NOVEL WEB Book 1 – Lesson 14: “How to train your Whale-Puppy.”
Snowball bounced in place, giving that odd clicking bark Alpha learned to translate as “hurry up!” Her floppy tongue hung out the side of her mouth as she vibrated with excitement, staring up at the object clutched in Alpha’s hand. Alpha sat perfectly still, letting the tension build, until he tossed the object into the distance with a blur of motion.
The soggy red object flew through the sky at speeds that put professional fastballs to shame. Snowball’s figure blurred as a black and white streak raced after it, crossing nearly 100 meters in the blink of an eye. With a mighty leap, the not-so-tiny whale-puppy snatched the object out of midair and landed gracefully on all four draconian paws.
Alpha made clapping sounds as the triumphant victor returned with her prize. Snowball held her head high as she trotted back; even with dark red blood drizzling down her muzzle from the large, still-warm penguin heart in her mouth, Alpha thought she looked adorable. She dropped it at his feet and barked, wagging her furry fluke with enough force to ripple the surrounding grass.
Alpha patted her head but denied her.
“Nope, no more. It’s going to get cold… and dirty.”
Snowball wilted, her head drooping, as she whined a long, drawn-out whistle. A few scritches fixed that, and she soon dug into the impressive organ with renewed vigor, her fluke wagging once more. In short order, the organ was devoured, and the whale-puppy bounded over to another nearby body for seconds.
Alpha watched fondly for a moment before turning back to his work, scanning the wall of the sinkhole they occupied for various mineral deposits.
He originally found the puppy hiding in a sinkhole just like this, surrounded by the corpses of a few large, bird-like creatures that vaguely resembled penguins. If penguins were dog-sized, with rocky plates along their bellies and a beak filled with needle-like teeth. Ok, so the teeth thing was already true for terran penguins, but this was soooo much worse.
The young puppy was half starved, bleeding out from various injuries, and was understandably terrified when the unknown gargantuan metal creature appeared from the surrounding grass. She bared a mouth full of tiger-like teeth in a threat display, but struggled to stand on shaking legs and collapsed shortly after. Alpha questioned momentarily if he should put the creature out of its misery but ultimately decided against it. Of the lifeforms he’d encountered so far on or near this planet, two showed remarkable intelligence, and the chicken, at least, was obviously sapient.
A quick nanite bath, some painkillers and an injection of a medical solution saw her much more amicable to Alpha’s presence.
Now, almost three days later, she was active and playful. Almost fully healed, too. Some of that could be attributed to the medical nanites Alpha administered, but something told Alpha her species were just naturally fast healers to begin with. They almost had to be, given how dangerous this place seemed.
The AI soon found he enjoyed the hyperactive puppies’ presence as well. He’d always liked kids; children were simple to read and easy to get along with if you treated them right. When you let a kid be a kid, you could always trust that they would tell you exactly how they felt about you. Unlike the vast majority of adults he knew.
Of course, there were places where kids couldn’t be kids, even in the Federation. Alpha made it a special point to find those places and… help… the issue, where and when he could. Often that involved a lot of screaming and people in suits yelling at him. But the first time he’d gotten a letter from an 8-year-old Vidaasi girl thanking him, it had made it worth all the trouble.
Snowball hadn’t shown signs of true sapience yet. Though she seemed very intelligent. It was unclear whether her apparent young age was a factor; only time would tell. Until he knew for certain Alpha was treating her mostly as a pet. Or at least as a very hyperactive toddler, if just as bloodthirsty.
The difficulty of discerning sapience at a glance was a major factor in the Federation’s policy of not shooting everything on sight. The Fli’ke were a good example of this. It was only during the Second Federation that 1 in 25 Felis catus was discovered to be, in fact, a species of sapient, feline-like aliens. Ones who had been secretly monitoring and influencing Old Earth (and several other planets) for literal millennia. They were only exposed when Felis catus, a non-sapient species engineered to be a physical match to Fli’ke (allowing them to hide in plain sight), was found across multiple, unconnected planets.
Ironically, the Fli’ke were instrumental in the defeat of the galactic threat known as the Hunters. The Fli’ke infiltrated Hunter strongholds, acting as spies behind enemy lines, and fed the Second Federation valuable intelligence that saved billions of lives. Even those genocidal psychopaths couldn’t resist the charm of the modern house cat.
He always wanted a pet, but General Haldorðr never let him, not after the “incident.”
Ok, the mysterious old woman had told him not to get the thing wet, but in Alpha’s defense, it kept lighting itself on fire!
Snowball, in contrast, was much easier to handle. She spent most of the first day in her carrier but could move on her own by day two. By day three, she was running around like she’d never been hurt at all. She even showed off the same weird power over the earth as the gopher, dipping in and out of the ground like water. Alpha half expected the cute little thing to vanish after that. She was a wild animal, after all… he thought.
But Snowball seemed to have grown fond of him, too. She stuck close to him as he traveled from sinkhole to sinkhole, sometimes disappearing for hours but always popping back up with some strange new object or plant.
It was cute, and he stored all her presents in her old carrier to look at later.
Then, everything changed when the penguins attacked.
Snowball had gone out to explore earlier in the day and returned worse for wear. Alpha fussed over her at first, but her injuries were nowhere as severe as when he first found her, just a few cuts and bite marks. She would be fine in a few hours.
What wasn’t fine were the half dozen dog-sized bird creatures that came rocketing out of the sinkhole’s walls after her. Alpha physically deflected two of the creatures away from the panting Snowball with one of his legs, then mowed them and another down with a turret. The remaining three had latched onto Alpha, biting his armor and back with little effect. A quick shift in his adaptive nano-armor put small spikes through their mouths and out the back of their skulls, ending that non-threat.
Snowball seemed impressed with Alpha’s quick dispatching of her pursuers, too. Alpha decided that’s what the cheerful click-barking meant, at least, as she hopped in circles around one of his limbs. A quick study of the enemy revealed them to be exactly what they appeared. Some kind of penguin-adjacent avian creature, blown up to half the size of Snowball and packed with dense muscles. Snowball enjoyed that last fact as she devoured two of the corpse before Alpha finished his examination.
The largest penguin he looked at even had a strange quartz-diamond composite crystal growing in its heart. Why or how it hadn’t killed the creature, he didn’t know. Snowball insisted he give it to her, though, like a puppy demanding a treat. Alpha hesitated, but who was he to question alien biology? He tossed it to her, and the whale-puppy snatched it out of the air, happily crunching like it was a piece of candy.
Thus started their bloody games of “fetch.” Alpha found it adorable how excited she got when she found another of those strange crystals in a heart. Not that they were in short supply; ever since the first attack, the penguins hounded them every few hours. Snowball hadn’t left Alpha’s side the entire time, watching the various pitfalls’ walls. She would even make a sporadic, warbling, chirping sound he’d not heard her make before.
She seemed capable of detecting the creatures through solid rock, warning him when any were nearby. The animals here all seemed able to move through the earth freely. Echolocation might have been the natural solution for navigating in such an environment. It might explain why the gopher had such a violent reaction to the transport drone. Alpha filed that tidbit of information away for later investigation.
The creatures weren’t very dangerous, to him at least, but the attacks were becoming more frequent, with larger numbers the further they traveled. Snowball put up a brave front, but Alpha could recognize the signs of her nervousness. The light steps meant to reduce her noise, her eyes scanning the walls for danger, and even how she refused to move more than a few feet away from the “adult” (HA!). If it got any worse, he would have to try his luck in a different direction. No point in wandering into a nest of the things if he didn’t need to.
As he thought about his options, Snowball suddenly perked up, turning to face something unseen in the distance.
The cute, sweet puppy morphed into a growling, rage-filled beast in an instant. Her lips were pulled back, putting those vicious teeth on full display as the short black and white fur on her back stood on end. Her eyes changed from cute round orbs to the dilated pinpoints of a predator ready to pounce. Before Alpha could stop her, Snowball shot off in that direction, taking a few leaping bounds before diving into the earth and vanishing.
Alpha stopped and stared after her, something in his processors not sitting well with him. He’d never seen her act like that before. That hadn’t been a simple response to danger or enemies. No, there was more, something deeper, a rage unfitting of such a young child.
He hesitated for a moment and turned in her direction, speeding off after the small whale-puppy.
Good thing he was a responsible pet owner and had her chipped!
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Yutu’s breath came in ragged gasps. How long had they been running?
Hours?
Days?
He no longer remembered. He no longer cared if he was honest.
They had started the hunt strong, with 30 young men and women ready to prove themselves to their village and the prairies. They’d lost five in the initial ambush and two more during the push to escape. In the sequential hours, they’d been picked off, one by one. Sometimes one of the Grassbreakers would slip through the dwindling Guardian’s protection and grab someone. Other times, a stone needle would fly out of the grass and stab into someone’s calf, causing them to stumble.
Once, a metal flipper had cut one of the fleeing carts in two right from under it. The group on board was swarmed before anyone had the mind to help. More often than not, though, people simply vanished, either unable to keep up or wandering away from the group, never to be seen again.
Now? Now they were only nine.
Yutu and Gan were the only trappers left, the rest having fallen, swallowed by the grass, or killed in defense of the group. One man had even stopped shortly after their escape; some feared he’d just given up, but the massive explosion that rocked the prairies behind them several minutes later told a different story.
The man’s sacrifice bought some breathing room, but it wasn’t enough. Their pursuers were relentless.
The Guardians fell one by one after that until only Ulagan remained. Without their protection, the carts carrying the herbalists, or those too injured to run, were targeted next.
This differed from how Grassbreakers normally hunted. They were ambush predators. Their modus was to lie in wait, then strike as a group, taking out the target quickly and efficiently; they didn’t chase down their prey, picking them off like this. There was something darker going on here, something… unnatural. Worse than that, they were playing with them. He’d heard of Beast Lords and the destruction they could wreak before.
Every good story has at least one that the hero must face, saving the town, damsel, or sect.
But they were forces of nature given physical form. More often than not, they were depicted as noble creatures of power and respect. The hero would overcome the Beast Lord by earning its respect or companionship, as often as besting it in combat.
This… thing… that followed them?… Yutu could only feel malice and hatred from it; Kusanagi was like a dark storm cloud hanging over them, but whose lightning would never fall. It wanted to watch them run; it wanted to smell their fear and taste their despair.
What would happen if they actually got back to the village? Could they even hope to fight it off? Stories of Kusanagi were told to frighten children into behaving. The Beast Lord had spread so much chaos and destruction it had taken the intervention of the Akh’lut, the protectors and true owners of the Radiant Sea, to end the threat.
What chance did a small village of low-level cultivators have?
Thinking of the home he’d spent all his life in, Yutu’s heart ached. Yutu remembered his mother, the sweetest woman in the village, who always tried to make everyone feel a little happier. He thought of his father, who supported his every choice, even if he was disappointed his son didn’t have talent as a Guardian. He thought of the kindly older couple who always parked their cart near his family and who had been the ones to teach him the art of arrays. Dozens of faces flashed through his memory, and tears welled in his eyes.
They couldn’t lead this thing back home…
Had the others realized this too? Were they even headed in the right direction anymore? He doubted they were, if the grim looks on the few remaining faces said anything. It was fitting he was the last to realize.
Yutu took a deep, ragged breath and decided. The young man didn’t bother to stop the tears as he slowed his pace and came to a stop. Only his childhood friend and Oathsister, Zolzaya, noticed, being positioned on the back of the only remaining cart to monitor their rear.
“Yutu!? What are you doing?!”
She cried out in a panic. Another Herbalist had to restrain the young woman to prevent her from jumping from the cart.
Yutu only smiled and waved as they rushed further away. He turned away, not wanting her to see his tears.
A moment passed, and movement at his side tore his eyes away from their closing pursuers; had that stupid girl gotten away somehow?! What was she thinking?!
Instead of Zolzaya, Yutu found the panting, sweating figure of Ganbaatar standing next to him, staring off into the distance. Feeling his eyes, the larger man looked down at him and frowned before asking.
“What? You think I’ll let you be the only one to show off in front of Zaya? Think again, pipsqueak.”
Yutu stared wide-eyed for a second before letting out a curt laugh. A smirk crossed his face as he turned away and responded.
“Oh, you’re on, bricks-for-brains. Just try to keep them off of me. Let’s show them why it was a terrible idea to mess with Slatewalkers.”
Yutu then extracted his Array tools and kneeled down to work; Ganbaatar didn’t bother to respond, only hefted his spear and turned toward the approaching hoard.