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I had a terrible day's rest. Really, even using the word 'rest' to describe what happened was a bit of a stretch. That human woman was still around, invading my space by lying right next to me and worst yet she had the gall to fall asleep on top of me.

I rubbed my nose into her scalp, rustling and disfiguring the dark gray hair that was pulled back in one and I took a deep breath. Her scent was a mix of all sorts of things, some sort of plant and greasy but most importantly healthy and young. I could tell that her body was rejuvenating itself as it slept but that was it. She was definitely asleep and completely unaware of anything that I was doing.

This had to be some sort of game, some sort of ruse to pull the deer from right under my nose. How could she come to trust_me_so completely that she would think it worthy to try such a thing so soon?

I will tell you what it is though; unnerving. Until now I have yet to meet a human as confident as this one. Her approach and attitude seemed wrapped in an air of dominance and strength. She is willing to aggressively take what she wants, demand attention as well as to show that she was in charge.

I got it, you are tough, a risk taker and stronger at the moment but surely she must know that I am not at my best right now. Either way, it is still hard for me to justify harming her since there is something that she did do that I am definitely grateful for.

The last few seasons of my life... I had spent them in a place that I would rather not return to. She got me out of that place, a place that I could not get out of by myself and honestly I shudder to think what would have become of me if I had stayed any longer.

I remember waking completely submerged in a pool of clear liquid. Panic. Immediately I held my breath and tried to swim as my waking mind focused on deciphering which way was up and down. It became clear that my trashing around was doing nothing. It felt like the water itself just flowed around me with no resistance. The liquid simply seemed to part with equally as much force on my return stroke as my pushing stroke. I was getting nowhere.

The next thing I noticed was that despite trying to hold my breath, I simply couldn't. I felt my chest being pumped full of air by a mechanical sounding process. Every breath that I took felt timed and controlled in a manner that I was not at all comfortable with. With my drugged wits slowly coming back to me I noticed that some contraption was strapped to my face.

The whole device covered my nose and my jaws with some sort of mask over the rest of my face that seemed to be well secured across my neck. I tried to open my jaws but all I felt was the tension of the material locking it in place then I noticed that something was in my throat and in my nostrils. Some sort of circular worm-like thing was fed right down inside of me like some sort of alien parasite.

Even though I could not see for myself what time of day it was, I knew that it was night but yet this white light permeated through the space around me, illuminating it as though it was day. My internal clock could always tell the daily and seasonal cycles apart even without other clues such as a change in weather or environment and this light certainly was not natural.

From my suspended position I could see human figures walking around in an unnaturally white space. The area was large enough for me to run around in but looked sterile and plain, nothing stood out except the five people that stood dressed in white coats standing behind some sort of machinery in a darker room in front of me.

The reflections of light from the mechanical boxes in front of them changed as their concealed hands moved around just below the box. They seemed to be examining what was on those boxes, pointing at them then talking presumably about what was on them. Their lips moved but their voices were all muffled so that even my large sensitive ears were having a challenge in picking up what was being said. Even if I did, understanding what was being said would be another story all together.

My thoughts were suddenly interrupted as I felt my stomach slowly being filled with something. It was breakfast as I would soon learn over the next few days. Whatever it was it had no taste and was simply being injected right in whether I wanted it or not.

A few humans came out from behind the mechanical boxes with a flat board like piece of machinery in their hands and stood a few feet in front of me.

"Honestly, I can't believe that we've managed to catch one." One man said to the other.

The other's burly voice stood out much more clearly than the first "Well honestly I'm pretty glad we did otherwise the budget for this operation probably wasn't going to last much more than two more years."

"You are right about that," the first had an air of relief about him as he talked "It has been twelve years since the first credible footage of one of these things appeared and now we've got one right in front of us."

"It's amazing how there is so much lore and mythology surrounding these creatures and their existence and yet still with all the technology at our disposal in this day and age we could only now find and capture one of them." The second commented as he looked towards me and then back to a flat piece of metal in his hands.

Whilst the second one performed all sorts of strange gestures across the surface of the metal the other one spoke "We'll soon discover all the secrets that make this thing so hard to find and fight. I bet our sponsors must finally be smiling from ear to ear."

"You better believe it." He started waiving the metal thing in his hand around "I almost regret we found one now with all the comms that is flooding into this thing now. From the looks of things we'll be spending the next two years running all of these tests alone."

"Better than looking for a job in the next two years to be honest. It is a pity that we couldn't save those two guys at all though."

"Honestly? They were some pretty bad people that the authorities couldn't catch in the first place."

"That's true but I would rather see justice be done than to have them mauled by a wild animal. You know... ethics and all that."

"Yeah alright nice guy," he seemed unconvinced by the statement of his friend "What really bothers me though is why the hell would this thing be after the two of them? It's just a rather odd coincidence don't you think?"

"The lore says that they chase after bad people. So maybe there is some credit to that."

"Yeah? Well I don't see one ripping your throat out for chasing after that guy's wife."

"Hey, hey. Let's not get side tracked. It was a thing that happened, it is in the past. It is not a big deal." He seemed annoyed that that subject was brought up.

"Have you heard about what it's abilities?"

"Yeah, the away team said something about it not channeling externally like most creatures, it seems to generate all of its energy from within."

"Sound like it is using its own life-force but that more of a speculative concept than any thing else. There are some pretty severe risks involved in doing so and anything that has evolved in order to do it would have to be extremely specialized in order to survive repeating the process."

"But, you can't cross it off at the moment. It would explain why we have never seen its signature and therefore why it is practically impossible to track one of these things."

"Well I'm sure that our experiments will reveal more about how it channels its energy. Life force at this particular time is just speculations and concepts proposing its existence but if it is true then this thing could potentially lead to treasure throve of medical discoveries."

"The abilities that have been discovered so far, the various forms of Elemental Kinesis, Causality manipulation, Order and Chaos manipulation as well as Mass Manipulation."

"Typically most creatures evolve some sort of elemental manipulation to help them to better cope with their environment. It is more immediately useful and more flexible of an ability to have."

"In very rare cases there are those that seem to be able to manipulate the natural laws such as the manipulation of the links between two more objects and the results. This is called Causality since the most highly skilled do seem to have some effect on time and probability itself but with great side-effects."

"Order and Chaos stem from the ability to destabilize and stabilize materials or constructs. This is a less common ability but can prove to be quite useful at times."

"Mass manipulators can create constructs as well as to force materials to take various states such as solids, gases and liquids; another quite useful but less common and more specialized ability."

"Life force manipulation is supposed to be the ability to draw from one's self. We all do it on some small scale but to expend this energy in high enough quantities so as to express forms of external abilities is very risky if not damaging to the host each time it is performed. To find a creature that survives solely on the use of this kind of manipulation, further more a predator of this size is unlikely. The amount of energy that would be needed to support such a creature... this thing would probably have to be eating sizeable meals every day."

The other chimed in now "It all depends on the efficiency of the biological system though."

He laughed at his colleague's comment "It would have to be really efficient to keep that thing going for long."

"Enough gawking though, let's try to finish these reports so we could get started on this thing."

They continued to talk and pointed at me in different areas and at different intervals during their conversation. Then their focus went back to the thin flat metal thing in one of their hands, pushing and rubbing their hands across the surface.

The whole experience was a bit surreal. Was I being inspected, analyzed or judged? What was being said? Why am I suspended in this place? Given my past and all the humans that I had killed I thought that I would be dead by now. What is going on here? I have been captured. That much is certain but what are they planning on doing to me?

The next few days were much of the same, more men in white coats walking around, pointing and mouths moving. More distilled silence except the rhythmic hum of the breathing apparatus or the mechanical pumping of the feed tubes at the precisely assigned time for those tasteless meals. More days passed of nearly complete sensory deprivation and it was driving me up a tree.

I couldn't smell a thing or taste a thing. Occasionally I could see some of the things that were going on in front of me but not behind me but that was not how we Hell-hounds build up a picture about the world around us. We rely on scents and sound more than anything else and the muting of half of those senses was making me feel completely trapped. I hated this place but the longer I remained in it the more I began to dread it.

Some weeks I began to feel terribly ill. The food pumped into my stomach felt like it would be rejected but the apparatus in my throat always made sure that I took my medicine. My immune system was strong however, we Hell-hounds have the ability to convert chemical energy into pure energy and as such the result... the by-product is always a toxic cock-tail strong enough fall a stampede of horses. The deadly mix is expunged from pours around and on our tails, especially around the trident and adds an extra element to our deadly arsenal.

This same process does not work too well if it keeps getting repeated however. We need time to recover and replenish the chemical energy that we've burnt off as fuel at rocket like rates. The buildup of this 'waste' could grow to such levels that our bodies are overwhelmed by the sheer quantity, resulting in us slowly poisoning our selves.

That's why we like to fight on two different extremes. Either long chases or quick and decisive battles. Our sensitive noses and pointed ears are not going to lose track of you even if we closed our eyes and a long chase hardly affects out lupine stamina. On the other hand our abilities are quite pricey but highly effective at killing and the older a Barghest gets the better our ability to distill chemical energy into pure energy becomes, making our attacks much more dangerous to both ourselves and the target.

Sometimes however, whatever they were doing got so bad that it was difficult for me to even lift an eye lid. In those times I honestly felt as though if they were not force feeding me oxygen and food then I would probably be dead. Fever, cold chills, trembling and weakness but my body fought it off, each time less effectively than the other.

They were using me to test their poisons, they were slowly killing me. At first I struggled physically in order to escape. Instantly converting what they had fed me into raw energy and coursing it through my veins but the pump simply withdrew my supply of air and refused to give me any. I panicked of course, sucking desperately to get some oxygen to survive and my thoughts of escape immediately switched to desperate thoughts of survival. The raw energy became unstable and I soon lost control of it as it dissipated into my surroundings with little to no effect.

I didn't even have the air to whine, in order to complain about my situation. It didn't take long for all strength to be sapped from my body and I started to pass out. A black shadow threatening to take away my vision as I floated helplessly exactly where they wanted me to be. My brain quickly began walking through events in my life, trying to solve this puzzle, trying to search for a way to survive.

Just as I was beginning to become resigned to death the pump started up. My body gladly drew in deep breaths of air as relief slowly began calming my panicked mind, relief that I was still going to be kept alive in this dreadful situation. My lethargic body slowly felt alive again but fatigued, severely weakened by a single event. I wanted to lick my nose but I couldn't, I couldn't do anything to escape or improve my situation. They had complete control over everything and they knew how to keep it that way.

I know that I was relieved to be alive right now but had I managed to find a fate worse than death? A slave to tubes. At the whim and mercy of humans walking around, pointing at me with no sense of fear. They are completely calm, completely in control. That is how they looked and it was true. Why are they doing this to me? If they are going to kill me with these tubes or however they are making me sick then why don't they do it already? Why the torture? Why the games?

Seasons passed and there were more weeks where I felt sick than I did not. Pondering these questions and fighting the mysterious illnesses day after day slowly eroded both my mental and physical health. It was clear that I was not recovering as well as I used to when I first woke here.

Soon enough the day finally came when I felt the nerves in my feet and toes tingling; a bad sign of things to come. Being stationary for so long meant that my heart was slowly giving up the ghost. To tell the truth, I had given up quite a while ago but this body just wouldn't. As the weeks drew on I started to feel more and more tired.

The food kept coming and the pump kept me breathing. These machines were certainly relentless; I have to give the humans credit for that at least. They are able to make things that I wish I could understand but I certainly had seasons to admire.

One day I slept and I was swept away into a dream, well not so much of a dream but a memory during a dream. I don't usually dream but in this one I could feel my muted senses come back to life. The grass under my feet felt wet and smelled full of grasshoppers. A faint smell of a healthy rabbit lingered in the area and I could tell that it was two nights old, the morsel that had laid this scent as it foraged was long gone from this area by now.

The most important smells were in the air; those of my pack. All five of us were walking in a single file, off to a new hunting ground. I was much younger than I am now however the dream felt more like how I wanted my life to be rather than an old memory.

I clung to the scents, smelling the earthy tones and the scents of those larger and older Hell-hounds before me. Our names are our scents and my Alpha smelt healthy and strong. The character of his scent was sharp, musky and very masculine. His scent was definitely the strongest of the pack; my ears pressed down against my skull as his scent alone reminded me to submit whenever he drew nearby. I could sense that he was in a good mood, legs motoring along at a steady pace as he guided his pack off to somewhere new.

With our eyes I could see the tall trees in the forest around us, thick bushes all growing unhindered, up to the older of our pack's shoulder and well above my own head. Some vines expanded across the trunks and bodies of other trees and climbing limb from limb across to other nearby trees.

With my nose however I could smell the creatures in the trees, mostly small rodents and birds, the scent of rotting wood grew stronger as we approached a dead tree, swarmed by vines and weeds. The scent of sweet fruits hovered around the fruit trees as you walked by like a cloud of aroma that wafted around in the breeze.

Besides the most immediate scents around us the scents that came in with that breeze was amazing. I could smell a burrow of rabbits, traces of what had to be an owl kill a few kilometers away from here, the scent of a river and a multitude of scents from well over the horizon wafted in.

The longer the breeze the more information I could discern from around me and it didn't come in just a few scents here or there but rather an entire snapshot of the environment was carried along with the wind. And as objects moved their scents adjusted in the wind, becoming more sharp or intense or weaker. This is how I was accustomed to seeing the world around me unravel.

Our ears are sharp but I am not going to claim to be able to hear everything from beyond the horizon. I could hear the riffling of the trees around me. Each different kind of tree had a slightly different tone when the wind rolled through it but most sounds go unnoticed, filtered out because they mean nothing. Nothing threatening, nothing dangerous, no hints of a meal to be had or no reason to pay attention to them; they were simply background noise.

A screeching call came from above us and we each looked up to see but the glare from the sun above us could only make out a small shadow moving between the trees. Immediately however we all knew what it meant, there was a bird of prey and from that call of warning we could also tell that there was nest nearby.

Discerning where exactly a sound came from took a bit more focus. Swiveling around our cone like pointed ears in the general direction of the noise's origin and then fine tuning with subtle movements of both our head and ears for more precision as the next call came in.

It was above us and off to the right at a considerable height. Circling around to keep an eye on our movements and to protect its nearby clutch.

Besides the creature however well out of the range of our instant burst he still gave me the signal. A slight change in attitude, no noise at first but a crouching motion before he started lowly barking orders for the pack.

I needed to stay here in the center as the rest of those split of in a circle around my position. The goal was to make it hard for the bird to keep track of all of us but most importantly to create openings for attacks.

I understood how it would work but given the altitude that we had to overcome I doubted that it was even going to be worth it in the first place. Orders were orders however so I stood there, feinting attention to the rest of my surroundings instead of the bird circling above as the others dissolved into the surroundings.

A low but sharp call signaled the start of the hunt and instantly adrenaline rushed through my form as I turned and looked up, aiming ahead of the target as I crouched to leap. The mind needed to be sharp, the senses ready to detect and the mind ready to react and a burst of adrenaline was sure to do just that.

The raw energy flowed through my body, coursing through my limbs, through my muscles and impact them ground as I rocketed into the beginnings of a burst leap. The vigilant birds noticed and his wings flapped, changing direction and forcing me to compensate as my hind legs were about to leave the ground. I let one trail behind it and pushed a bit more to alter my direction in a split second decision as I burst into the air in a gray flash of lightened.

A split second later I was hundreds of feet in the air, having burst through the tree tops, hurtling towards a dot in the sky. As I slowed down in the air the energy from my burst over took me, cloaking my form in a gray bolt of lightning that screamed on through my intended path but the bird rolled and spun off to the side as quickly as I had made it up there.

It instantly went on the attack as I streaked by flapping its wings and releasing an unseen wake of wind as I spun around so that I faced the animal. The wake was like being slammed into by a tree, knocking me off balance and back towards the ground at a significantly increased pace.

I'm not going to tell you that I wasn't scared as I hurtled towards the ground. My landing was hardly graceful; again bursting through the tree tops as I twisted built more raw energy into my legs. Just before hitting the ground I took a deep breath and felt my muscles fueled by the increased oxygen but I landed far less than ideal.

My hind legs slammed into the ground first as I slid backwards and cut a path through the fallen leaves that seemed to blow up all around me. I put the energy into the ground causing a splash of gray energy to clear an impact crater of leaves of shrubbery but most importantly dissipating the majority of the energy that I carried in the fall.

That wasn't enough however as my left hind leg slide off to the side and there was a sharp pain before I saw sky then ground, tumbling backwards and slamming my left shoulder in the ground.

I picked myself up as quickly as I could with a slight grimace of pain as I stepped forwards to re-enter the skirmish and hind leg sent a sharp pain straight across my back. Just like I thought, this wasn't worth it at all.

Never the less this wasn't a problem that more adrenaline couldn't solve and my body practically boiled in a soup of it as I took the next step and the pain was gone. One more attack.

I lifted my head and focused on my target again running across the ground to get the target as close to within my burst range as possible but realistically there was no way I could reach it and I knew it and as it would turn out the bird seemed to know it too.

It made my blood boil to feel like I wasn't a threat at all to my target but I was doing my job; distracting the bird from its surroundings. I sped along the ground before leaping up into a tree, rolling in mid air and bursting off of it in a vain attempt to add a few meters in height to my burst distance.

The bird simply added a bit more height and as I exited my burst it twisted and rolled effortlessly in the sky and prepared to attack once again.

A gray wave engulfed the bird as it opened its wings to strike and jaws clamped down around it; plucking it from the sky. One of my pack members took advantage of my distraction and caught the morsel in time to prevent me from taking another hit.

This time the ground rushed up to meet me it was in a controlled manner and I managed to land into a run a diffuse some of the moment horizontally as well as a much smaller burst than last time to reduce the impact.

We met up again and continued on. All of this happened simply because the boss didn't like anything following us around. It is hard to hunt a real meal with something flying around advertising your position but not every time is it worth the trouble to guard against it.

Eventually the adrenaline boiled down and the pain returned to my leg and I woke up. Still encased and trapped in this strange place but I remember limping my way for several miles after that. No whining; no complaining. They could see that I got hurt from the exchange but it was always silly needless exchanges like this and I knew why.

I was a young male growing up to be an adult soon and besides the excuse that we have to be strong and hone our abilities as hell hounds I knew what was really going on. Soon I would be competition and potential to take over leadership of the pack.

Either way I was tired of being the bait; not just with birds but also against other predators that were sometimes even larger than me. So it is needless to say that a week later I walked out of the pack and since then have been going at the world by myself.

It is sad to think that I would now be looking back at those memories and preferring to be in that situation rather than my current one. After all I've been through I never thought I would look back at that with a fond light.

Today things were destined to be different. I knew this because something was different. I had awoken earlier than usual but I was also being fed earlier than usual. That is when I saw her standing right outside my transparent prison; mouth moving saying indiscernible things.

I almost immediately started to feel weak and numb; I was fighting to keep my focus as the water started to recede. I lost focus for a while and the next thing I remembered was shooting my eyes open as the ground came up to meet me and I stood up, well sort of, on something solid for the first time in several seasons.

I stumbled and collapsed on the floor like a week old pup, whatever was going on I knew I had to stand up and fight. So I struggled, drugged feet scrambling for some sort of purchase against the perfectly square stones laid down below me but to little avail.

It was right then that she approached closer and whispered "Relax, every things going to be all right boy."

Despite me shooting her the nastiest glare that my drugged body could muster up she kept getting closer and kept talking things in a tongue that I did not understand. Her tone and emotions were calm and non-threatening but how could I come to trust her when it was humans that had put in this very situation to begin with?

She did something, her hand touching a flat object in her hand and a steady hum of machinery activating echoed in the room. The tubes that were keeping me alive seemed to start moving and I lost focus again, blinking awake moments later, scrambling back into a crouched position to watch that woman to see what she was planning on doing.

It seemed that the tubes had been removed from my throat as I felt my stomach churn; rejecting whatever cock-tail of drugs had been pumping into it a while ago. Violently I attempted to puke up the substance but all I managed to do was to make myself feel more unwell.

Motion right in front of me brought my attention back to that woman who was now apparently approaching me saying "Sorry about those drugs buddy but it's the only way that we could safely move you from here."

Her voice carried the emotions of an apology as well as pity lingered within it. There was no malice, no hatred. All that I was able to interpret was her basic emotions so I took a deep breath through my nostrils, confirming that the environment smelt just as sterile as it looked but most importantly there was no sweat. No scent of adrenaline running through her veins, or a surprise soon to be acted upon.

I must have lost focus, no passed out of consciousness again because the next time I opened my eyes she was crouched right in front me as my head rested on the ground. The material was still wrapped across my muzzle, keeping my jaw well encased that I could not bite her but it didn't prevent me from attempting to ward her off with a deep rumbling growl as her hand came down on my head; an act that I had only previously associated with pain.

The moment I started to growl she talked, pushing air through her lips in a calming lullaby "Shhhhhhh. Don't worry, I won't hurt you so just relax and stop fighting it. You are going to go to sleep and wake up somewhere better."

Again I didn't understand a single word she had to say but her emotions seemed to be absorbing my worry and my fight, perhaps the drugs had something else to do with that as well. Either way my ears plastered back against my head as her hand stroked through my fur. Her scent immediately began to change, growing more excited but her voice remained steady and even as she kept stroking my head despite my obvious disapproval of the act.

By the tenth time through my mind recognized that no ill was going to happen from her actions and my eyes were already half lidded when I stopped growling. It seemed that I wasn't in any immediate danger and just moments after recognizing this I felt myself drift off into sleep.

When I woke up I was here; in this cavern in the middle of no-where in the desert, with the same woman. Whatever it was that was over my face, stopping me from opening my jaws was gone and she was just standing there as though she was expecting something.

I am grateful to be out of that place but there had to be more... more trouble. I expected something more than food. Normally I wouldn't have taken anything from a human but it felt like it had been seasons since I last ate anything and it was_her_ so I took a gamble.

I yawned and climbed to my feet, an act that was certain to wake the sleeping human that was still lying on my side. Sure enough she roused and we both our eyes locked for a moment but I averted my own before anything could be inferred by it and walked off to the outside.

"Where are you going buddy?" she asked in a eerily confident manner that I wasn't sure I could ever get comfortable with as sat up on her rump. She appeared not to be bothered with the fact that I was making my way to the exit and shortly after I discovered why.

The further I got from the center of the caverns the harder it became to walk, as though there was some invisible force pulling me and providing unseen resistance against my forward motion. The closer I got to the hot and dry air outside the more pressure developed until it became impossible for me to wade through the soup of energy that now restricted me from the escape.

So I sat on the edge; as close to the exit where I could see the Sun setting amongst sparse trees and the cloudless blue sky. The wind rolled across the ground dragging small dust devils around the cracked soil as well as the smell of small lizards that scamper across the ground and only come out at night.

This is a better situation than before but what is she really planning by trying to keep me here? She also couldn't hope to think that she could retain her position over me once I have fully recovered. It was going to take a bit more than lording over some food and land as well as a calm demeanor to prevent me from usurping my complete freedom in the near future.

She certainly knows how to play her cards right. She's providing the food and until I can figure out how exactly she's keeping me here then it probably wouldn't be wise to cross her. I'll bide my time for now; until my strength returns.