP YIP*

Two small pups burst out from their hiding spots to confront me and keep me away from their dying mother, one wolf pure black just like his mother and the other a whitish grey with red eyes…..they couldn't be more than a month old.

But as the pups were "valiantly" standing between their mother and I, the dying mother in question doesn't even flinch and keeps her eyes on me with a heated focus for a few seconds before she takes a quick look back at her pups and then back to me and let's out a small pained huff…

It's pretty obvious she wants me to take them in, they wouldn't last more than a few days out here alone at their age, it was an easy choice for me, a pair of hunting wolves could be fun to raise….

"Don't worry little lady, I'll take care of ya pups, just move along to whatever awaits you next…..and ill see these two raised and fed"

She just huffs again one last time while still looking me in the eyes before the light in her gaze flickers out and suddenly she's gone..

The pups seemed to notice it too as they turned out and ran to their dead mother, moving toward her with pitiful whines as the nosed her slowly bleeding corpse….

I gave them a minute to grieve for what they lost but not long after I made my way over and picked both of them up, each struggling and biting my fingers as I did..

"Settle now pups….she's gone and she's not coming back, but I'll do as I promised and raise you two as my own…there will be time for grief later…..for now let me store he corpse and be on our way….I have another beast to hunt before we head back to camp…"

The twos struggles died down a little as they heard my deep timbre voice rattle through their little bodies….I had rather large pockets on the inside of my cloak…so I tucked them in and knelt down to store the mothers corpse into my inventory before I was back on my way to hunt that boar….

I'll head back afterwards and get these two something to eat and see how everyone back at camp is doing….only a few more days before I get to my new land where I can begin to rebuild my life….