Suiteonem Prime, Grail Beach, Suiteonem V, 20137

  First Stalker.

  He had another name. The one given by the canopy village wise council upon the first bright moon of his third year of life. But, that was long forgotten by the years and the end of any that remembered it.

  The golden-eyed bastards had seen to that by answering his village’s cautious and hopeful welcome with fire.

  The title was his name, but even that no longer held any meaning.

  For what was the First Stalker without a village, a people to serve?

  No more animals to hunt.

  No more threats to slay.

  Nothing.

  How many worlds away was he from home?

  He had failed to keep track.

  The irony was the mocking thorn under a toenail.

  Treetop Stalker.

  At least he still had that.

  “Track Prey,” he whispered.

  A rookie’s act.

  He couldn’t remember how long since he had last spoken his Skills out loud.

  It was the damn red haze wavering in his sight. Both in the physical and… elsewhere. It seeped in like the rain through an ill-maintained roof.

  Thoughts of home and its frequent rains cooled the heat in his soul for a moment.

  “Stalker’s Shroud,” he said for the benefit of the two young wild men straining against his leadership Skill.

  They were lost to the enemy’s greatest strength.

  The boiling rage made them little better than the rabid mist slayers that often plagued the canopies.

  The thoughts of home bubbled within him, driving away the brief respite as the red slipped in once again like the living tide of formids. The tiny creatures that devoured all in their path when on their migration.

  His senses detected the children’s toys hiding in the straight metal branches that rattled and farted out gouts of steam. Everything in his eyes was unsightly. Everything in his nose told a tale of poison and decay. This cramped gray box was a tomb when compared to the freedom of his home.

  Fitting that, for he aimed for an ending.

  His, certainly.

  And of the cursed god’s children, hopefully.

  Too weak to save his people. Too weak to die against the golden-eyed bastards. Not too weak for this small measure of revenge.

  “At least one, Mother of the Forest,” he uttered a prayer to a silent goddess. “If not for me, then for your people and their unanswered prayers. You. Owe. Us.”

  The toys blinked red lights and screeched out a near-silent sound.

  The old First Stalker would’ve pulled back, waited and watched.

  One didn’t continue when there was the slightest chance that the target was aware of one’s presence.

  Decades of experience had taught him that lesson many times over.

  There was a reason that the stalkers of any one canopy village was a small, elite and young group of syarumen.

  Not many made it to old age like him.

  Sadly, all he could see was the red.

  The blended scents of the half-god children spurred him on recklessly.

  Prey.

  Wounded prey.

  Nostalgic.

  Cloying.

  Reminding him of better days and nights.

  Not those where the only sights, sounds and smells were those of his own kind and other species of people like him from different worlds forced to fight and kill each other or monsters for the entertainment of the false god and his chosen peoples.

  Gold.

  In the eyes, the clothing, everything.

  It almost subsumed the red.

  Almost.

  He slowed his loping gait to let the two young ones pass him.

  They were beyond saving, lost in the red haze.

  He could see it in their wide eyes, flared nostrils and spittle-flecked mouths.

  Sharp canines gnashed like wild animals or worse, monsters.

  They barely held on properly to the crude weapons the golden-eyed bastards had dumped in front of them before throwing them through the golden portals.

  “Left turn.”

  The drab, gray tunnel made him shiver with its unnatural straightness. Floor, walls and ceiling were demarcated by a sharp angle. So unlike the pleasing roundness of his home.

  He was losing the memories.

  He couldn’t bring the feeling back.

  Not completely.

  He couldn’t make the false god pay for that.

  So, the children would be good enough.

  “Final Rush.”

  He slapped the two young ones on their backs as they all rounded the sharp corner.

  Thunder cracked in the enclosed space.

  Deafening.

  The stench came after, but not before heat lanced through what was left of his right ear.

  He had lost most of it years ago to a laughing golden-eyed bastard in an arena.

  Another of the fecund false god’s children.

  What sort of being spawned countless, faceless offspring and cared not a bit for a single one?

  He had seen animals be better parents.

  Large round ears made for good targets.

  So said that one nameless demigod.

  It would’ve been an eye if not for an old, wily man’s instinct to move his head at the thunder.

  There they stood.

  Five demigod children.

  Five targets.

  He fixed each with all his hatred as the two young wild ones surged ahead faster under his Skill than they were physically capable of on their own.

  “I am the First Stalker, you are my prey. Only one of us leaves this hunting ground.”

  There.

  One way or another he’d have an ending he would be satisfied with.

  The smallest demigod fired another shot from her ugly, stench-filled tube of a weapon.

  Fire blasted out like a stone falling from the great darkness above.

  One of the young syarumen spun, trailing blood from his shoulder. The light-colored hair stained crimson quickly, but the young one gathered himself and continued the charge a few steps behind the other young one.

  The biggest demigod yanked the small one and the tall, stick-like one behind her and slashed her huge axe.

  “Iron-hard Hair,” the leading syaruman roared.

  The First Stalker was, perhaps, uncharitable to think of the two strange syarumen from a different culture and world as half-rabid.

  The axe struck the young one in the side and drove him against the cold, gray wall like a climbing peg.

  Blood spewed from his mouth, but the red glow in his eyes remained shining and angry.

  The First Stalker overtook the wounded and leapt.

  The axe flashed in the dim light crystals.

  He flipped onto the broad, dual-edged blade and scampered up the long shaft on equally dexterous hands and feet built over years of hard work and practice since he had been old enough to climb the branches outside of the nursery hollow.

  He lashed out with sharp nails made sharper and faster than a striking serpent by a Skill.

  They had made a target of his big, round ears, so it was only fair that he return the favor with their big, red-gold eyes.

  He raked across her face.

  Then felt immense disappointment.

  Instead of the wet squelch of overripe fruit in his fingers he felt the splitting of hard flesh and the squeal of harder metal.

  Damn helmet.

  The big demigod roared and lashed out with a hand bigger than his head.

  He was akin to a small human child climbing over a massive adult human.

  However, owing to the greater density of his bones and muscles he was much stronger than the strongest normal human adult. Not accounting for Skills and spells.

  Which was why even the mighty behemoth had to stop and choke for air after he punched her in the throat.

  Greater Strength as a passive stacked perfectly with nearly everything else he had.

  With that, he used her back as a branch to leap upon his true target.

  The weakest died first.

  Whether in a hunt or battle.

  Success was often found in the softest parts of the prey.

  The stick-like demigod had been wounded horribly in the last battle.

  Perhaps, that was why he did the worst possible thing and tried to ward the First Stalker off with an outstretched hand.

  Splayed fingers!

  Fists, the old syaruman thought, make a fist if you don’t want to lose your fingers.

  Sharp canines flashed briefly before the screams.

  Hot iron filled his throat as he scampered past the spells and blades.

  The First Stalker stopped a short distance away on the other side of the demigods.

  Hanging upside from his much-shortened tail he flashed a red smile, wiggling the fingers like a prized catch before chewing and gulping them down.

  “Just like grubs.”

  He had so much hatred, so much rage.

  So much to let out and fall into.

  He saw his home in the treetops one last time receding in the distance behind where the two young syaruman fought like rabid animals against the behemoth with an axe.

  Saw the green leaves shaking the sweet dew as the wind whistled its comforting song.

  Saw the last of his people made faceless and nameless by the years of torture.

  They waved, they beckoned.

  “I am almost there. Please wait just a little bit longer,” he whispered.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  With that last sight he allowed himself to fall from home for the last time and into the red river rising up to devour him.

  …

  “Stop him!”

  Seven dived, but for once Thirty-two was faster.

  Sixty-eight figured the rage generated from losing a bunch of fingers to an old white-haired monkey man would’ve filled a huge pot. The kind they used at the kitchens to feed a hundred growing demigod kids, who ate as much as an army of soldiers ten times the number.

  “Fifteen! Shield!”

  Golden light flared, cutting Thirty-two’s wild charge off and placing the old syaruman on the other side.

  Thirty-two began striking Fifteen’s barrier, leaving gold-flecked crimson smears like the most pretentious of artwork.

  “Stop that, you moron!” Fifteen snapped. “You’re damaging it!”

  The old syaruman sneered. His dark eyes blazed with hate and that which gave them all strength.

  Indeed, Sixty-eight’s wounds felt noticeably better.

  “Watch out!” Seven again.

  She turned on instinct, finger poised on her rifle’s trigger.

  One of the younger syaruman was mid leap as his lochosmate clambered over the towering Eighty like a rabid squirrel trying to stab and bite where she wasn’t protected by her armor.

  Teeth glinted in the dim light.

  Impressively sharp and long canines made even more fearsome by the fact that they had transformed into steel.

  He snapped his mouth over the barrel, shearing through the iron before she could squeeze the trigger.

  In the next move he punched her in the chest, sending her to the floor.

  Too quick for anyone else to act he landed on her like a heavy weight.

  Much heavier than he looked for he was significantly smaller than even her.

  Like a true child.

  The kind that still hid behind her mother’s skirt or needed to hold her father’s hand to cross the street.

  Struggling for breath, she drew the short gun from her holster.

  The locally made weapon was woefully inaccurate compared to those from her homeworld, but one didn’t need to be accurate when one could push the barrel into the syaruman’s clothing-covered gut.

  Bang!

  The syaruman fell back with a grunt.

  The red in his eyes didn’t fade like Sixty-eight expected, but only grew stronger.

  He began hooting and slapping the floor, ignoring the hole leaking crimson to quickly stain his trousers.

  An inarticulate cry exploded from his throat as he leapt.

  She cursed the single shot standard of this world’s guns as she threw the short gun in the syaruman’s face.

  On the plus side the rage they were generating was like something out of a volcanic eruption.

  She drew a knife and met the leap with one of her own.

  Stab and bite.

  They took turns in a blurring ball on the floor.

  Tiny fingers that looked delicate dug into her mouth and tried to tear her undamaged cheek.

  As hard and unyielding as a steel tool.

  She bit down.

  It was only fair.

  They took Thirty-two’s fingers.

  She took theirs.

  Fingers plunged into her empty eye socket, reaching for her brain.

  She twisted and plunged her knife into his eye, which was, again, fair.

  Ending on top of the child-sized syaruman allowed her to really put all her weight into the stab, right down to the handle.

  Somehow, he still flipped her over his head and into the wall with a painful thud.

  She landed on her head and watched him rise to his feet through the red-gold haze over her vision.

  Despite the knife in his brain he still looked like a furious little monkey man out for her divine blood.

  Until a blade sang and turned his neck into a crimson fountain.

  Seven grinned.

  “I think he had a death ability. Best way to stop those is to take the head. Help Eighty. I’ll—”

  Whatever he had been about to say was upended by the headless syaruman’s tail as it coiled around his ankle and sent him crashing face first into the floor.

  The syaruman without a head fell on Seven, striking and clawing at his head and neck with the vigor and ferocity of one that still had a head.

  Sixty-eight had enough.

  She launched herself across the short distance with a high-pitched roar.

  Tackle first.

  Then dismemberment.

  It was difficult with the strength in the thin limbs, like wrestling a constrictor serpent, but eventually she managed to use both hands and legs to pin the syaruman’s body to the floor while pulling with all her might.

  The arm went free with a loud pop, showering her in crimson.

  Thus, did she proceed to beat the already dead syaruman with his own arm until he finally stopped fighting.

  Seven spat.

  “Father… that wasn’t what I expected. How are they so strong? They look young. Usually, you need to be pretty high level and a veteran warrior to have those types of Skills. Also helps to have really been in the toughest spots. Repeatedly… and I answered my own question.”

  His face was a crimson mask.

  “Seven! The white-hair disappeared!” Fifteen sounded terrified.

  One could tell by how much higher her voice went.

  For some reason Sixty-eight thought to the times she had accompanied her mother and father on one of their hunts.

  Boars, stags, it didn’t matter, there were sounds animals made when in distress.

  Akin to ringing the dinner bell for the predators, as her parents and the hunters had often said.

  As if summoned by Fifteen’s voice, the old syaruman appeared upside down just on the other side of her golden magic shield.

  Those tails of theirs were, like the rest of them, stronger than they looked.

  “Prey… should pray.” He cast a baleful glare over them.

  Sixty-eight imagined she felt as those boars and stags did as the hunters closed in as she suddenly felt the oppression of thick foliage overhead and dense undergrowth all around her with shining eyes darting from branch to branch with predatory hunger.

  “To your false gods. So, send those prayers to your father. Tell him that you are hunted because of him. Tell him when I send you to whatever hell your kind goes to after the end of your worthless existence that I stain my hands with your diseased blood because of him.”

  So said, the syaruman shattered the barrier with a punch before vanishing from sight once again.

  “Seven—”

  Fifteen’s shout was cut off by a gurgle as a white-haired blur swept past her, briefly slowing just enough to so that Sixty-eight and Seven could see him plant his bare feet on her back.

  The subsequent kick sent her rocketing into Thirty-two.

  The two tumbled together down the corridor in a tangled ball of twisted limbs.

  And then the old syaruman was above Sixty-eight.

  Up she went with him.

  Thin fingers as hard and unyielding as steel stole her breath like a noose.

  She had a moment before the ceiling slammed the air from her lungs. Or rather it would’ve if not for the old syaruman’s stranglehold. It was a strange feeling to have the wind trying to escape but unable.

  He beat her against the ceiling like she was a blanket on fire.

  The dim light darkened around the edges of her vision as she scratched and clawed at hair-covered arms thinner than her own, yet so much harder.

  Seven leapt in with a slash of his blade.

  The old syaruman kicked it away with a foot.

  Wind whistled as Seven parted the air in a near blur with furious desperation, attacking the old syaruman’s tail.

  Yet, each strike was met with a deft foot.

  Somehow, the little monkey man controlled all his limbs with perfect precision while hanging upside from his prehensile tail.

  Toes almost as dexterous as fingers grabbed Seven’s wrist, stopping the blade’s song abruptly. With his other foot the syaruman went for Seven’s face. Toes dug into nostrils, lifting.

  The syaruman’s rage was such that he slammed Seven’s head into one of the lights, shattering the flickering crystal and shrouding them in darkness.

  On the downswing, Sixty-eight managed to use the momentum to swing her legs up and around the syaruman’s arms.

  He bit at her boot, severing a good chunk of the front, but luckily they had been a few sizes too big for her and all he got to chew on was leather and rubber.

  She stretched out her body, violently straightening out at the hips while trying to extend her legs to drive the syaruman’s fragile-looking elbows the wrong way.

  Once again, his physical appearance deceived.

  Instead of popping the wrong way they resisted like solid steel bars.

  It was a race now.

  Her vision darkened.

  His elbows groaned.

  Which would give first?

  As it turned out it didn’t matter.

  An outside party ran in to disrupt the contest.

  A black blur flashed past them.

  The remaining living syaruman was… not?

  She only got a quick glimpse out of the corner of her eye before he vanished into the corridor’s shadows. It looked like the black-haired syaruman was missing a quarter of his head, sliced diagonally across his left eye. One arm was gone, torn raw red at the shoulder, while the other was bent in too many places. As for his legs? They flopped around bonelessly like pennants in the wind.

  “Rrraarrr! Kill you!”

  Eighty’s axe head was broad enough that even though she looked like she was aiming for the old syaruman it was going to catch a not insignificant part of Sixty-eight.

  The syaruman wielded Sixty-eight like a shield.

  The axe flashed out of shadow and struck with a loud clang.

  Sixty-eight was confused.

  She wasn’t skinned in metal, plus her armor was hardened and padded cloth.

  Oh?

  It was Seven.

  He had somehow freed himself from the syaruman and blocked Eighty’s blow.

  The axe pushed his blade into his chest, cutting into his chest plate before knocking him back into Sixty-eight and the syaruman.

  The impact jarred them all loose from each other.

  Sixty-eight rolled to a crouch, gasping for that sweet, sweet air. Not fresh though because the air in the prison-like building was stale and dank like wet animal fur in a damp cave filled with rotting things.

  The syaruman was nowhere in sight.

  “Eyes out! Back to back! Triangle formation! Watch the ceiling pipes!” Seven exhorted them.

  Eighty was frothing and her red-gold eyes were wide, but she listened.

  Sixty-eight hurriedly pulled another short gun and knife from her bag of holding as she dashed to take her place in the formation.

  She scanned the corridor.

  There was something in front of her a few meters away.

  Ripples in nothing.

  Like the surface of a calm pool disturbed by the first drops of a light rain.

  And underneath it was the roiling mass of that which fueled her and her half-siblings’ strength.

  Act without thinking.

  Muscle memory.

  She snapped a shot at the center of the rippling mass.

  The old white-hair caught the bullet in his palm.

  Blood dripped as he tossed it dismissively to the floor before vanishing once again.

  “Switch!” Seven pulled her, slashing his blade at the rippling air in front of her. “He’s got a camouflage ability!”

  Eighty broke formation with a roar, roughly shouldering them aside to chase the quick distortion with sweeping strikes.

  “Damn it!” Seven yanked Sixty-eight back out of range of a back swing. “You see it, right?”

  She grunted an affirmative as she reloaded her short gun.

  Stupid morons and their single shot technology.

  Damn them all!

  The rage added to the boiling within her, further healing her wounds.

  As she predicted, the bandages around her raw arm began healing inside the new skin.

  It wasn’t pleasant to rip them off before they could be completely engulfed, which just made her angrier, which, again, was good for faster healing.

  Meanwhile, the old white hair toyed with Eighty as he appeared long enough to strike telling blows with his sharp finger and toenails before disappearing back into the slight, rippling distortion.

  Eighty’s face quickly became a red mask from dozens of shallow cuts. Her clothing at her joints and other spots not covered by armor grew damp the more they were shredded.

  A miasma surrounded her, emanated from her.

  The cuts healed, but the blood remained.

  Enough to blind her eyes, forcing her to relinquish the two-handed grip on her massive axe to wipe them.

  The old syaruman struck, appearing on her shoulders with thin legs around her thick neck. With a roar he ripped her helmet strap and twisted it around almost a hundred and eighty degrees.

  Sixty-eight shot him in the back.

  Crimson blossomed like a flower waking to the dawn.

  He kicked Eighty forward, causing her to stumble like a drunk quadhorn into the wall and a tangle of leaking pipes. Hot steam bathed the huge demigod child.

  She ripped her helmet off in her rage, allowing the steam to scald her face an ugly red.

  Blisters formed but healed just as quickly as they had appeared.

  Seven dashed in with tight thrusts and cuts of his blade.

  The old syaruman bared his fangs with a high-pitched screech.

  Seven stumbled under the Skill, stunned for the moment.

  Just enough for the old syaruman to rip the blade from his hand with a foot and swing it around in a spinning kick that sent an arc of crimson flying from underneath his chin.

  Sixty-eight fired again.

  Too long to reload.

  Much too long.

  The old syaruman twisted on instinct.

  The bullet screamed a hot, red track across his cheek and ripped away what was left of his remaining, round ear.

  Even a primitive bullet would utterly destroy something so delicate as an ear with the slightest touch.

  The old syaruman laughed even as a mountain-like shadow descended on him from behind.

  He shifted to the side ever so slightly as if he had eyes in the back of his white-haired head.

  Eighty’s fist hammered into the floor, breaking the cold concrete instead of the old syaruman.

  “Naive,” he sneered, “you’d need to live another century and a half to come close to my experiences. Sadly, my hunt ends here and now.”

  He slashed a hand across her eyes.

  Eighty roared.

  “Don’t need eyes!”

  She lashed out quicker than he expected, catching him across the chest with a backhand.

  Thunder cracked even louder than Sixty-eight’s substandard guns.

  He crashed into the wall.

  Eighty followed blindly, planting her fist into the hard, gray surface as the old syaruman scampered up her tree-limb of an arm with blood flecked on his lips and wide, rage-filled eyes.

  Eyes focused solely on Eighty’s exposed throat.

  He called himself a hunter and experienced hunters knew the danger of focusing solely on the kill.

  Prey was never more dangerous when it was wounded and trapped.

  Sixty-eight shot the old syaruman in the face.

  His left eye burst. His charged up Eighty’s arm stumbled.

  The huge demigod child shook the suddenly less adroit syaruman off and grabbed him to her chest.

  He bit and clawed with none of the precision he had displayed as his body, like the younger syaruman, fought on for the final moments past his death.

  She squeezed and he persisted even after the crack of his spine.

  Eighty battered the corpse against the floor until it was a red smear as Seven staggered over to Sixty-eight.

  He rasped through the half-healed cut across his throat.

  “Please check on Thirty-two and Fifteen.”

  They had lived.

  Broken and battered, but with the strength, quality and amount of the rage the syarumen, especially the old white hair, they had healed enough that they seemed in better shape than Seven and Eighty.

  “My fingers… gone…” Thirty-two wailed.

  Mostly in better shape.

  Fifteen massaged her temples.

  “Stop complaining. You can get them regrown by the healers when we return or replace them with your little toys.” She waved dismissively. “I believe you tinker types like that sort of thing. Fifty-five cut off her own fingers to replace them. Or was it Fifty-two? Ugh, so hard to tell you apart.” She rolled her eyes.

  Seven led Eighty via her hand on his shoulder to them.

  “We have to keep moving,” he rasped. “You’re on point, Sixty-eight.”

  Sixty-eight nodded as she reloaded her short gun and pulled a replacement rifle from her bag of holding.