"Aowoooooo!"
With a heavy howl from the Wolf King, the pack ignited. They Dire Wolves charge toward Hyenas.
The standoff didn't last ten seconds. The hyenas were outclassed. These Dire Wolves were bigger, meaner, and moved with a terrifying, synchronized coordination that made the hyenas look like amateurs. Most of the Hyenas didn't even have time to yelp before their spines were snapped. Even the Hyena Matriarch, the veteran of a dozen battles, couldn't handle two wolves flanking her. They shredded her haunches and belly until she collapsed, waiting for the end.
The Wolf King stepped up to her. She bared her teeth, her ugly face twisted in a silent plea, but he didn't do mercy. He clamped his jaws onto her throat and crushed it with a single, sickening crunch.
The skirmish was over. The hyena pack was wiped off the map.
"AOWOO!!"
The King howled a victory cry, and the rest of the pack backed off, whining low and making a path. Like us, they have a strict hierarchy. The King eats first. He gets the best cuts, the choice organs, and the right to mate. But it isn't just about being a bully; there's a bond there. They trust him to lead, and he trusts them to have his back.
He walked over to the intruder Sabertooth's carcass and started tearing into it. He was starving. Despite having a small army at his disposal, hunting in the Pleistocene is hard work. Wolves don't have our explosive power or the Lion's sheer weight. They can't ambush a bison and end it in seconds. They have to run their prey into the ground, a marathon of endurance that often ends in nothing but tired legs and empty stomachs.
He ate until his belly was bulging before stepping aside. Then his mate—the Alpha Female—took her turn, followed by the rest of the pack in descending order of rank. By the time they were done with the tiger, they started on the hyenas. They weren't picky. In this era, calories are calories.
The next evening, Mom and Dad led us out of the territory, passing the site of the slaughter. I couldn't help but stare.
The ground was a jigsaw puzzle of frozen blood and bone. The hyenas' eyes were still open, fixed in a permanent state of shock. Crows were already hopping between the ribs, their beaks stained red. The Sabertooth we'd helped kill was gone—nothing left but a white ribcage picking up the evening frost.
It was a grim sight. Looking at that skeleton, I felt a cold shiver that had nothing to do with the wind. Is that same will happen to me in ten years? I wondered. No matter how strong you are, every king eventually meets a ditch. It's a cycle of wandering, fighting, and dying that none of us can escape.
But as I looked at Mom and Dad, I saw they weren't mourning. They were already scanning the horizon for the next meal. That's the beauty of it, I guess. You don't quit just because the ending is written. You fight until the last breath.
We trekked through the melting snow, the grass damp and emerald green underneath. The moisture had brought out the grazers in droves.
We were scouting for wild horses or elk when a group of strangers appeared near a grove of trees. I'd never seen anything like them.
They looked like camels, but without the humps. Their necks were long like a giraffe's, and they stood nearly three meters long and two meters at the shoulder. They were massive—at least a ton of meat. But the weirdest part? They had short, fleshy trunks like a tapir or a mini-elephant.
System, what the hell am I looking at?
[Target: Macrauchenia. A long-necked ungulate from South America.]
"Macrauchenia? Sounds like something out of a fantasy novel," I thought.
Mom and Dad stopped, their ears swiveling. They'd never seen these trunk-camels either. Most of them stayed in South America, and seeing a group this far north was rare.
Despite the curiosity killed the cat rule, Mom and Dad didn't budge. They were veterans. If they didn't know how a beast fought, how fast it ran, or if its kick could shatter a skull, they weren't going in blind. They watched the Macrauchenia for a few minutes, decided the risk of the unknown wasn't worth the calories, and turned away.
We weren't here to sightsee. We were here to kill something we understood.