Well, with the less than comforting news that he was somehow broken Jacob couldn’t think of anything else to do get back to work. With that in mind, he headed down the road which lead farther out of town and out towards the McFearon’s farm. They had been in their early 20s when the human and his dog eared, wagging tail beastkin bride bought the farm. Mr McFearon had been in his late 40s when his heart gave out, leaving his widow to run the place herself. Now, years later with no family to speak of, and her own age approaching 60 faster than she would admit, the widow McFearon had started putting quests in whenever there was anything she couldn’t handle. She managed the dozen or so cornrows and tended to the chickens, pigs, and cows herself. She even could handle the rabbits she was breeding for food, furs and pets. Unfortunately, she couldn’t handle it when predators broke through her fences to hunt her animals. For that she heads to the guild shops to issue quests. She’s usually ok with the Hunters guild telling her that her quests are [Tracker] level, but this one she wasn’t so sure about. I mean it’s usually just a fox, maybe a family of them. On the rare case, the fox has grown to the dire state. This time however, she had a feeling it was something else. She was never the sort to support the claim beastkins had any animalistic senses, but it still didn’t smell like a fox this time. She was missing 3 half cows, and no she wasn’t referring to 1 and cow and a half cows, 3 cows were split in half (though front, back, left, or right didn’t seem to matter). And what could possibly make those teeth marks anyway? Well, maybe the young man knocking on her door will get lucky and find more than the odd track this time.

  Jacob didn’t know what to expect when he knocked on the farmhouse door, but he could only hope that any woman he ended up with still looked this attractive when she reached the age of the woman before him. He had no interest in robbing the grave of course, but the beauty was undeniable. Allot of people paid good money to replicate the natural silver streaks that blended nicely into the woman’s golden hair and tail. He had never seen that hair color, and that type of hourglass figure flow together some nicely. The denim overalls and yellow tube top, while questionably age appropriate, never the less worked extremely well for her in a subtle sort of way. Still there was no hiding the wrinkles around the brown eyes, the droop to the once clearly perky ears, nor the mouth who spoke up questioningly.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Hi there! A…are y-you Mrs McFearon? I’m here to investigate some disappearing animals”

  “Oh, yes! The little hunter I asked for! Yes, this way please my dear” she added walking past Jacob and leading him around the back of the house. This was where the rabbits and chickens were penned. From the looks of things, they were usually kept in two separate pens, though a look at the broken slabs and planks made it very apparent as to why there were currently rabbits in and around the hen house.

  “When did this attack happen? I mean I know I went to the guild this morning, but how old are the signs?”

  “It happened this morning at around dawn. You must have just missed me. I’ve only been home about an hour after dropping it off. Was getting ready to do some work on the corn stalks.” She answered pointing to the side opposite where they had come.

  “Well, let me look but whatever did this likely ran the other way towards the forest.” Jake said pointing the other direction, “but let me check the area before stirring up anything.”

  “Alright, I’ll be inside when you know anything” the beastkin said heading to another door in the back of the house.

  With the aged distraction disappearing inside with a flick of her tale and a slam, Jacob went over to abandoned rabbit pen. He soon found the clearest track in the mud. Clearly canine, likely a wolf, but something was off about it. For one absurd moment he considered the widow, but beastkins have humanoid feet, not animalistic. It was approximately the size of a smaller Dire Wolf, and anyway there wasn’t a report of a wolf that strong… or many wolves at all recently now he thought about it. Not for a while now.

  With the activation of that one skill, all the tracks in the area were highlighted. Unfortunately, there were hundreds of rabbit tracks of varying sizes all over the place. If for no other reason than to clean up the confusion, Jake continued advancing through the tracking skills.

  At an almost unnoticeable rate, Jacob’s Mana started dropping. As the other tracks vanished, the wolf tracks were brought to sharper focus and the others vanished showing just a trail. They started at the corn cobs, jumped the fence, ran around the pen a few times (killing a few rabbits from the blood splatters here and there), before attempting to jump back and falling through the fence leaving the damage. The beast then disappeared into the woods. Even knowing the beast went the other direction, Jake went to the cornrows first. He just couldn’t figure out where the beast had come from. Nothing else was there, except for some boot tracks matching the widows foot size. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much else he could do, and other traces were surely dissipating in the woods, so with a quick knock on the door, and indication that he was following the trail to the woods, he was off.

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  Jake kept following the path into the woods, where the trail became more hidden, but it seemed to be heading towards some of the hills close by. He could only guess the wolf had a den over there somewhere. He kept going that direction, more following his own intuition than the trail. Still, he kept an eye on it finding a track here, and some grey fur there. Oddly enough, the tracks changed over time. Somehow the weight and track size reduced quickly. If Jacob were to guess, he’d say the wolf went from about 7 feet tall to around 3. What’s more the width between the beast’s shoulders and between his front and rear paws was roughly halved. The paws themselves also shrank drastically. It made no sense at all. If he didn’t know better, he would have sworn the thing he was tracking un-dired, but that was simply impossible. It would be like shoving a butterfly back into its cocoon and changing it back into a caterpillar. De-Evolution simply doesn’t happen.

  A few hundred yards away from the first hill, the signs of the beast were everywhere. It started getting difficult to tell the tracks he was following from the others in the area. About that time, Jake started hearing a rustle. Whatever it was, it kept a consistent distance, and it was trying not to make noise, but it was clearly following him. Although, Jake supposed, it was more stalking than following. He only hoped that it wasn’t stalking the prey that would be its next meal. But if it was the beast he was tracking, Jake wasn’t sure he could win if the element of surprise had been turned against him. Without even noticing, he started getting faster and faster, at about the same rate his pulse was increasing. Before long it started closing the distance. It was obvious to both parties, that both knew the other was there, and it was quickly becoming a matter of who is going to do more than just run first. Just as the trees were starting to thin out, the beast answered that question. The wolf whose nose easily cleared 6 feet charged out the trees and slammed his head into Jacobs back knocking him into the air and to the ground a foot away, where his forehead smacked on a fist sized rock sticking out of the ground.

  As Jake rolled over to face the dire wolf and pushed himself towards the nearest tree behind him, he thought he heard something in his mind. No sound came out, but the voice in his head wasn’t his own.

  

  Jake could only assume the large wolf bearing down on him was the source of the “voice”. Even so, Jake was dazed from the head banging, and between that and the panic all he could do was wave his hands in front of him trying to scare the beast away.

   the wolf said, narrowing his eyes on the boys flailing hands, then raising them to his face with a cocked head and confused look

  “umm… yeah?” Jake whimpered trying and failing to figure out what is going on.

   The wolf replied. Then, before Jake’s eyes, the beast went from Dire Wolf back to a basic silver wolf and sat down apparently getting comfortable.

  “Some sort of Demonic Dog? T-The color isn’t right for a B-*Swallow*Blink Dog or Winter Wolf, but I’m sure there are others I don’t know”

   It got up to leave and turned back towards the trees.

  “WAIT!” shouted a very confused Jacob, his head starting to clear, but this “conversation” making less sense to him by the minute.

  

  “Defeat?” Jake said reaching towards his sword.

   said the wolf turning back to Jake. It then leaned back, sitting on just its back legs like a show dog, placing his left leg down by its side and the right one over its head it added It put its legs back down readying to stand.

  “Y-Yeah” Jake replied barely paying attention.

   said the wolf standing and turning back towards the trees it added and ran off, leaving a thoroughly mind blown Jacob. He still couldn’t believe that was all it took for the second message to appear, though admittedly, it was not exactly the one he expected.