"Every able adult is required to take part in the hunts. Some do so exclusively, while others hunt among other pursuits. The lame and aged are excused, as are the mothers of the littlest younglings. Others participate only rarely as they have duties for the band that require most of their time."
--Fable of the Hunter.
----------------------------------------
'The root of a Qard's power is their aura, which is the vehicle of their perception,' Gryphon said as he warmed his belly on the paving stones, his ears flicking in the slight breeze. 'Each one as unique as the individual, it is the interface between your mind and the universe beyond it. Everywhere beyond your body's senses and physical reach is accessible to you by stretching out with your aura. There are few limits to how far you can reach with an aura, and learning to manipulate it is the foundation of a Qard's existence.'
Rae sat on the low wall she built over the last month. A meter tall and another wide, the stones for it had been cut from larger granite blocks with telekinetic shearing planes, an ability that Gryphon helped her refine. It lay alongside the pathway to the river, and extended half a meter below ground in a ditch her teacher had her shovel out by hand. After carving a veritable mountain of stones for it, she assembled the wall in a single continuous flow, dodging bricks that he kicked back at her because she placed them crookedly or for leaving gaps.
'There are three main ways of transporting yourself. The quickest is to choose a location by sight and perform a short spatial warp, also called a combat port. A longer method is to find a spot out of your physical view with your aura and then warp there. The extra time comes from directing your aura to your destination and holding a mental lock there while you perform the warp.
'The limits of this kind of teleport are how far you can extend your perception without passing through something that would interfere with the warp energies. Examples are things like exotic forces or the curvature of a planet. When one's focus is not in their vicinity, there is also a risk of harm to their body while they aren't paying attention. This risk is small in the longer warps because even a teleport of a few thousand kilometers only takes a brief amount of time.'
Today she was using the mind shear delicately by carving out the insides of a twenty-centimeter granite cube. Starting with removing a cylindrical core, she was to hollow it out, leaving two centimeter thick walls, then turn it into a shadow box by cutting designs in five of the six sides. So far, she'd eaten more of them as scrap than she completed. While she worked, she paid attention to Gryphon's lecture because he would question her about it later.
'Translocation takes the longest amount of time and goes the farthest, but therefore poses the greatest personal risk from inattention. The time to project an aura across intercontinental or even interstellar distances can be significant. The skill is also used to move between disparate environments. The aura surrounds your body, and on the other end, a mirror of this aura duplicates your body's form and position. When you perform the spatial fold, the contents of the mirrored auras are exchanged. If you transport to a hostile environment, whatever is inside the area of the projected mirror appears where you launched from after the fold while you appear at the destination. You can even port inside solid matter without suffering harm because the material you displaced is now where you began. This is what makes it the safest way to transport.'
Rae knew all this. She'd been using translocation for most of her life. Her parents had taught her how when she was a child, although they put far less emphasis on the quicker ports. She turned her attention back to her cube, turning it over in her hands, looking over the solid sides for inspiration. The first few sides were easy to carve, with repeating circles on one, interlocking squares on the second, and triangles on the third. Ovals for the fourth side and… a honeycomb for the fifth. She began carving again as Gryphon continued speaking.
'Translocation's spatial fold is capable of putting together any two places anchored by your aura, letting you momentarily perceive both locations. From your point of view, it isn't you that moves - the universe does. The faster spatial warp is a different transport mechanism. It's more akin to a small wormhole through space that you slide through laterally and then catch your balance on the far side. If there is an unseen object at your destination, you'll need to move it out of your way as you appear. You'll need to learn the strengths and weaknesses of each method, Rae, and how best to use them.'
Humming an affirmative response, she cleaned up her carving, dwelling on the irony of her current situation. Only the three other original-bloodline Qard were her senior. When the methods were established, she encouraged mortals and Kin to become part of the Family to increase their numbers. As Chief, she was usually the instructor of the new Qards. It was odd being the student and learning more about her powers than she ever thought possible. Gryphon was right about her laziness. Never having rivals or actual competition while growing up, she never had to hone her abilities. Her current training was difficult and often annoying, but she couldn't argue with the results.
Gryphon was suddenly in her personal space, making her flinch and bobble the shadow box. She got it under control as he sat on his haunches and held out a talon in silent demand. She handed it over, and he examined it closely. 'Nicely done, but you should try for more intricate patterns next time. You've proven yourself competent; now try for artistry.' He handed it back, then clasped her shoulder in approval. She smiled. 'Starting tomorrow, you'll start cutting more blocks to do the other wall. I'll think of ways to increase the difficulty of the task as something for you to look forward to.' Her smile faded as Gryphon took wing and flew away.
Heaving a sigh of aggravation, she headed back to the dig and lined the new cube up with the other three she'd successfully finished. She picked up her datapad and created an image covering the day’s lecture. Rae was perfecting her style before beginning to journal her personal issues. It alternated blocks of handwritten notes with small sketches of the principles being discussed. The last drawing showed her entering a spacial warp, then coming out the other side and kicking a rubber duck out of her way. Saving her current page, she started a new one and thought about when her inner angst began, conveying it in a combination of words and images.
> Looking at humanity from the outside was often painful for her. She and her parents were a little bubble of alien culture hidden within American society. Friends left her behind as they matured quicker, and human media assumed that there was a perfect person out there for everyone. The concept was ubiquitous throughout their calendar; Valentine's day, love songs, mistletoe, and annual crops of romcoms. What really stung were diamond commercials and the idea that love could be purchased, while the gems were just food to her.
>
> The pace of their lives was frenetic compared to hers. As a child, her parents taught her to manipulate chronal forces to live double or triple lives over her own timeline to appear to age like her mortal peers. If she had lived her life straight, the children she knew early in her life would be pairing up as couples and starting families well before she reached the equivalent of ten years old.
>
> She absorbed the idea of having her own life partner like the very air around her, but with her education outstripping her maturity, the math of the situation soon appalled her. Humans on Terra had literally billions of potential mates to choose from, and she had none. It was just the three of them, and the other two were her parents. Genetically, that wasn't the problem it would be with humans, but she'd absorbed their taboos along with their romantic expectations, making the notion distasteful for her.
>
> Danel and Perin didn't understand why it upset her and had little sympathy for her fears. It made no sense to them why she was fretting over potential mates while still a child. The Light promised she would have a partner in due time, and even if they didn't know where that person would come from, she needed to trust that promise. But trust was difficult as she didn't know the Light like they did. It drove her to seek ways to increase her kind by any means possible, so no child of the Qard would have to grow up hopelessly alone, like her.
Beginning a new image, Rae started by listing the means she ultimately found on the top of the page: the Immortals, the Kin, and those raised to become Qard. She put a box around 'Immortals,’ having stumbled on that path first, which led her to the others.
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
> After she left home and mostly recovered from Raliyard's loss, she found an odd planet in the Andromeda galaxy that the unmistakably human inhabitants called Tellus. It was like someone had taken Terra's ethnic cultures from thousands of years ago and remixed them in new ways. Their histories spoke of them being taken from their original homes and given untouched new lands.
>
> Her parents confirmed that alien ships had randomly gathered two percent of Terra's population in the middle Roman era and transported them elsewhere. Intrigued, they followed, and afterward, they visited Tellus every so often, but they hadn't done so since before she was born. Yet, there was a hesitancy in the way her parents spoke of Tellus that she didn't understand at first.
>
> Tellus society was vigorous and optimistic, with their tech base and space program well advanced compared to Earth. It didn't take her long before she found the man behind the current advancements in one Jon Giles. Sandy-haired and green-eyed, he was shorter than most and slight of build. Jon was an eccentric scientist, more comfortable with equations than emotions.
>
> As such, he had a team of aides and minders who kept him ticking personally and professionally. Lorens kept the master list of his ideas to research, constantly adjusting the priorities as needed, and Henré acted as the public face and PR flack of AstraCorp. Leyana encouraged him to eat and rest, luring him from his work with scanty attire if that's what it took to get him to take care of himself.
>
> Rae was drawn to his orbit, taking a human guise to join his company as an engineer. Before long, she was caught up in his mad genius. Having built Taylor recently, she told Jon of her forays into artificial intelligence. The AI worked admirably for his purpose of operating the Question for her, but she felt he didn't quite fulfill the potential of the technology.
>
> Using the concept of memory engrams, they experimented with using organic mind patterns as the basis of a more advanced intelligence. The successful trial out of hundreds was a blend of them both, balancing Jon's focused desire for knowledge for its own sake with her own all-consuming drive to save her people. He called himself Chayse.
She put a bubble around his name and drew an arrow from it to the edge of the page. Chayse deserved his own entry in this journal, and she would hotlink the files together when she made it.
> The more time she spent with Jon, the more it made her brain itch. She'd only been granted the Crysfire Gem a year before, and she was still trying to get used to what it did. It told her something about Jon, but she couldn't see what it was. Rae meditated on this feeling, exploring it until finally, she dreamed that inside him, in his very core, was a tiny bundle of emerald green sparks. The Gem recognized this energy and whispered its name to her. 'Aura.’ This man, this human… was a Qard. But how could he be?
She saved the page and put down her stylus with a sigh, rubbing her temples. This sort of journalling was difficult, and she could only take so much navel-gazing in a day. She cuddled Agate before deciding to do something productive. Turning on her holo monitors, she looked over her research projects. She input a batch of felids into her recognition database, spotting one she'd seen during her visit to Edomere. Checking on her drone production, she released a group that just finished response testing to expand her surveillance range.
Rae switched to the drone monitoring her sour scent experiment and found the scent ball was now some distance downriver over a reeder pool. The metal sphere was partly submerged in the shallow water, with the stake and chain she used to secure it still attached. Speeding through the drone's archived footage, the results of this test were quite different from the previous one. Where animals ignored the concentrated sour scent alone, this sour plus algae funk test was more in line with the reactions to the reed roots.
At first, most animals coming to the river to drink near it gave the ball a wide berth and then began avoiding that part of the riverbank entirely. Most, that is, except reeders. They were drawn to it, snuffling and pawing at the container until one determined individual dug up the stake and dragged it to their hollow. Going back to the live feed, she watched as a reeder played with the ball like a cat would with catnip. Some evolutionary force inspired most creatures to avoid the scent combination, but at the same time, it attracted reeders. Later, she needed to retrieve the ball and repeat the experiment at other locations along the river and out in the plains.
Frowning, Rae cocked her head. The Chief's Gem occasionally nudged her actions when she wore it, although she never counted precognition as one of her native gifts. Gryphon told her it was an essential Qard talent to be mindful of and act on the impulses. She felt an urge to go out to the plains and prepped her board for an outing. She was still locating patches of Bolten stalks for the year's coming harvest and sampling color oaks in different soil environments. She designed mosaic doors for the dig that depended on assembling and carving specific colors of lumber, some of which she still needed to find. She headed out of the dig site and took a cloud of surveyor and genetic sampler drones with her.
Out in the grasslands, she found a significant depression filled with dried grasses with a reddish head, sort of like a cross between wheat and oats. The new growth had small, pale yellow ears that weren't ripened yet in her judgment. She waded through the waist-high stalks and found some of last year's ears still containing grains. This might be the flour substitute she was looking for. The tiny seeds of the Bolten's plant were edible when combed out of their fluff, but it was better used as a source of cooking oil than as a flour. She logged several new clusters of Bolten stalks. It was common to find one or two stalks on the plains wherever the wind had taken them, but when they ripened near brambles or other growth that caught and held the fluff, they grew in dense patches as the seeds concentrated there.
The few areas she found trees out here were near natural springs or the creeks that meandered from the higher lands in the north to the river. Rae found a black-colored oak and a nice light brown. She felt a vague sense of anticipation and dread as she performed her surveying tasks. It was likely the same impulse that brought her out here. Something was going to happen; she just didn't know what. As she was cutting some small rounds from a greenish-brown 'oak' branch, the sensation coalesced into a feeling of being hunted. Her first instinct was to use her visor to check the drones around her, but she hesitated. Gryphon felt she relied on her tech too much and that there was a reason her ancestors never needed it. Acting as if she hadn't noticed, she put away her samples and tools and transformed into her totem form to hunt the hunter.
Her sleek black jaguar self cast about for an unfamiliar scent or shape, working her way closer to the source of the feelings. She paused at a wave of slavering meat hunger that told her she was after a predator. That was strange, though, because she didn't smell like meat even as a totem. She closely slunk alongside the shadow of a low ridge when the top of it rose up with a roaring howl and launched itself on top of her. The creature was so still as it lay in wait, with the long hairs of its coat waving idly in the air that it blended into the landscape. Now enveloping her, the furry bulk of it far exceeded her own slender form. Wrapping her in its forepaws, the beast tried to roll her over onto its belly; she resisted, outmassing its 600 kilograms twice over. Growling in frustration, it resorted to pinning her under it and closed its toothy, drooling maw around her entire head.
Aggravated, Rae used her clairvoyance to locate its pounding heart in its chest and crushed it with her teke. A surge of life's blood came up its throat to splash her. She forced its saber-toothed jaws open to extricate her head and shoved it off her with a grunt of distaste. Shaking herself, she changed back, wiping the dripping blood off her face. Using her aura to locate her board where she left it and triggered it to home in on her. While she waited, she laid the creature out along the ground. It had a mix of ursid and canid characteristics, measuring four meters long and about the same in girth. In sheer size alone, it was probably the local apex predator. It would take an entire family group of the felids to harass it, and unless the pseudo-skeletal jaklan came in much bigger packs, she couldn't see them even approaching this beast.
The pelt was absolutely massive. Incomparably thick, it would make an excellent furry bedspread. Processing the carcass would be a messy affair and take a good deal of her time. When her board arrived, she used her water jug to rinse off her head and shoulders and hefted the corpse onto the board to send it back to her camp. Slipping into her totem again, she tracked the beast back to its solitary lair. Tagging the shallow cave on her maps, she was about to leave when she smelled something repulsively rotten. Jumping onto the top of the den, she saw a gaunt animal swaying over a small rivulet. Unfamiliar to her, it was light brown and spotted. It shuffled around to face her when she approached, and she recoiled at its appearance.
It was a plains grazer: A wilderbeast, based on the shape of its horns. It had a horrific case of something like deer warts all over; disfiguring fibroid tumors splattered over its sunken hide like a swarm of big and engorged ticks. Its drooling mouth gaped open, and from the lumps around its jaws, she wasn't sure it could close. Thick, ropey strands of saliva continuously flowed down, fouling the trickling waters below it. One eye was obscured by a wart, while the other fixed on her with a faint purple light within. Staggering towards her a step, it didn't approach any closer. Rae was filled with revulsion and a deep desire to kill it with fire...