4 The Ancestral Forest (Part 1)

The treacherous path to the Ancestral Forest was laden with dangers. Bogged up marshes filled with insects that carried horrific diseases and body-melting poisons, desert regions where the temperature spiked so much that even a Yautja would feel overheated, plains filled with an abundance of predators that matched a Yautja in ability--and all of us knew none of it could compare to the ancestral we were heading for.

Hundreds of thousands of years worth of Yautja had entered this Ancestral Forest and only a few from each Pack ever exited the forest. The ground was soaked to the core with the blood of billions of Yautja.

This practice is the only reason Yautja population is still in the low billions like Humanity. But it serves a purpose. It embodies the principle of 'Survival Of The Fittest'. Only the best enter and exit. Only some Yautja decide to face the dishonour and disgrace and decide not to enter. They become Unblooded still, sure, but they will never gain the opportunity to become Blooded. Ever.

Good. A coward should never have the chance to become a Hunter.

To Hunt is to be eternally against the odds and to grasp a hold of them with your bare hands and twist them in your favour. To be a Hunter and to Hunt is to selfishly fight against predetermined fate and survive--no. To thrive. To Hunt is to be brave. To Hunt is to be the controller of your own fate, your own destiny. No coward should have such a chance to do so. If cowards control their own fate, who knows what they'd do to with such a power.

I grasped a palm-sized mosquito out the air before it landed on my skin and squished it with a casual movement before dropping it's popped corpse to the ground. Wiping my hand with a cloth, I continued my march onward. Out of the surviving Pack of seventeen, six had decided not to take the final test and had been flogged to show their cowardice forevermore. Of the remaining eleven who made the journey, a further four had been killed. At that point we'd split down different paths on our way to the ancestral grounds.

My current destination was the final marsh before the plains that surrounded the Ancestral Forest. I'd killed plenty of prey who thought themselves the predator of me in my journey here but I held no trophies - none of them were worth it. The true trophies would be found in my destination.

The thick mud below and the heavy smog clouding my vision could hardly stop me, my steps calm and determination as I waded my through it all. I'd travelled for two days straight, sleep more of a suggestion for Yautja when we had a goal in mind, and I was finally nearing my destination. Another mosquito came at me but I clawed through it's brittle exoskeleton before moving ahead. A few more miles of walking and the ground began to harden, the smog becoming lighter and easier to see through. I switched between my two forms of vision periodically - what one version would miss, the other would pick up.

I heard a sudden burst of motion, my sensitive skin picking up on the air moving and I extended my wristblades from my right gauntlet, striking out in a brutally fast thrust that skewered a thickly-scaled snake right through the face. It twitched and curled up, it's death spasms hitting it hard as it's body began to realise it was dead before it went limp. I pulled the corpse off of my wristblades and retracted them before pulling the corpse to my mouth and taking a bite from the flesh.

A Strangler. Basically a python but supersized like everything else on Yautja Prime. Brown as the muddy marsh's floor and capable of easily moving underground and swimming through the mud. It sensed through vibrations and it's eyes...well, it didn't have any. It looked kinda like a worm with a snake's mouth.

Tasty too.

I ate a few dozen kilograms from the corpse before throwing it to the side. The scavengers could have the rest.

And before I knew it, I was out of the marsh and into the plains. My eyes caught the forest as soon as I exited the smog. Gigantic. Like a city of skyscrapers made of wood. Each tree the colour of crimson and leaves as black as night. Their height reached into the sky like spears and their thickness held them steady against anything that would seek to see them knocked over. Even miles and miles away, they looked so intimidatingly huge.

I wonder what they look like up close.

Focusing, I scanned my surroundings and the horizon of the plains and saw multiple different beasts. Some fighting, some resting and some already dead and rotting. I ignored them but kept my guard up, starting the last stretch of my journey.

. . .

"I'm finally here," I said to myself, my hand against one of the mighty trees of this great forest. I ran my hand against it's tough bark, claws catching in places, but for the most part they were quite smooth. I looked deeper into the forest and saw it was the basically impossible to see too far in before a tree blocked my eyeline. Grunting, I dug my claws into the bark to test it out.

It took a little effort but soon my five claws had dug into it enough for me to hoist myself up. So, I did just that. I climbed the tree at a rapid pace, throwing myself upwards over and over again and finally stopped a few dozen meters up. Nowhere near the top but high enough to reach the branches.

Standing up on one of the branches, I shot off my standing point to another nearby branch and travelled deeper into the ancestral ground.

I had a week of Hunting to do but I couldn't Hunt straight from the get-go. I had to scout out worthy prey.

Spotting some tracks, I changed direction mid-air and pressed off a nearby trunk, shooting silently in the direction of the tracks. Round-ish feet at the back, three-fingered forelimbs, walks on all fours--the indents on the ground and the deepness of the tracks speaks to it's weight and the distance between each individual track tells me it's stride and overall size. I knew what it was by this point, and I'd never been able to find one before, let alone Hunt it.

I smiled a brutal, bloodthirsty smile. A fresh trophy for my collection then.

I continued through the trees, silent despite the power and the weight of my body. Mother's training on the columns and the further training under instructor Adiken'de basically made me a ninja. Faintly, I remembered an animated blond-haired kid saying something about becoming Hokage. Whatever that was. Probably a ninja.

My eyes caught more tracks, different to the ones I was following but only in size and stride. Same species. A herd of them, then.

Hearing them before I saw them, I climbed a little higher before I finally laid eyes on them.

Red, leathery skin and bony armor plates covering their spines and limbs, four tusks forming out of an elephantine head. Graka. Five meter tall behemoths.

Worthy prey.

But which among them was the most worthy? I scanned over the herd of a dozen before my eyes landed on the herd Alpha. A foot or so above six meters tall and covered in thicker bone plates than the rest with even more muscle and fat under that. An Alpha Graka. Oh, what a Hunt this'll be. Despite my joy, I wiped the smile from my face and concentrated, centering myself and focusing my mind to a razor's edge.

I slowly flexed my muscles, the scimitars matching the speed of my flexing as they slowly crept out of their holdings in my wrist gauntlet. The blood rushed past my ears, my hearts beating ringing through my chest and up into my head. My breathing was shallow but full at the same time.

A switch was flipped in my head as I stealthy jumped and maneuvered myself above the Alpha Graka who was eating some indiscernible corpse of crumpled and squashed meat and bone. One of it's tusks was snapped at the middle, forming a jagged edge with what was left. I saw the marks and scars over it's bone plates and leathery hide. It was experienced, so no mistakes could be tolerated.

I continued my watch, my body so low to the branch I was on that I was basically hugging/laying on it. My entire being came together at that point, focused on a singular goal. Everything faded to the background, becoming unnecessary as the world turned to be just me and the prey below.

I needn't have worried about the other Graka. Despite being carnivorous, as soon as the Alpha of a herd is killed, they show an uncharacteristically cowardice and run away.

Just because I hadn't seen nor Hunted one doesn't mean I haven't learnt as much as I could about it.

The claws on my toes dug into the branch and I leaned downward, my strong leg and back muscles keeping me from falling as I held myself in a crouched position while being parallel to the ground. And I waited. I focused on my prey and waited, patiently, for an opening to become apparent. It was eating but it must've killed it's food recently because it was still somewhat on guard.

But it would drop it. Everything does, at some point.

And soon it did indeed drop it's guard, too busy engorging itself on meat and bone to pay any attention to the surroundings. That was when I chose to strike.

Releasing my hold on the branch, I fell and gravity pulled me quicker and quicker to my target. It didn't even notice when I was within a meter of it, or when I reared back both arms and scimitars. It only reacted when I slipped one of my scimitars under the bone plates - right below it's neck. My other scimitar missed the mark and dug into the plate a decent amount but still ineffective enough that it caused no damage to the Graka.

I clicked my tongue, the noise covered by the Graka rearing up and letting out a pained roar. Twisting myself around, scimitar still in my soon-to-be prey, I pulled back my other scimitar and thrust it forth again. Despite the rocking and thrashing of the Graka, it struck true this time and slipped under the bone armor and into the meaty neck.

The Graka's right arm came at me as it reached for whatever was causing it pain but I kicked out a leg and put my foot firmly into the inside of it's elbow, keeping the arm at bay. I focused my arms and brought them together, veins bulging in exertion as the tough, dense flesh of the alpha did all it could to stop my cutting. It's other arm swung into my side with a calamitous bang but I held my ground, biting back the pain caused by the hit and put my strength into my motion of bringing the blades together.

They cut soon enough and I dodged another blow, going over the front of the Graka alpha and landing lightly on my feet. I spun, slashing out with both my blades across the throat of the Graka, biting deeply into it's flesh. Deep enough to connect with where my scimitars had already cut. I dodged one final barrage of haymakers and ground slaps and the alpha dropped to the floor, dead.

And it better be too. The fact it survived such grievous wounds to it's neck, both back and front, is a testament to how tenacious life on Yautja Prime is.

Just as I was about to get to carving up my trophy, I saw a red blur charging at me and gave a bit of a smile. The second biggest of the pack had decided to try and kill me, probably to solidify it's control over the herd now that the previous alpha was dead. After all, if it could kill something the other alpha couldn't, wouldn't that impress the others? Or whatever went through it's simple mind. Not one to run, I welcomed it's charge with one of my own.

Scimitars and fangs bared, I rushed toward it until the last second when it used it's superior reach to swipe at me with it's arm-thick fingers tipped in blunt claws. The sharpness isn't what kills it's prey, obviously.

I bent my torso backwards and let my feet fall out from under me, my momentum carrying me in a slide as I twisted and slashed at it's softer underbelly. The tendons and joints between it's arm and shoulder, the muscles that allowed it to raise it's arms were stabbed through, and finally I cut deeply into it's hind legs.

Using my blades, which were stabbed into it's abdomen, to steady myself, I pressed against it's crippled back legs and went back the way I came, slicing a bloody line up the center of it's abdomen, torso and finally it's neck before coming to a stop with a flip to face it. It collapsed to the floor and slid across the ground before stopping right at my feet.

"Nice attempt," I said to the dying beast and brought my scimitars down to saw through it's thick neck, killing it. Grabbing it by a tusk, I dragged it over to the alpha I'd killed. It's weight left a deep groove in the earth below and I wondered just how heavy this thing is. Yautja Prime is a much bigger and denser world than Earth, so it's gravity is naturally much, much higher. On Earth this Graka would weigh in the ten tonne range but on Yautja Prime...probably a few hundred or so tonnes.

A mirthless laugh left me when I thought about my life here as purely a training arc under intense gravity and conditions before I went out into the world. What an oddly Human thought. I have a surprisingly lacking amount of those. I guess I've never had the time or chance. Yautja culture gives no time for anything other than training and Hunting, of course, so it wasn't exactly a choice I personally made. Even if I don't regret it.

With those thoughts in my head, I finished pulling the dead Graka beta to the alpha's corpse and got to dismantling them. First to come off were the bone plates, then the skin which I would use for a tent or just for decoration. I buried most of the muscle and organs for I had no need for them while I ate what little I did keep, feeling hungry after the travel across the plains, my scouting and the fight.

Soon, I had two thick-boned skeletons in front of me. Extending one of my wristblades, I cut through the neck bones of both of them and I had my trophies. Now I just had to clean them of any left over blood, meat and brain.

But first, I needed a safe place to do so. A safe place to store them too.

I looked up and found a thick enough branch before I hefted up one of the skulls and began my back and forth journey to that branch. Once I'd brought up the skulls, skin and the bone plates, I turned to the massive trunk and brought out my wristblades again before setting to carving a circle into the bark. I did so meticulously, doing my best to not damage the thick bark anymore than I had to. Once I had my circle, I worked my scimitar under the bark and leveraged the circle of bark off of the wood underneath.

Picking up up, I placed it behind me and got to the really hard part. I retracted my blade and began carving away at the wood. It was ridiculously hard but my claws were sharp and my patience solid, so in the end, by nightfall, I had a roughly fifteen by fifteen by ten cuboid room. I dragged the skulls in through the opening and then carried the bone plates and skin in as well and finally covered the hole with the bark circle I'd cut out.

If someone knew I was here, I'd be easy to find. But for the brutish animals around these parts? It'd be enough. While some of them did possess a certain level of low cunning, they were still easily tricked by certain things. Like a simple panel of bark covering a hole.

The darkness wasn't much of a problem - either my human sight or my Yautja sight were more than enough to discern things in dark - and I got to cleaning the my trophies with a cloth and my blades for any tenacious bits of meat that refused to get off before treating the hide and racking it with my scimitar. After that was done, I put everything to the side and closed my eyes and listened to see if anything was trying to sneak up on me but heard nothing. Deciding it to be better to sleep now and explore the forest further in the morning, I lay down on the wooden flooring of my new abode and went into a light sleep.

. . .

I awoke a little while later, hearing how the morning in the forest went. Most predators on Yautja Prime are nocturnal or hunt later in the day - so herbivores and omnivores are usually most active in the morning where they can eat as much as they want without running the risk of being eaten - A death wail echoed through the forest and I snorted - but of course there are exceptions to the rule.

Pushing myself up, I did a few stretches to work my somewhat stiff body after sleeping on the hard wood. I hadn't slept on anything but furs for the last three decades, so going back to such an uncomfortable bed was...a very sudden change my body wasn't ready for.

Yawning, I continued my stretches as I stood up fully. Walking up to the bark covering, I pushed on it and it popped free. Exiting the tree house, I looked around rapidly, guard up and body tense and ready to react. But there was nothing, thankfully, and I just put the covering back where it belonged and began scouting my surroundings.

The creatures awake at this time weren't really worth hunting, so I settled for knowing the area. I marked trees with crosses or lines denoting whether there were any tracks near them and of course so I knew my way back to my camp. I snacked on some of the Graka meat I'd brought with me as I overlooked a group of deer-like creatures, their scaly green skin blending quite well with the long grass they were grazing in.

Not too far off from the main group a Terror, a creature I'd hunted many times before, jumped from it's position deeper in the grass and landed itself a particularly big specimen which it killed by snapping it's jaws around it's preys head.

The cycle of life, huh? Hunt or be Hunted. I breathed in heavily through my nose to focus myself but found the air to be a little...weird. Tinged with something. Not the blood of the Terror's prey, nor the prey and the Terror themselves. Something different yet familiar. I realised what it was just as I saw a grey-ish blur from the side of me.

I tilted my torso back just in time to dodge the metal spear that had been hurtled at me, though it's jagged edge had still drawn a light cut across my chest.

Turning to the direction where the spear had came from, I saw a Yautja. It was a male, standing a few inches shorter than me and built with strong yet lean musculature. His head and face were covered with the skull of some kind of feline, two dark green eyes looking at me with hostility through the eyeholes of the skull. He was carrying a whole bunch of spears on his back as well.

Not wasting any time, I exploded into action and burst off of the branch I was on, going toward the right before pushing off a nearby branch to change direction as the unknown Yautja loosed another spear at me. Or rather where I was going, anyway.

He looked surprised at my sudden change in direction and hurriedly pulled another spear but by the time he'd drawn it and gotten ready to throw it, I'd disappeared. He looked up yet didn't see me. He looked around yet didn't see me. He basically spun on the spot looking for me. The idiot never thought to look down. I jumped from below him, grabbing the branch from below and gripping it as my momentum carried around it and behind him.

Wristblades extended, I thrust into his lower back and severed his spinal cord with my left wristblades and sliced a bloody chunk out of his shoulder and back to stop him lifting his obviously dominant arm. He roared in pain as I let him drop to the ground. Wristblades came from his own gauntlet and he swung at me with his remaining arm in a frantic manner.

I stomped my foot down on his wrist and put an end to that, leaning over him and gripping his skull-mask with a hand. A squeeze later and the brittle bone was crushed into little pieces. I tore away what else was left and looked him in the face, "Why did you attack me?" I asked aggressively. He continued to struggle so I backhanded him across the face, sending a few of his teeth flying, "Answer me, you disgraced cur!"

When he continued to struggle, I released my left scimitar and sliced his remaining arm off at the shoulder. He screamed and flailed, his struggles reduced to pained shaking and twitching.

"You...soft one..." he crocked out with twisted mandibles and broken teeth, "Why...strong?"

Soft one. Ah, so he isn't one of the younglings who thought it best to hunt his brethren. He's a Savage Yautja. A Tribal Clan probably lives within this forest then...and I'd thought those stories were just that. Stories. Stories to frighten pups and younglings more than they already were about the Ancestral Forest.

If he's a Savage, it'd make sense why he attacked me. They attack anything they can get their hands on. Especially Yautja from outside the forest, who the savages nickname 'soft ones' because apparently not living in squalor makes us weak.

I scoffed at the thought and released my other scimitar, holding both of them in a cross that held his neck in between it, "I'm strong because I'm a predator. You're weak because you're prey. As is life," I finished by cutting his head off. Smirking, I kicked his head off the branch and watched it fall to the floor and hit it with a gorey explosion. He wasn't worthy of being a trophy.

Looking around, I upped my perception as much as possible. There's never only one Savage Yautja. They travel in Tribes and when hunting they move in trios. That means I have two others to deal with. Maybe one of them will be a worthy trophy? I'm anxious to find out.

Though I must say...it is troubling a Tribe of Savage Yautja are moving about this close to the edge of the forest. Something must've happened deeper and pushed them out. A strong beast, no doubt.

Now that, would most definitely make a worthy trophy.

With a smile on my face, I jumped higher into the tree's branches and began surveying the area. I had some pests to deal with and many trophies to gather.