Path
Into the Darkness
Part
Five: Grune
Chapter Three: The Hunt
After a four hour hike through the hottest, most humid, and vegetation dense jungle territory he had ever been in, an exhausted Grune followed his Lunatac lover Kalin into the remote and secret hunter settlement called Serilune. The transport they had taken to the hunters’ home left them at the edge of the territory, far from the actual site, where the hunters handled all “outsider” business. Kalin had explained to Grune that it was done that way because the law of her clan was that the outsiders—including the other Lunatac clans, even the nobility—were not to know the exact location of Serilune under any circumstances. Those select individuals who were shown the place were either brought in blinded or sworn to secrecy under pain of death, and the hunters’ knew well how to make death painful. If the secret location were to be given away to the “civilized” citizens of the Third Moon, the hunter clan leaders moved their city to another spot in the jungle. Serilune had been vacated and moved many times over the centuries, although never in Kalin’s lifetime.
The two of them got more than a few surprised and suspicious looks from the native hunters as they walked past the sentries into the village limits—which, given the fact that Grune was not only a Thunderian, but a known ex-Thundercat, was not an unexpected reaction. Kalin took the sabertooth’s hand and smiled at him reassuringly as they strode into town, the look she gave him indicating that she was pleased and even a bit proud that her lover had lasted as far into the venture as he had. If the truth were to be told, Kalin had not been positive until that moment that when it came to it, that Grune really had what it took to see it through to the inevitable end. But now that he was there, and The Hunt was not that far off, she was confident that bringing him along had not been a mistake.
At that point Grune needed only to get through the preparations and trials to participate on the most exclusive and in Kalin’s eyes, exciting part of the several-day ceremony. If he completed the ritual successfully, the other hunters would accept his presence among them as a peer as opposed to an outsider—something that did not come easily to non-hunters, and that hunters generally wanted if they grew close to outsiders. Bringing Grune through The Hunt successfully was the final test that would convince her that she had converted her sabertooth lover to her side, the ultimate sign that he would never turn back. She was determined to see that it happened. Not only because corruption of the Thundercat was something Luna wanted, but at that point, it was far more personal for the hunter herself, more so than she would readily admit to.
He can do it, Kalin assured herself as they made their way down the stone and mud-lined streets. She thought back upon the day in the city the week prior, watching Grune make his first real kill. The thug who had attacked the sabertooth that day had not stood a chance against the might of Grune, and it excited her to mentally replay that vivid scene of him tearing the unfortunate man to shreds, sending him to a bloody and painful death with nearly his bare hands, aside from the little his knuckle-mace gave. Oh yes, he would do just fine in The Hunt, she was absolutely certain of it.
Grune himself was a bit overwhelmed, and he found himself looking over his shoulder nervously as he passed hunter after hunter eyeing him with curiosity, disdain, dubiousness, and in some cases outright hostility. Even though Kalin had told him quite a bit about the place, he had not known exactly what to expect when he came to Serilune, but it was nothing like he imagined it regardless. The village itself had a far more primitive look than the capitol city, but something about the atmosphere warned him not to dismiss it as too backward. In the distance, at the southern end of the town he could see the outline of a tall building with jagged architecture which he guessed at as being some sort of temple. The signs and posts of the buildings he passed had the sort of carvings and architecture that reminded him in a way of the great Valley of the Stone Giants on Thundera. It was clear to him that the band of Lunatacs called the hunters, while somewhat feral in their behavior at times, was by no means primitive or throwback. Evidence of modern technology, likely selected for functionality by the hunters, he imagined, could be seen here and there in the scenery. It was an incongruous mix, but somehow it seemed fitting of them nonetheless.
The hunter people themselves were also a bit of a surprise to Grune. Much like he had seen in some of the more rural areas on Thundera, many hunters walked around fully in the nude or wearing only a loincloth, including the women. Nearly all the hunters, even the old and very young, were in excellent physical shape for their age. Those that were well-fed were still strong and powerful, while the leaner and smaller ones appeared fast and nimble. Grune also noticed that some of the natives put personal grooming and bathing low on their list of priorities. He passed more than one hunter with a wild and knotted mane of green hair full of caked mud, burrs, and thorns from the surrounding jungle. Yet, aside from those who apparently found personal hygiene optional, the sabertooth found something attractive about the people as a whole. The idea of being in touch with the more natural and animalistic side of life and being so comfortable with it held a certain appeal. He was beginning to like the idea of staying there for a visit.
The first place Kalin and Grune went after their arrival in Serilune was to the inn that held the room Kalin had reserved in advance. Since she had no close relations in Serilune, the property upon which she had been born and raised had been taken over by another, more distant branch of her family whom she told Grune were little more than strangers to her. It struck Grune as funny that a place like Serilune, so isolated and hidden from all but the hunters and their chosen and watched day and night by guards with orders to kill anyone who looked at them wrong, would have an inn. Kalin explained that the inn was not for outsiders, but for individuals like her, who lived among the outsiders but returned periodically for events like The Hunt or other religious festivals and ceremonies.
Once they acquired the keys to their room, they headed in. Grune noted that their room was even more sparsely furnished than the one Kalin had in the capitol, that one having only a bed, a small chest of drawers, a mirror—all the better to match mud splatters with, he thought with a snicker as he remembered the au naturel hunters outside—and a claw-footed bathtub. It was in the main bedroom and not the bathroom, which was more like a closet. It had a sink and a toilet crammed into a small space barely large enough to accommodate his large sabertooth shoulders, but he supposed he should just be glad he didn’t have a hole in the floor.
Glad to be off his feet after the long hike, Grune kicked off his boots and stretched out on the bed, the old mattress feeling like heaven against his sore muscles. Kalin meanwhile peeled off most of her own clothing and undergarments—sweaty and dirty from the walk through the jungle—and climbed on the bed beside him when there was a knock at the door.
Grune drew in breath to tell whomever it was on the other side to get lost, but Kalin had already gotten up and answered the door before he got the chance to say it. The ex-Thundercat got a kick out of watching her answer the door half naked without a second thought. He knew of a snarf who served on staff back in Cat’s Lair that would have had a heart attack at such impropriety, and it made him grin to think about how he would have reacted to Kalin, if she or the other hunters didn’t eat the little furball first.
Kalin opened the door and found herself face to face with a Lunatac youth, aged in his late teens Grune guessed, clad only in a loincloth like many of the other hunters. Immediately the boy struck Grune as strange, although it took him a few moments to figure out why. It finally struck him that it was because of his appearance. He was clearly of mixed race origin, and not a full-blooded hunter, given the purplish hue of his skin compared to Kalin’s and the thinner texture of his hair, even though it was the same green color found on every hunter he had seen. Even though mixed-blood Lunatacs were a fairly common sight back in the capitol, Grune realized had come across very few that were any part hunter, and every hunter he had seen there in Serilune was obviously a full-blood. If he had not known better, he would have guessed the hunters to all be related, they looked so much alike. The boy’s appearance was not the only thing that set Grune on edge, however. He radiated an unsettling vibe as his eyes traveled from Kalin over to him on the bed, and back to Kalin. “I was told to deliver this schedule to everyone who came back for The Hunt,” the youth explained. He then handed Kalin a paper, and turned and left without another word.
Kalin unfolded the paper and shut the door, reading it quickly as she walked back over to the bed before she tossed it aside and lay down beside Grune on the mattress. “Nice of him to bring it by, but it’s nothing I didn’t know already,” she said, stretching out comfortably.
Grune drew Kalin into his arms and held her close to him, pleased to have a moment alone to enjoy their closeness. “That boy seemed a bit—”
“Strange?” Kalin finished, as if she already knew what Grune was talking about before he could say it.
Grune nodded. “Yes.”
“That’s because Demrock is a rislir, a half-breed, which sets him apart from other hunters. We have a strict law against creating mixed blood offspring, and those who live by our ways take that very seriously.”
“Really? I thought your outlook was one of no rules?” Grune said, eyeing her curiously. He also wondered why, if out-breeding was discouraged and she respected the law, that she would take a Thunderian like him as a lover. Granted, their relationship was hardly one that thought about the future, children, marriage, or the like, but if it was that serious, he wondered why a man like him would even appeal to her.
“My outlook is to disregard the rules that hold me back because they serve no purpose,” Kalin clarified. “Hunters aren’t like lunars, psis, or darklings that make up rules just to keep themselves occupied and feel important. We’re more like the Lixuvekh icewalkers or the Mirindet fire-bearers. We follow simple laws that have served us well and kept our clan strong. Our laws might a few papers worth of text if they were written out. Lunars would need an entire library to get through all their laws, and with their nobility as the cohesive ruling force of the Moons, you can imagine how well a hunter like me appreciates all that,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“Pretty xenophobic law, although not as extreme as moving your city if its location gets out, I guess,” Grune said with a shrug.
Kalin chuckled. “We’re a pretty xenophobic group, you should have realized that by now, Grune,” she teased, tracing her fingernail along the furry contours of his stomach before she grew serious again. “The reason we have the law is a bit more serious than our phobias, though. History has shown us that it’s not a good idea for us to interbreed with the other races of Lunatacs. The other clans don’t understand us as it is, and for a rislir it’s even worse. I don’t know if it works like this with Thunderians, but when certain races of Lunatacs interbreed, the result is not always healthy. Some races mix well enough, so that the natural abilities of the parent races will complement one another, but other times mixing blood proves to be a volatile combination—and that is the case with hunter blood. They estimate that over fifty percent of rislirs with hunter blood will become dangerously insane at some point in their lives. Because of that, the outsiders fear and shun them, and our own people see them as a weak half-breed. That’s why it’s against our law to mate with other Lunatac clans.”
“And that boy’s parents did it anyway? What happened to them? Were they outcast?”
“Suffice it to say he is an orphan because of it,” she replied darkly. “The kid’s father, a hunter named Demlin, died for his part in it. The mother was a fifteen year old psi from the capitol he kidnapped, raped, and tortured for the fun of it. She managed to escape only to be stopped by one of our sentries—they’re trained to watch for unescorted outsiders—and needless to say the sentry was disgusted by the girl’s story. Several of them cornered Demlin and killed him for his crime and his irresponsibility. You see, hunters are misunderstood enough already without loose cannons like Demlin going and giving us an even worse reputation among the ‘civilized’ outsiders,” Kalin explained.
“Unfortunately the girl had gone into season while he had her—likely the reason the fool lost control of himself in the first place, if you ask me—and she was already pregnant by him by the time she escaped. She stayed here for a short time, but she didn’t exactly fit in among the hunters, and eventually took off after she bore the child without a word. The boy became a ward of the town after that, mostly to make sure he is kept in check if he does succumb to the insanity of his breed.”
“And if he does?”
“They’ll probably kill him too,” Kalin said with a shrug.
“So what do you think happened to the kid’s mother? Think she’ll ever come back for him?”
Kalin shrugged. “Who knows? I never spoke with her, only saw her in passing. I was pretty young then, and don’t really remember.”
She then rolled over and glanced at the timepiece across the room on the dresser. “Anyway, we should save our energy and take a nap. We’ll need it later on,” she told Grune with a sly smile. The sabertooth pulled Kalin a little closer and closed his eyes, and within minutes they were both fast asleep.
* * *
Grune awoke a few hours later to a gentle shake from his lover. He blinked and looked up, and to his surprise Kalin was clad in nothing but some ritualistic paint on her face. “Time to get ready for the first ceremony,” she informed him with an excited smile.
He sat up and stretched, trying not to let himself be distracted by her naked form. “What do I have to do?” he asked.
“Strip,” she said with a teasing grin. “We participate in this event in our natural form.”
Grune raised an eyebrow, but agreed readily and stripped out of what little clothing he had on, leaving his sable fur as his only covering as he awaited further instruction from Kalin.
The hunter strode over to his side and ran her fingers through his thick fur, eyeing him up and evaluating him silently for a moment or two. Then, without warning, she smiled and started for the door. “Let’s go. It wouldn’t do to be late.”
Grune blinked in surprise, but he assumed she would tell him what he needed to know when he got there. A few minutes later they left the inn and went toward the temple-like building that Grune had noticed on their trip in. He noticed that there was quite a large crowd of hunters, as well as one or two outsiders like him—though he had the distinction of being the only Thunderian—apparently brought along by hunter friends to participate, gathered in front of the building’s steps. At the head of the crowd stood a hunter whom, even fully naked, still managed somehow to convey clearly that he was the master of the ceremony. The Lunatac began to speak in what Grune assumed to be the hunters’ native dialect of Lunar Plundarrian, for the sabertooth had a lot of trouble understanding him despite the fact that he’d learned quite a bit of the Third Moon common Lunar Plundarrian in his time there. He was able to figure out bits and pieces of what was being said, and that the chant he spoke was some sort of religious supplication to their gods. Grune was able to discern a significant focus on the word “air”, although he was not sure what was meant by that. He glanced at Kalin questioningly, but she only nodded to indicate that he needn’t worry about it. He took that to mean that either she would explain it to him, or it wasn’t all that relevant to his part in it anyway.
A few minutes later the hunter leader finished his speech, and the door to the large temple-like building opened. Two hunters wheeled out a cage that held a large, vicious looking bird. Grune was not up to speed on Third Moon wildlife, but it did not take a zoologist to recognize that it was a bird of prey, and one that would have no trouble slicing or clawing the average Lunatac—or Thunderian for that matter—to shreds. One of the attendants opened the door to the cage and the bird immediately tried to flee, but it did not get far. The ceremony leader went from composed to feral in a flash, and made a flying leap into the air after the creature. Roughly he grasped the bird by the neck, pulling it to the ground with him in a sharp motion as he became a snarling mass of teeth and claws—not all that dissimilar to the way Grune had seen Kalin revert when she killed back in the capitol—and tore the bird’s head from its body with only his teeth. The leader then stood, the bird’s head in one hand and its body and neck in the other, and shouted his victory loudly, inspiring cheers and bloodthirsty howls from the crowd. He then let out an echoing warlike cry, pointing at the forest. Grune was able to translate the gist of his final speech as he spoke it: “And now, hunters of Serilune, you who are sacred to the Gods and the chosen warriors or our kind, claim those of the air as ours this night!”
Instantly the crowd sprang to life and ran for the trees in a frenzied rush. Caught up in the bloodlust and the thrill, Grune ran with them.
As he had guessed, the ceremony involved a hunt for birds of prey. The only rule, as Kalin explained to him when they entered the darkened jungle, was that the animals they hunted had to be killed by their bare hands. No weapons of any kind were allowed, and if one was caught using one, not only would they be disqualified, but they might very well be torn apart by angry hunters who had little patience for the disrespect of their rites. Such a restriction might have been a serious obstacle for many whom were not native hunters, but it was not one to Grune. The claws, teeth, and sheer strength of a Thunderian sabertooth were something to be reckoned with, and coupled with his former Thundercat training meant he was deadly, armed or not.
Grune stayed with Kalin, and he saw clearly just how fully in her element she was in the wilds of the Third Moon’s rainforest. While he had seen the same deadly, predatory look she wore then at other times when she had killed back in the capitol, there in Serilune’s lands she seemed even more fierce and beautiful. It made him want her even more.
However Grune himself was also intoxicated by the thrill of hunting with only his natural defenses. Over the course of the evening he was able to track down the nests of five of the giant birds, and he successfully brought down three of them. Kalin had been impressed with his kills, and told him that it was rare for a first-timer to get even one, let alone three. She had helped him in taking one of them, as well as getting four others on her own, but teaming up was permitted in this event according to what she told him. Naturally, it was more prestigious to take a bird down without any aid, but it was not considered dishonorable for two or even three to entrap and kill a particularly large or vicious one.
When the sky started to lighten, signaling the end of the night and the allotted time for hunting, Kalin and Grune began the hike back to Serilune, as the other hunters participating in the ceremony were also doing. Upon their return they gathered with the other participants in the town square, busy showing off their kills and exchanging hunting stories, while they gutted and cleaned the birds so that their meat could be cooked for the victory breakfast. Some saved the feathers of birds with more impressive plumage as trophies, but Kalin did not. She thought such trophies were the pride of the more insecure, ones who felt they had to brag about their prowess to seem important. Grune tended to agree with her, and discarded the feathers as his lover did. Like her, he knew he was good, and he knew that the others knew it, so he had no need to flaunt his success.
After the celebratory meal of roasted prey-bird they returned to their room to get some much needed rest. Kalin told Grune that the second day of the ceremony would begin once again at sundown, and they needed to be prepared for it with adequate sleep. Once they were back at the inn, they drew a hot bath and indulged in it together, to rinse off the caked-on blood and grime from a night in the jungle. Grune was tenderly removing some twigs that had gotten tangled in Kalin’s long hair when he questioned her as to what to expect on the following evenings of The Hunt.
“The rest?” she repeated. “Much like the first night, only with different prey,” she told him, savoring the relaxing sensation of the hot water as it soothed her aching muscles.
“So we hunt different and more dangerous things each night?” Grune asked, drawing a stream of water over Kalin’s back.
Kalin nodded and dabbed at a caked spot of blood in the fur of Grune’s leg. “In a sense, yes. The first night, the one we completed last night, was the first of the four elemental ceremonies, the Night of Air. On that night, we focus our abilities on capturing the most deadly air-dwelling creatures of the jungle—the Firilean Birds.”
“I see,” Grune said. “And tonight?”
“The Night of Water,” she replied.
“We go fishing?” he guessed, smirking.
Kalin laughed and leaned against his strong body, stretching out with him in the tub. “You might say that. We dive and hunt for the Sharp-Mouthed Kordik, a schooling fish that averages a size of two to three feet in length and consumes Lunatac,” she looked up at him and smiled, “or in your case, Thunderian flesh. Our objective is to beat them to it and kill them ourselves, while swimming in their waters.”
“That does sound like a challenge,” Grune admitted.
“It is, but I think you’ll do just fine. I hear cats are quite good at catching fish.” She splashed her feet a bit in the water, enjoying the contrast between the water and Grune as she rested in the bath. “Then, tomorrow night,” she continued, “we have the third elemental ceremony, the Night of Earth. Our prey of choice then will be the Hetosha, a bear-like creature nearly three times the size of one of us, which dwells in the caves and rockier areas within the jungles. Those we often take down in groups of three or four, as it’s nearly impossible to kill one with our bare hands. It can be done, but it’s not easy for even the best of us and many have died trying to do it.”
Kalin paused for a moment and smoothed her hands through Grune’s fur. “The night after that we have the Night of Fire. Our prey that night is only a small rodent-like creature that bites, scratches, and moves like lightning, but its native terrain—the hot and fiery chambers around an active volcano a few miles from here—is the real danger. It’s quite easy to fall into a lava pit or asphyxiate in the toxic fumes from the heart of the volcano.”
“Good thing I’m getting used to the heat here,” Grune mused with a smile. “What about the fifth night?”
Kalin turned toward him, her eyes alit with excitement and anticipation. “That’s the Night of Challenge. That is the climax of The Hunt, the ceremony that we all participate in this for, the one that taxes our skills to the fullest. The other nights are merely practice runs compared to the Night of Challenge.”
“What do you hunt on that night?” Grune asked, intrigued.
The hunter looked him dead in the eye. “Lunatacs.”
Grune’s blood ran cold for a moment at her statement. Had she just told him that she hunted her own people? “What?”
“You heard me,” she replied. “Yes, we hunt other Lunatacs. And sometimes Mutants or even the occasional Thunderian, but mostly Lunatacs.”
“You just… kill these people for no reason?” he asked, shocked. While he had killed before, back in the city, it had never been without a reason. Usually the unlucky individual was guilty of something, even if it was just the general crime of being a lowlife.
Kalin frowned. “Not for ‘no reason’, but for good reason. It hones our skills to incredible levels and keeps them at their peak. You know what it’s like to kill, Grune. You’ve felt the rush of adrenaline, the surge of power, the knowledge that you are the predator and not the prey, and the high it gives you to feel it. Imagine what you felt each time you delivered a fatal blow to one of those pathetic street thugs back in the city, multiply it a hundred fold, and that’s what it feels like to take down the prey on our Night of Challenge,” she told him. “And before you say it, there is no reason to feel any of your Thundercat guilt or pity for any of the prey. In modern times the only ones we hunt are ones who have been sentenced to death under the royal laws anyway. We are merely acting as the executioners.”
Her last comment caught Grune by surprise. “The royal law endorses this?”
She nodded. “Oh yes. It’s one thing the royals do that makes sense. Many crimes, under general Lunar law, are punishable by death. The specifics vary depending upon which Moon you’re on or even what city you are in, but overall, it works the same way: if you’re accused of one of these crimes, there are two choices, to plead guilty or innocent. If one pleads guilty, the death will be swift and somewhat merciful—a lethal injection, a clean and fast beheading, or perhaps a laser blast to the brain, depending on the circumstances. If the plea is innocent, one has to prove that he is indeed innocent to the satisfaction of those presiding, or else he is sentenced to death anyway. Should this happen, once again the individual is given a choice. He can choose an execution—and if he has pleaded innocent and found to be not, he will likely be killed a way fitting his crime or something nasty at the whim of the sentencer—or he can choose the more sporting option: a chance at life and escape, but with the possibility of dying a savage and brutal death.”
“That chance,” Kalin explained, “is to play the role of prey in our Night of Challenge, an event that takes place three times per year. These condemned souls will be held in their cities until the time comes for the ceremony, and then they’re sent to Serilune the day before the Night of Challenge takes place. They’re released into the jungle an hour before it begins to give them a sporting chance. We then hold our ceremony, ending with our leader sacrificing one of them—one not released with the others, obviously—at the temple, in a manner very much like you saw last night with the bird. We then venture into the jungle ourselves and hunt these criminals down as our prey. If they survive until dawn, they’re free to leave and their crimes are forgotten. They even start over with a clean record when they get back into the mainstream society. If not, they die at our hands. But being our prey is their choice.”
She allowed Grune to digest that information for a moment before she continued. “In the end, it works out well for everyone involved. We no longer have to capture unwilling participants in secret as our ancestors generations past did, and the outsiders have a convenient way to get rid of their criminals. It appeals even to the condemned, in that it offers a possibility to escape their fate—though most greatly overestimate their chances against us. Fewer than three percent of those sent to us have ever successfully gotten away.”
“I see,” Grune said quietly. He didn’t really know what else to say at that point. It did not really surprise him that the Lunatacs would have such a law among their people. Lunar Plundarrians were a cruel and dangerous lot of creatures to begin with. Besides, while the method of execution seemed a bit savage, he had to admit it had merit. He thought it was a fitting end for the dregs of their society, and given how even many of their ‘law abiding’ citizens were evil and vile by Thunderian standards, their criminals had to be pretty much the lowest of the low. Still, the very concept went against the forgiving Code that had been drilled into him growing up on Thundera and then in the years that he’d spent as a Thundercat. On Thundera, there was no death penalty for anything—the worst punishment one could be sentenced to was exile. Grune wondered how horrified his old associates would be at the thought of a law like the one Kalin had just described. And now, here he was among the Serilune hunters, about to willingly participate in it. It gave him a perverse sort of pleasure. Only seeing Jaga and Claudus’ shocked faces to know it would have given him more.
Grune noticed that Kalin had her eyes fixed on him, watching him intently for some sort of reaction to her description of the Night of Challenge. Much to her delight, she did not see any guilt or doubt or even hesitation. Instead Grune simply smiled at his hunter lover. “It sounds incredible, my dear. I can’t wait.”
Kalin beamed and drew the sabertooth into a long and lustful kiss. “That’s what I hoped you’d say,” she purred under her breath as their lips met.
* * *
The Night of Water proved to be as much of a thrill—and success—as the Night of Air had been for Grune. He managed to kill two Sharp-Mouthed Kordiks, both of which were slightly larger than the norm. In the entire night of swimming with the deadly fish, he had sustained only two bites, and neither was a terribly severe or painful wound. One of his catches was the one that bit him anyhow, so in his eyes the score was settled. It also made the fish’s flesh taste that much better when he consumed it at the victory breakfast the following morning.
The Night of Earth turned out to be a bit more challenging. In her description of the hunt of the cave dwelling Hetosha, Kalin had not conveyed the beast’s truly terrifying appearance. She had described it as large and fierce, but Grune had been in no way prepared for the sight of the four-armed, heavily muscled, immense-fanged beast. Even the ferocious leader of the hunter ceremonies, the one that sacrificed a representative of the night’s prey each evening at the beginning of the festivities, had a good ten minute struggle with his chosen Hetosha. In the case of Grune and Kalin, the two of them formed their own small team and spent the better part of the night tracking a twelve foot tall Hetosha to a rocky cavern near one of the jungle streams, and then trapping it so they could ambush it. The kill itself took both of them using almost their full strength, but after a challenging struggle they were victorious, and the mighty creature fell to the ground breathing his last. The rest of the night had been spent dragging the beast back to Serilune, and later they joked that lugging its’ heavy carcass had been the hardest part of the ordeal.
The final elemental ceremony, the Night of Fire, turned out to be the most difficult of the four so far. Kalin had implied that The Hunt became harder with each night that passed, and he was inclined to agree. The small rodent creatures they hunted that night, sneaky and difficult little beasts called Mepirs, were nearly impossible to catch on easy terrain, and doubly so in the treacherous setting of the volcano’s peak. Grune’s thick fur proved to be a hindrance in that environment, and the staggering heat sapped his endurance quickly. Because of that he was only able to snare two of the elusive creatures, while Kalin, being more experienced and better adapted than he, managed to catch nine of them. Fortunately for the sabertooth, Kalin did not mind sharing her sizeable portion of Mepir stew with her lover that morning at breakfast, or else Grune might have gone to sleep on a rather meager meal. The Night of Fire left Grune feeling somewhat discouraged by his performance after how well things had gone for him the previous nights, but Kalin assured him that he had no need to worry and that it was more of a practice ceremony anyhow. She again told him that the real fun—and thrill—would be the hunt to come that night, for it was the much awaited Night of Challenge. By the time the two of them finished their meal and then a brief but intense interlude of passion back in their room afterward before they went to sleep, the sabertooth’s mood had improved considerably.
Just a little under eight hours later, Grune was awakened from his slumber by a demanding kiss from his lover. “Mmm, Kalin?” he mumbled, reaching for her, still half asleep.
“Out of bed, sleepy-cat,” the Lunatac teased, already up and out of bed. Once Grune’s eyes were open she grasped his arm and pulled him to an upright position. “It’s almost time to leave and you need to get something to eat before The Hunt begins. It’s going to be a long night.”
Grune yawned and stretched, resisting the urge to fall back into bed and go to sleep. “All right, all right,” he muttered sleepily. The past few nights had been physically draining on him and he was starting to feel it, despite his rather impressive physical shape. Regardless, he had no plans of letting a little fatigue stand in his way. Not on that of all nights… not on the Night of Challenge.
As he climbed out of bed, his long-ignored conscience sounded again in the back of his mind, questioning why he was going to go ahead with what he planned to do. How could he, once a respected noble of the Thundercats, an upholder of the Code of Thundera, be treating the vicious act of deliberately stalking and hunting a fellow sentient being, with the full intent of slaughtering him with his bare hands, like some form of game? Even though he had killed before back in the Third Moon capitol, he had never engaged in premeditated, cold-blooded murder. A few months ago, just considering such a thing would have been unthinkable. Yet now… now he was looking forward to it. To the thrill of the chase. To the kill.
Kalin was either oblivious to the last minute wrestling of conscience in her lover, or she simply disregarded them as unimportant. Either way, she did not acknowledge them visibly. “Ready, Grune?” she asked, sidling up to him in a seductive, slithery movement that erased the last bit of moral doubt that remained within him, replacing it with the more primal urge of lust.
“Whenever you are,” the sabertooth answered, a small but confident smile on his face. Kalin replied by planting a soft kiss on his lips, and then led him out of the inn and down the street toward the temple, where the gathering began for the final night of the hunters’ ceremony. As they walked down the nearly deserted streets of Serilune, Grune eyed the surrounding jungle with surprising calmness. It struck him that he was about to brutally deliver someone into the hands of death, and the thought no longer bothered him in the least.
Kalin squeezed Grune’s hand, momentarily bringing his attention back to her. Their short walk was over and they had arrived at the temple, joining with a crowd larger than any that had been drawn of the other nights of The Hunt. The mob was restless as it waited, and a bloodthirsty and eager energy emanated so powerfully from it that it almost seemed tangible. A few moments later the doors of the temple opened and the Lunatac Grune recognized as the hunters’ leader of ceremonies took his space on the altar in front of the crowd once again. Like he had on the other nights, he opened the ceremony by addressing the crowd in that unfamiliar hunter dialect of Lunar Plundarrian that Grune could just barely understand. That speech, it seemed to Grune, was more general in nature than the others, from what he could gather mostly focusing on tradition and clan pride, and how he and his people were on that night bound to carry out their sacred duty of using their natural prowess to deliver their sacrifices straight into the hands of their gods.
After the speech, which seemed to Grune to last far longer than any of the others, ended came the first kill, the one executed by the leader himself. When the hunter turned toward the temple, the grand door opened and a startled, somewhat haggard looking icewalker stumbled out. The ice Lunatac’s features held a crazed and defensive look which changed to one of sheer terror as he saw the bloodthirsty crowd of hunters in front him. The condemned soul realized that his fate was already sealed, and stepped back vainly, desperately searching for some way out of his nightmare. The ice man had wondered why all of the other prisoners save him were released earlier when he was not, and he had been feverishly hoping that it was because he had been granted some form of pardon. That hope was now extinguished as he realized the real reason he had been segregated from the others. Panic consumed him, and without waiting another moment, the terrified icewalker took off in a mad dash for the trees, but the leader of the hunters pounced on him before he could get any farther than a few feet.
The unfortunate ice man shouted desperately for help and kicked vainly beneath his predator, desperately trying to free himself from his hold. He spat bursts of ice at the hunter, but the icewalker was so panicked and afraid that he could get very little force behind his breath. The hunter pinned his prey beneath him almost effortlessly with his knees and savagely slashed at him with his claws across the throat and chest. The condemned Lunatac let out a squeal of pain and thrashed violently, managing to discharge one fire-beam from his hand that struck the hunter leader in the gut, knocking the wind out of him temporarily. In an act of pure survival instinct and with the aid of rushing adrenaline, the doomed ice man rolled out from under the hunter and scrambled to his feet, breaking into a panicked final run for his life.
It was clear that the hunter was surprised to have gotten that much of a fight out of the icewalker, but he was by no means bested. The hunter then stood and used his innate morphing ability to change into a creature that could only be described as part wildcat and part bird of prey with speed rivaling what Grune would have guessed would give a Thunderian cheetah a run for its money. Whatever time the ice Lunatac had gained in his run while his predator morphed was soon lost as the beast that was the hunter swooped down upon him and dug its powerful talons into his shoulders, immobilizing him as they punctured the skin and severed the muscles beneath. The doomed Lunatac could do nothing but struggle in vain and scream an unheeded cry for help as the hunter leader slammed him with incredible force back onto the ground. His screams went silent moments later when the morphed hunter’s jaws closed around his neck and his sharp teeth tore the icy and tender flesh open, spilling his dark blood all over the carved stone of the temple courtyard.
Grune watched from his spot in the crowd in a detached and awed form of silence as the hunter leader savagely mangled the body of the icewalker, not relenting until all of his victim’s movements and death spasms ceased and his body laid still and dead upon the ground. The victor then stood above his kill and flexed his wings outward while his body morphed back into its natural shape. The blood-covered hunter was visibly fatigued but he was still clearly victorious in his match against the first sacrifice. Without even bothering to wipe the maroon blood of his prey from his lips, the hunter ceremony master then stepped back onto the altar and called out a few more religious chants, ones that time echoed by much of the excited crowd, before he let out a loud and animalistic war cry and pointed to the forest. Immediately the members of the crowd made a mad dash for the jungles, bloodthirsty and intent on scoring their own sentient trophies. Grune was no exception and ran with the hunters as though he was supposed to be there, as though he had always been one of them.
The fading sunset soon gave way to darkness, and Grune had no sooner gotten into the thick of the rainforest foliage before it seemed that all of the natural light had vanished. He had of course dealt with that obstacle in the previous nights of The Hunt, but for some reason it seemed much blacker and more ominous on that night. The intense darkness might have been due to the cycle of the Plundarrian Moon system, as it had entered a phase where the larger planet Plundarr itself was not visible at all in the twilight, and the other Moons save the small desert moon Mirindet shone as half, crescent, or even less in the sky above. Despite the natural explanation for it, it felt fated and supernatural to the sabertooth nonetheless, and it only added to the dark mood of the Night of Challenge and heightened his anticipation further.
Eager to take his part in the bloodlust, Grune scaled a tree and sniffed at the air, depending upon his catlike sense of smell to track down his prey in the near blinding darkness. The one advantage he had on that night over the hunters was that he as a Thunderian could already easily distinguish the alien scent of a Lunatac, and even differentiate easily between the moon dweller races. He had certainly been around enough of all their kinds in the diversely populated capitol as of late to know what he was—and wasn’t—looking for.
Seconds later Kalin joined his side in the tree. The two of them had agreed before the ceremony began that night that they would hunt their prey together. Kalin wanted to watch Grune kill, and although she did not share the sentiment with him, she wanted to make sure that she could squelch any remaining shreds of his past Thundercat weakness should they surface at an unfortunate moment. She had put forth so much effort to seduce Grune to her lifestyle that she did not want to see that fall apart now, not when she had such great plans for him and certainly not after she had invested so much of herself into him. While it was true that it was initially Luna’s idea to make Grune theirs, as far as Kalin was concerned her shrew of a boss now had very little to do with it. In Kalin’s eyes, Luna was little more than a source of amusement and easy cash and first and foremost Grune was now her toy… and perhaps a bit more.
Kalin watched as Grune tensed his body, twitching one of his feline ears in the direction of a distant rustling. He sniffed at the air in a manner in which she imagined his catlike ancestors might have used when they roamed their world on four limbs, using only what the gods had given them at birth as weapons to hunt and take down prey. Grune’s eyes then widened with anticipation and his lips parted in a faint and sly smile. “That’s one of them,” he whispered. “A Lunatac, not a hunter. A dark-dweller. Male.”
“I’m impressed,” Kalin replied in a smooth purr. “So do you want him? The darklings’ vision grant them an advantage of sight over us on a night like this.”
“But he doesn’t have half the strength or endurance of Grune the Mighty,” the ex-Thundercat growled arrogantly. “He’s as good as mine.”
With that Grune leapt from the branch to the ground, and stealthily made his way in the direction of the darkling’s scent. Kalin, not wanting to miss a moment of Grune’s kill, followed his path through the intertwining mesh of tree branches above. Grune tracked the red-eyed Lunatac for a good two miles before he finally prepared to strike. He knew that sneaking up on someone with such keen vision would be difficult, especially as he would expect to be tracked and hunted, so he bided his time very cautiously and did little to give away his presence. Grune figured that if he gave his prey a chance to let down his guard, it would improve his chances of being able to take him by surprise.
Grune was right. The darkling had no idea he was being tracked or followed, and was beginning to relax somewhat. He had survived in Serilune’s jungles for hours by then, and he knew that the hunters only had until dawn to kill him. If he made it to sunrise then he was home free, and he was beginning to think he might actually defy the odds and make it—and how badly he wanted to go back home with his crimes erased. That sadistic bastard who called himself the Lunar King had sentenced him to death unfairly, he thought bitterly. The crime on his death warrant had been treason and espionage, but those were general labels that the royals slapped onto anything that they felt made them look bad.
Politics on the Moons of Plundarr were just like anywhere else—mostly about image. What the unfortunate darkling had actually done was break into the palace armory to steal a few of the valuables and sell them off for cash. Breaking and entering, petty thievery, he could have owned up to and served his time for. Those were not capitol crimes, although stealing from the royals hardly carried a light sentence. But treason? No. He had not committed treason. Unfortunately what he had failed to realize at the time was that he had committed a far more heinous crime—namely making idiots out of the palace security, who he had been able to get around with startling ease. Rather than deal accordingly with the lax attention of the Lunar Royal Guardsmen, King Lunaro had instead prosecuted him as a spy looking to sell secrets to Plundarrian Mutants. That charge had been justified by the discovery of some names of contacts—black market treasure dealers—on Plundarr that he had on his person at the time of his arrest.
The darkling had thought the charge against him was pure bullshit, so he pled innocent to the crime of treason. In retrospect he realized that he should have known he would be sentenced to death anyway. He had chosen the option of the Night of Challenge for the slim chance of survival, and he hoped that because he was a darkling he had an advantage in escaping the hunters. After all, he would see them coming if any followed him. Their ivory skin would stand out in the darkness like a neon sign with his infrared vision. Unfortunately there was one flaw in the red-eyed Lunatac’s thinking—he was so caught up in looking for hunters, that even when he looked over his shoulder, he missed the dark-furred sabertooth that crouched in the foliage every time he turned to watch his back. Finally he grew weary of running and hiking. He was not in the best of physical shape, and he was not used to the hot and humid air of the jungles surrounding Serilune. His home on Noktoraek had much more temperate weather, and he missed it.
When the dark-dweller paused to take a drink at the side of a stream, Grune decided then to make his move. He let out a wild, predatory roar, and sprang from the shadows, pouncing upon the condemned Lunatac. The darkling let out a cry of surprise, peppered with a few choice obscenities. Grune paid no attention to his rantings and pinned him beneath him with his powerful strength. The sabertooth then clamped a hand over the darkling’s throat. Being that his prey was rather stocky and muscular, Grune figured the best way to wear him out fast would be to cut off his oxygen.
“What the fuck… you’re not… hunter…” the struggling Lunatac gasped beneath him.
“I am tonight,” Grune retorted with a sinister growl. He tightened his grip on the darkling’s throat and grinned as the pathetic creature struggled in vain. Didn’t he realize that it was over now, Grune wondered, or was he as foolish as other Lunatacs he had dealt with when it came to not knowing when to give up? He stared into his victim’s fear filled red eyes and tightened his grasp. “And you’re going to die now. Say your prayers, Lunatac.”
The darkling thrashed around in a last ditch effort to save himself. “Fucking Thunderian,” he wheezed, desperately clawing at Grune’s hands, “damned miserable cat!” Like most of his people, the Lunatac had always hated Thunderians. He discharged a burst of his innate electricity through his chest hoping he might shock Grune off of him. It worked, and Grune’s grip faltered, stung by the charge.
“I’ll be damned if I let a fleabag like you get me,” the dark-dweller snarled venomously.
Snarling in fury, Grune dug his bared sabertooth claws into the meat of his victim’s shoulders to regain his grip and slammed him back against the ground hard. “I’m going to send you to your makers, you worthless moon-dweller,” growled the enraged feline. “And you can tell them the ‘fleabag’ that sent you there is Grune the Mighty.”
Tired of the verbal exchange, Grune ended it by slamming his fist into the side of the Lunatac’s head with all his might while he kneeled with all the weight of his body straight into his gut. Grune clenched his free hand around the darkling’s throat again, that time using more pressure and choking off his air supply almost completely, and then dealt him four powerful blows to the head. The Lunatac reeled from the assault, only vaguely aware of pain flashing through his body each time after the first time Grune’s fist connected with his skull, but it mercifully ended his conscious suffering as he finally blacked out, succumbing to the blows. Grune meanwhile felt the intoxicating rush of power again, like he had the day he made his first kill, and decided he wanted more. He wanted to kill more of those worthless beings, and make them all know that he was powerful and he was to be feared and only their gods could intervene to save one that got in his way. Growling with raw rage, Grune struck the hapless Lunatac in his grasp again and again, satisfying the dark urge within him that wanted to finish the act with the ultimate display of primal victory.
Unable to resist the allure of the kill high, Grune drew back his arm and delivered one final blow to the head of his prey and once it connected, pinned it down with his fist. The sabertooth threw his head back and drew in a deep breath of the humid air, tinged now with the scent of impending death. He savored the sensation for a moment before he thrust his head downward again, sinking both of his huge canines into the neck and chest of his victim, shredding it wide open and exposing flesh, sinew, and bone to the sticky jungle atmosphere. A spray of blood burst forth from the darkling’s body as Grune’s saber punctured his jugular vein, soaking his killer’s sable fur with a rich maroon shower of blood as the unfortunate Lunatac breathed his last and fell silent. Reveling in his animalistic conquest, Grune slurped at the hot fluid that clung to his lips and teeth with intoxicated pleasure for several moments, and then leaned back and roared his victory at the top of his lungs.
In a treetop above, Kalin smiled satisfactorily when she heard Grune’s victorious roar. He had exceeded her every expectation. He had finally joined with her in every sense, and nothing—not his Thundercats, not his girlfriend, not Luna, not the royals, no one—would stand in their way ever again.
* * *
The rest of the night largely passed in a blur for Grune. After he made his kill, Kalin climbed out of the trees and joined him on the forest floor for a fervent and excited victory kiss. Something within him had felt so wild and alive that he wanted to take her and make love to her in an animalistic frenzy right then and there, but she did not let that happen. Attraction or not, Kalin was first and foremost a hunter, and now that her apprentice had made his kill, it was time for her to make hers. She broke away from his embrace and stalked purposefully downstream, beckoning for him to follow. Grune slung the heavy body of his fallen victim over his shoulder and did his best to keep pace with her. He was not sure what they were supposed to do with the bodies of their trophies, but he knew that they were not left behind in any of the other ceremonies, so he carried it with him. When Kalin did not correct him, he assumed he was right to bring it along, although after walking for a short while he wished he had tracked a lightweight lunar rather than a bulky darkling.
Two hours later, Kalin finished off her own victim, a particularly violent and crazy half-breed graviton-icewalker female in her mid-twenties. The scuffle between the two was intense, but eventually Kalin gained an advantage over the woman and delivered her a fatal blow that snapped her neck, killing her instantly. Kalin herself sustained a large gash in her side from a sharp stick the woman had wielded as a makeshift weapon, but it was mostly superficial—nothing that a few stitches wouldn’t fix and that would heal before too long. Luckily for the hunter, her skin was not prone to ugly scarring.
Grune watched Kalin lift the woman’s lifeless body and hoist it onto her shoulder. Though she was by no means petite at her height of just a few inches short of six feet and he knew firsthand that she was stronger than she looked, it still surprised him how easily she handled the burden of the victim’s body. Of course, she’s probably been doing this for years now, he mused. It struck him for a moment how crazy it all was, for him to be so calm and rational when he and his lover had just brutally slaughtered two innocent—at least, innocent in as far as transgressions against them personally went—individuals. He could almost see Jaga’s prim and proper face looking at him in horror with a similar expression to the one he wore the day he walked out of Cat’s Lair for the last time. The thought did not make him sad, regretful, or even wistful. It just made him laugh. It was amazing how easy everything was to take when one simply did not care anymore.
Kalin shifted her load into a more optimal position upon her back, and then started to walk. “Ready to head back?” she asked Grune. “Serilune is a good hour and a half from here if not farther. We should try to be back by sunrise.”
“What happens then?” he asked, falling in step with her. Grune then remembered what the hunters did with the prey from the previous nights, and got a strange and almost sick feeling in his stomach.
“The breakfast feast,” Kalin stated, as if the answer should have been obvious.
Grune opened his mouth to ask just what they were eating, but he stopped before any words came out, and kept walking instead. He decided he was not sure he wanted to know the answer just yet. He supposed he would find out firsthand soon enough.
Once they were back in the town limits of Serilune, Grune followed Kalin to the gathering in the square where they had assembled the previous mornings with their trophies. Kalin walked over to a blood-covered stone slab and laid the body of her victim out upon it. An elderly hunter wearing a ceremonial robe then handed her a knife. Grune cast her a questioning look, and Kalin lifted the knife and set to work on her kill’s corpse as she explained. “It’s been blessed by the gods for us to use on our sacrifices. We have to cut out the heart from each and place it in the vessel by the altar over there.” She gestured to another stone table with a series of heavy collection containers decorated in elaborate symbols on them.
The ceremony sounded rather savage and primitive to Grune, but it did not really surprise him either, considering what he had already experienced among the hunters. Sacrifice of one’s own kind was practiced in many cultures on many different worlds, and it was common in ones with Plundarrian roots. At one time it had even been done on Thundera, but that practice had been long been outlawed on the planet. He glanced at the body Kalin was working on. “What about the rest of it?”
“The bodies, you mean?” she asked, slicing into the chest of the dead female in front of her. “We cremate them in a funeral rite.” The sound of ribs cracking and a frustrated grunt from Kalin interrupted her speech for a moment. “Sometimes these bones are so damned difficult,” she muttered, putting extra pressure on the knife as she tried to work it between two of the ribs. Finally it gave way with a wet snap, and the now cold and still heart of her victim was exposed. She gently cut away the surrounding tissue and lifted the heart from the body, and then pulled the corpse down onto the ground next to the altar, leaving space for Grune to place the dead darkling he carried. He took the hint and set the body on it, and then took the knife once Kalin handed it to him.
Grune slowly sank the knife into the flesh of the dead Lunatac and drew it back, exposing the chest cavity. He hoped that there was no residual electrical charge left in the body, for if there was he was risking a very nasty shock, but fortunately for him that died with his prey. Kalin eyed Grune carefully as he worked the body, eyeing her feline lover for any trace of remorse or emotion associated with what he was doing. She was relieved to see no evidence of such conflicts. Grune meanwhile, rather caught up in his work, had an easier time working around the bones than Kalin had, and removed the heart of his victim without too much difficulty. It came out a little more damaged for the effort than the one she had obtained, since Grune was less than delicate in his approach to remove it, but it was still intact.
With that task complete, Kalin had Grune follow her to the altar with the hearts of their victims in their hands. Grune followed her lead and placed the heart into the vessel set out as she did, and then followed her to collect the bodies of their kills. Compared to the hike back to Serilune, it was a short trip to carry the two dead Lunatacs to the blaze in Serilune’s square. The smell of burning flesh was strong and overwhelming as they approached, but Grune realized it did not repel him as it once might have. Instead it seemed to enhance his mood, and he and Kalin spent several minutes standing there watching their trophies be slowly consumed by the funeral pyre.
Eventually Kalin turned to Grune and gestured for him to follow her once again. “It’s almost time for the feast, we should head to the gathering back at the temple.” Grune nodded and followed, and they went back to the place they gathered the five nights before, that time walking more slowly from fatigue after their long and exhausting night. By the time they reached the temple the crowd was already quite large, comprising of a good two-thirds or more of what had assembled as the Night of Challenge had begun. Hunters dressed in ceremonial robes similar to the knife-bearer, mostly very old, very young or slight and weak-looking, were also present and passing around vessels with a stew-like soup in them. Other foods such as rolls and fruit were also made available to all in attendance regardless of whether they had taken part in The Hunt or not. Grune supposed that was the way that those who were not in good enough shape for the physical demands of the ceremony due to their age or physical weakness, would participate. He took one of the cups and two rolls, following Kalin’s lead, while the hunter leader called for silence and attention from the crowd and began the final ceremonial speech.
Grune, still unable to understand all of what the ceremonial leader spoke of, simply followed along with the crowd. Despite the language barrier he felt the rush of energy the hunter’s words incited in the bloodthirsty crowd and he felt as much a part of it as one of the natives. When the speech ended the hunter leader raised his cup, and everyone in the crowd, including Grune, followed suit. Cries and cheers echoed throughout the assembled mass of hunters, and then they all brought their cups to their lips and drank. As he drank Grune noted the soup was warm and salty, with chunks of tough meat. The flavor was not exactly distasteful to him, but he would hardly have called it gourmet fare, either. He consumed his share quickly and set his cup aside, once again following the lead of the other participants in the ceremony. When both he and Kalin finished their portion, Kalin sidled up to him, smiling slyly. “Did you like it?”
The sabertooth shrugged. “It’s not bad… pretty tough meat though.”
“The heart is not as tender as the poets and songwriters of the universe would like us to believe,” she commented dryly, starting down the street toward the inn as the crowd began to break up.
Grune’s eyes went wide with shock and he stopped dead in his tracks. “That was what they did with the hearts? I thought those were meant for the sacrifice…”
Kalin shook her head. “No, the bodies themselves were the rite of sacrifice. Burning them is the way of delivering them to the astral plane. The hearts are saved for us—to bring within ourselves and make us stronger.”
“I see,” the stunned Grune replied, the realization that he had literally eaten the heart of a hunt victim sinking in. What might have unnerved the old Grune the most was the fact that he took it in stride, and in a twisted sort of way, took pride in it.
Kalin smiled and drew him close. “Congratulations, Grune. You’re now officially one of us,” she said huskily, rubbing his shoulder approvingly and more than a little seductively. “Let’s go and celebrate, since we have to go back to the capitol tomorrow, hmm?”
The sabertooth drew her into a short kiss and savored the taste of the ceremonial drink that lingered on her bloodstained lips. “Lead the way.”
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