One raised in the jungle learned to respect its ways and know his place in it, but that did not erase ambition or the slow burn of vendetta. The endless stream of warnings and reproaches from the elders had only served to fan the flames. "Seek to take more from the land than it gives, and it will take your hands; walk out of your place and lose your legs; no winners, only survivors." On and on, like that.
However, for some – like him – the matter was more personal. He wanted the beasts to flee from him, to be the stalker that imbued darkness with primal fear in the minds of all that lived, and to see eye to eye with the Mother's most savage child when he gazed in the pooling blood of an enemy. He wanted to wrap his hands around the Mother's throat and squeeze, to wring the life out of whatever adversary set itself against him, and walk where he will.
But you did not hold dengue fever in your claws, and you did not see reflections of glory in the pooling blood of minuscule, poisonous insects.
And that rankled Mogashi deeply.
When the true lords of the jungle walked, the land held its breath. Around the strongest beasts it would grow silent with fearful reverence, like a tribesman bowing his head at the approach of a strong chieftain. That was the respect the jungle awarded a true warrior.
It did not grow silent at their approach. When a beast approached their band, they would hear it in the silence that followed another, not them. Not him.
And toxic plants, lethal mushrooms and stagnant, disease-ridden ponds did not fear anything. In short, the Mother cheated all her challengers: either of their lives, or their challenge.
The outlanders called the Mother many things. They called her a hell and pined uselessly after better things, rotting as they dreamed. They spoke of glorious fights with beasts and spoke of a warzone, mistaking the battle for the war, the victory for the end. They sang songs of appeasement and rattled off curses and told themselves that something benevolent was listening. Some few even named it a primordial cradle, when there was nothing primordial or cradle-like to it. There was only a pile of corpses growing taller and deeper by the day as life struggled to defeat and consume itself in an insatiable cycle of cannibalism.
No, there were no cradles, just a foothold won with the reach of an arm and the point of a weapon, your own or an ally's. Everything one had was forcibly wrested from another. Life in the deep green was not a personal contest of strength against the forces of nature, for the Mother did not tailor her challenges to her children's abilities. Nature was the ageless chieftain that, if challenged to a wrestling match, does not throw you into the ground but plops in your face in the misstep of a tiny, brightly-colored frog, lethal to the touch.
Mogashi growled in frustration. His folk fancied that they "knew better than to fight the Mother." Instead, they fought outsiders, enslaved anything and everything that would not sooner gnaw off its limbs than be bound, and mated with the spirit beings they professed to revere. It was convenient enough, as excuses went for bullying nobodies, fucking demons and lazing about in their own filth. However, while he did not mind taking advantage of the status his "holy" blood awarded him from time to time, slapping insignificant flies around was not how Mogashi intended to spend his days.
Winning the campsite from the cannibal tribe had been a worthy conquest. He could only hope that there would be more of the kind. Ripping apart men strong enough to hold their own against the Mother and her lesser children was most satisfying. The camp had not bowed to them, so they had crushed the whole tribe. They had made their own silence, and in a way, that was the finest outcome of all.
A log in the fire behind him burst with a sharp crack, loud in the susurrating silence. Mogashi took no more mind than the ensemble of nocturnal creatures that went on hooting, screeching, hissing, snarling, yipping and clacking outside the flickering light that marked their little piece of turf. Until the end of his watch, he waited for something of the Mother's to creep forth and encroach on it.