Banon was screaming before his eyes even opened, there was a pain in his gut as if a boulder had been dropped on him there, and he was pretty sure his head either had exploded already, or, if not, was certainly full of so much pressure it was only a matter of time.
There was a vague memory of a fight, the fight of his life, in fact. The Orux had pushed him to, and past his limits, and when he finally turned the odds in his favor, it had all gone horribly wrong. One instant of indecision. A quarter second of hesitation when he should have ducked.
His eyes shot open. His body, finally awake enough to respond to his pleas, began to curl up in a ball in an attempt to protect whatever injury that was causing the pain in his midsection. Above him, he was vaguely aware of the Orux’s head thrashing and its front legs kicking and bucking close behind. At first, he thought it was over, that he was being stomped into pulp and his mind just hadn’t caught up with the full extent of the damage in his body yet, until he noticed a sight truly for the sorest of eyes. Ugtang.
The Yubuou was the source of the Orux’s distemperment, not him. Ugtang’s blonde-furred form was being thrashed and swung about in circle after circle, back and forth, up and down, over and over again, and yet the ape-man refused to let go of its horns. The Orux’s panicked stomping and thrashing appeared it might be angling back towards Banon once or twice, but Ugtang actually seemed to be deliberately steering the danger away from Banon.
Banon coughed something hoarse, felt hot liquid immediately filling up his mouth, coughed again and tried to ignore how close he was to passing right back out again and how horrible the throb was in his head. Only after the blood that’d been clogging up his throat was gone, he had the presence of mind to look down at the source of pain emanating from his stomach. His eyes widened when he saw how much deep red there was plastered across him. It seemed he hadn’t been so lucky as to miss being trampled entirely. There was a small consolation in the fact that the huge gash stomped into him was only a relatively grazing blow on his one side, instead of the center of the torso, but there was still a chunk of flesh the size of his forearm gone nonetheless, and he was pretty sure some of his ribs were cracked or broken.
Banon’s hearing came back into focus all at once, and he was suddenly aware of Ugtang’s angry howling. Well, angry, and unmistakably fearful. Banon growled and spit the remaining blood out of his mouth as he rolled over onto one knee, and rose up on shaky legs, gritting his teeth, holding his torn-up side. The moment he straightened his torso fully, pain like a shot of lightning erupted from his midsection, immediately sending him back to his knee again. Another cough of bile and blood, a dry heave, and finally, he threw up everything in his guts, his nose stinging horribly from the acidity, his every breath afterwards feeling like he was inhaling hot smoke straight from the fire.
Banon barely managed to raise his head, even worse was the process of refocusing the blur out of his eyes. Thankfully, when his vision came back, the ape-man was still holding on, both literally and figuratively. Banon was sure he could have let go anytime he pleased, but that would leave Banon as the next target for attack. All that could be done in his state was watch the relentless attempts from the Orux to catch Ugtang at the wrong point of his swing on the points of one of its horns. He hadn’t managed to get gored yet, but it was only a matter of time. Ugtang didn’t have the same luxury as Banon did when the Orux had paused its thrashing long enough for Banon to fully cinch himself around the base of its horns. Ugtang was holding onto the very ends of its horns, fighting for dear life and never able to get a closer grip. It seemed his kind’s immunity to danger was not so absolute as Banon imagined, because his lack of being pierced through by its horns so far was certainly not for any lack of the Orux trying.
As much as he hated to admit it, maybe it was enough to let Ugtang take the weight off him for a while. He winced harder at that thought than he had for the pain. It was against everything he believed about himself to let someone take the risk for him, to not be the protector himself. And yet… he was too weak. Blood-slick fingers raised in front of his face, his blood, maybe even more–he couldn’t be sure yet if his stomach had been punctured and was leaking, but if it was, this wasn’t going to be a wound he could simply push through, no matter how much he ignored the pain. All along his back and sides, he felt the sting of his numerous shallower wounds caused by the beetles. Every time he shifted his position even slightly, his entire body became a conduit of agony. His sweat-slick hair draped over his eyes like a tangled veil. Everything was wrong. It wasn’t supposed to go this way. Ugtang wasn’t supposed to sacrifice himself. He wasn’t supposed to lose.
The exhaustion was too much, his mind too dim. Shaky fingers probed the head wound where the Orux had smashed him in the head with his own staff, and he found his flesh swollen and bloodied there as well.
There was too much wrong.
He had sustained too much damage.
He was going to die here.
And the only creature in the world he counted as a true friend besides his single-minded older brother was too stubborn not to go down along with him.
A scream broke him out of his self-absorption like a strike of thunder. His face twitched up only to see the worst possible outcome had come and gone, and he had been too busy letting his own weakness swallow him to stop it. Ugtang, the purest heart in all the jungle, was impaled on the tip of the Orux’s horn, wailing and flailing hopelessly. Breath misted in front of Banon’s face as his lungs emptied, not able to believe his eyes.
Instantly, everything changed.
Banon snatched up his staff from the mat next to him, where the Orux had likely coughed it up while he was busy being unconscious, leaped straight into a sprint, and roared his battle cry into the night, causing the Orux to pause its further attempts to shake Ugtang further down the length of its twisting, triangular horn. There was nothing logical about what he was doing, no plan, no worry for the consequence of his actions. There was only one thought: to sacrifice a friend, is not worth any sacrifice at all. It was so clear, almost as if a voice had spoken it in his mind. He knew not where it came from, only that it was true.
His last footfall tore deep into the mat, giving him grip to push himself into a last moment, extra burst of speed. He flew through the air towards them, and brought up his staff, aimed for another chute strike.
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Before Banon reached striking range, the bull lowered its head and then swung it in a wide arc, causing Ugtang to slide free of the horn, tossed straight into the space between Banon’s staff and the Orux’s head. But Banon had already activated the staff, unable to react in time.
Ugtang, however, was quicker.
To Banon, it was a blur. Ugtang, while wounded and spinning through the air, somehow managed to slap Banon’s staff aside, out of the way of himself, and lining it up perfectly, aimed for the side of the Orux’s head, which was exposed thanks to the followthrough of the motion it had taken to throw Ugtang in the first place.
Banon felt the shock through his entire body as the secondary chute shattered the bone just under its horn, continued through, and broke its way out the other side as well. His palms skinned themselves in the friction created as his desperately tight grip, the rigid strength of the Orux’s bone, and the explosive force of the secondary chute’s force all struggled against one another in the same instant. There couldn’t have been a more perfect strike, a straight shot through both temples, leaving its head skewered like a chunk of meat on a spitroast.
The Ourux was motionless for a only second before it collapsed.
Banon let his staff slide out of his hand along with the Orux as it crumpled away from him, instead, dashing towards Ugtang’s motionless body on the ground. His heart began to sink while, as he approached closer, he saw the blood stains on his blonde fur. Ugtang was positioned on his side, facing away from Banon, completely still. He slid onto his knees, then paused over his friend, his brother, unable to turn him over for fear of the wound he would see.
Better sense won out. He needed to see because he needed to know what he was working with. If it was a less-than-grave wound, Banon could try something. He was as well-versed as any Ooura in utilizing the flora and fauna of the jungle for healing.
Banon gently pulled Ugtangs shoulder, causing him to slump onto his back, revealing… revealing a worse wound than Banon could treat, that much was immediately obvious. A large chunk of Ugtangs chest and up across his shoulder had been pierced by the horn and torn away in the thrashing, leaving dark purple blood leaking all over his front side. His wound was far worse even than what Banon had taken throughout the entire fight.
“No!” Banon pleaded, clutching Ugtang’s hand inside his own. “Kimitrius!” he shouted into the air. He waited for a blessing, a flash of light, an answer, something, but none came. Banon’s shoulders slumped, his hand slipped away from Ugtangs. His eyes closed, unable to continue watching what had become of his friend, what his own ambition had sewn. Tears fell for a time, it could have been seconds, or minutes, hours, and Banon wouldn’t have been able to tell. An indefinite time later, he was wretched out of his weeping by the slightest touch on his knee.
His eyes opened, and he found that Ugtang’s were open again also, though he looked like he was likely to fade away at any given moment. There was something held in Ugtangs hands now that hadn’t been there before. Two things, actually.
The first was Banon’s long combat knife passed down from his uncle, which he had lost during his initial attack maneuver on the Orux. How Ugtang had come to possess it during the fight, he did not know. The second, in his other hand, was a single purple flower. Without thinking, he accepted the knife from Ugtang, and the Yubuou’s eyes lit up with joy the moment his gift was received. Banon reached out to accept the flower as well, but to his surprise, Ugtang pulled it away, and then, of all things, Ugtang popped the flower, stem and all, into his mouth and swallowed it without chewing. Ugtang’s smile was peaceful as his eyes drifted shut again, looking like he was napping instead of dying. Banon’s confusion only lasted until again, he was certain that Ugtang had gone completely limp.
Banon abruptly stood, stumbling backwards on weak legs, guilt consuming him utterly. His stupor was cut short, however. Slowly at first, but eventually loud enough he was forced to acknowledge it, there was a mighty scraping sound building in volume behind him. Turning, he found himself facing the impossible. The Orux, his staff still firmly lodged through its head, was standing up. Its movements were uncontrolled and weak, and one of its eyes was wide open while the other was closed entirely, but somehow… it was still alive.
Banon looked down at the knife in his hand and glanced back once to Ugtang, still motionless with a blissful expression. He could hear his own teeth grating inside his skull as he stared the beast in its one eye, feel his hand beginning to cramp around the hilt of his weapon, and found it impossible to let it go, himself as likely to see sense as Ugtang was to come back from the dead. Banon pushed the lingering bile out of the gap between his bottom lip and his teeth with his tongue, spat it out, and charged forward.
The Orux wobbled on its legs, the only properly functioning part of its body seeming to be its mouth, because it was opening again, and a hoarse and gutteral call was building in volume from the back of its throat. Banon pushed his broken and battered body faster, ignoring the pain. Straining his last two strides to the limit, he dipped low and slid along the dew-slick mat on one knee, pressing his hands over his ears until the last moment to avoid the concussive effects.
He plunged the long obsidian blade straight up through the roof of its mouth, hot blood instantly flowing down his arm. The Orux’s call did not stop, but Banon could tell the creature was dying nonetheless. This was not the rejuvenated call of an oncoming second wind, it was a death rattle fit for a champion of the jungle, a beast closer to a century old than not.
Blackness closed in on the edges of Banon’s vision, weakness of mind and body forcing him down to his knees. He fell along with the Orux, tangled together in their mutual spiral towards the end, the hunter and the hunted–who were both each of those things in this moment.
Sprawled down on the mat with the cold, damp mesa pressed against his cheek, the last thing Banon’s fleeting vision saw was a blonde furred figure standing over where Ugtang’s body had been, one arm cradling a huge clustering of glowing purple flowers while his other hand shoveled them by the handful into his ape-like mouth, his smile somehow not compromised by the act of eating in the slightest.
Banon’s eyes fluttered closed, and he felt a deep sleep coming on. Exhaustion, all his physical wounds, and repeated concussive berating from the roaring Orux finally taking their tolls upon him all at once, and the last vestiges of Kimitrius’s blessing faded as well, its purpose having been fulfilled. As Banon’s mind faded, he was only vaguely aware of the grave mistake he had made in overestimating his own abilities so thoroughly. Even injured, concussed, and in the midst of falling into unconsciousness, his mind managed to think one last thought, and that thought was the image of the chamber of rites, all his fellow eighteen year old men wearing their newly acquired Orux skulls and… and…
An empty seat where Banon should have been.
And then purple light was everywhere, and Banon felt his soul wretched from his body and torn through space into somewhere deeply familiar, and yet impossibly alien.