As Banon waded through tightly interwoven foliage, entire flocks of summer-spotted brown beaks that had been perched in the upper reaches of said foliage took flight to avoid the disturbance of his passing. In his wake, Ugtang crawl-walked along the ground, using the way Banon carved with a humble but reluctant attitude.

Yubuou got quite uncomfortable with any more than about five seconds spent not swinging from something, usually a branch but… occasionally other things. They were worse even than Banon had been as a child while he was exploring the jungle for the first time. Only the Yubuou never grew up. Doomed, or blessed, with the permanence of a childlike excitement for the world. They were also immune to the sharp edges of the world as far as Banon could tell, so life never took away their innocence from them either.

And actually, Banon still didn’t know much more about Yubuou than that, even from the passed-down knowledge of the older generation. This had much to do with the superstitious fear that to trifle with Yubuou was to invite the world of spirits to take root in your mind, resulting in an early transfer to the after, where your spirit would then be guided into re-entering the end-well within Kimitrius.

And from there, the cycle would continue, as it always had, and always would.

Of course, Banon had completely ignored that sentiment, regularly seeking the Yubuou and Ugtang specifically out. So far, his spirit felt just fine. As far as he was concerned, it was just one more antiquated belief that only served to limit the enjoyment of life.

After another few minutes of bushwacking, Banon finally found what he was looking for. A small area of disturbed ground with a visible scar running in a circle that implied a chunk of mat had been cut out and replaced there, which it had. Most notably, there was a section of rope visibly poking up through the scarred edge of the circle. Letting out an exhausted sigh, Banon sunk down onto his haunches. He paused before he grabbed the rope, suddenly finding it very comfortable to be seated on the ground. In fact, why shouldn’t he just lean over and–

Banon sprang upright, his attention coming back into focus. He had almost just fallen asleep then.

All this time, all his preparation, and he had almost thrown it all away in one momentary lapse. To be fair, he had a right to be exhausted. He hadn’t slept in… longer than he had realized until just a second ago. And it was possible Ugtang would have woken him anyway, but still… such a stupid thing like that nearly costing him everything was inexcusable. His time was already short, and even an hour nap could mean the difference between success and failure.

After a rapid series of self-inflicted slaps to the face to wake himself up and a deep but very quickly taken breath, Banon felt somewhat himself again. He then sunk into a wide squat this time, instead of sitting down completely. Banon pulled away the cutout section of mat, revealing lake water only a few feet beneath since this was a fairly thin example of the floating weed mats that coated much of the lakes and rivers in the jungle. Convenience was only one reason he had chosen this spot to stash the cargo on the other end of that rope though. This tiny sub-surface lake was also isolated from other, much larger nearby water systems, and, as such, had no purely aquatic megafauna to speak of. Of course, there was always the chance a transient of both mediums like the titan boa had gotten to it. They could digest just about anything given enough time, even the immensely durable creatures he had bound onto the other end of the rope.

The rope snapped tight and his feet dug into the green mat of floating mesa ground as the buoyancy of the mat fought against the weight of what was on the other end. He began to pull it up, arm over arm, as Ugtang watched with immense curiosity.

After less than a minute, dozens of jungle barnacles came up through the hole in the mat, all hanging from the rope by no binding of his make, just purely by their unbelievably sticky snare mouths which Banon had forcibly stuck to the rope throughout his preparation days before the rite began. They didn’t look as much like mouths as a weird fern-shaped, white fleshy protrusion. The huge barnacles– each larger than Banon’s head– would look indiscernibly different from a remarkably uniform series of boulders if it wasn’t for the thin slit where their snare mouth happened to protrude out from. He continued until the whole line of them was out of the water, all strewn on the jungle mat around him, Ugtang hooting in awe beside him all the while.

Banon grunted with the effort as he dropped the end of the rope. He was glad to see his Yubuou friend impressed. It had taken weeks of preparation before the summer festival and his days of rites began to forage this many of the giant things in the lakes nearby this particular one.

And, among his other reasons, it was this lake he had chosen as his stashing location for the fact it was located an evenly spaced distance away from each of his three prospective Orux dens he had scouted out as his best options. Of course, the fact that this lake was somewhat isolated also helped, but jungle barnacles were absurdly durable, and as such, most of even the largest fauna ignored them, kraken’s being one of the few purely aquatic creatures that were exceptions to that rule. A jungle kraken’s beak could crush just about anything, even living reeds, given enough time.

Instead of separating the barnacles from the rope and crafting a sled to move them the conventional way, he simply opted to pull the whole thing as it was. It made for an awkward task, but he didn't have far to go, and his time was too precious to waste on perfectionism. The first time Banon glanced back over his shoulder to check on the cargo he was dragging, he was greeted with the sight of Ugtang balancing from barnacle to barnacle, arms held wide for balance. Even in motion, constantly bumping around as Banon dragged them over uneven ground, Ugtang was hardly struggling to stay upright as he bounded between the boulder-shaped barnacles.

Banon smirked as he turned forward again and then gave a swift tug on the rope to throw his friend off balance. An annoyed hoot responded to him, then rapid footsteps coming closer, and then Banon felt Ugtang land on his shoulders. Before he could muster a counter maneuver, the ape-man clung himself firmly in place and slapped his palms over Banon’s eyes, blinding him, then shouted triumphantly.

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After considering throwing him off, Banon sighed and instead just resumed trudging forward. Ugtang would get tired of it eventually, and it's not like Banon would lose his course by walking blind for a minute or two.

Despite his exceptional eyesight, as far into night hours as it was right now, his ears painted a far clearer picture of what dangers were around him. Not to mention the fact he had a creature riding on his shoulders that practically guaranteed the angrier spirits of the night would turn a blind eye.

Ugtang swung his legs, heels tapping a rhythm into Banon’s collarbones as the Yubuou hummed a tune that carried a distinct feeling of satisfaction in it.

***

As Banon and Ugtang traveled through the nighttime jungle, he had plenty more time than he would have liked to think, to dwell, to doubt.

He still had this night and tomorrow free to him if he disregarded sleep, and he would. Though that was of little comfort. Most of the other boys attempting their rite to become Kothai would have already downed an Orux and brought the meat back to their home village by now, and from there, they could take the time to rest in preparation for the next stage, the one that would take place inside the chamber of rites held in the branches of their Mew tree.

The taking of the night wasp, Banon mused inwardly, was going to be much worse on him, given his lack of sleep recently. He already felt only half himself. Adding a potent vision-inducing hallucinogenic venom into the mix was… not going to be a fun experience.

Banon huffed the bad thoughts out through his lungs, forcing himself to focus on all the advantages he did have.

Without all his planning and preparations– that he was pretty sure technically didn’t count as cheating– he would never be able to attempt taking down a bull nearly so old as the one whose den he was currently dragging his cargo towards.

The kind of single, well-placed final blow to one the temples that was usually only attempted when you had a group of several hunters and could direct the Orux’s attention at your whims should have been a ludicrous plan to attempt solo, much less so when the Orux in question had all the sharpness of a half-century survived in the rabid jungle. The expectation for boys like him undergoing their rite on their eighteenth year was to just beat the thing into submission with staff strikes from a safeish distance until it was so disoriented and exhausted that you could slip a knife under its throat without it having the presence of mind to gore you for deigning to get so close like would normally happen.

And even that was no sure task with a young bull. Banon was more than certain that several of the other boys who had attempted their Orux kill during these seven days would never return home again. Even with their legs broken and their horns broken, Orux would still fight until their dying moments for the sake of spiting their attackers, if nothing else. And that wasn’t even beginning to talk about the difficulty in approaching the jungle behemoths in the first place.

Orux had an uncanny ability to spot you. From the moment they did, and they always did spot you before you spotted them, they would simply stare you down until the moment you were out of their sight. You never saw the back of an Orux’s head unless they wanted you too, instead it was always that dark silhouette of their triangular wedge-shaped faces as they watched you, and about that sprouted similarly triangular-shaped horns that spiraled like they had been softened and then twisted up to end up that way. They were the jungle's eyes, the most alert and aware creatures who drew breath besides perhaps the Ooura themselves. You had to be, Banon supposed, when something was always trying to eat you and you didn’t have the necessary appendages to flee into the tree canopies. Titan boas, swamp tigers, and even mangrove spiders had been known to kill them. However in that case, mangroves only did it for defensive reasons since they were only able to eat large bug species and birds small enough to get caught in their webs as well.

Banon even had an uncle that always told the story of a jungle kraken that lurked beneath the notorious lake of eels that was big enough to swipe Orux right off the mats, using its barbed tentacles like a chameleon tongue, then dragging it simply straight through the floating mat of mesa and down into the lake below, leaving nothing but a scar in the land for evidence.

Lonka also claimed he had seen it in person, but Banon thought it was more likely Lonka, being the fisherman, felt the need to have an appropriately themed harrowing story of his own, since he had no tales of woe to brag about from taking on the challenge of the Kothai rite when he was a younger man. Banon had never been to the lake of eels, despite considering it many a time.

He certainly wasn’t scared of it… that wasn’t the reason at all.

It was simply that the lake of eels tended to appeal more to fishermen and trappers who preferred aquatic fauna. Ever since Banon’s first kill, when he held the fruits of his labor in his hand, saw the bright red feathers that were now his, saw the talons he knew he would make into a necklace, and saw the beak that would make a fantastic scouring tool of some kind, he knew his heart belonged above the mat and among the trees rather than below it.

Back then, at that age he relished killing as much as the actual purpose behind it. At some point though, the roles had flipped. Now he relished ideas, coming up with new ways to use what the jungle provided to him to his utmost advantage. Banon enjoyed having such a wide ranging span of foods of which he could claim knowledge on how to prepare in a pinch. He enjoyed the freedom in having learned a wide-spanning number of places and the routes to get there. Most of all, though, he now enjoyed learning from others, seeing what was achievable when he took all the knowledge that the older generation within his own tribe had bestowed upon him and combined it with a little extrapolation and ingenuity of his own. He had even come to see what value a little trade of knowledge with one's neighboring tribes was worth. After all, his own people didn’t know everything, as much as many liked to pretend otherwise.

Banon stopped. Had he just heard something?

Ugtang made a quick series of sounds that sounded like amplified rain drops, a sound which carried an unmistakable undertone of fear. Not his imagination then, and although he was pretty sure the noise was not from somewhere close, he still stood completely motionless, waiting, listening, just in case.

Somewhere distant, a snort that could only have come from lungs as thick as tree trunks shook the air.

Banon found himself smiling, even though the sound terrified him.

“Ugtang,” he said, which was met with a curious hoot from behind his head. “Sunrise may be closer than I thought. Whatever power your kind still holds in the eye of Kimitrius and his emissaries, this is the time to weave me your highest blessings.”

Another curious hoot.

Banon continued from there with an extra spring of urgency in his every step.