I came from Aiur
by KeanuGrym
copyright disclaimer: We know what belongs to what. Nuff said.
Ch.1 New Prey
Vak'kthir stood under the sun. He stood under the sun and calmed the beating of his heart while attuning his senses to the world around him. He willed his mind to a standstill and allowed himself to become one with the land beneath his feet and the air above his head. In his minds eye he found his spirit become one with the horizon and felt a strange feeling in his heart that his kind doesn't often relish in. Some would call it strange, but he considered it sacred. Such insight to the world around him and within him only reaffirmed the creature that he was and at the same time calmed the hunter within, as if the thing he was truly hunting his entire life had been with him all along. But this state of mind he felt came with a acute awareness of all that was not right as well, and in the east he felt a strange almost supernatural disturbance that peaked his curiosity.
"Father, why does Centanu bother hunting us at all? He always gets his trophy and surely after claiming thousands of yautja souls both good and bad, he would eventually get bored. Who is then left to impress with such a collection of trophies?" asked his youngest son.
Vak'kthir turned to his unblooded child and considered him. He had no name yet, because he has not been blooded, but Vak'kthir always wondered what it should be. Knowing the nature of the child, it probably would be something along the lines of "Asker of the Strangest Questions." Not that it bothered him so much, but it did raise some eyebrows in social gatherings when ever his son spurted another abnormal question from his mandibles like, "If rocks cannot breed, then why are there so many of them?" or "If Paya is the greatest warrior of all, does that mean he can never know the glory of fighting an equal?" or the infamous "If females hate each other so much, then why are they still alive?" Vak'kthir chuckled at that last question.
"I do not know, my son. When you die you can ask Centanu when you meet him. Pray that will be a long time away from now."
The yautja child accepted his Father's response, but soon began to itch with another question. "Father, might I ask another question?"
Vak'kthir sighed and said, "If you must."
"Why have we turned from our intended path to the east? I had thought that we were going to the delta so you could teach me what to expect from underground prey."
Vak'kthir was pleased that his youngest son had enough sense to be aware of where they were going. He worried that the child's mind spent too much time in the clouds and not enough upon his surroundings. Such a mental state, could get him killed.
"I just had a feeling, thats all. Sometimes you never know what you might find off the beaten path."
With that his son was satisfied.
It was not until an hour or so later the elder yautja stopped and knelt down to the ground. What he had found was an interesting set of tracks that he could not identify and a strange electrical smell. It was very odd. Vak'kthir knew every creature in the region and knew all their tracks and markings, except for the tracks before him. He hearkened back to the strange feeling he sensed earlier and wondered if there was a connection. Perhaps Paya was leading him to something?
"What is it father?"
Vak'kthir looked into the horizon as if to ask the same thing. " I do not know. Never seen tracks like these. The creature is lighter than we are, but judging from the stride quite tall. The way it's toes are spread out suggest that it may be a fast runner of some sort. This is a new creature, however and I suggest you be on your best watch."
"Does that mean we are going to track it down?"
Vak'kthir clicked his mandibles and tilted his head in thought. "Yes, I believe we will track down this creature and find out what it is. However we are not going to hunt it down until we know what it is. The scientists on board the Ikche'tal might be interested in this.
As the trek continued, the strange electrical smell strengthened and more tracks were found. Along the way familiar species were encountered, though few were worth killing. One of those creatures was a yitikor which was a lumbering creature slow of speed, but also possessed a nasty whip like tounge that held a poisonous stinger at the end. Vak'kthir warned his son about the poisonous stinger, and showed that the best way to deal with the creature was to keep the appropriate distance and circle around to it's blind flank. He also explained that it was never a good idea to pounce on the creatures back, for it held a vast arsenal of retractable spines upon it's back.
"As you can see, this creature is slow and dim witted, but an extremely good aim. If I were a few centuries older, I might not have the reflexes to dodge it's tounge," Vak'kthir said as he whipped his spear across the creatures shooting tounge, allowing it to wrap around his weapon. He then extended his Ki'cti'pa and sliced off the creatures tounge. It moaned in agony, but soon was put to silence with a quick spear thrust to the heart. His son was enthralled.
After the kill was over, Vak'kthir took the tounge and stinger and gave it to his son saying, "Use the equipment I gave you and fashion this into a usable weapon, and by the gods do not prick yourself. If I have to carry you back home, as soon as you come out of paralysis I won't finish beating you until all the stupid comes gushing out of your mouth or ass, which ever comes first."
His son gulped inwardly and took the tounge and stinger. About twenty five minutes later he had shaped for himself and unusual choice of weapon, but not unheard of. The bow and arrow were not commonly used among the yautja, so it raised the elder's interest when his son chose to use the stinger as the tip of an arrow. The elder permitted him to use some of the sinew from the beast's corpse as the string for the bow.
"It's a unusual choice, not many use that kind of weapon. What made you decide to make it that way, when a knife would be more simple an instrument?"
His son turned to him and answered simple. "It thought that it should be used the way the yitikor used it. Only I want my aim to be better."
Vak'kthir was pleased with his son, and they soon continued their quest to find the mysterious creature. It was not long, however until another interruption came along in the form of a grt'akuk. It was dangerous only to small creatures and a full grown yautja had nothing to worry about from these things. However, a young yautja child could easily be swept off the ground by the leathery skinned grt'akuk's talons. Wary of this danger the elder warned his son about the grt'akuk soaring above them. The child however, was eager to use his new bow on the thing, so Vak'kthir agreed to hide behind some boulders and allow the grt'akuk to think that he left his son alone. Soon the creature began to circle around the youngling and feeling confident that the larger adult was no where around, it came swooping in, talons extended. Vak'kthir crossed his fingers that his child would hit the mark. It would be a terrible pain in his sore rear end to have to chase the grt'akuk all the way to it's nest just to retrieve the young one, at the cost of losing the trail of the strange creature that they were tracking.
"Hya!" the child yelled as he released the bowstring, propelling the poison tipped arrow into the neck of the Grt'akuk. With a hiss it twisted around in the air and swooped in an eccentric motion, finally coming succumbing to the poison and crashing down into the dirt. The youngling let out a shriek of glee and rushed to his kill. Vak'kthir came up behind him and clicked his mandibles in approval of his son's work. They took their time taking the beak and talons from the grt'akuk, and the youngling wrapped the objects in cloth and placed them in the small satchel at his side as a trophy.
As the sky soon began to turn dark the father considered setting up camp, as the temperatures drop from day to night. Nearly all the creatures on their world developed heat sensing eyes sight, so camouflage was dictated not by colors, but by matching one's temperature with the surroundings. In the swamps night was the prime time to hunt, since so many warm blooded creatures traveled at night, but in the desert the opposite was true, as most of the hotter creatures went underground and the colder ones took advantage of the lower temperatures. But on this night, as the temperature dropped the heat signature of an apparently dead creature became more prominent near the base of a large rock formation up on a sloping hill.
"Come, young one. I think we should have a look at that," Vak'kthir said as he began to approach the hill.
As they got closer it became clear that the creature was what was known as a hishkan'trat. The hishkan'trat was a very large biped creature that was stronger than a fully grown yatjua male. They would usually hunt while camouflaged by the heat of the day, but this one appeared to have been disturbed in it's sleep and was attacked. The hishkan'trat was the apex predator of this environment though, and was a worthy opponent for the yautja. Creatures like the yikitor could have killed the hishkan'trat, but the one they found was killed by obvious blunt force trauma to the head. No creature that Vak'kthir knew of could have done this to a hishkan'trat.
"What could have killed it? If it were another yautja, it's head would have been taken," remarked the youngling.
Vak'kthir agreed, but was still stumped. No true yautja warrior would kill the creature in the way it died, the head was far to valuable a trophy. Unless the creature took to smashing it's head repetitively into the ground for fun, he could not guess what had the power to do this. Surely not the lightweight oddity they have been tracking? However, Vak'kthir was open to the possibility and pondered whether or not they should continue their coarse.
"I do not know what it was that did this. It might be the creature we pursue, but -," the elder cut his response to his son as he noticed something out the corner of his eye. A flash of heat atop a not so distant, or high rocky mesa perhaps only 250 to 300 yards away. Vak'kthir mandibles clicked together. They might have found what they were looking for.
"Now, my son we are going to circle around that mesa and watch for a while. I think that whatever killed this beast may be there. Stick close to me and be prepared for anything. If we see a flash of heat, then we will go climb atop the mesa and see if we can take this creature."
"But father, I am not very good at climbing. What if I fall and alert it?"
"I'm not worried that you will fall, for if you do I promise you a beating worse than the one I threatened you with earlier. If you must you may cling upon my back when we ascend."
The son submitted to his father's will, and soon they set up their stake out which lasted less than an hour. Vak'kthir's intuition was correct and soon the familiar scent of electricity faintly came to him as a heat signature of a nearly yautja sized biped creature blazed in the coolness of the night. Inwardly Vak'kthir thought to himself that if it were a natural creature of the region it would never show it's body heat like that upon a mesa of all things for a whole world of heat sensing carnivorous creatures to behold. It had to be foreign he thought. How foreign though, he did not know.
"Come, my son. This will be interesting," said Vak'kthir, "and for the record, what we are doing is very dangerous. Under no circumstance should you ever track or approach unknown prey while alone. The most dangerous prey is the prey you virtually know nothing about. When hunting, you always should know what your hunting or else it may be more than you can handle. The greatest sight you will ever learn my son, is the ability to see the line between courage, and stupid."
The young one took in the words, but then asked, "Father, if what you say is true then isn't what we are doing stupid? I mean, to track a creature we know nothing about. We could be walking into an ambush we have no chance of winning, despite even your great skills."
Vak'kthir noted what his son said, but was somewhat irked that his son made even a shadow of a suggestion that his judgment was unwise. Most young yautja would never question their elder's or else face severe punishment, but on the other hand Vak'kthir knew his son had a point, and in truth he was not so sure that what he was doing was the wisest thing to do. Yet his spirit was telling him different.
"My mind is telling me the same, but my heart and my instincts tell me different. Let it be another lesson to you son that in making risky decisions you cannot always trust only in your mind or your heart or even your instincts, but in all three of these things. There are times though when opportunity will not allow all three to come in agreement with each other and in the heat of battle decisions must be made quickly. We will just have to do with a two thirds majority vote for now. What do your three judges say?"
The youngling looked up to his father and said, "The same as yours."
"Then let us proceed."