Metal Gear Solid V: Chronicles of Outer Heaven (MGS/Valkyria Chronicles)

With This Eye, I See: A D-Dog Tale



Song 1: Empty

=====

I remember it well. My life before I would become the hunter-brother of the old one who called himself Ahab.

I was lost.

Without family and without hope. All cruelly taken away from me by the immortal beings whom other wolves that sing through the night fearfully whispered of.

Man.

The undisputed rulers of our kingdom whose temperaments are as capricious as the many forms of our goddess. Our Moon.

To many, we are but pests to be ridden of through their weapons of fire and thunder.

How regrettable it is that many of them do not understand our tongue, so far from the origin of all, I suppose that upon further consideration with the wisdom of adulthood that the tragedy of my origin could have been avoided if we could only communicate to one another.

…

No. It is perhaps, that I think this way because of my hunt-brother's influence and those of his kin who follow in his path.

I know I am no normal wolf.

The lessons I have been taught, the incomprehensible tools I have been given.

I can choose to kill or disable any being of this world at my leisure if I were so inclined.

To be trusted with the tools and knowledge of the immortals known as man…

I am only too glad that my hunt-brother is both wise and unimaginably powerful.

For if I did not witness Ahab fight his own inner demons day after day, I fear that I would have succumbed to my own had I not his example to follow.

And what power he holds. At a mere whim he could send his hunt-brothers and sisters out to ravage the world if he were to desire it. I have seen the unbelievable, impossible tools of the immortals. All it would take is a touch of their strange, seemingly weak digits to set the world on fire.

But Ahab does not use this power. Instead he acts to seal it away so that this abominable weapon may never be used to throw the world into an unending cycle of death.

I cannot understand his reasoning. I do not have the capacity for it. The immortal race known as man are so beyond those of us who follow the natural order of the world that it would be folly to even believe we could come to understand them.

This is the lesson passed from Wolf to Pup.

We cannot understand the beings called humanity.

…

But this is not true.

I should not understand him.

But I do.

I always have.

---

February, 1984
Afghanistan

"Do you want to come with me?" The old human asks, his words unintelligible, but his meaning clear by the offering of rough fingers waiting for me to approach and scent.

I pawed forward without fear. It was not simply the curiosity of a foolish pup that drew me forth.

His fingers stank of blood, sweat, and death.

By every lesson mother and my elder siblings taught me, I should have ran.

But I didn't.

"Hello…? I'm Fang Who Cuts the World!" I replied, finished taking in the human's scent and looking up at him with the eye that could still see.

"Hey there. You can call me Ahab." He didn't say.

But I understood just like he understood me.

"A...hab…?" I asked.

"Yeah." And he replied, taking me in his arms and carefully tucking me into his human 'cloth'.

"C'mon. Let's get you home". His chest rumbled with subdued strength.

His measured breathing and body heat was a comfort to me.

---

Next to me, the young human pup stirs, shivering in the morning cold.

"Ah!?" Gasping awake from the frightful dreams that haunt her, her eyes open to show me a vision of a terrified youngling who has known love and loss.

"D-dream…"

Only, moments later, the ocean blue of her eyes dull once more, hiding herself behind the protection of a closed heart.

It distresses me.

In my mind, I know that the one called Hana is beyond what I could ever be.

Such is the kind of existence that a human is. Even their children understand more of the universe than the oldest of my kind ever could.

… *chuff*.

When I am old and my fur turns gray. When my eyes are unseeing and when my nose begins to fail…

Hana will only just be reaching young adulthood in the time of the immortals.

…

I am only a wolf. If a young one just having reached the power and wisdom of adulthood.

… "wff."

But I understand your pain very well, oh young immortal.

Time moves so much differently for us.

How will you continue when I am no longer here to guide you? To comfort you?

Should I not leave you now so that you may learn to fend for yourself?

To leave you like my own mother would have for myself and my siblings had they lived?

…

I...

"DD…" The small immortal that still dwarfs me in size in her youth reaches out, a small, unscarred hand of warm flesh and blood shakily stroking along the fur of my back…

As if to make sure that I am still here.

…

I...

I cannot.

I will not leave.

"Sleep young immortal. The sun will soon rise to chase away the demons of the night." I croon, pawing to the side and resting my back against the child who wraps her limbs around me in the search for security.

I will not abandon you. Not even when I am old and unable to smell.

When I am gone, my children will guard you.

And when they too come to greet me in the night's song that never ends…

Their own children will watch after you.

They will watch until you are old and have no need of us any longer.

…

But for now, the sun is rising. I must attend to my duties and prepare myself for the hunts ahead-

"Nn…"

I feel something wet.

Small beads of liquid drop along my fur.

And when I try to move away, small hands grip me with a weak…

Desperate familiarity.

"DD… stay…" The youngling whispers, burrowing herself into my fur and relaxing as her breathing slows and the former thudding of her heart settles into a soothing beat against my back.

....

……

………….

Alright...

I will stay with you a little longer, young pup.

Hunt-brother will understand.

Because he too knows pain.

More than I can ever know.

I lay my head down, curling up to rest my chin against my paws and close my eye.

When Ahab arrives in search of my whereabouts, I am still here.

He says nothing as we stare at one another with the only working eyes that we have, no words or movements needing to be shared.

Wise, ancient Ahab simply makes a pleased human expression and slowly closes the door with soft words of parting hidden behind an equally gentle sounding order.

"Good. Stay and guard." He says, whispering with the wind.

"Of course." I reply.

Ahab is strong. It is not necessary for me to worry for his sake.

"Nn…" The pup next to me bundles her fingers along my fur in distress-

Away with you demons. I will not suffer your presence here.

Gently, I turn ever so slowly so that I can rest my chin against the neck and cheek of the girl who so desperately wishes for the comfort of her mother and father.

Not when there are younglings that need looking after.

Not when there are souls that must be guarded.