• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“But the Chieftain, he will certainly smell the cooking flesh.” This response came from Hammadus, Facius’s brother, a young, rich-coated brown warrior that showed signs of naiveté but was perhaps the strongest of the pack. Ceretus could smell the young one’s fear in daring to disobey the Chieftain. It was Hammadus that got the newly found human out of the tree, and whined demands that they bring him back to the camp, to show their Chieftain, rather than eat him on the spot.

Ever since Parabum called for the eating of human flesh only after a traditional and grossly over elaborate hunt, Ceretus couldn’t bear the idea of following suit. Plus, the time it took to bring the carcass in from the forest caused the meat to spoil. Any worthy Jiralhanae knew all too well that the fresher the kill, the finer the taste. A savage like their Chieftain wouldn’t bother to savor the feast properly in the name of the gods.

“What do you suggest, young brother?”

“Well the Chieftain doesn’t know we didn’t kill one in the hunt, does he?” Facius asked with an ever-so-slight grin. “We can at least have some fun until he returns.”

“Yes we can, Facius.” And he turned back to the prisoners. This young one showed promise.

BRIEN COULDN’T help but stare out at the human remains lining the forest pathways, hanging from trees, beaten to pulpy pieces surrounding the camp. It was disgusting. One thing was obvious: These beasts had no respect for humans at all. The same keen sense of smell the Brutes followed to his hiding place didn’t seem bothered by the awful stench of human carnage. He figured it might actually seem sweet to these monsters.

Though he’d only been awake in captivity for a few hours, Brien was starting to make sense of a few of their growls and grunts, at least emotionally. It didn’t take long for Brien to pick up on a brewing impatience from the circling Brutes.

“What do you think they’re doing?” Brien whispered to the man next him, as the Brutes all began walking down the line of prisoners.

“You don’t want to know . . .”

Brien watched carefully, looking away at any sign of a Brute turning back toward him. Most of the captives slept or showed such shock and fear that he found it impossible to communicate with many of them, but this man he immediately recognized. Dasc Gevadim was a renowned guru of a religion known as Triad. Those who followed the Triad teachings believed that we all harbored three internal lives, and spiritual transcendence only occurred if you managed to link all three. His followers ran galaxy wide. He used to run seminars via public comm channels, but he’d disappeared about ten years ago. It was much publicized. Many called it a transcendence, and his following grew exponentially with such reports. The sales of his vidcasts went through the roof.

“They’re deciding which one of us to eat, huh?” Brien asked, knowing the answer.

“Not exactly. Big Boy seemed to put a stop to it. Now they only eat after they let one of us go and hunt us down,” Dasc whispered back. His scraggly white beard was caked with dust and blood. His eyes glassy and red. Brien wondered if they had been feeding the captives raw human flesh. He didn’t want to know.

“Which one is Big Boy? That one?” He pointed discreetly to the one who had knocked him out of the tree.

“No. Big Boy isn’t around. Maybe still hunting,” the man next to Dasc answered—a sickly yet stocky man Brien recognized as a famous big-game hunter, named Hague or something.

It made sense. He’d seen a few packs scrambling around this morning, and now there was silent hostility among the beasts as if they were on the verge of doing something wrong.

This especially rang true for the slightly graying, black-furred one, the one with a clean-shaven face, who had been surveying the captives and had treated Brien to a foul saliva offering. He seemed to have good control of the lot. Brien immediately called him Six.

Just then, Six caught wind of the whispering and turned back toward