Path Into The Darkness

After a four-hour hike through the hottest, most humid, vegetation-dense jungle territory he had ever been in, an exhausted Grune followed his hunter-lunatac lover Kalin into the remote and secret settlement of Serilune.  There were suspicious looks from the native hunters as they entered the village limits, which, given the fact that Grune was not only a Thunderian, but a known ex-Thundercat, was an unusual sight.  Kalin took his hand and smiled to him, a look that almost seemed that she was proud he had gotten this far.  Truth be told, she hadn’t been positive until now that Grune really had what it took to see it all through.  But now that he was there, and the Hunt was not that far off, she knew that he would see it all through.

He only needed to get through the preparations and trials.  He can do it, Kalin assured herself.  She remembered watching him make his first kill.  That lowlife mook who attacked him that day hadn’t stood a chance against the might of Grune.  How it excited her to mentally replay that deliciously wicked scene of him tearing that man to shreds, killing him with nearly his bare hands, save a little help from a knuckle-mace. Yes, he would do just fine in the Hunt, she was certain of it.

Grune himself was a bit overwhelmed. He hadn’t known what to expect when he came to Serilune, but it was nothing like he imagined it. The village itself had a more primitive look than the city, but something about it told him not to think of it as too backward. In the distance he could see a tall temple-like building, with the sort of carvings and architecture that reminded him in a way of the great Valley of the Stone Giants on Thundera. This band of Lunatacs, while a bit feral in their behavior at times, was by no means primitive. Traces of modern technology, selected for functionality by the hunters, he imagined, could be seen in bits and pieces as he looked around the settlement. The people of were also a bit of a surprise. Like some of the more rural areas on Thundera, many walked around fully in the nude or wearing simply a loincloth. Some looked like they didn’t even bother bathing or grooming themselves much. He passed more than one hunter-lunatac with a wild and knotted mane of green hair full of caked mud, burrs, and thorns from the jungle. Yet, aside from the ones who apparently found personal hygiene optional, he found something attractive about them as a whole. The idea of being in touch with the more animalistic side of life and being comfortable with it held a certain appeal. He was starting to like the idea of staying here.

The first thing Grune and Kalin did after their arrival in Serilune was to go to the inn and claim the room Kalin had reserved. Since she had no remaining family, not even here among the hunters, the property where she had been born and raised had been taken over by another family within the clan. Grune wondered why a place like Serilune, which was isolated and hidden from all but a few select outsiders and defended from strangers by deadly guards, would have an inn. Kalin explained that the inn was not for outsiders, but for ones like her, who lived among the outsiders but returned periodically for events like the Hunt or religious festivals. Once they were in the room, Grune kicked off his boots and stretched out on the bed, eager to rest his sore feet and muscles after the hike. Kalin had just stripped out of much of her own clothing and had joined him on the bed for a rest when there was a knock at the door.

Before he got a chance to tell whomever it was to get lost, Kalin had already gotten up and gone to see who was calling on them. The ex-Thundercat got a kick out of watching her answer the door in her underwear without a second thought. He knew of a snarf who served on staff back in Cat’s Lair that would have had a heart attack at such impropriety. Kalin opened the door and found herself face to face with a Lunatac youth, aged in his late teens he guessed, clad only in a loincloth like many of the other hunters. Immediately he struck Grune as strange. He supposed it was partly because he was clearly a mixed-breed Lunatac, and not a full-blooded hunter. Even though mixed-race Lunatacs were common back in the city, he had come across very few that were any part hunter, and nearly everyone here in Serilune was a full-bred hunter. It wasn’t simply his appearance though… Grune got an unsettling vibe from the boy, who was eyeing them both with an odd intensity. "I was told to deliver this schedule to everyone who came back for the Hunt," he explained. He handed Kalin a paper, then turned and left without another word.

Kalin took the paper and shut the door. She read it quickly, it was as the kid had said, a schedule of sorts. When she was done she put it aside and rejoined Grune on the bed. "Nothing I didn’t know already," she informed him, stretching out next to him.

He quickly drew her into his arms and held her close, grateful for the quiet moment to relax. "That boy seemed a bit—"

"Strange?" finished Kalin.

Grune nodded. "Yes."

"Demrock is a Rislir, a half-breed. That sets him apart from the others. We hunters do not generally create mixed blood offspring, at least not the ones of us who still live by our ways."

"No?" Grune asked with surprise. He wondered why, if that were the case, she would take him as a lover.

Kalin looked away for a moment, then met his eyes as she went into further detail. "History has shown that it’s not a good idea for us to interbreed with the other races of Lunatacs. The other clans don’t understand us as it is, and for a Rislir it is even worse. I don’t know if it’s like this for Thunderians, but when certain races of Lunatacs interbreed, the result is not always healthy. Sometimes in a mix the powers will complement one another, but other times they prove to be a volatile combination. It’s estimated that over fifty percent of Rislirs with hunter blood will become dangerously insane at some point in their lives. Because of this, outsiders fear them, and our own people look upon them as weaker, for they don’t have the full strength of our powers to begin with. For those reasons, it’s against our codes to take a Lunatac race other than hunters as a mate."

"And that boy’s parents did? And they are not outcasts for it?"

"He is an orphan because of what his parents did," Kalin said with a dark tone. "His father, a hunter named Demlin, was killed for his crime. That boy you just saw is the result of his father capturing and then repeatedly raping a fifteen-year-old psychic Lunatac female he got the better of on a trip into the capitol. He secretly brought her back here and held her captive for his own pleasures, until she escaped and was found by one of our sentries. The one who found her was enraged by the girl’s story and incited some of the other female warriors into cornering and killing Demlin for his act. Unfortunately the girl was already pregnant by him. She was then held here in Serilune—with what Demlin had done to her, and her being so young, we felt that we were obligated to take on the responsibility of her Rislir child—until she gave birth. Afterward she was returned to the city from which she’d been taken. She wanted nothing to do with the child anyway, so he was left as a ward of our village. The innkeeper took him in most recently, giving him a free place to live in exchange for working for him," she explained.

"I wonder what became of the mother," Grune mused.

Kalin shrugged. "I don’t know, I was still a child when all this happened. I do remember seeing her from time to time but never interacted with her. My guess is she’s back among her own people somewhere." She then rolled over and stretched out. "Anyway, let’s save our energy and take a nap. We’ll need it later on," she said with a sly smile. Grune pulled her a little closer and closed his eyes, and within minutes they were both fast asleep.

Grune awoke a few hours later to a gentle shake from his lover. He blinked and looked up, and to his surprise she was clad in nothing but some ritualistic paint on her face. "Time to get ready for the first ceremony," she informed him.

He sat up and stretched, trying not to let himself be distracted by her naked form. "What do I have to do?" he asked.

"Strip," she said with a teasing grin. "We participate in this event in our natural form."

"All right," Grune agreed. He removed what clothing he had on and looked at her expectantly, waiting for her next instruction.

Kalin strode over to his side and ran her fingers through his thick brown fur, eyeing him up and evaluating him silently, then simply smiled and started for the door. "Let’s go. It wouldn’t do to be late."

They left the inn and went toward the temple-like building that Grune had noticed on the way in. There was a large crowd of hunters, as well as one or two others like him, apparently brought along by hunter friends to participate, was gathered in front of the building’s steps. At the head of the crowd stood a hunter whom, even fully naked, still managed somehow to convey clearly that he was a leader of sorts. He started speaking in what must have been the hunters’ native dialect of Plundarrian, for the sabertooth had a lot of trouble understanding him. He could figure out bits and pieces of what the man was saying, and that he was chanting some sort of religious supplication to their gods. There seemed to be a large focus on the word "Air", and he was not quite sure what he meant by it. He cast Kalin a questioning look, but she simply nodded to indicate that he needn’t worry about it. He took that to mean that either she would explain it to him, or it wasn’t all that relevant.

A few minutes later the hunter leader finished his speech, and the door to the large temple-like building opened. Two hunters wheeled out a cage that held a large, vicious-looking bird. Grune wasn’t up on Lunar-Plundarrian wildlife, but it didn’t take a zoologist to know that it was a bird of prey, and one that would have no trouble slicing or clawing the average Lunatac—or Thunderian for that matter—to shreds. One of the attendants opened the door to the cage and the bird instantly tried to flee. It didn’t get far. The leader of the hunters made a flying leap into the air and grasped the bird by the neck, pulling it to the ground with him. The hunter became a snarling mass of teeth and claws—not all that dissimilar to the way he saw Kalin get when she would kill—and tore the bird’s head from its body with simply his teeth. He then stood, the bird’s head in one hand and his body and neck in the other, and shouted his victory loudly, inspiring cheers from the crowd. He then shouted in a loud and warlike cry, pointing at the forest. "And now, hunters of Serilune, you who are sacred to the Gods and the chosen warriors or our kind, claim those of the air as ours this night!" Instantly the crowd sprang to life and ran for the trees in a frenzied rush. Grune ran with them.

As he had guessed, this ceremony involved a hunt for birds of prey. The only rule, as Kalin explained to him, was that the animals had to be killed by their bare hands, no weapons of any kind were allowed. It might have been a serious obstacle for many whom were not native hunters, but not to Grune. The claws, teeth, and sheer strength of a Thunderian sabertooth were something to be reckoned with. Grune ran along with Kalin, clearly in her element here in the wilds of the moon’s rainforest. While he had seen the same deadly, almost crazed look she now wore at times when she’d killed back in the capitol, here she seemed even more fierce and beautiful. It only made him want her more.

Grune himself was intoxicated by the thrill of hunting with only his natural defenses. Over the course of the evening he tracked down the nests of five of these birds, and successfully brought down three of them. Kalin had been impressed. She said it was rare for a first timer to get even one, but for one to get three was almost unheard of. She had helped him one of them, as well as getting four others on her own, but teaming up was allowed. It was more prestigious of course to take it down without any aid, but it was not dishonorable for two or even three to entrap and kill a particularly large or vicious one.

When the sky started to lighten, signaling the end of the allotted time for hunting, Kalin and Grune started the hike back to Serilune, as all of the other hunters were also doing at this time. Upon their return they gathered with the others in the square, who were showing off their kills and exchanging hunting stories, while gutting and cleaning the birds so that their meat could be cooked for the victory breakfast. Some saved the feathers of birds with impressive plumage as trophies, but Kalin did not. She thought such trophies were the pride of the more insecure, ones who felt they had to brag about their prowess to seem important. Grune tended to agree. Like Kalin, he knew he was good, and he knew that the others knew it, so he had no need to flaunt it.

After the meal they headed to their room to get some much-needed rest. The ceremony would start all over again at sundown, and they needed to be prepared for it. Once back at the inn, they headed straight for their bathroom and indulged in a hot bath together, to rinse off the caked-on blood and grime from a night in the jungle. Grune was tenderly pulling some twigs that had gotten trapped in Kalin’s hair out for her when he asked her a question about the rest of the event.

"The rest? Much like the first night, only with different prey," she replied with a sigh, stretching out in the tub and letting the hot water soothe her aching muscles.

"So we hunt different and more dangerous things each night, then?" Grune inquired.

"In a sense, yes. The first night, the one which took place last night, was the first of the four elemental ceremonies, the Night of Air. On that night, we focus our abilities on capturing the most deadly air-dwelling creatures of the jungle-- the Firilean Birds."

"I see," Grune said with a nod, picking a dried leaf out of her hair. "And tonight?"

"The Night of Water."

"We go fishing?" he asked, incredulously.

Kalin laughed. "In a sense. We dive and hunt for the Sharp-Mouthed Kordik, a schooling fish that averages a size of two to three feet in length and consumes Lunatac—" she looked up at him and smiled "—or in your case, Thunderian—flesh. Our objective is to beat them to it and kill them ourselves, while swimming in their waters."

"Wow," Grune said quietly. "That does sound like a challenge."

"It is, but I think you’ll do just fine. I hear cats are quite good at catching fish." She raised the soapy sponge and worked at a matted stain of blood on the fur on his chest. "Then, tomorrow night, we have the third elemental ceremony, the Night of Earth. Our prey of choice that night is the Hetosha, a bear-like creature nearly three times the size of one of us, which dwells in the caves and rockier areas within the jungles. Those we often take down in groups of three or four, as it is nearly impossible to kill one with our bare hands. It can be done, but it’s rare and many have died trying." Kalin paused for a moment and smoothed her hands through his fur again, making sure that the last of the blood was washed out. "The night after that we have the Night of Fire. Our prey that night is only a small rodent-like creature that bites, scratches, and moves like lightning, but its native terrain… the hot and fiery chambers around an active volcano a few miles from here… is the real danger. It’s quite easy to fall into a lava pit or asphyxiate in the deadly toxic fumes from the heart of the volcano."

"And the fifth night?"

"The Night of Challenge. That is the height of the Hunt, the night that we are all in this mainly to participate in, the one that taxes our skills to the fullest. The other nights are merely practice compared to the Night of Challenge."

"What do you hunt on that night?" Grune questioned.

Kalin paused for a moment, and looked him dead in the eye. "Lunatacs."

Grune’s blood ran cold for a moment. Had Kalin just told him that she hunted her own people? "What?"

"You heard me. Yes, we hunt other Lunatacs. Sometimes Mutants or even the occasional Thunderian, but mostly Lunatacs."

"You just… kill these people for no reason?" he asked weakly. While he had killed, back in the city, it had never been without reason. Usually the unlucky individual was at least guilty of something, even if it was just the general crime of being a lowlife.

Kalin frowned. "Not for ‘no reason’, but for good reason. It sharpens our own skills and keeps them at their peak. You know what it’s like to kill, Grune. You’ve felt the rush of adrenaline, the surge of power, the knowledge that you are a deadly creature to be feared, and the resulting high it gives you. Imagine what you felt each time you delivered a fatal blow to one of those pathetic street thugs back in the city, multiply it a hundred fold, and that’s what it feels like to take down the prey on our Night of Challenge. And there is no reason to feel any of your Thundercat guilt or pity for any of them. In modern times the only ones who we hunt are ones who have been sentenced to death under the royal laws anyway. We are merely acting as the executioners."

"The law endorses this?" Grune asked in surprise.

"Many crimes, under general Lunatac law, are punishable by death. It varies depending on which Moon you’re on or even what city you are in, but overall, it works the same way: If you are accused of one of these crimes, you have two choices, to plead guilty or innocent. If you plead guilty, your death will be swift and somewhat merciful—a lethal injection, a clean and fast beheading, or perhaps a laser blast to the brain, depending on the circumstances. If you plead innocent, you have to prove that you are indeed innocent to the satisfaction of those presiding, or else you are sentenced to death anyway. Should this happen, once again the individual has a choice. He can choose an execution-- and if he has pleaded innocent and found to be not, he will be killed a way fitting his crime—or he can choose the more sporting option: a chance at life and escape, but with the possibility of dying a savage and brutal death."

"That chance," she explained, "is to play the role of prey in our Night of Challenge, an event that takes place three times per year. These condemned souls will be held until the time comes for the ceremony, and then sent to us the day before the Night of Challenge takes place. They are released into the jungle an hour before it begins to give them a sporting chance. We then hold our ceremony, ending with our leader sacrificing one of them—one not released with the others, obviously—at the temple, in a manner very much like you saw last night with the bird. We then hunt venture into the jungle ourselves and hunt these criminals down as our prey. If one of them escapes successfully, his or her crimes are forgotten and the individuals start over with a clean record when they get back into the mainstream society. If not, they die at our hands. It is their choice," Kalin explained to him.

She allowed him to digest that information for a moment before continuing. "In the end, it works out well for everyone involved. We no longer have to sneak into the cities of other clans and kidnap subjects as our ancestors did, and the outsiders have a convenient way to get rid of their criminals. It appeals even to the condemned, in that it offers a possibility to escape their fate—though most greatly overestimate their chances against us. Fewer than three percent of those sent to us have ever successfully gotten away."

"I see," Grune said quietly. He didn’t really know what else to say. It didn’t surprise him that the Lunatacs would have such a law among their people. Lunar-Plundarians were a cruel and dangerous lot of creatures to begin with. While the method of execution seemed a bit savage, he had to admit it had merit. He thought was a fitting end for the dregs of their society, which, given how even the average citizens were evil and vile by Thunderian standards, their criminals had to be pretty much the lowest of the low. Even so, the very concept went against the forgiving, nurturing code that he’d had drilled into him growing up on Thundera and the years that he’d spent as a Thundercat. On Thundera, there was no death penalty for anything—the worst punishment one could be sentenced to was exile. It struck him that his old associates would probably be horrified at the thought of a law like the one Kalin had just described. And now, here he was, among the Serilune hunters, about to willingly participate in it. It gave him a perverse sort of pleasure.

Kalin was eyeing him carefully for an adverse reaction to what she had just told him. To her delight, she did not get one. Grune simply smiled at her. "It sounds incredible, my dear. I can’t wait."

The huntress beamed and leaned in and gave him a long, lustful kiss. "That’s what I hoped you’d say."

The Night of Water proved to be as much of a thrill—and success—as the Night of Air had been for Grune. He had managed to kill two Sharp-Mouthed Kordiks, both of which were slightly larger than the norm. In the entire night of swimming with the deadly fish, he had sustained only two bites, and neither was a terribly painful or deep wound. One of his catches was the one that bit him anyway, so in his eyes the score was settled. That knowledge made the fish’s flesh taste that much better when he consumed it at the victory breakfast the following morning.

The Night of Earth turned out to be a bit more challenging. In her description of the hunt of the cave-dwelling Hetosha, Kalin had not conveyed the beast’s truly terrifying appearance. She had mentioned it was large and fierce, but Grune was in no way prepared for the sight of the four-armed, heavily muscled, large-fanged beast. Even the deadly hunter leader who sacrificed a representative of that night’s prey each night at the beginning of the festivities had a good ten-minute struggle with his chosen Hetosha. In the case of Grune and Kalin, they formed their own small team and spent the better part of the night tracking a twelve-foot tall Hetosha to a rocky cavern near one of the jungle streams, and trapping it so they might ambush it. The kill itself took both of them using almost their full strength, but after a struggle they were victorious, and the mighty creature fell to the ground and breathed his last. The rest of the night had been spent dragging the beast back to Serilune, and later they joked that lugging its heavy carcass had been the hardest part of all of it.

The final elemental ceremony, the Night of Fire, turned out to be, as Kalin suggested, the most difficult of the four. The small rodent-creatures they hunted, sneaky and difficult little beasts called Mepirs, were nearly impossible to catch, and doubly so in the treacherous terrain of the volcano. Grune’s thick fur proved to be a hindrance in this environment, as the staggering heat sapped his endurance quickly. During that night, he was only able to snare two of the elusive creatures, while Kalin, more experienced and better adapted to it than he, managed to get nine. Fortunately for him, Kalin didn’t mind sharing her sizeable portion of Mepir stew with him that morning at breakfast. Grune had been a little discouraged by his difficulty in the last hunt, but Kalin told him not to worry too much, that it was more of a practice ceremony anyway, and that the real fun—and thrill—would be that night, for it was the awaited Night of Challenge. By the time they had finished their meal and a brief but intense interlude of passion back in their room afterward before going to sleep, the sabertooth’s mood had improved considerably.

Just a little under eight hours later, Grune was awakened by a demanding kiss from his lover. "Mmm, Kalin?" he mumbled, reaching for her, still half asleep.

"Out of bed, sleepy-cat," teased the Lunatac, standing upright and pulling him into the position as well, "It’s almost time and you need to wake up and get something to eat before the Hunt begins. It’s going to be a long night."

Grune yawned and stretched, resisting the urge to fall back into bed and go to sleep. "All right, all right," he muttered sleepily. These past few nights had been physically draining and he was starting to feel it. Still, he wasn’t going to let that stand in his way. Not on this of all nights… not on the Night of Challenge.

As he reluctantly climbed out of bed, he briefly questioned what he was about to do. How could he be treating the horrifying act of deliberately stalking and hunting down a fellow sentient being, with the full intent of slaughtering him with his bare hands, like some form of game? Even though he had killed back in the city, it was never such planned, cold-blooded murder. A few months ago, such a thought would have made him sick. Yet now… he was looking forward to it. To the kill.

"Ready, tiger?" Kalin asked, sidling up to him in a seductive, slithery movement.

"Whenever you are," Grune answered, a small but confident smile on his face. Kalin kissed him in reply, then grinned and led him out the door and down the street toward the temple, where the gathering was to take place for the final night of the ceremony. As they walked down the almost deserted streets of Serilune, Grune looked at the surrounding jungle with surprising calm. He was about to brutally deliver someone into the hands of death, and it didn’t bother him in the least.

Kalin squeezed his hand and brought his attention back to her. They had arrived at the temple, and a crowd larger than any of the other nights had drawn was assembled and restlessly waiting. Within moments, the doors of the temple opened and the man Grune recognized as their leader of ceremonies took his space on the altar in front of everyone again. Like the other nights, he started the ceremony, addressing the crowd in that confusing native tongue that Grune could just barely understand. This speech, more general than the others, was mainly one on tradition and honor, as usual, and how he and his people were on this night bound to carry out their sacred duty of using their natural prowess to deliver the sacrifices into the hands of their gods.

After the speech (which seemed to Grune to last a lot longer than any of the others) ended, came the first kill, the one performed by the leader himself. A temple door opened and out stumbled a startled, somewhat haggard-looking Lunatac of the frozen race. He had a crazed and defensive look of pure terror in his eyes as he looked out upon the crowd of hunters and realized that his fate was already sealed. The man had wondered why the others were all released earlier, while he was not. Now he knew why. Without waiting another moment, he took off in a run for the trees, but the leader of the hunters had pounced on him before he could get further than a few feet.

The agitated Lunatac shouted and kicked beneath the predatory hunter, desperately trying to free himself from his grasp. He spat bursts of ice at him, but he was so panicked and terrified that he couldn’t get much strength behind it. The hunter used his knees to pin the ice Lunatac that was now his prey to the ground slashed at him with his claws, across the throat and chest. The man let out a howl of pain and thrashed violently, managing to shoot one fire-beam from his hand that hit the hunter-leader in the gut and knocked the wind out of him. Acting on pure instinct and rushing adrenaline, the doomed ice Lunatac rolled away and scrambled to his feet, breaking into a panicked run for his life.

Surprised to have gotten that much of a fight out of the other Lunatac, the hunter stood and used his innate morphing powers to change into a creature that could only be described as part wildcat and part bird of prey, that moved like lightning. Whatever time the ice Lunatac had gained in getting away while the hunter morphed was soon lost as the beast that was the hunter swooped down upon him and grabbed his shoulders with its powerful talons, tearing and pinching the muscles of his shoulder. The man could do nothing but struggle in vain and scream desperately for help as the hunter leader slammed him back on the ground. His screams were silenced moments later when the morphed hunter’s jaws closed around his neck and his sharp teeth tore his icy, tender flesh open.

Grune watched from the crowed in a detached, awed form of silence as the hunter savagely tore apart the body of the ice Lunatac, until all of his movements ceased and his body lay still on the ground. The victor then stepped off of his body and folded his arms, allowing his body to morph back into its natural shape. The hunter appeared tired and was stained with the blood of his victim, but he was undeniably victorious in his match against the first sacrifice. Not even bothering to wipe the maroon blood from his lips, he stepped back onto the altar and shouted a few religious chants, echoed by much of the excited crowd, before he let out a loud, almost unintelligible war cry and pointed to the forest. Immediately the crowd made a mad dash for the jungles, bloodthirsty and intent on scoring their own sentient trophies. Grune was no exception.

The fading sunset seemed to give way to darkness faster that night. Grune had no sooner gotten into the thick foliage of the rainforest than it seemed that any light had all but vanished. He had of course encountered this in the previous nights, but for some reason it seemed much blacker on this night. It might have been because the Third Moon’s main planet of Plundarr itself was in a phase where it was not visible at all to shine in this moon’s sky at night. None of the other moons did either, aside from the small moon Mirindet, from which the psychic race of Lunatacs originated, which shone in a near full state above. The sabertooth scaled a tree and sniffed at the air, depending on his catlike sense of smell to track down his prey. The one advantage he had on this night over the others was that he could already easily pick out the scent of a Lunatac, and even differentiate between the general races. He’d certainly been around enough of all their kinds as of late to know what he was—and wasn’t—looking for.

Moments later Kalin was at his side in the tree. They had agreed that they would hunt their prey together. She wanted to see Grune kill, and she also figured her presence would stop any remaining shreds of his past Thundercat weakness from slipping out. She’d worked so hard to bring him to her side, she did not want to see that fall apart now. Not when she had such great plans for him. Yes, initially it had been Luna’s idea to seduce Grune into their lifestyle… but now, Luna had very little to do with any of it as far as Kalin was concerned. When it came down to it, her crime leader boss was little more than a source of amusement and easy cash. Grune might have been intended to be an advantage for Luna, but first and foremost he was the huntress’ toy.

She eyed Grune as he tensed his body, twitching one of his ears in the direction of a distant rustling. He sniffed at the air in a manner which she imagined his catlike ancestors might have used when they roamed their world on four limbs, using only what the gods had given them at birth as weapons to hunt and take prey. His eyes widened with anticipation and his lips parted in a faint, sly smile. "That’s one of them," he whispered. "Lunatac, not a hunter. A dark-dweller. Male."

"I’m impressed," Kalin replied in a smooth purr. "So are you going to take him? A dark-dweller has the red eyes that grant an advantage of sight over us on a night like this."

"But he doesn’t have half the strength or endurance of Grune the Mighty," growled the ex-Thundercat. "He’s as good as mine." With that, Grune leapt from the branch to the ground, and stealthily made his way in the direction of the dark-dweller’s scent. Kalin, not wanting to miss a moment of it, followed his path through the intertwining mesh of tree branches above. Grune tracked the red-eyed Lunatac for a good two miles before preparing to strike. He knew that sneaking up on him would be difficult, so he played it safe. He figured if he gave him a chance to let down his guard, it would improve his chances of being able to come at him from behind before he was alerted to his presence.

He was right. The dark-dweller had begun to relax. He’d been in the jungle for hours now, and he knew that the hunters only had until dawn to kill him, and if he made it to sunrise he was home free. And how he wanted to go back home and have his crimes erased. That bastard King Lunaro had sentenced him unfairly, he thought with bitterness. His crime had officially been treason and espionage, but that was a general label that the royals gave anything that they felt made them look bad. Politics on the Moons of Plundarr were just like anywhere else—mostly about image. What he had actually done was break into the palace armory to steal a few of the valuables and sell them off for cash. Breaking and entering, petty thievery, he could have owned up to. Treason, no. But what he failed to realize at the time was that he had committed a far more heinous crime—namely, making idiots out of the palace security, who he had been able to get around with startling ease. Rather than deal accordingly with the rent-a-cop mentality guards, Lunaro had instead prosecuted him as a spy looking to sell secrets to Plundarrian mutants (justified by some contacts on Plundarr he had on his person at the time of his arrest). He thought the charge was bullshit, so he pled innocent. He should have known he’d be sentenced to death anyway. He chose the Night of Challenge option because he knew that as a dark-dweller, he stood a good chance of escaping the hunters. After all, he’d see them coming if any were after him. Their near-white skin would stand out like a neon sign with his infrared vision.

There was one flaw in the red-eyed Lunatac’s thinking—he was so caught up in looking for hunters, that even when he looked over his shoulder, he missed the dark-furred sabertooth that would crouch in the foliage every time he turned to scan. Finally he grew weary. He was not in the best of shape, and he was not used to the hot, humid air of the jungles surrounding Serilune. His home had much more temperate weather. He missed it.

When the dark-dweller paused to take a drink at the side of a stream, Grune chose to make his move. With a wild, predatory roar, Grune sprang from the shadows and pounced upon the condemned Lunatac. He let out a shout of surprise, peppered with a few choice obscenities. Grune ignored him, using his powerful strength to pin him underneath him, and clamped a hand around his throat. The Lunatac was not a small one, so Grune figured the best way to wear him out fast would be to cut off his oxygen.

"What the fuck… you’re not… hunter…" gasped the struggling dark-dweller.

"I am tonight," Grune replied with a sinister growl. He tightened his grip on his throat and grinned as the pathetic creature attempted to struggle. Didn’t he know that it was over? Or was he as foolish as other Lunatacs he’d dealt with when it came to not knowing when to give up? He started into the his victim’s fear filled red eyes. "And you’re going to die now. Say your prayers, Lunatac."

As he thrashed around in a vain effort to save himself, the red-eyed man realized what his attacker was. "Fucking Thunderian," he wheezed, "Damned miserable cat!" Like most of his people, he’d always hated felines anyway. He sent a charge of electricity through his body and attempted to shock him off. "I’ll be damned if I let a fleabag like you get me."

Grune was knocked backward and stunned, but not enough to lose his grip on his panicking prey. He dug his bared claws into the meat of his shoulders and slammed him against the ground hard. "I’m going to send you to your makers, you worthless moon-dwelling bastard," growled the enraged sabertooth. "And you can tell them the ‘fleabag’ that sent you here is Grune the Mighty."

Grune then slammed his fist into the side of the Lunatac’s head and kneeled all of his body weight into his gut. He clenched his free hand around his throat, choking off his air supply, then dealt him four powerful blows to the head. The dark-dweller reeled from the blows, vaguely aware of pain flashing through his body each time his fist connected with his skull, but he hardly had time to be aware of the fact before he slipped out of consciousness. Grune could feel the rush of power again, like he had when he made his first kill, and decided he wanted more. He wanted to kill more of these worthless beings, make them all know that he was powerful and he was to be feared and only the gods could save one that got in his way. He struck him again and again, and could almost feel some other, dark power urging him to finish the act.

Giving one final blow, he slammed his fist into the side of the Lunatac’s head and used it to pin him to the ground. He then leaned in and sank both of his huge canines into his neck and chest, shredding it wide open and exposing flesh, sinew, and bone to the sticky jungle air. A spray of blood burst forth from his body as he punctured his jugular vein, soaking the sabertooth’s sable fur with a rich maroon shower of blood as his victim breathed his last and fell silent. Grune slurped at the hot fluid that clung to his lips and teeth and, intoxicated with the taste blood and the adrenaline of the kill, he leaned back and roared his victory.

In a treetop above, less than fifteen feet away, Kalin broke into a wide grin. He had exceeded her every expectation. He had joined her in every sense, and nothing—not his Thundercats, not the royals, no one—would stand in their way ever again.

The rest of the night seemed to pass in a blur for Grune. After he made his kill, Kalin had joined him on the forest floor and wrapped herself around him in a hungry, excited kiss. Something within him had felt so wild and alive that he almost wanted to take her and make love to her in an animalistic frenzy right then and there, but she did not let that happen. Now that her student had made his kill, it was time for her to make hers. She stood and started walking downstream, and beckoned for him to follow. Grune slung the body of his fallen victim over his shoulder and followed. He did not know what they would do with the bodies, but he knew that in none of the other ceremonies were they left behind, so he carried it. Kalin did not correct him, so he assumed it was right.

Two hours later, Kalin had successfully stalked and killed her own victim, a particularly violent and somewhat disturbed half-breed gravity/ice Lunatac female in her mid-twenties. Their scuffle was long, but before long Kalin gained a clear advantage over the woman and delivered her a fatal blow that snapped her neck. Kalin herself sustained a large gash in her side from a sharp stick the woman had wielded as a weapon, but it was mostly superficial—nothing that a few stitches wouldn’t fix and that wouldn’t heal before long. Luckily for the huntress, her skin was not prone to ugly scarring.

Grune watched as Kalin picked up the woman’s lifeless body and hoisted it onto her shoulder. Though she was by no means petite at her height of just a few inches short of six feet and was well-muscled, she handled the victim’s body with surprising ease. Of course, she’s probably been doing this for years now, he mused thoughtfully. It struck him for a moment how crazy this seemed, to be so calm when he and his companion had just brutally slaughtered two innocent—or innocent as far as not doing any wrong to them personally—people, and were not even bothered by the fact. He could almost see Jaga looking at him, horrified, with a similar expression to the one he wore the day he walked out of Cat’s Lair for the last time. It made him laugh. It was amazing how easy everything was to take when you just didn’t care anymore.

Kalin shifted her burden into a more optimal position upon her back, then started to walk. "Ready to head back?" she asked. "Serilune is a good hour and a half to two hour walk from here. We should try and be back around sunrise."

"What happens then?" he asked, falling in step with her. He then remembered what they did with the prey from the previous nights, and got a strange, almost sick feeling in his stomach.

"The breakfast feast," Kalin answered simply.

Grune opened his mouth to ask just what they were eating, but he stopped before he did. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer just yet. He’d find out when they got there. They kept walking.

Once back, Grune followed Kalin to the gathering square in Serilune where they had met each previous morning with their trophies. She went to a stone slab and laid the body of her victim out on it, then took a knife from an old hunter, wearing a ceremonial robe, who had approached them. "It’s been blessed by the gods, for us to use on our sacrifices. We have to cut out the heart from each and place it in the vessel by the altar."

The ceremony sounded rather savage and primitive to Grune, but it really didn’t surprise him, considering what he’d already experienced among the hunters. Sacrifice of one’s own kind was practiced in many cultures, and very often in ones with Plundarrian roots. It had even been done on Thundera in times past, but that practice had long been outlawed on the entire planet. He simply nodded. "What about the rest?"

"The bodies, you mean?" Kalin asked, slicing into the chest of the dead female in front of her. "We cremate them in a funeral rite." The sound of ribs cracking and a frustrated grunt from Kalin halted her speech for a moment. "Sometimes these bones are so damned difficult," she muttered, putting extra pressure on the knife as she tried to work it between two of the ribs. It finally gave way with a wet snap, and the now cold, still heart was exposed. She gently cut it away and lifted it from the body, and laid it on the ground next to the altar, leaving space for Grune to place the dead dark-dweller. He took the hint and set him on it, then took the knife, which Kalin now offered to him.

Grune sank the knife into the flesh of the dead red-eyed Lunatac and drew it back, exposing the cavity. He hoped that there was no electricity left in the body, otherwise he was risking a very nasty shock. Fortunately for him that ability died with his prey. Kalin watched him carefully, eyeing him for any trace of remorse or emotion associated with what he was doing. She was relieved to see none. Grune had an easier time working around the bones, and removed the heart of his victim without too much difficulty. It was a little more beat-up than the one she obtained, since he was less than delicate in his approach to remove it, but it was intact.

Kalin beckoned for him to follow her to the altar with the heart. They each placed it in the vessel set out, with a few others that had already been set in there, and then returned to collect the bodies of their victims. They carried the two dead Lunatacs to the blaze in Serilune’s square and threw them in, watching them be slowly consumed by the flames. It was not long before their features were blackened and they were burned beyond recognition. After silently staring at the fire for several minutes, Grune turned to Kalin with an expectant look, waiting for her to tell him what was next.

She glanced briefly at the sunrise on the horizon. "It’s almost time for the feast, we need to gather back at the temple." Grune nodded and followed her, and they went back to where they had started last night, walking more slowly now since they were quite tired after their long and exhausting. By the time they arrived, there was already a large crowd, a good two-thirds or more of what had assembled last night. Hunters dressed in ceremonial robes similar to the knife-bearer, mostly very old, very young or slight and weak-looking ones, were passing around vessels with a stew-like soup in them, as well as rolls and fruit, to all in attendance. Grune supposed this was the way that those who were not in good enough shape for the actual hunt due to their age or physical weakness, would participate. He took one of the cups and two rolls, following Kalin’s lead, while the leader began another ceremonial speech.

Grune, who still couldn’t understand much of what the man was talking about, simply followed along with the others, getting caught up in the energy of the bloodthirsty crew. Soon the hunter leader raised his cup, and everyone in the crowd, including Grune, followed suit. Cries and cheers echoed throughout the crowd, and then they all brought their cups to their lips and drank. A rush of warm, salty liquid, filled with chunks of a tough sort of meat, greeted his lips. It was not exactly distasteful, but he wouldn’t have called it gourmet fare, either. He consumed his share, then tossed his cup aside, again following the lead of the others. When both were finished, Kalin sidled up to him, smiling slyly. "Did you like it?"

"It’s not bad… pretty tough meat though."

"The heart is not as tender as the poets and songwriters of the universe would like us to believe," she commented dryly.

Grune’s eyes widened in shock. That was what they did with the hearts? "I… I thought those were meant for the sacrifice…"

"Only the bodies… when we burn them, that is the rite of sacrifice. The hearts are for us. To bring within us, and make us stronger."

"I see."

Kalin smiled and drew him close. "Congratulations, Grune… you’re now officially one of us," she purred. "What do you say we go and celebrate, since we have to go home tomorrow?"

"I say lead the way," Grune replied, drawing her into a short kiss before they made their way back to the inn.