Krim awoke with a gasp, as though he had been drowning somewhere, and someone had just dragged him to the surface.
There was an odour of iron and trampled berries in the cave. His lungs drew breath which suddenly bore a million tales, warm rock and rain and the musk of great thing that had made a mark on a tree yesterday and under it all the sweetness that lingered of that accursed fruit.
He sat up slowly.
It was all wrong in the best sense possible.
His arms were longer, heavier, and corded with muscle, which flexed without his request. His shoulders had been so enlarged as to make the cave narrow. As he rose the crown of his head touched stalactites which had been overhead and safe on his head yesterday.
A hobgoblin. A real one. Not the munchkins of the tribe. Bigger. Stronger. Constructed as though the forest had determined to raise his own warlord.
And the hunger.
Gods, the hunger.
Now there were two, riding one next the other in his chest.
The former was a mere one, his stomach had torn itself, and required meat, blood, anything that was hot, and substantial.
The second was below and deeper, a burning coal back of his belly which clenched all his muscles and made him catch his breath. It wasn't painful. It was impatient. Possessive. It desired land, battles, and (so that his head fluttered no longer to complete that sentence) other things.
He laid a palm against his breast, and he heard the drums go on at the same time.
Yes, all right, he said to himself, in a voice that made a kind of rumbling as it hit off the walls. "New body, new rules. Got it."
The shrivelled husk of the fruit was there on the stone pedestal, deprived of all lustre. A knot, a withered purple knot. Instead it was within him whatever power it had possessed.
Krim stepped outside.
Sunlight hit him like a slap. His skin sucked it up, new green turned to a deep forest colour and as though his whole world for a dizzy moment appeared sharper: each vein of a leaf, each scuttlear beetle, each little trail of scent drawn up into the air like smouldering smoke.
Then the wind shifted.
Warm. Alive. Close.
Boar.
He didn't decide to move. His body simply launched.
Trees blurred past. His very long legs devoured the ground in gigantic strides, his bare feet giving no sound to moss and leaf-litter. Thirty strides off the boar came pouring out of cover, a black-bristled beast, pony-sized, with tusks of yellow and curved shape.
Yesterday-Krim would have shrilled with fright.
Today-Krim met it head-on.
And he crashed into its shoulder at full speed. There was a crack, loud and wet. The boar turned over on its side, and squealed once, and then the sound ceased. Krim sat it, with his knees clinging to the neck, his hands tearing already.
He did not recall becoming a eater.
It was not until he had seen the red haze rise and he was kneeling in the blood that face and breast were painted crimson, the ribs opened like a treasure chest and steaming meat shot down the sharp teeth faster than his thoughts.
By the time it was finished all there was was a dead silence and bones.
Krim sat down on his heels and heaved a deep breath, the blood streaming down his chin.
Power passed through him, dense and vital. Unnoticed wounds (thorn scratches, bruises of the last two days) healed in his sight. The hunger in his stomach passed by satisfying purr.
The other hunger did not.
It wound the closer, and more and more passionate, and dragged down his spine, and sat at the bottom of his gut, waiting and absolutely sure it would be fed some time.
Krim mopped his mouth with the back of one huge hand and looked at the woods.
The trees looked smaller now.
Everything did.
He slowly stood up, turning new shoulders, and feeling the weight and balance of this improved body. The rags of his old loin cloth had been lost somewhere in the pursuit; he did not take time to find it. It was a joke to be modest when you had just killed and ate a boar with your bare hands.
There was a lone pack of wolves somewhere away in the distance that began to bark in anxious alarm, then again ceased so as to be rebuked.
They knew.
Something unfamiliar wandered through these woods.
Something that had made off what it desired.
Krim stretched out blood-slick fingers, and was off, aimlessly, merely to move forward, since he was suddenly aware he was standing still.
His heartbeat was finding a slow, jealous beat.
Mine, it said. All of it. Soon.
He sighed long, slow, with a flavor of iron and of future in his mouth.
"Yeah," he told the quiet forest. That was surely a fruit of its kind.
Then the newborn Alpha grinned, sharp and feral, and disappeared between the trees.
The forest held its breath.
It already had the answer to the question that followed.