LONG AGO
Hair standing on end, pupils dilated, the feline glided beneath the cover of dry grass nearly the same color as his fur. With the sounds of his movements masked by the heavy rainfall, he crept closer.
Closer…
And then he froze.
Just a few meters away, the herd of elynise – large antelope creatures whose elaborate horns caught lightning from the sky and whip-like tails struck faster than a blink – suddenly lifted their heads and ears in alert. The lone hunter didn’t dare move, knowing how badly outnumbered he was. These creatures weren’t likely to feel threatened by a lionkin cub, and just one of them was enough to be a tangible threat to his life. There were twenty.
But Ae’dron was hungry, and he wasn’t alone.
Thunder rumbled as lightning snaked across the clouds above. The wind intensified, threatening to blow the young lion’s locs right out of their ponytail. The elynise had stopped grazing, their eyes to the sky. The younger ones in the center of the herd pawed at the ground and mewled nervously. Electrical filaments jumped across the creatures’ horns as they communicated with each other before the entire herd turned their heads towards Ae’dron’s direction. He could tell that they hadn’t seen him, but they did sense someone else: Xophorys. The human was crouched low in the grass and nearly impossible to see, but his mind was racing in a dozen different directions at once. The electroreceptive creatures had picked up on those rampant thoughts, and now were on alert. One twitched its head, and its gaze fell directly on Ae’dron.
Lightning flashed. Thunder roared.
Chaos erupted.
Ae’dron sprung out of the grass moments before a bolt of lightning struck him. He landed on all fours and sprang again as another elynise discharged electricity from its horns. Mid-jump he twisted in the air, flinging a bladed ring at the next attacker. It struck the elynise in the ear, turning its head and diverting its electrical blast harmlessly into the air.
The herd turned into a stampede as the antelopes ran. Most were fleeing with their young, but several had stayed behind to ensure the safety of the rest. Their glowing horns left streaking lights in the night sky, and some of that electrical energy channeled into their hooves, allowing them to run at speeds impossible for most predators to catch up.
The wildkin landed expecting to be close enough to pounce on the nearest antelope, but the defenders were keeping a healthy distance from him. He saw four spread around him, their eyes, horns, and hooves all illuminated with ionic charge. The largest one exhaled steam from its nostrils as it kept its gaze locked on the feline, pawing at the ground with its front legs. The others spread out into a semi-circle, electrical filaments tethering their thoughts together and allowing them to move perfectly synchronized. Ae’dron tried to take a step forward, but hissed and jumped back as another bolt struck before his foot even touched down – and then a second bolt right behind it that forced him to dive wildly to the side! Lightning struck from every angle, and the only reason Ae’dron was able to dodge was because the young warrior astutely watched when the elynise would lower their heads to prepare to discharge. He anticipated the directions of their shots and avoided those areas best he could, the landscape around him as bright as day with all the flashes of light and even the rain seemed to glow from the residual energy.
The barrage didn’t stop until Ae’dron was kneeling on the ground and cornered, the electrical beasts surrounded him yet again. They approached slowly, methodically, and all lowered their heads together. The dark sky responded with thunder, lightning surged down through the air and channeled into their horns all around Ae’dron. The swell of heat from the pillars of electricity was almost as unbearable as the light was blinding. Ae’dron searched for an escape, but there was nothing but calamity looking back from all sides… and then a weight rolled across his back.
As one, the creatures all fired.
A blinding flash, a deafening explosion. “Gah!” BOOM!
A shockwave rolled out from the impact, and when his vision cleared Ae’dron could see Xoph standing in front of him. The human boy’s arms were straight ahead and legs spread as if he was pulling ropes, while the lightning –still connected to the antelopes’ horns- coiled into glowing runes on his hands. The elynise’s heads were stuck, magically tethered to the electricity, and they neighed as they furiously pulled against the hold. Ae’dron rose to his feet besides Xoph, “Hey.. Hey it actually worked!” The wildkin said with a grin.
“Its.. .Working.. Sure.. but… Hurry!” The young mage said through grunts. Xophorys was crouched on one knee, holding the creatures down with lassos made from the very same electricity they had discharged, but his grip was already slipping. Ae’dron had to work fast.
The feline raced on all fours to the nearest elynise, jamming a sword into the rain-slicked ground to halt his momentum as he swung himself up onto the beast’s back. The young hunter saw his mark – the nape of the creature’s neck – and could feel an instinctive hunger making his claws and fangs grow longer. Resisting the urge to bite (he wasn’t nearly big enough for that yet) the young felinus shouted a war cry as his blades swept in for a swift kill. A hot lash across his back from the beast’s whipping tail threw Ae’dron from the creature before he connected. He hit the ground rolling between two of the antelope –his ear twitched – and his body jerked just in time to swerve past two kicks from the bucking beasts. But they were quick, and the burning wound on Ae’dron’s back slowed him enough that another flying heel caught him in the side of the head. He hit the ground, the elynise stomped, and the young lion narrowly swerved his skull away from being splattered. It kept trying to trample him, electrical hooves hammering holes in the ground. Ae’dron used his buckler to guard as best he could while trying to escape from beneath the beast, but the elynise was determinedly keeping him pinned. With a primal scream, Ae’dron lashed out with his sword, slashing at one of the elynise’s legs even as it stomped down on his stomach and shoulder. It whinnied and fell over, and Ae’dron quickly scrambled to his feet and pounced. The fallen antelope’s tail whipped out, lashing him across the chest and discharging another shock. The young warrior accepted the sting, landing on the creature’s side. Ae’dron hadn’t noticed that the electricity had made his muscles spasm and drop his weapons. He didn’t notice the still-glowing wound across his chest.
The lion only saw his prey.
Instinct overwhelmed his senses, and Ae’dron’s body began to shift. His face contorted to fully feline, claws and fangs extended as his body swelled and fur grew out. Feet became paws as his legs took on a more lion shape, though the wildkin still had a humanoid torso, and a long tail sprouted from his spine. Ae’dron’s jaws opened wide and he clamped onto whatever he could of the creature’s neck, his arms and legs wrapped tight around its head in a submission hold. He could feel the powerful beast struggle, but in his primal form Ae’dron was strong enough to maintain the lock, and soon its thrashing stopped and the elynise slept for the last time.
There was another flash and thunderous retort as the creature fell still, the lightning chains shattered, and Xophorys went tumbling backwards. The other elynise had toppled from the feedback, but quickly got to their feet and retreated, channeling the remaining electrical energy to their legs to run away. The thunder fell silent, leaving nothing but the sound of rain and their own heavy breathing to congratulate the two hunters. Excited beyond measure at another successful kill, Ae’dron proudly yelled his warcry through the rain and up to the sky. Xoph couldn’t help but stare at the slain elynise’s lifeless eyes, feeling a deep sense of remorse. “I’m sorry..” He whispered.
“Sorry for what?” Ae’dron asked, surprising Xoph out of his pensivity with a heavy pat on the shoulder. “Ya did great!” Xoph looked at the sticky blood on Ae’dron’s hand -now on his shoulder- and grimaced an awkward smile, “Y-yeah. Lets head back to the camp.”
Theirs was a brotherhood forged from a legacy inherited by their parents’ triumphs and tragedies.
The three of them had grown together for so long that they could barely remember a time when they were apart. A human, a wildkin, and something else altogether, the three boys’ first true memories started when catastrophe struck their home and they were sent away.
The brothers had lived as nomads for months, never finding a place to settle at. With no adults to guide them, the three children – barely into their first decade of life- had to use everything they had learned from their elders to survive… And even that wasn’t enough! More often than they realized, they simply got lucky. Jiran was not a forgiving place, and every sunrise that they lived to see was a miracle perpetually taken for granted. Every day offered a new challenge to overcome, a lesson to learn and the trio –each very different from the other – had various levels of success. Xophorys wasn’t as fast or strong as the other two, nor did he have the same physical fortitude. Over the years, it was creativity that kept him alive, the boy’s cleverness had saved the brothers more times than any of them had ever realized.
With no one to teach him how to properly use his magic, Xophorys never learned how to cast a spell. Instead, he naturally learned to expel bursts of light off of his body and accidentally learned that he could control the elements by touch (you learn incredible things about yourself when tumbling down a waterfall). Other strange phenomena occasionally happened, but they were too inconsistent and mysterious to be reliable. Xoph always worked harder than he needed to in order to try to remain physically useful to his brothers, never realizing that it wasn’t his athletic or even his intellectual prowess that made him so special to them.
In his mind, just “being himself” couldn’t possibly be good enough. Xoph had the unfortunate habit of measuring himself more from his failures than successes. It drove him to always aspire to be better, but also left him with a crippled self-image. He was far better at defending himself against compliments and postive reinforcement than he was at defending physical strikes.
“Argh, slow down! T-this is too much… I can’t.. I can’t move like that.” A young Xophorys said, doubled over and panting trying to catch his breath. He was training with Ae’dron again, this time on a giant leaf that served as a platform in a forest so large that it made the two of them look like dew drops. The ground couldn’t be seen from so high up, but the clouds were close enough to touch, casting a misty fog over the entire area. Ae’dron and Xoph often practiced in order to teach the human how to move and maneuver through the woods the way a wildkin would. Even though his thumbs and fingers were more dexterious, Xoph lacked the strength and flexibility of a felini and could never keep up with the movements that came so naturally to Ae’dron.
“Aw come on.” Ae’dron complained, hands on his hips. “It’s not THAT hard! All you have to do is-“
Xoph shot him in the face with a bolt of energy, knocking him off the platform. The human smiled in smug satisfaction, but a third voice spoke from above. “You know he’s going to come back and throw you off right? You need to learn how to move in your own way, not like a wildkin.” The eldest brother, who they called ‘Ar’, said. He was reclined on a tangle of branches in an adjacent tree, the air distorted around him, with his long wavy hair making it hard to see his face. Xoph just shrugged in response, chuckling at the expletives Ae’dron was screaming on the way down.
“What’re those light balls made of anyway?” Ar asked.
Xoph responded defensively, “They’re not ‘light balls’ they’re magic chaos-blasts!” The boy’s palm-sized magic bolts absolutely were nothing close to ‘chaos blasts’. “And uh.. I sort of don’t really know? They are.. Um. Force, I guess. Like you know when you punch somebody? Or push a wheel and it keeps going?”
That was painfully vague, but Ar looked at Xoph curiously, “So can you push yourself with it?” He asked.
“Yeah?” Xoph responded. “Though that isn’t very practical.” The mage thought on the absurd idea, but shook his head. “It would be too awk-
“C’MERE WENCH!” Ae’dron seemed to lunge in from out of nowhere! Xoph barely managed to pivot away from the lion’s pounce, but the warrior’s feline body moved without missing a beat, swiftly catching up to Xoph. “I swear I’m gonna throw you over the sun when I catch you!” He roared, reaching out to snatch Xoph’s leg.
“Um c-can we not!?” Xoph said as he fired a blast of energy from his shins, the sudden thrust launching him out of Ae’dron’s grip. He tumbled backwards, but landed on his feet. As he looked up, Ae’dron was already in the air in another pounce. Xoph’s back was to the edge of the leaf and he could’t move in time to avoid the lion.
Xoph glanced over at his eldest brother, smiled awkwardly while he aimed his hands sideways, and fired a shot that repelled him out of the lion’s path. Ae’dron’s eyes went wide, but he reached out at Xoph to yank him down too.
He missed.
The other two brothers laughed.
“You little bastarrddddd!” echoed down the treetops.
Slowly, after many years, the children of Jiran grew through blood, sweat, and tears.
Like all youth, Xophorys, Ae’dron, and Ar thought that they understood everything they needed to thrive. They had learned to hunt, to traverse the treetops, to identify dangerous cratures, and avoid all wildkin and human civilizations. They had eachother’s company, they had food and could find shelter, and could even feasably defend themselves. So why did something feel like it was missing?
One day after another elynise hunt, Xoph was unusually quiet. He looked around at the large open field they were in. It was a beautiful sight, with yellow puffballs blowing in the wind under a starry sky saturated with moonlight. The shadowed mountains on the horizon edged the scene into an artistis’s dream. There were birds in the sky (though mostly carrion birds waiting for their turn on the kill) and animals off in the distance, including the remaining elynise flock. Behind him Xoph could hear Ae’dron roaring a victory cry. Lost in a sense of wonder, Xophorys’s desires spoke through his lips without his mind’s consent.
“Why do I feel like… Theres so much more to life than this?” He uttered to himself, not expecting a response. Especially not the one he recieved.
“Its ‘cuz there is. Mating! We gotta find some girls.” Ae’dron said
The ground trembled in response.
“Huh?” Xophorys looked around, confused. Ae’dron had already started to tear into the meal, slowly shifting back to his more humanlike form. As usual, Ar had stayed back to watch over the camp (Xoph never saw him eat anyway). The ground shuddered again, this time for a longer period. “This may be a foolish question but… Do you feel that?” Xoph asked the wildkin, as Ae’dron lifted his head up to glance over at his brother with a mouthful of antelope meat. “Huh?” Ae’dron asked aswell, right before the whole world erupted into the worst earthquake the two boys had ever felt.
The ground split all around them, entire cliffsides started to crack and fall apart, and the sound of thunder in the sky was muted under the roar of the stones. A sudden pressure in the air pushed down on the brothers and everything else in the area, the wind picked up so furiously that it was difficult to breathe and the dust blinded them. The two of them were paralyzed under the sheer force of the elements until, after what felt like forever, everything suddenly stopped.
Ae’dron and Xoph slowly rose to their feet, looking around nervously. Both of them winced when the ground vibrated and made a deep, low, moaning noise. A pale green fog rose from the grass all around them, smelling like fertilizer. They were much higher in the air than they were before, the ground was so far away that they could see the landscape for miles. The footing beneath them felt solid, yet softer than stone, as if they were standing ontop of a massive mushroomcap. From their perspective, it looked as if a giant pillar had emerged out of the ground beneath their feet. The floor they stood on ended in several smaller, curved pillars that were gently moving.
“W-what just- Ae’dron! Are you alright?” Xoph asked, still struggling to keep his balance. Ae’dron didn’t respond with words, because he couldn’t. He had reverted back to his natural beast form, claws digging into the ground as he braced on all fours. The lion did roar though, and Xoph had been around the wildkin long enough to pick up on the warning his pitch. He spun around to see what Ae’dron was looking at.
His eyes widened.
His jaw dropped.
Two massive eyeballs were staring back at him from an even more massive face that took up his entire field of vision. The platform that they were on was actually flesh. What he thought was a pillar was an arm. An amiran had emerged from the ground beneath them, and the two brothers now stood in the palm of the giant’s hand thirty stories off the ground.
Its face split horizontally below the nose, a too-wide grin showing rows of crooked, whale-sized teeth. A green mist blew off the giant’s horrid breath as he bellowed.
“IIIIII founndddd yoouuuuuu!”