Otherworlde BST 203: Apex Predator

Cressida walked into the Beast Studies classroom with a collection of photographs in hand. This time, she had not taken her levitating video camera with her on the assignment. It would have been too dangerous, given the creature she had chosen to track, for her to make another sort of documentary. Even the manticore that the witch had faced before was not as dangerous as the creature Cressida had chosen to stalk. Besides, Cressida’s video camera had a tendency to… misbehave in very cold weather. It had been difficult enough training the camera to do what she wanted after the first time she had used it. That camera had a mind of its own, and certainly not a very mature one.

But another reason that Cressida’s chosen creature was more dangerous than the manticore was because there was a lot of information available on the manticore, its habitats and its behavior. The witch had known exactly what to expect, and she had been able to prepare for the worst. In this case, however, there was very little information available on the creature that Cressida had chosen. But, equipped with an arsenal of plants, most of which she had brought with her into the classroom, the witch had survived, and with a decent collection of photographs to show Professor Baines at that.

The witch arranged the photographs neatly in front of her. “This was perhaps my most dangerous assignment I have ever undertaken, Professor. I hope you are satisfied. The creature I chose to report on for this assignment is the Akhlut, a mythical predator found in the folklore of the Inuit people. The Akhlut is completely carnivorous, and indiscriminate about what it eats. It has no qualms about attacking humans or any other animal, and it is definitely the apex predator in its environment. Even I was only able to deal with it temporarily with my plants, long enough to get photographs and escape.”

Cressida pointed in succession to the photographs she had arranged. “The Akhlut is actually, as you can see here, an orca spirit, and this is the form it usually takes. They are larger and more dangerous than a typical, non-magical orca, however, the Akhlut is actually less intelligent. It resides in the water, obviously, and it is always a solitary creature. This is most likely because the Akhlut is so large that it can’t really share its territory with much of anything that might also be its size. Its thick layers of fat, like any orca or similar aquatic creature, allows the Akhlut to survive in very low temperatures, including freezing water. These creatures do, however, have to eat meat very frequently in order to survive, a requirement that is compounded by their large size. However, they are very powerful predators, and their strong teeth, impressive sight and hearing, and echolocation abilities allow them to trach and take down their prey. Their thick layer of blubber not only acts as a method of insulation, but it also gives them protection from attacks, cementing their position at the top of the food chain in any environment that they might inhabit.”

But not all of the photographs that the witch had taken were of the orca-like creature that Cressida had just desribed. Some of them did not appear to be aquatic at all, and were in fact photographs of a wolf… albeit particularly large, vicious-looking wolf, larger than any non-magical wolf could ever be, and one with the same black-and-white color scheme and markings as the orca that was in the other photographs. “The Akhlut is, in fact, a shapeshifting spirit. It is not only a dominant predator in an aquatic environment, but in a terrestrial environment as well. It is capable of transforming into a wolf, like the one seen in these photographs, in order to leave the water and hunt creatures on land. In fact, I was able to, at least to some extent, capture the shapeshifting process itself on film.” Cressida showed her professor even more photographs, detailing the process of the Akhlut in its orca form undergoing a transformation into the wolf seen in the other pictures. The process looked… rather disturbing, to say the least. But Cressida did not seem to be disturbed or disgusted at all by it, and she simply continued with her presentation. “Theoretically, if the transformation process were to be canceled somehow, the Akhlut would stay in the form of a hybrid of orca and wolf, unsuited for either environment, and this would be exceedingly dangerous for the creature. Perhaps it is because of this that it does not hunt in the form of a wolf often, and instead prefers to find prey in the water. Or, perhaps, prey is simply more plentiful in its usual aquatic environment. In Inuit folklore, the tracks of a wolf leading into the ocean are those of an Akhlut, which will probably be lying in wait for any humans who might follow the tracks to the sea. The wolf form of an Akhlut is, also, a way to prevent it from beaching in orca form. It can simply transform into a wolf and be done with it. Presumably, it can also breathe underwater as a wolf.”

Cressida indicated the wolf-form photographs again. “In this form, the Akhlut is very competent at stalking prey on land, and it is also very fast. However, it is also smaller, and… well, it can’t fare against my plants very well. There are also tales of dogs, as opposed to actual wolves, walking into the ocean and being revealed to be an Akhlut. This could simply be a misidentification, or perhaps a different subspecies of Akhlut. Alternatively, there is the possibility that this is actually the wolf form of a juvenile Akhlut, whereas the one I encountered was an adult. Although in Inuit folklore, the Akhlut is generally viewed as being evil, perhaps it is not. It is not a particularly intelligent creature, and most likely has no concept of good or evil at all. It is, probably, simply a predator that must be particularly vicious and indiscriminate towards its prey in order to survive.”