Chapter Two
Though disconcerted by the strange events he had witnessed, Bakuub turned his mind to the task at hand. He would hunt the rakshasa and return with its spinal chord decorating his spear. After his first encounter with the beast's kind, he was not too keen on another direct assault. Stealth would guide this hunt, he had tested his strength against the rakshasa's talons before. Today would be a test of his guile and speed. Moving swiftly from tree to tree, Bakuub followed the trail of his quarry as it led into the depths of the jungle. As night crept in, the temperature began to drop, and Bakuub decided to rest in the branches of a large tree. Though not fatigued, Bakuub knew he would have to be in peak condition to face such dangerous prey. He would pick up the trail again at dawn.
Early the next morning Bakuub awoke from a light sleep. It took him a short while to regain the trail and it was another two hours before he had closed the distance to within a hundred noks. Soon enough his prey would appear below him and he would strike swiftly. His hunter's sense told him that the rakshasa was a very short distance to his left. He would have to make the approach in absolute silence. Creeping into position, Bakuub tensed every muscle in his body in preparation for the struggle to come. He was greeted by a sight that baffled him. The rakshasa lay on the forest floor as in sleep. Bakuub knew that the creature was supposed to be active at this time of day. Something was very wrong. In the eerie silence Bakuub could hear the beast's labored wheezing. Suddenly spasms racked the rakshasa from head to tail as it began thrashing wildly on the ground. Bakuub watched in a mixture of fear and awe as the creature frothed and screeched in what must have been excruciating agony. Was it the slime after all?, Bakuub wondered. Even in death, the little one has avenged itself. The spasms stopped just as abruptly as they had come. The rakshasa lay on its back in dead silence, quivering only slightly as spittle dribbled from its long snout. Without warning, this brief reprieve was shattered by the sound of crunching bone as an explosion of gore erupted from the dying creature's chest. An ugly worm-like creature slithered out of the ruptured chest cavity and skittered off into the tangled underbrush.
As seasoned as he was, Bakuub was a little shaken by the scene he had just witnessed. By the time he recovered, he realized there would have to be a change of plan. His intended prey lay in a bloody mess on the forest floor beneath him, dead after its encounter with the mysterious egg. Bakuub weighed his options. He could search for another rakshasa, but each creature usually occupied a large range far away from its fellows. Bakuub didn't mind the extra work but he feared he had wasted too much time already. His peers were expecting him to return soon, and taking longer than necessary for this hunt would cast serious doubt on his tracking skills. Of course he could simply take the head of the fallen rakshasa as his trophy, but he couldn't stomach the idea. There was one last option. He could kill the worm-thing which the rakshasa had unwillingly spawned. The tiny thing would make for a poor trophy, but it would prove the truth of an otherwise outlandish story. It didn't take long for Bakuub to settle upon this last course of action.
At first tracking the creature was easy. Its path was marked by a trail of slime and gore. With the rakshasa dead, Bakuub decided to proceed on foot, stalking after the tiny trail into dense foliage. The trail of blood quickly diminished however, and soon Bakuub was left with only the creature's secreted slime to follow. This too soon dwindled and the tracking became significantly harder. By midday Bakuub reached the edge of a vast wetland, whereupon his quarry's trail vanished into the shallow water.
