INTSTM 3
A single moon after she had found her cave, R'ka-thwei had killed several more Spike-hounds, and had used their tough scaled hides to make some spare outer clothing for her self. The impossibly tough scales had been left on, because while they might not stop a plasma caster, they were more than durable enough to stop the teeth and claws of the creatures that she needed to hunt to survive. Salt gained from sea water that she evaporated by her fire was used to season some of her meat, and all of her meat was stored in the smoke channel above her fire pit. Teeth and claws from various beasts had been made into jewelry. Using her dagger, and a frozen image that had been recorded by her mask, she was painstakingly carving a small statue of the Dark Hunter himself. It was slow work in making it from the largest piece of the second tusk from that huge beast that had come close to killing her, but she felt that it was fitting. After all, she was sure that the Dark Hunter must be watching over her on this world for her to have survived for so long.
All of her people, the Great Yautja, knew that there were the two primary Gods. Lilka; the Goddess of home, health, hearth, and all that was considered good. But there was also Cetanu; the forever and eternally angry God of the battle, the God of war, and rage. But there was a third great being that her people revered. The Dark Hunter, and it was he who was believed to be cold, calculating, and methodical in every way. Completely impartial, and utterly incorruptible; he eventually claimed all. For no matter which of the Gods one followed, it was the Dark Hunter who claimed them all in the end. It was the Dark Hunter who constantly followed and stalked one throughout one's life. It was the Dark Hunter who decided which of the Gods received the soul, and it was the Dark Hunter who passed the final judgment on the soul. Skilled in ways that mortal minds could scarcely imagine, the Dark Hunter was considered to be the truest epitome of Hunting skill that could ever be dreamed of, and it for those reasons and those skills that he was revered.
R'ka-thwei knew that she wasn't gifted in the area of carving, and that was why she was taking her time in doing it. A few minutes each day, a shallow groove here, a small cut there, but the statue was slowly taking shape. Each time she worked on the sculpture, she felt that her little cave was becoming more of a home for her. There were many times however, when her thoughts weren't so pleasant. It was when she thought about why she was here at all, that her thoughts became dark and sinister. Half formed daydreams of somehow finding the culprit that had acted so cowardly in the murder of her Bearer, became thoughts on how she would enjoy slowly skinning them alive as she savored each and every scream. Thoughts of splitting each of their sensitive tendrils in small amounts before severing them a small bit at a time. It would feel as if her very blood burned with the murderous rage that coursed through her mind. She prayed fervently to the Dark Hunter that one day, she might have the chance to extract true justice from the coward who had killed her Bearer and caused her to be exiled to a world where she could be freely hunted and killed. It was a prayer that she knew would never be answered.
She eyed the carving critically as she compared the generalized outline of the sculpture to the frozen image on her mask. She wasn't sure just how much detail she would be able to put into it without running the risk of ruining it entirely. With a resigned sigh, she wrapped the incomplete statue in a length of skin, and placed it carefully back in the cubby hole that she'd made for it. She turned her attention to taking stock of what items she now had, and what she needed.
A small number of dishes for eating and drinking, several sets of outer clothing composed of the tough scaled hide of a Spike-hound, the one set of durable clothing she'd been wearing when exiled here, a few meager weapons that had been made from materials provided by her kills, and her awu'asa. While she knew that the spear she had made from a combination of ivory and a spine from a Spike-hound wasn't reliable, the weapon she had made by following instructions from her wrist computer was another matter entirely.
With one tip placed on the ground, the other tip rose to the level of her bottom rib. In the center of the 'bow' as the computer called it, it was as thick as her wrist, and slowly tapered to points as thick as her thumb. A single strand of hide ran from one point to the other to keep the shaft bent with a large amount of tension. The bow, as the computer named it, propelled a miniature and primitive version of a spear at incredible speed, and with far more power than she could throw it herself. She had made a number of these small spears, or 'arrows' as termed by her computer, and had even tried the weapon. While it appeared to be crude, clumsy, and ineffective, the strange weapon had proven to be very powerful when she tried it. She did realize that while the weapon was excellent at medium ranged targets, it was also something that she would have to develop her skill with.
She decided that since she needed to practice with the strange weapon and that she needed a variety of meat to allow for a change in her diet; she might as well attempt both at the same time. She grabbed the bow in her left hand, and retrieved the hollowed log of arrows. Then she crawled to the mouth of her cave to see that it was low tide. Dropping to the ledge that ran just beneath the surface of the water, she headed to her right in the direction of the mountains. She went about six st'rok, which were each five thousand nok, before climbing up the cliff to reach the mountains.
R'ka-thwei reached a plateau, which was covered in a thick jungle like growth. The only real difference between what was located up here versus what she knew was found below, was that the plants were growing more densely here. She had no idea what type of creatures she might find in this area, but she knew one thing for certain. There was little of anything on this planet that wasn't considered highly dangerous in one way or another. That was why she always had to stay sharp and focused. Almost everything on this planet was deadly. She had even heard a few rumors that concerned very large carnivorous plants existing on this world!
She made her way slowly through the branches of trees that towered far taller than those near sea level, as she cycled through the visual modes of her mask to search for possible game. It was nearly two hours of silent moving before she finally spotted something. It almost appeared to be a reptile of some kind about five nok in length. She observed the creature closely, as it moved through the thick undergrowth. It didn't appear to be very fast, but that didn't mean that it wasn't. Deciding that she might as well find out the quality of penetration that her self made weapon offered, she nocked an arrow, and drew it back. Taking aim at the head of the creature, she fired.
The arrow wasn't as fast as a shot from her plasma caster, and it certainly didn't cause the same level of damage. But it definitely had more than enough power to easily penetrate the skull of the beast. R'ka-thwei stared at the creature that had been killed instantly, with more than a little surprise. The survival guide that she had in her wrist computer had indicated that the weapon possessed an amazing amount of power in spite of its primitive nature, but she never would have dreamed that it had this much power! The arrow from her single shot was buried more than half way into the skull, and she was fairly sure that it had actually gone all the way through. She knew that she couldn't be positive about that until she got down there and actually examined the body.
The Great Yautja stepped easily off the tree branch that was located a little more than thirty nok off the ground, and landed silently near her latest kill. Instead of falling over onto its side, the creature had simply fallen to its belly, as if the legs had suddenly given out. Using her right foot she intended to roll the creature onto its left side. A muffled snap accompanied the move and she saw to her surprise that the arrow had actually gone completely through the skull and had been deeply embedded in the ground beneath the creature. Her mandibles flared in an unintentional grin as she considered the implications, and possibilities of her new weapon. She knew that it wouldn't have the range of her plasma caster, but it did have the singular advantage of being almost as silent as a thrown chakt-ra! The main differences being that it was much more powerful than a thrown weapon, and she knew that with time and skill, that it could be more accurate as well, plus it had to have at least twice the range of a bladed disk.
Her eyes began to burn from unshed tears of gratitude as she thought of what her Bearer had insisted that she keep with her! She was now certain that her Bearer was even now looking after her safety from beyond the almighty and unstoppable grasp of The Dark Hunter. How this could be so, she had no idea, but she was sure that it was true. A home, cooking utensils, skins, furs to sleep in, means to preserve meat for quite some time, and now, she even had a new and very reliable weapon for hunting, and all of it was because her Bearer had insisted that she keep some information in her wrist computer. A Bearer who was now dead at the hands of a Bad Blood. A Bearer who would never see or know of her triumph in completing her Kainde Amedha Chiva a full ten years early. Her Bearer, whom she knew would never be avenged, and that the Bad Blood who had so callously murdered her would never be brought to justice, had insured that she could survive even this ordeal.
Downloading and storing the information was such a simple thing. It had been nothing really, but that one simple act had made her Bearer release a breath of relief once she had the survival guide permanently stored in her wrist computer. Her Bearer had only been doing what was best for her, and while she hadn't truly realized it then, she most certainly realized and appreciated that fact, now. R'ka-thwei knew that her Bearer was beyond any means of communication now, and she would never be able to tell her Bearer just what she now missed, nor would she ever be able to speak of the things she had never said. They were regrets that now haunted her at times, and she had no idea how to deal with those regrets. She shook her head sadly and turned her attention back to the creature she had just killed.
She reached down and pulled the broken and now useless arrow from the head of the creature. Turning to the body of the creature, she pulled her knife and was about to start skinning it, when she noticed something. She used her wrist computer and the short range sensors in it, to examine what she saw. The coating of thick mucus that covered the creature was nearly a tenth of a nok thick, but the real problem that the sensors showed her, was that the mucus was an incredibly toxic contact poison. She turned her knife so that she could then use the spine of the blade to scrape the slime off.
Scraping the slime off the strange beast proved to be a very time consuming task. She made certain to get enough of the stuff removed so that she could place the carcass in her large game bag, then she began heading back to her cave. On the return trip, she spotted many small creatures that served as prey for many of the carnivorous creatures on this world. The powerful bow that she had made turned out to be very useful in hunting several of the small, nimble creatures. Those were then placed in her smaller game bag on the other side of her waist. The bow proved to be an interesting and relaxing way to hunt, and though she had missed her target completely on quite a few attempts during her return to her cave; R'ka-thwei was quickly approaching the point that she adored the new weapon.
Approaching her cave, she stopped and used the water of the ocean to wash away the remaining slime from the strange creature that she'd killed, before entering her home. She quickly cleaned the smaller creatures first, and set the meat to be dried by the smoke from her fire. Then she turned her attention to the Slime Beast as she had decided to call it. Cleaning the creature turned out to be extremely easy. The hide wasn't anywhere near as tough as she had thought that it would be, and the entire beast came apart with surprisingly little effort on her part. It wasn't until she was portioning out the meat that she realized she might have a problem.
Even drained of blood, the meat was incredibly wet from the amount of fluid that it retained. She knew right away that it would never last long enough to become fully dried before beginning to rot. Once more, she consulted the survival guide in her wrist computer, and learned that with a very wet meat, she would need to use both salt and smoke in order to preserve it, but that even then, it would not last as long as the rest of the drier meats. Curious to see how it would taste, she put a chunk of it over the fire to roast while she processed the creature's hide.
It took her a while to deal with the meat from the Slime Beast before she was able to deal with preserving the skin from the creature. Once she was done, her mandibles fell slack from her face as she kept running her fingers across the hide of the strange creature. Nothing she'd ever felt, not a single fur that her Bearer had possessed, and not even her own undercloth were as soft as what she was now repeatedly dragging her fingers across. Incredibly soft and pliant, the skin was something that she had never imagined could exist. She didn't even try to resist the sudden and inexplicable urge to rub the hide against the side of her face. It wasn't until one of her highly sensitive tendrils brushed against the hide that she realized just how soft and smooth it really was. Suddenly her golden yellow eyes shot wide as she realized that she could make some excellent underclothing from this skin, and that it would be even softer than the factory fabricated underclothing that she had been wearing. Her mandibles fixed themselves into a smirk of pleased smugness as she began measuring out the pieces that she would need.
After she had measured and cut the pieces for new underclothing, she realized that she was salivating heavily. When she focused on why that was, she became aware of the most wonderful scent emanating from the meat of the Slime Beast that was roasting. Unable to resist the incredibly tempting smell of the meat that was thoroughly cooked; she removed it from the fire and bit off a small piece. Suddenly, her hands were completely full as the meat simply fell apart. At first, she thought that it was ruined, but then the flavor in her mouth told her otherwise. The meat had become so soft, tender, and was so full of juices that she couldn't believe it!
'No wonder the creature is covered in that poison! That has to be the only thing that keeps those beats from being hunted to extinction by everything because of their flavor!' R'ka-thwei thought in surprise.
An unintentional rumbling purr of the purest bliss rose from her deep within her chest as she began eating the flesh of the strange beast. Soft and tender enough that even a still sucking pup could eat it without teeth or tusk, she was truly enjoying this repast.