Lex sat at the console of the Dragonfly, cross legged in the too-large pilot seat. Down the corridor, Spyro was finally asleep.
Now Lex reached out and initiated the launch sequence and felt the turbines hum into life. In a few moments the shuttle would lift smoothly off the ground. Not long after, it would blast free of the planetoid's atmosphere and they would begin their orbit. There they would stay, floating serenely in space, until she decided what the hell to do next.
"The fourth time." She thought "This is the fourth time she's run away in two weeks."
Her daughter was slipping through her fingers.
"It was never this difficult with Selim." It was a treacherous thought and all the more so for being true. At the age of four, Selim too had wanted to copy his father, learn to hunt and be a warrior, but he had also had a calm, steady temperament. He loved her unswervingly and rarely disobeyed her.
Isaac was a bolder, brasher personality than Selim, but underneath all his bravado she knew there was sweetness. His relationship with Scar was a lot more … problematic than his twin brother's, but he adored Lex just as Selim did. Lex had loved Isaac since before the day she had become his mother (see 'Replication').
Spyro was different. Sometimes it almost seemed to Lex like the girl scorned her mother's love. She idolised her Father and had adopted his values of yautja pride, yautja courage and yautja honour so thoroughly that Lex sometimes felt she wished to completely forget the human side to her nature. Of all their children, Spyro was the one who bore the greatest resemblance to Scar and it was a subject on which she had taunted her elder brothers mercilessly.
Lex stared gloomily out of the view screen as the planetoid fell away beneath them and found herself remembering one of the many times she'd had to break up a fight between the girl and Isaac. Selim – ever the peacemaker – had come running to tell her they were about to murder each other. After Lex pulled them apart, Isaac had grudgingly apologised but Spyro absolutely refused.
"I am pure yautja," She had said, disdaining to use human language as usual "Selim and Isaac are just half breeds."
"Spyro, they are your brothers." Lex had said, trying to pour oil on troubled waters, as Isaac glared daggers at his small sister "You are the same mix of yautja blood and human as Isaac and Selim."
"No Mei'Varsi." Her daughter had glowered, her miniature, scaly brows drawn down "I am yautja." She insisted "I do not have human blood."
Lex looked down at her angry, little daughter and tried not to show her hurt.
"Of course you have human blood sweetheart," She'd said gently, kneeling so that she was on a level with the girl "You get it from me." She had been going to say but Spyro interrupted her with a stubborn toss of her braids "I am no soft meat."
Now Lex sighed, feeling again the hurt and anger that has flooded through her at hearing her own daughter dismiss her with that unpleasant phrase.
"No mystery who taught her those words!" She thought.
Scar had disappeared out of her life, taking the twins with him. She'd tried and tried to find them but she'd failed. He must have done something to cloak the signal given out by the Chameleon and she didn't have enough knowledge of the hunter's tech to find them by other means.
The pain of missing the boys was like a wound that wouldn't heal. Only in the moments just after waking up could she be at peace. In the misty vale of semi- consciousness she could escape, but then she would come fully awake and the knowledge would hit her again.
Now that it was just herself and Spyro, Lex had tried her hardest to forge a closer bond with her daughter but the harder she tried, the more it felt like she was failing.
"Are you going to take her too, Scar?" She asked, "Haven't you taken enough from me?"
The void outside the windshield gave no answer. As the stars appeared like scattered embers, slowly burning through the sky's dark canopy, she squeezed her eyes shut and leaned forward to rest her arms on the console. She let the motion of the engines rock her, the deep, bass-thrumming of the turbines soothing and enfolding her. Tears sprang from under her eyelids and traced a tired path through the grime on her cheeks. She sat there breathing deeply, like one who is ill.
Finally she sat up. The poison of her grief had drained and she was calm and decisive. What she needed was someone she could talk to. She straightened her back and set a course for the only friend she had who was still alive.
Scar moved silently through the trees. Normally he felt calm on the hunt, at one with the darkness. But not tonight.
"How dare they!" He growled to himself "How dare they defy me! Isaac has always been insubordinate, but Selim.." He growled "To have Selim turn on me… it is intolerable!"
His mind was a swirl of chaos, but he could still read the night. Every breath, every sound, every shadow; they were part of a pattern wired right into his nervous system. Something big had come this way; he could sense it by the whisper of the night air, see the faint, orange glow of its heat signature in the blue tinged gloom.
By the look of the trail, it was some species of predator. Right now, Scar didn't care what it was; he just wanted to stick his blades into something. To watch it die.
He followed the trail into the valley, passing through the trees like fog, feeling the air becoming cooler with every step he came nearer the river. Perhaps his quarry was going down to drink. Perhaps it was stalking another creature, all the while unaware that it was being stalked in turn. It would never see death coming.
All the while he was fuming inside "Ungrateful hell-spawn! Without me, they would have died today. Without me they are defenceless. Naked as infants. Yet they think they know better than I do what life is."
Now, he came to a place where the trees thinned into a clearing. In the moonlight, he saw the shape of the creature he had been tracking.
It was the Oriande; its sleek coat dappled like the jungle shade. Scar bit back his surprise "It cannot be the same beast," He thought, but his eyes were drawn to its flank. There - to his horror - was the Avissa's puncture wound. Somehow, somehow… it had managed to drag itself here in its enfeebled state.
"It should have died earlier." He steeled himself "It matters not, it can die now.."
As he drew back his combi spear, the Oriande lifted its head and made a noise - a deep, strange trilling sound that caused odd vibrations in Scar's brain. From the jungle around it came other answering trills, more high pitched… and three tumbling shadows emerged from the undergrowth. They were as silky dappled as the Oriande, but far smaller. They danced playfully around the larger beast, who bent her huge head to nuzzle tiredly at their coats and lashed them with its huge, rasping tongue; a mother on the point of exhaustion trying to care for her offspring.
Scar knew her fate was sealed anyway "She can scarcely lift a claw to scratch, let alone hunt. In a solar cycle or two she dies and her spawn will soon follow. I can at least give her a quick death."
He raised his ki'cti-pa and aimed it towards the creature's chest but somehow... somehow, his right arm would not move. Somehow he could not see the mark, the spot on the Oriande's velveted chest where the ki'cti-pa would pierce her heart and drop her like a stone. It floated somewhere in his field of vision; there for the taking but frustratingly out of focus. And as he watched the Oriande lick wearily at her cubs' fur, his arm would not obey him.
Again and again he tensed his arm, but each time his strength failed him. Again and again he made up his mind to leave and then stopped, vacillating and indecisive.
"I have become as enfeebled as Selim!" He thought furiously "What do I care for this mangey vermin and her mewling spawn?"
All of a sudden, he noticed the cubs stop their play and fall quiet, drawing close to their mother. She stilled, ears pricked and alert. As he watched, a shape emerged from the undergrowth on the other side of the clearing. It was another Oriande, its coat of dark, patterned silk the very match of hers.
"Oriandes mate for life," Scar remembered, and the thought caused an odd tightening sensation in his chest "Her salvation has come."
He decided at once that he did not want to see their affectionate reunion. He was about to turn and leave when the male Oriande began to growl, the sound deep and guttural. The creature's muscles tensed under his coat as he began to inch forward. Scar saw the mother's ears flatten against her skull and he realised that she had known - as he had not - that this was not her saviour, but her death. She met his challenge with a blood curdling growl of her own. She must still be weak from the Avissa venom, pathetically so, and yet she lowered her head and spread her jaws and mouth feelers aggressively. She was ready to fight and Scar could see it would be a fight to the death.
For a few beats, Scar stood frozen. Then, he carefully pulled a throwing blade from its sheath. The metal was cool where it rested against his skin. "A quick death," He told himself again "Her courage deserves no less."
His breathing was as deep as a sleepwalker, his pulse slowed until it seemed hours between heartbeats. His arm drew back as the target swam into focus before his eyes. The blade left his fingers soft as a whisper, flying straight and true to its mark. Scar heard it strike with a muted thud. Seconds - or perhaps minutes - passed, and when he looked down he was shocked to see the male Oriande on the ground, a puddle of shadow. Scar saw the body spasm once or twice and then it was still.
The mother Oriande rose from her defensive crouch and gave an interrogatory sniff, mouth feelers tasting the air. When the male did not move she limped over to his body and cautiously lowered her head, at first to sniff but then leaning forward as if to nuzzle him, while the cubs still cringed in a huddle.
The nuzzling became more insistent and the scent of blood filled the air. Then the Oriande chirruped. Her cubs surged forward, their playfulness no longer suppressed by fear. They clustered at the point where their mother had opened the dead male's belly for them. Their mewling cries were muffled as, one by one, they buried their muzzles in the warm corpse of the dead male.
Scar stood for a moment, hands hanging at his sides. Then he turned on his heel and walked away, quickening his pace as a chorus of satisfied purrs and trills echoed around the clearing.