Chapter 5

The Icoanmenti

At that moment, we decided to break for lunch, and we spent the better part of three hours just sitting and watching the world pass us by below. I knew we could have made it to the dungeon that day if we hadn’t stopped for so long, but I think we both needed the break. I couldn’t think of a nicer way to spend an afternoon. Then, the bottom dropped out of my stomach.

I had been looking around at the trees, enjoying the variety of plant life around me, when I spotted something about twenty feet up in a tree. I focused a bit to see if I could make out what it was. Then we met eyes and realized we were being watched. The person or creature in the tree realized they had been spotted, and they began to run for it. They dropped out of the tree so fast I thought the person had fallen for a second, and then they hit the ground and took off.

“Fuck.”

“What?” Janet asked. She had been sunbathing with her eyes closed, lying back and enjoying the warm sun on her face.

“I just saw someone watching us, but when I noticed they were, they took off in that direction,” I told her, pointing in the direction the being had run off. Janet opened her eyes and shot up into a seated position. Janet turned and looked at me after scoping out our surroundings for herself.

“Were? Did you get a good look at them?”

“All I saw was its eyes, and then it saw me. The next thing I saw was a bunch of movement. The thing must have dropped out of the tree it was in and then taken off.” Janet looked like she was thinking as she turned back towards the forest and started eyeballing trees.

“Well, what should we do about it?” Janet asked, looking concerned.

“I’m honestly not sure. As I see it, we have three choices. First, we try to chase that thing down and find out what it is and what it wants. Option two, we climb a tree, wait to see if they return, and then go from there. Then there’s option three. Which might be my favorite. We say fuck it, and we just keep doing what we were doing, trying to find this dungeon. Thoughts?” I asked Janet when I was done with my thoughts on the situation.

“Well fuck. You’ve got a point. The fuking thing or person or whatever already took off. We might be able to catch up, but I think you’re right. Option two or three seem good to me. Why don’t we do the tree thing for about an hour? If no one comes back, we’ll just head for the dungeon. If they do come looking for us, though. I say we jump them and find out why they were spying on us. I thought about what Janet had said, and I didn’t have much faith that waiting only an hour would yield results, but I didn’t mind wasting an hour or two. With the plan decided, we spread out to find good trees to hide in.

We had been sitting in the trees for forty minutes, and I had settled in and was enjoying my time up in the trees. If I was honest with myself, I didn’t see anything coming from this stakeout, but Janet had wanted to give it a shot, so here we were waiting. I was waiting for the timer to run out, and then we could get our search for this dungeon back underway. Ten more minutes passed without incident, but when I was five minutes away from calling it, something happened.

I had been lying back in a sweet nest of branches about fifty feet up in a tree on the cusps of falling asleep when I felt a small rock or maybe acorn hit me in the side of the head. I hurt a bit when it hit, too, so I instantly assumed Janet had seen me falling asleep and was trying to wake me up. I turned and looked over at Janet with a what the fuck expression on my face till I met her eyes and saw her pointing down at the ground beneath us. I followed the path of her finger and low and beheld. There was what looked like a hunting party of five people, beings, or sentences, maybe? That might have been a better word. I didn’t really know, but they were walking in a tight line below us. It seemed like they were quietly trying to sneak up on our old location. Let’s just say they didn’t look too friendly.

We sat in our trees as quietly as possible so as not to alert the hunters below. I thought we were in the clear and we would just get to observe these guys for a while, but as they walked past the trunk of the tree I had climbed, the hunter in the lead noticed something it didn’t like on the trunk. I saw it lean in to get a better look, and then I saw it lick something off the tree trunk. I watched the hunter do all this. It was rather interesting, and I wanted to see what the hunter would do next.

I watched the hunter sniff the tree and then lick it before its eyes opened wide. Then, the hunter looked straight up into the tree and directly at me.

“Fuck.”

They had fucking seen us. Shit! Were they really that good at fucking tracking? They had fucking seen me. Well, only one thing to do now, I thought, and I let go of the tree. As I dropped, I pulled my Teremnocal from my bag. However, before I hit the ground, the group of hunters scattered. Every hunter moved about ten feet from where I would land, put an arrow on the string, and dew their bow back, ready to fire. I saw all this happening as I fell, and the only word that would come to mind was, fuck.

As I landed, the hunter’s arrows began to glow. As they held their shot, the glow intensified, and I could feel the Mana moving and gathering around the arrows. This was bad. If I didn’t do something fast, this was going to hurt. There came a brief moment of hesitation between me and the groups of hunters before we both knew the shit would go down. I let a breath out slowly, about to move, when Janet stepped out of the shadows. She had a dagger in her hand, and she moved fast. She had seen that moment of calm before the fight began in earnest and had acted.

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Travis, you fucking moron. I thought as I watched Travis just sit there as he was about to be spotted by the hunting group. I groaned internally and quickly began to make my descent out of the tree as swiftly and quietly as I could. I had made it to the ground and was about thirty feet from the hunting group and the tree Travis was still sitting in like a dumb ass. At least move to the other side of the tree, Travis. God! He was just sitting there watching them.

Why do I have to save his ass every time? Damn it. Well, if Travis can do anything well, it’s making a good diversion. I moved. Travis was falling out of the tree and was going to land right in the middle of the damn group of hunters. Why did he always have to deal with everything so head-on? I guess that is part of why I love him. The fucking nut job. No, it wasn’t the time, though. I still had to save his ass.

The group had spread out, and Travis had landed right in the middle of them. Every hunter had drawn their bow and hard an arrow on the string, ready to lose. Then the arrows got all magical. I had been moving closer to the group, and Travis had the whole time staying in the shadows. I was close now, and things had gotten tense. Travis had recovered from his landing and now was my chance. If I waited any longer, this situation could turn into a blood bath. I have to do something. I considered my options and then acted.

The atmosphere between the two groups had reached a point where the combatants were measuring each other up. I moved from the shadows. I stepped out and, in one fluid motion, grabbed a hunter by the neck from behind and put my dagger up to the hunter’s throat.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Put down your weapons, now!” Half the hunters swiveled their bows to point at me while the other half remained on Travis, hands pulsing with Mana of his own. No one moved a muscle for almost ten seconds before one of the hunters stepped forward and spoke. All that I was thinking was this should be good.

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Oh my god, Janet was amazing. We were still not in the greatest position, but it was definitely an upgrade from a moment ago when I thought I was about to have to pull out all the stops. We were all in a stalemate now, and I wasn’t sure where we would go from there. Then, one of the hunters lowered their bow, stepped forward from the group, and spoke.

“Please lower your weapons, hunters of the night, fallen one. We have no quarrels with you and yours.” I powered down my ready and waiting Mana-infused fists, and as I did, the hunters lowered their bows, and the magical glow that subsumed their arrows’ tips died away. Janet was the last to release her hostage, and when she did so, she made a sound of annoyance before pushing the hunter toward his fellows. Her dagger then popped away back into her bag of holding.”

Once everyone had calmed down a bit, an awkward silence filled the air between our two groups.

“So…” I started before I was cut off.

“what are your intentions on our land?” The hunter who had spoken before asked. I was a little annoyed the dude had cut me off. I just shook it off and made to answer the hunter when I was cut off again. This time, it was Janet.

“We were here…” I had started.

“We were just passing through the area. We were traveling and didn’t know we were trespassing. That’s our bad, but if you want us to leave, that’s fine. There’s just something to the northeast we are intent on finding. If it is on your land, maybe we can work something out, like some compensation?” The hunter looked amenable to Janet’s words, but Janet spoke again before he could say anything.

“Great. It looks like we might be able to come to an agreement.” Then Janet looked over at me and said, “Hey Travis, go suck his dick.” That was it. I had been cut off twice now, and it was pissing me off, and now this. Janet was asking for it. She knew it, too. As shown by the shit-eating grin slapped across her face. The hunter looked confused by Janet’s words at first. Then the hunter’s eyes danced between Janet and me till a glint of recognition flashed in its eyes. Then, the hunters burst out with laughter. The hunter’s people even seemed confused by their leader’s outbursts.

It took a minute or so, but the hunter eventually started to calm down, and a fat smile was left on the lead hunter’s face. It got a question or two from its fellow hunters in a language I didn’t understand. Then, answered in that same language, and shortly after, every hunter was chuckling. One hunter even started undoing their belt before stopping and laughing harder than ever. They obviously got the joke, and that didn’t help my mood. Janet seemed to be loving the reaction of our new friends just as much as they thought what she had said was hilarious.

After a while, even I started chuckling. It was a good one, and Janet had gotten me pretty good, I had to admit, and the atmosphere was definitely lighter. The leader of the hunters whipped a fucking tear from its eyes, yeah, a fucking tear, and then let out a breath and spoke again.

That was funny. Promising for another that they would perform a sexual act that would disgrace them to avoid violence. That was a good one, indeed. I see your partner would rather die than be disgraced in battle. I can see it in his eyes. Death follows these two.” He had said the last bit to the rest of the hunters. Many had nodded in understanding. Turning its attention back to Janet and I. The leader of the hunters smiled. You said you are traveling? Would you like to stay in our village for the night? You may regale us with tails of your heroics as we shall do the same. You are the people of Earth, are you not? I am Colismo, leader of the Icoamenti hunters. Come, let us return to the village. Will you join us?”

The Icoamenti, Colismo, stuck his eight-fingered hand out, and I assumed it meant for me to shake to show our comradery. Looked over at Janet. She was closer to Colismo, and I gave her a shrug as if saying fuck it, right? Janet rolled her eyes at me, then turned back to look at Colismo and stuck out her hand.

“Sounds good to me. Just don’t try to stab us in the back, or we’ll stab you in the face,” Janet said, clasping the hunter’s wrist. The Icoamenti let out a bark of laughter, smiled, then reached forward and placed a hand on Janet’s shoulder.

“You have the heart of an Icoamenti. I think we will be fast friends. The hunter said, and Janet could only agree.

We spent the next hour following the Icoamenti back to their village. The Icoamenti were an interesting race of people. They stood, on average, about six foot five inches tall. They all had eight fingers on each hand, and I hadn’t seen their feet yet, but I was assuming they had a similar number of toes. Their skin was a soft green with blotches of brown here and there, as if they had vitiligo, but it looked more like a form of natural camouflage to me. Their most distinguishing feature out of everything, however, was their heads. The Incoamenti had heads that looked similar to humans, just elongated.

The Icoamenti were pioneers of Earth but were nothing like the Ectovizzors. They looked to be a well-equipped and strong people, and they didn’t seem nearly as violent or as stupid as the Ectovizzors. From what I had seen so far, for all I know, they could just be leading us to a big cooking pot, and we would go from staying for dinner to being dinner. Fuck it, we would just have to wait and see. It felt like we were getting close to the village at that point. Sure enough, as we topped the small mountain we had been hiking up, below us sat a good-sized village with many Incoamenti actively moving about came into view below us. As we looked down upon the village, Colismo flung his arms open wide and said,

“Welcome to the village of Ivarne!”

We spent the next ten minutes making our way down the back side of the small mountain, and before we knew it, we were standing at the gates of the village of Ivarne.

The village was quaint, and the villagers’ homes were nothing special. However, it turned out that we earthlings got a heavy discount on items from the shops compared to pioneers. Apparently, it had something to do with balance or some shit. I didn’t know this when I first walked into the village, so I was surprised by the simple homes and lack of amenities the Icoamenti had. The people of the village didn’t seem to mind, however, as most people had smiles on their faces as they went about their day.

That is, until the villagers saw us. Most of the Icoamenti people watched Janet and I with concerned looks, unsure what to make of us. I’m sure not many of them had seen a human, let alone met one. I took a second to look around and take in the people of the village. As I looked around, I saw people or Icoanmenti, I guess, living their lives. Icoanmenti were walking and talking together. Children were playing and running around as mothers and fathers watched on with care in their eyes. They were just like us. It was then I realized these people had probably left everything they had or knew behind to take a chance and try to make it on the frontier.

That day, I gained a newfound respect for some of these pioneers coming to inhabit our galaxy. At the end of the day, yes, there were bad apples in the bunch, but then there were folks like the Icoanmenti. Not alien was the take me to your leader type. All I’m trying to say is that the world was full of gray areas. Nothing was really black and white. In meeting the Icoanmenti, I felt closer to understanding this world that had been thrust upon us.

Once the hunters had passed off the bags of holding they had with the meat they had collected on their hunt—oh, and apparently, bags of holding are super common in the galaxy—Janet and I were led into a large meeting room. We talked with the hunters for a while, and they looked to be a mix of males and females. I didn’t know if the Icoanmenti had genders, but it looked like they did.

I figured almost half the hunters looked to be female. They had what looked like breasts in the same place a human woman would have them. They also wore their hair slightly longer, but that wasn’t exclusive to the women. It was just more common. Some of the male Incoanmenti, I figured, had longer hair as well, so honestly, I gave up on trying to understand and just paid more attention to what was being said.

Janet was telling the story of the time we fought the fucking Master, and every Incoanmenti seemed to be enthralled with the story. Janet looked like she was loving it. I listened in to see where she was at in the story and almost regretted that I did so immediately.

“So Travis here was on his last legs. We had all been frozen in place, and our people were dying all around us. Then Travis breaks through the Master’s mental freeze on all of us, and they start going at it. Meanwhile, we were all still frozen, and people were still dying. Then, something happened, and we were all freed. We found out later that Travis had broken the Master’s little controlling orb and that had done it. Once I was free, I started fighting my way over to Travis. It was a good thing I did, too, because the Master had Travis by the throat and was squeezing the life out of his. I saw that the guy was super distracted. So I came up from behind and blam!! I put my fucking axe right through that fuckers head. Your dead bitch. Travis passed out after that, but we won that day.”