The Nuclear Reign of Strottimar [Part 1]

Chapter 16; Moonless Hunt

The summer ran slowly, and the harvest was thick considering the social troubles of the time. I felt like I hardly knew my way around these borders anymore, the grass felt taller and the trees felt towering. I closed my eyes and tried to listen to what the forest gave me, as Ryu told me.

Over the past season, we'd become so much more acquainted. He'd made my loft into our own in his own way and he'd sat himself quietly into lander culture while the world kept passing by as if nothing happened. Yet, talk of this disease grew terribly. There were more sightings within lander borders and even outside the trunk of the province. I worried, especially since we'd told Xander who hadn't taken the news lightly of Alfanza's deal, he's grown more and more distant. Seemingly befriending me in reverse, I was lucky if I saw his face at all once a sunrise or so. I worried about him but I didn't want to push to the point of annoyance or bother, so I let him be. I suspected he and Quincy needed time. She was due soon, I think.

Ryu gave me a distraction from all the stress of the world, as he did now, out tonight. He'd convinced me earlier in the morning while I was reporting to Hansen, rather abundantly his need to take me out on a real hunt. And by "real" he meant his own egliptie way, in simple terms of putting it. He hunted with his claws alone, all five of his senses sharp as ever while he'd use his physical features to kill his meals instead of measly weapons or other help.

For the most part, he'd told me eglipties hunted in pairs. They used unique tactics to trick their prey together instead of the harsher conditions of fending alone or in a larger number. Though I couldn't be of much a real help, it interested me so to see the world through his eyes so I went along anyways, to where I stood now, stalking in all black with my wings tucked in tightly. (He'd told me earlier that they'd be a bother, considering how bright all white stuck out in the forest)

Then again, I'd never seen an all white egliptie before, in fact, to be truthful the only egliptie I had seen up close was Ryu, and yet he'd never spoken of such a thing as a white pelted egliptie either. Nonetheless, with my wings concealed under my cloak, we stalked along the underbrush feeling the silent summer wind tickling our faces. Ryu, still in his regular form, stopped.

"Do you smell that?" he said without looking back at me. His words were choppy, I'd been teaching him lander speech and it was coming along well. He was a fast learner, and already more bilingual than me, he clung on easily to such things. "I don't smell anything." I admitted to the fact that his sense of smell was much stronger than mine. He paused, his black clawed fingers twitching before he met my eyes, slowly turning his head. "I am going to change now, are you ready?"

"Yes," I laughed quietly as he gave a curt nod and began to shift. He'd started asking around when and if it was okay to shift due to the fact that I found it so sudden most of the time. He'd startled me a dawn or so back by leaping up on my lap in cat form causing me to shriek in front of the high council while discussing the distant disease. I didn't quite much appreciate it, as he should've assumed.

Yet this time, he shifted into no cat, nor any animal at all really. It was his own beast, unique to his blood as the scales on his shoulders formed first, shifting out from his skin as his bones twisted in an unnatural way in front of my eyes. He stretched himself to nearly be twice his size, black fur and hair covering his entire body while large horns pierced through his head. His ears grew large and leathery, and drooped alongside the darkened shiny almost purple-ish horns. His face formed a pointed snout with the nose of a dog and the wrinkled face of a bear almost.

His claws retracted from his beastly paws as the dark gradient on his arms and legs remained intact, a black bleeding into a softened shade of blue gray yet in this moonless hour, he looked completely colorless. Blended in with the night except for the thorns on his back and tail and his piercing sapphire eyes that'd become fully blue and slitted to sharpen his night vision. He was a predator of the forest in the moon hours, something about that always chilled my bones as he looked back at me with razored teeth that could no longer fit in his mouth. His slitted tongue fell out from his unhinged jaws when he spoke now in a very low, distorted throat, his long thick almost pelican-like neck folded neatly to his body for the time being. "I - ope I do not- scare yu," he tried his best lander speech but the clicks, whistles, and calls didn't seem fitting nor physically capable for this side of him. I nodded and resorted back to Tebanthian.