So, with vigilance in mind, they continued moving forward, listening out for anything that sounded like trouble.
*growl*
Like that.
Both tensed up immediately at hearing a growl similar to the one those beasts made. Olivia went for her spear, but remembered it was broken, and so had to take the dagger instead with her free hand. Again, with her condition, she couldn't wield the Morningstar effectively, so opted for the safer and easier option. Lyrika too took out her knife and got ready, also tightening her grip on Olivia to keep her up.
Both stood there, fearful and looked around in every direction. They knew they were hard to spot given the camouflage-type skin they had, so they had to remain vigilant for any odd movement or blur in the scenery.
"…"
"…"
But nothing happened.
Olivia had a silly panic moment, thinking that it had been her stomach making the noise. But when another growl passed through the air from the direction they were going, she knew that was not the case.
"What do we do? Where is it?" Lyrika said shaking slightly.
"I don't know. If it was anything like the other three, I would think it would have attacked us now."
Confusion flooded their minds as they continued to search with their weapons drawn, but nothing happened. The few moments they stood there turned to several seconds and finally a minute, where nothing happened, aside from still hearing the growl every now and then.
"I wonder if its trapped or hurt. That might be why it hasn't attacked us yet." Olivia put out there. "Plus, while it sounds like them, the growl is a little…off."
She couldn't put her finger on it, but it just sounded a little different to how the others did, which Lyrika agreed with.
"Should we look for it?"
Olivia almost put the idea down instantly, but as she thought about it, it was probably the best thing to do. One reason was to find out what was going on, just for curiosities sake. The other was that if it was hurt or trapped, who's to say it won't get better and free itself at some point. If its anything like the last three, then that means it's going to attack someone at some point. Or attack themselves if it frees itself soon.
"Ok, but we need to be careful."
So, with their decision, they headed off towards the noise, weapons out at all times. They made sure to survey the area as they went, as who knows what was out here.
Before long, the noise got louder and louder, where by now the growl had changed to something more akin to a cry, which led them more along the idea it was trapped. But as they got nearer to the source of the sound, they soon realised they were a little off in what they were expecting to find.
"It's…ok, I didn't expect that."
"W-what do we do?" Was Lyrika's question.
Standing before the source of the noise, they could see a small pit that had been dug into the dirt, and right at the centre of it was one of those creatures. It was however more than half the size smaller and very young. Its skin was the same, being the same odd camouflage that they had, but they could see only the beginnings of claws growing on its paws, and the tail was just that, a tail, missing the deadly spike they had.
In essence, they had happened upon a baby of one of those beasts
"It weird to say this, but its…kind of adorable."
Olivia agreed with her. How could she not. While there was still the trauma from the fight with those creatures, both mentally and physically, it didn't change the fact that this baby was so small and cute.
By this point, it had seen them and grew a little fearful. It tried to pull itself out of the pit, but struggled to and fell back down, landing on its back.
"Awwwww" both cried out at seeing it fall over.
They continued to watch it as it tried the same thing twice more, landing on its back each time and wiggling it paws to try and right itself, which is when Olivia noticed something.
"I know it's a baby, but it seems very weak, weaker than I thought it would be. The pit isn't steep, yet it can hardly climb it."
Sure, Olivia had no idea about the species, and yes babies were generally weak, but something about this one seemed…off again.
"What's it doing here? Do you think they were travelling back to it when they spotted us. Could that be why they attacked us?" Lyrika asked.
It was a possibility. But it was also a possibility that they had been wandering away from it, and then caught their scent and decided to go after them. This was another thing they would never truly know.
The only question now though, was what to do with the creature.
"We can't just leave it. It feels wrong to do that. Same with…killing it. I don't think either of us could do that." Olivia said as she looked over to Lyrika who nodded her head agreeing with her on that. The adult versions had nearly killed them, but this thing was innocent, hopefully. But really, if it could hardly get out of a shallow pit, it's not like it had or would be able to kill people as it was right now.
"Should we…keep it?" Olivia put out there. The quizzical and downright shocked face from Lyrika was one she was expecting, but really, what choice did they have.
"And do what with it?" Lyrika said crossing her arms with a look of confusion at the stupid suggestion.
"I don't know. I mean it's a baby. Could we train it, tame it? Can people do that?" Olivia asked. She was very much aware that you can train animals, being a usual occurrence on Earth obviously, but did that also occur here. And could it be done with something like this.
She hoped it could. Her times from reading novels brought to mind animal companions that the protagonist would have with them. She always liked the idea of that and wondered which animal she would have. She couldn't recall all the ideas she had on it, but she was fairly sure she never pictured have a creature whose parents had nearly killed her.
Hearing the question, Lyrika huffed and looked up in thought on that, trying to recall if she had heard anything about taming creatures.
"I'm not sure. People do tame animals for their products and some to ride, but… with something like this, I really don't know. With the claws and spiked tail its going to get, it seems like it's made just to kill things. They were also really aggressive. I don't know if you can train a creature like that."
Olivia had no clue either. She had heard news stories of people training deadly animals such as tigers, lions and a hippo if she recalled correctly. But she had also heard of times those animals had killed the people that trained them. It was anyone's guess how it would go if she gave it a try.
"There may be someone we can ask at the next village. We might be able to find out what it is or even see if it's possible to tame it."
It was as good a plan as any, and so with that in mind, they decided to use Olivia's shirt to put the creature it. It was torn in places, but still held together enough for them to place the creature inside it.
Once that was done, they headed off to the village again.
…
Through the journey, the creature mewled and made many other odd noises as it tried to move inside the shirt. Olivia was currently holding it with one arm, pressing it against her chest. Her other was still over Lyrika, who was holding onto her and a good deal of gear.
When they sat down for a rest, as they day was coming to a close, they sat by the fire and placed it nearby in order to keep it warm. Then came dinner which, as usual was effler meat and hard tack. It was at this point that Olivia realised they definitely needed to get some fruit or vegetables in themselves at some point. Balance diet being needed and all.
As they stuffed their faces, they heard the creature making noises and so Olivia took this opportunity to feed it some of the meat they had, which ended up being quite hard to do.
Oh, there were nothing hard about the actual feeding. No, the hard part was trying not to let Lyrika's distressed and quivering face faze her as she watched Olivia take her meat to feed it.
She took bite sized chunks of raw meat, figuring that's what they ate given the others perseverance to kill them, and placed it next to its head. Having seen this, it looked up at her, then down to the meat, before giving it a cautionary sniff and gobbled it down.
"Well, I think it likes it."
"Of course, it does…its meat." Lyrika said sulking a little.
She continued to provide it with some morsels of meat, where soon, light turned to darkness and they turned in for the night. But first they had to figure out what to do with the creature.
The good thing was that it hadn't attacked either of them when they got near it, whether it was some form of imprinting on them, or that it lacked the strength or will or claws to do so, neither knew. This though meant that it should be fine to keep in the tent.
With its small size, it needed to be kept warm so inside the tent, out of the wind and with two warm bodies near it, was the best place to keep it healthy.
It was large enough that there was plenty of space for them both to sleep and as well as the creature, so digging out a little pit, with steeper walls this time, just to be sure, they placed it inside. They created the pit to make sure it didn't wander off in the night should it wake up at some point.
Then they got to sleeping.