The stag Daxo had been tracking all afternoon lapped coyly at the banks of Enamel Brook. Somehow, the brook was able to pass through the aetheric wall wreathing Goldcrest Valley. Kana’a Kapa’nui his people called it - God’s Great Wall. It had to be God’s work, reasoned shaman O’Pona, for it eschewed all but what was necessary for life. ‘God is watching over us’, he had been telling the pride all day.
Beside Daxo lay Kai and Ole. The three were ordained hunting brothers at birth, and Daxo’s ascendency to pride leader could not break a bond as sacred as that. They adjusted their prone bodies, muscle by muscle, preparing to fall upon the stag as one. It perked its ears and scented the breeze. It had heard them. Kai was in poor form. Yesterday, Kai lost his woman and their two infant sons to the human scourge called Caesar. Daxo had called him to this hunt only so that he would not harm himself or jeopardize relations with the human mob. The stag backed skittishly away from the brook. He would have to act now.
The three Kona men burst forth from their camouflaged dugouts. Each man weighed greater than three hundred pounds and stood six and a half feet tall. Their knives were short and thick, intended for the hunting of muscly, carnivorous prey. Kai flung his knife, and by a stroke of luck it took the stag in the eye. The prey floundered about long enough for Ole to seize one of its antlers, and Daxo to wrap his arms around its torso. The three beastly men dragged it to the ground, where Daxo recited to it The Benediction of Thanks. Once the holy words had been spoken, Ole broke its neck.
Daxo hadn’t any time to celebrate the successful hunt. The human banquet began in only two hours time, and the stag had to be fully prepared by then - the human way. That meant skinning, disembowelment, and thorough roasting. Some centuries ago, the world of humanity forgot the value of raw organ meat. Their jaws grew slim as their bodies forgot what it was like to gnaw through tough hide. They developed traps and unholy contraptions with which to kill prey at a distance. Daxo believed that contraptions such as the bow and the rifle should be reserved for Opa’apa’a - war with a dishonest opponent. Prey such as the stag and the rabbit, on the other hand, deserved the utmost respect.
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The three men took the path home as hastily as possible, taking turns bearing the stag upon each of their backs. First, they exited the quaint little forest the humans called ‘The Glade’. It was a heavily manicured copse of trees in which wealthy humans would hunt for sport. Next, they bore their dinner across a miniature plains where the very same wealthy humans played petty games with no stakes at all. Last, they climbed Noch Hill to the primordial boulder garden in which their pride had been given permission to camp.
As the sun began to set behind the sheer white stone of walls of Goldcrest valley, what remained of Ope Loa Pride came into view. When the pride had followed the legendary spirit warrior Karash Vorna’a into the world of mankind, they had numbered four hundred and fifty five. Now, they numbered only one hundred and thirty two. Two hundred and ten warriors had died in service to the warrior queen Alexandria Arkham, and one hundred and twenty three men and women had been killed only yesterday, when Caesar’s arachnoid xenomorphs rampaged through the city’s streets. Daxo instructed Ole and Kai to prepare the beast, and sent them on ahead. He would not be afforded the luxury of family until after the festivities had concluded. The enemy in the sky may have been defeated, but none of his people would be safe until they were far from here. Humans were the most murderous type of animal ever to walk the planes, and he was trapped in a prison with one hundred thousand of them. Once fear gripped their feeble minds, they would form a mob and their xenophobia would lay waste to anything they could see.