AUTHOR'S NOTE: See additional Author's Notes at the end.

xXx

Escthta stared at the Matriarch, the gravity of her words like a weight in his stomach. This was what Yugmnelsh had meant. There is a balance to these things. And it is tipping. He turned to look at H'chak-di, stunned by the revelations. We are dying, and she is the only one who can save us? Surely it could not be so, but Paya herself said that the race was at an end, that humans held the key to breeding without estrus, that they shared… the same genetic material? He turned to look at H'chak-di only to find her face blank, her mind shuttered.

"Why should I help you?" Her voice seemed far away. Escthta had not dared hope for an immediate acceptance, but this reply seemed more negative than he had wanted to believe. Didn't she realize the difficulty he had undergone bringing her here? He had taken on considerable personal risk, been challenged to defend his honor or die, not to speak of the risk Hir'cyn and Cthinde had taken on by supporting this endeavor. Many yautja would not understand the presence of a human on the homeworld. Even the Council, selected from the most learned and experienced of their race, had been uneasy at best with her diminutive presence.

The Matriarch spread her hands wide. "I cannot offer you a reason why you should." Escthta's mouth fell open. What was the Matriarch playing at? Why the hell would she ask for such help from H'chak-di and not give her reasons why?

"Then my answer is no."

Escthta stood suddenly, his wrath and confusion taking control before he had time to collect his thoughts. "Why?" He looked at the Matriarch. Why ask her if you know you cannot offer a reason? The Matriarch closed her eyes and dipped her head slightly. It is Paya's will.

He snarled in frustration, and then turned on H'chak-di. He glared at her harshly, hoping to cow her into consent, but she stubbornly stared back at him. Escthta saw only fear, anger, resentment and the lingering effects of the liquor in her eyes. He knew that they could force her, that she would be no match for their superior strength. The thought of her in the stocks, the cuff and collar chafing her skin until it bled drained his anger. Only criminals deserved such treatment, and she had done nothing wrong.

xXx

Anise watched the huge Hunter growl. His face had turned from pensive to angry in moments, and the rapid change scared her, but not enough to give in.

"Explain to me why I should offer my body, my life to those who hunt us like animals? Even if you don't-"she added, noting the hurt look on his face, "-others of your kind do. What about that group back there?" She cast a hand at the door leading to the Council chambers. "Even I can tell when something isn't right."

She stood unsteadily, her legs weak from the long time spent curled up and the cn'tha. "I'm not safe here, not from anyone." Her eyes landed on Escthta at this last word, and she half-wanted to exclude him from this last group, but still couldn't completely trust him. Those are human skulls on his walls, Anise! He killed Jake! Don't let him lull you into a false sense of security! But being in a constant stage of vigilance for nearly six weeks was beginning to take its toll.

"Nothing has happened to me since I left Craxan Prime, but I am not sure I trust anyone here. I am likely to be stabbed as I sleep, or poisoned by your scientists. Why should I put my only life at stake to save a race of murderers? Why should I care?" Aside from the fact that you have my life in your hands, she added to herself.

"We are not murderers, H'chak-di. The Hunt is a sacred trust between the yautja and Paya."

"Those are human skulls on your trophy wall." Her voice held an accusatory tone.

"They are." He inclined his head to her, closing his eyes briefly. "Every one of them died honorably and deserves their place of honor on my wall." Escthta spoke with conviction, remembering each of the three nameless humans whose skulls were hung on his wall, remembering their uplifted faces, eyes wide with surprise, their last breaths burbling out with their blood.

"And what about those that you killed dishonorably?" H'chak-di's mindset turned cold and poisonous. Escthta frowned, sensing that she was baiting him into a trap.

"I have never killed anyone dishonorably, H'chak-di."

She gave no answer. Her mind opened to him suddenly and he heard again her screams, the dull thud of the invalid's chest cavity opening to the air, and raw pain splintered like glass into his mind. He reeled with the vitriol, the sorrow, and for the first time in his more than three hundred years, he was moved to tears. Not only because he felt her sorrow as if it was his own, not only because he now felt her loss as sharply as she did, but because she did not know that the man prayed for death; that with his dying thoughts, had bid Escthta to take her and keep her safe from the Hard Meat.

"I do not expect you to understand the circumstances, H'chak-di. I saved him from a dishonorable death." His voice was earnest.

Anise heard his words, and could only think of how hard they had worked to keep the Craxan flu at bay, how much she had done to keep Jake's organs alive, how Scott had succumbed at last and she wasn't going to let death take her brother without a fight and she had begun crying without realizing it. Escthta was claiming to have saved him. Rage and grief swelled anew in her, threatening to overflow and drown her reason.

"You saved him? After all I went through keeping him alive? After all the money we spent looking for new treatments? All the time we spent in poverty so that he could be treated, all the effort that went into caring for him and you saved him?" And though the question came out in an incredulous tone, she found that she could only supply half of the rage that the thought deserved.

She had wondered, since Jake had been unable to hold meaningful conversations, whether he would prefer death. She wondered if she had been stealing his dignity, letting him rot in a wheelchair with bits of plastic hanging out of his stomach. He had been vital once, running and laughing, and then he was as a dead thing, pale and shrunken in his room. Many times she had almost asked him if he wanted to be let go. At the last moment, she would stop, restrained by the unspoken taboo against human euthanasia, no matter how desperate the situation. Had his death been a sorrow? Or a relief? Anise wept bitterly, because after all she had done, she could not save his life and it had taken an alien with a split face and human skulls on his wall to restore her brother's honor.

Escthta's hands fell from their entreating gesture, and he watched her face distort with pain. He felt her second-guessing, her realizations, blunted as they were by the veil of tears. Her sobs were gruesome and silent, and she sat down, shuddering as she drew breath. The Matriarch looked on quietly, tall and statuesque, her shining headdress glinting as the skylight let in the strengthening sun.

"If I help you, I'll be signing humanity's death warrant." H'chak-di's voice was small and strained, barely audible. She looked up at Escthta, seeming smaller still against his height. She shook her head slowly, "I can't. Humans are petty, jealous creatures with evil intent. We're overrun with greed, corruption, and we often kill each other for no reason at all. But there are good things too. There are good things too…" She murmured the last words, trying to think of anything that would justify them, imagining them in a different mouth.

A different mouth opened to speak. "We often kill each other for no reason at all. But there are good things too," said Hir'cyn quietly. "There are good things too."

Anise closed her eyes, blinking away the glittering tears that clung to her lashes. She looked at Escthta, thinking of the brother he killed, but unable to scrub away the woman he saved. The life he ended and the lives that might go on. Sinner and savior, executioner and pardoner, until her head became heavy, and she leaned forward to put her chin in her hands, her thoughts turned inward.

Escthta watched her, cautiously monitoring her inner battle for signs of acquiescence. "Anise," he began slowly, carefully choosing his words, "What can I do to make my people worth your sacrifice?"

Anise was brought up short by his calm request; her thoughts of Jake's death had segued into a montage of memories, comparing her life now to her life with Jake and before that, Scott. A small smile crept across her face as she remembered her farm in the French countryside. Those days were gone. Even the days in the razorgrass on Craxan Prime were gone. There was no turning back from the future, no matter how strange or foreign. Her father's voice murmured a proverb in the back of her mind, and she nodded to herself. What is done is done. There is no changing what has already happened, who has already died, who has not. She looked up at the Hunters, their faces like strange gashes in their heads, and yet, she knew their mannerisms so well, she could see Escthta's apprehension, the hesitation in his body.

Before thinking, she mumbled, "Stop hunting humans, at least while I am here. And guarantee my safety." She ran a hand through her short hair, pulling it out of her face before lifting her eyes to meet Escthta's.

"Is that all?" His words suggested finality, and she seized on the offer in his question. "Remove our home system from your star charts and never go there again." It was what she could do to protect humanity from their Hunts in the long term. At least she told herself that. In truth, she acknowledged blackly, it was a small request to assuage her guilt at selling out her species.

"And for yourself?" The older female Hunter leveled a speculative gaze on the smaller human, and

H'chak-di shrugged uneasily. "Put me on the planet of my choice when this is over."

Escthta hid his disappointment, though he had known it would be this way from the beginning. Their cultures were different, radically so, and hers was little more than prey for his. For the first time, her leaving had been spoken of. For the first time, she had an end to match her beginning.

xXx

Paya bore twin sons. The firstborn, Cetanu, emerged from his mother's holy womb fully formed, and took up the spear and blade to Hunt, leaving his mother alone. Paya continued to labor, and after two days and two nights, her second son was born. His name was Selachi, and he too came forth fully formed, but no sooner had his foot touched earth than he turned and began to tend to his mother's bleeding body. Paya slept for three days and Selachi watched over the universe, undoing Cetanu's chaos and setting the cosmos in order.

As Cetanu smashed stars together, the novae frightened the yautja, but Selachi drew them near and showed them how the exploding stars silhouetted Cetanu's form, and like revealing the workings of a magician, the veil of fear was stripped away, and they stood tall and unafraid. Selachi taught them how to build shelters against Cetanu's storms, how to make fire to warm themselves, and how to weave clothes that protected them from the elements. Their hair caught in thorny brambles and Selachi taught them how to braid it into the fearsome dreadlocks the gods wore. Their females were beyond control, and Selachi taught them the overtures they needed to breed. He taught them thousands of things in the darkness while Paya slept on, oblivious.

xXx

"Done." The Matriarch's pronouncement spread like a shockwave, echoing in the heavily draped room, vibrating through tissues and muscles, and it seemed to Escthta that every part of him was shaken, down to each atom of his being.

He felt Her return, the Goddess' holy presence filling the Matriarch and brightening her body as sunlight brightens the bottom of a crevasse at noon. Her body became supernatural, wreathed with light, and he felt his heart strain in his chest, flopping wildly without rhythm or reason.

She looked at him, and Her gaze stripped him of his mental mask, laying bare all his flaws for Her to see. She saw his fears, like great silvery moths shivering on trees, dreams like coppery butterflies tucked between leaves, and his growing talent for Speech, an ever-present gale that threatened to rip those delicate wings apart. She closed her eyes and Escthta sagged, breathing as if he had run for his life, feeling his heart wobbling in his chest.

The Matriarch stepped off her dais, walking toward him, and she glittered as her head carapace and collar caught the strengthening sun. Paya's presence remained rooted in her form, and Escthta caught his breath as the goddess drew near. She reached out and cupped his face in Her hands, Her touch lighting all his nerves on fire. With one thumb on each hand, She marked a circle around his tusks, scoring the ivory with Her nail. She slid one thumb and then the other into the folds of Her own mouth, and silvery strands of saliva dripped from each finger as She rubbed them into Escthta's newly carven tusks. The glistening fluid flowed into the crevice, filling and hardening into silver rings around each tusk.

Her eyes sought his and time stopped abruptly. Escthta's surroundings faded from his peripheral vision, blurring together the tapestries together until only her face was left. He breathed in and then felt her in his mind. I have given you a great Gift, Protector, given only once before in my lifetime. Hasuan-del Thuin, the Gift of Tongues, will make her speech flow from your mouth as freely as if you had been born speaking it. Her voice, warm and quiet, seemed only for him. Time began again and the effects of the cessation receded. He knew instinctively that her words had been for him alone and Escthta bowed his head low, lifting it only when he felt the warmth of the Goddess move away. He reeled from her nearness, which numbed his senses, like a cloying scent that he could neither name nor resist.

Anise watched the old female approach her, moving to stand only as she drew closer. She came up only to the Matriarch's solar plexus, and felt very small and vulnerable in front of such a great creature. She saw the finely wrought filigree on the tusk-rings, the rich stones on her collar and headdress that shunned no hue. The thin fabric that showed her dappled hide showed also the muscles it stretched over; the curve of her breasts, the scars from fights ages ago. Her knowing eyes, infinitely wise, sat deep under her heavily-lined brow. This close, she could see the age marks, and Anise knew that the Hunter in front of her was impossibly old.

I have a gift for you as well, H'chak-di. The voice was in her head, the same rich alto that had spoken to her first in the room with the gathering of Hunters. Anise knew as she met the Matriarch's eyes that the words were ones only she could hear. The Matriarch knelt, bending her knee to touch the floor, her thighs bunching up into massive cords that strained to loose their power. With one hand, she smoothed her thumb across Anise's forehead, leaving behind a faint shadow of light. She said no more, but rose and moved away to the last guest.

Hir'cyn was on his feet even before the Matriarch had finished with the human. He dipped his head as she approached, but she made no move to touch him. I do not have a gift prepared for you, Elder, said the velvety voice in his head. "I ask but two things, Lady," he said softly.

The Matriarch leaned in to listen and then nodded slightly. "The first will be done immediately. The second will come in good time."

xXx

The seven Council members watched the doors close with a solid thud. It was some moments before anyone spoke.

"An interesting development." Noskor sat down in his chair, his single eye unfocused, looking at things far away.

"Interesting, my foot," grouched Bruyaun. "Humans will only bring ruin upon us. They did before."

Ren'da clicked softly, his trill betraying his interest. "I think this, perhaps, is different. The incident of which you speak, Bruyaun, had markedly different circumstances." Ren'da also seated himself, taking up a cup of water and sipping at it reservedly.

Tjat'le remained standing, looking at the door that remained closed, carved with the representation of Paya herself. The chambers of Paya remained closed when she was not on the planet, and she rarely used it to hold hearings while she was on planet. He paced around the Council chambers, stopping to look at the doors every time he passed the chair the Matriarch had occupied. His rounds grew more leisurely, but his agitation became more and more obvious with each round.

A crash shattered the uneasy silence as Tjat'le hurled his ceramic water bowl at a wall. "What the shit is going on!"

"I can't say," offered Noskor from behind his steepled hands, his eyes still staring out into space.

Tjat'le snarled and balled his fists, searching for something to lay into. Moments slid by and still the doors remained shut. A slave came by to clean up the fragments of bowl and Tjat'le kicked him viciously, carving a furrow in his side with a spur.

"Get out of my sight, you…!" Unable to come up with a sufficiently vile epithet, Tjat'le kicked him again and roared him out of the room.

"Settle down, Tjat'le," droned Ghanede. The strategist was making small notes on a piece of holofilm. "You won't accomplish anything by kicking slaves and making the rest of us miserable."

"The hell I won't!" and Tjat'le began to advance on the doors to Paya's chambers.

"Tjat'le!" Kvar'ye bellowed the Council Leader's name with enough force to stop him mid-tread. He spun on his heel, looking dangerously belligerent, his eyes daring Kvar'ye to question him further.

Kvar'ye gestured to the chair next to him, and Tjat'le reluctantly stomped back to the table, throwing himself into the proffered chair, Noskor on the other side of him. Kvar'ye leaned over on one elbow.

"Liege, we can only speculate about what is going on in Paya's chambers right now. But it is becoming clear that the Psionic is becoming a greater threat. If he is meeting with Paya without us present, he may be acquiring any and all knowledge she has." His voice lowered to conspiratorial tones. "The Matriarch may be trying to seize power."

Tjat'le was startled out of his sulk by Kvar'ye's words. "You see conspiracy at every turn, Kvar'ye," he answered, brushing off the concerns with one wave of his clawed hand.

"I do not think we should dismiss his concerns out of hand," said Noskor quietly.

Tjat'le lifted a brow. "Oh, really?" He turned back to Kvar'ye expectantly.

"She has never left the females to themselves on the broodworld after a Council, and the fact that she has waited so long for the Psionic to return." Kvar'ye's eyes slid shiftily to the carved doors and then back to Tjat'le. "Something isn't right. If she's a scientific specimen, why is she with the Matriarch, and not Thtarok?"

Tjat'le frowned. "Where is Thtarok?"

xXx

The memories only came to him in flashes, never all at once. It was just as well, he thought. Made things last longer. The skull watched him with hollow eyes, and Thtarok clicked softly at it, purring his pleasure.

"NO, STOP!"

It felt so good. He remembered her screams again, his hands tightening. She had been his first kill. A 'young male', as he recounted to his Clan leader, but he knew the truth, as did anyone who examined it closely. They never got the chance, of course. No one got that close to her. No one but him.

He stood over her, his ki'cti-pa glistening. Shreds of skin hung off her legs, the exposed bone a beautiful shade of pink. She was sobbing, but quieting as she started going into shock. The blood, so red, strange on his hands, and he was fascinated with the way it coated his blades, flowing down the serrated edges. Thtarok slung his blades, spattering her with her own blood and relishing the smears made on her arms as she continued to crawl away.

He squeezed his eyes shut against the skull's unyielding gaze, painting her flesh, her fear and agony back onto the clean bone, watching her tear-stained cheeks turn red with blood that hadn't been drained. He remembered the texture of her skin as it came off, a soft hide that had tanned into a buttery leather. He sucked in air fast; her skin had almost finished him, but a pause brought his libido back under control. He shivered, stroking himself slowly, opening his eyes to stare at the skull's mocking sockets. It was still there, the hairline fracture.

Her hair was matted with dirt, leaves and mud, but it was an effective way to restrain her. He had only half-flayed part of her leg, mostly to excite her fear. And she was so afraid. It was a living nightmare for her, and he was her own personal monster. She screamed again, sobbing, but it wasn't begging for mercy; it was the cry of someone who is in pain and wants it over by any means necessary. The last whimper escaped as he broke her neck, a gift given to her for being so very entertaining. Her heart continued to pump what blood remained, and he realized that her brain would still be alive for a few seconds, current still arcing from one neuron to the next as the cells tried to figure out what had happened, where things had gone wrong. He dug into her socket for her eye, removing it easily and flicking it into the dirt. The socket opened, red and wet, into her skull.

It didn't matter how many times he tried, or the different ways he explored, Thtarok never held out. He could never make himself last until the explosive moment in his memories and his hands became the same. He closed his hand over the slickness, stepping away to wash his hands of his secret sin.

The skull looked on, empty-eyed.

xXx

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Congratulations on making it to these notes. I apologize for the length of time it has taken for this chapter to make its way here. It is amazing that an excess of free time will actually reduce writing time. I have a very heavy semester ahead of me, so you'll probably get lots of chapters as I seek to ignore my academic responsibilities. :)

Thanks to Miika, who gave me ideas on just how gross things could get. Thanks also to Solain Rhyo and Drakonlily for their gross input and their beta.