(no subject)
It's a young world. This section has recently formed through seismic and volcanic activity, along with scouring windstorms. The water's receded, and what's left is clouds and fog and steam. The rock is sharp-edged, drizzled and piled into ridges and columns and flowing melted shapes around her; in some places, it's half-melted and reformed into long drapes with hardened holes that stretched into place as the stone cooled.
There are plants. They're epithytes that drifted here through the air, seeking only a place to latch on to. They build and pile into huge drifts. They're incredibly delicate and break apart at a touch; the broken pieces simply fly away in the wind. It's the only way any part of them survive, when most contact here is killing.
Rau looks behind her at the trail she's leaving and shakes her head. The rocky walls behind her were so heated they simply cooled into glassy forms, but here the melted lava was spat into place and the stone is rough and twisted. She climbs up the jagged side, displacing more intricate fronds, and looks around.
There: one of the rare natives. A heavy-hided, six-limbed egg-layer. It's heading across the wall over the crashing sea, always keeping its rearmost pair of legs angled for jumping. The front set articulates to grasp a surface above the creature; the middle legs are flipperlike. It's the size of a small dog.
They're most comfortable in the water, and they usually travel in groups. This one's been chased from the water or from its companions. Either way, it's isolated and they'll want it for larvae, not food. She growls softly in satisfaction and moves.
She knows the prey, and right now, she is the hunter. Then one slides up out of the surf, taking the impact of the waters over its ridged back without losing its joined-toed grip on the wall, and its head swings once from side to side, and she knows it has chosen larger game than just the lone creature. It scrambles up the wall and into a wide crack running up the cliff face. She moves just as quickly, heading down the wall headfirst and going around a honeycomb of rock--wait--
She’s hunted. She draws her wristblades. Best place yet for the small--she whirls as she hears it, already swinging her arm up and ducking now that she knows the direction. The two halves of the facehugger fly past and roll apart over the smoking rock. She keeps moving, the hunter once more.
It slowed her just enough that the kainde amedha comes over the next ridge an instant after she does, before she has time to pick a confusing path through the swirling air currents and make it uncertain. She growls, crouching down low. Its tail is held in the “lone fighter” whip angle, instead of the more confident “group attack!” stabbing one. It comes in, quiet and gliding. The illusion of serene movement is gone in the next instant as it springs.
Hunted.
She commits to the fight without further study or evasion. She knows the enemy. Time stretches, seeming to slow, as it hisses like the first time danger drew breath. She’s already got her feet and body in line to dodge, wristblades swinging up and across and cleanly severing one foreleg. She carries the movement through into a duck as it flings acid overhead. It lands, lesser jaw swinging out for a moment to help it test the air, swinging around with a hiss of melting rock. She’s already coming in for her attack, the predator closing in for the kill.
She understands as it draws itself down and leaps clear. She touches down, bringing the maul up in case it wants to charge in.
This is a step past what humans think of as hunting, closer to the nature of the struggle of life itself, the Hunt.
And in just as true a way-
She blocks with wristblades turned to the side, but nicks its tail anyway. The bladed tip tries to slide around and strike at her mask, but she throws it away, brings the maul around, and slices into its head, into the secondary nerve cluster.
--this is war.
It falls at her feet. She stares down into it. The sound of crashing waves thunders around her as she reopens her senses to the world outside just the duel, almost drowning out the sound of its blood etching a marker into the stone. She stands like a statue, mask angled downward, acid dripping like water off a pair of blades and leaving a bright trail down her chest armor.
Then she throws her head back and roars.
She’s won another fight. Now to find it. She grabs the foe’s tail and begins moving.