I woke to darkness.
For one disoriented moment, I thought I was back aboard the colony ship and that the
corridor lights had gone out again. Then the sounds reached me—chirping insects, rustling
leaves, and a distant call echoing through the jungle—and reality came crashing back.
I wasn't on the ship—I was still on Xanadis.
Groaning, I rubbed my eyes and slowly sat up beneath the tree where I had apparently fallen
asleep.
After the native had left me alone in the forest, I'd torn a strip from my spare clothes to
bandage my arm and spent hours wandering in search of my lost knife and the burrow I'd
hidden in the previous night. Somewhere along the way I had gotten turned around.
Exhausted, frightened, and running on almost no sleep, I'd sat down to rest for just a moment.
Apparently that moment had lasted the entire afternoon.
"Great..." I muttered under my breath.
Night had fallen, leaving me completely exposed and alone in the middle of an alien forest.
Pushing myself to my feet, I looked around. The dense canopy swallowed most of the
moonlight, turning the jungle into a maze of shifting shadows. Every tree seemed to twist into
strange shapes, and every movement at the edge of my vision made my pulse jump.
Something rustled nearby.
I froze.
For a few seconds, I listened, but nothing moved, and the sound of distant calls continued on
as though nothing had changed. Still, that familiar feeling of being watched crawled up my
spine.
I decided not to stick around.
After only a few steps, something cracked loudly beneath my boot, something that didn't
simply sound like a branch snapping...
My eyes trailed down, and I lifted my foot to find something much worse—bones.
My stomach dropped. Slowly, my gaze lifted.
Scattered across the forest floor were dozens of them—rib cages, skulls, and broken limbs
bleached pale beneath the moonlight. Some looked old. Others looked unnervingly fresh.
This wasn't random—it was a feeding ground.
Another rustle sounded from the bushes. My breathing stopped as I spun around to look in
the direction of the sound.
Several pairs of eyes reflected the moonlight from the undergrowth.
Dread settled heavily in my chest as dark shapes moved between the bushes, circling closer.
Every now and then one stepped into a shaft of moonlight, revealing patches of gray fur.
Then one fully emerged with a growl rumbling from its throat.
The creature resembled a large cat, though far larger than any feline I'd ever seen. It stood on
six powerful legs and had short gray fur mottled with darker patches. Four narrow ears lay
pinned against its head, and two enormous saber-like fangs protruded from its jaws.
Another stepped out...then another—
There were at least five of them.
My heart hammered against my ribs, and without thinking, I started grabbing whatever I
could find and throwing it. Rocks, sticks, dirt—anything to scare the felines away.
The creatures hissed and snarled, momentarily flinching away before continuing their slow
advance.
Desperate, I grabbed a fallen branch and swung it wildly at the closest cat.
It leapt back with an angry yowl, but the others didn't back away; they merely spread out,
circling around me as they hissed and snarled.
I backed against the nearest tree until bark dug into my shoulders as the creatures circled,
cutting off every possible route of escape.
As I watched one, another moved. Every time my attention shifted, the others crept closer.
They weren't rushing me. They were coordinating—waiting for me to make a mistake.
The saber to my left stepped forward, muscles bunching beneath its fur as it prepared to
pounce. I moved on reflex, quickly swinging the branch in a wide arc at the feline.
The creature darted back instantly, and as I stumbled forward from the momentum of my
swing, I realized my mistake.
The saber behind me rushed forward. I barely had time to turn before it pounced.
With a cry, I lost my footing and crashed to the ground. The branch flew from my hands as I
threw my arms over my head and squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the impact and tearing
of claws and fangs.
But they never came...instead, a startled yelp split the night air followed by a thud as
something heavy slammed into the ground only a foot away.
I heard rustling as the remaining sabers scattered back into the darkness, retreating out of
sight.
My heart hammered against my ribs as I slowly lowered my arms.
The saber that had been seconds away from ripping into me lay motionless at my feet. Its
body twitched once before going still, moonlight glinting off the end of the long spear that
had pierced completely through its torso and pinned it to the earth.
For several long seconds, I couldn't move, couldn't think, couldn't even breathe. All I could
do was stare in shock.
Around me, the forest had fallen eerily silent. The remaining predators had vanished so
quickly it was as if they had never existed at all.
My gaze followed the length of the spear toward the darkness beyond the treeline, and there
high up in the branches, in the canopy above I could see silver eyes glaring down at me.
The moment our gazes met, the figure moved and dropped from the tree.
He landed silently on the opposite side of the clearing, his feet absorbing the impact with
practiced ease before slowly straightening to his full height.
The moonlight filtering through the canopy illuminated sharp features, dark skin, and the
curved horns that swept back from his head. His tail swayed behind him, the metal blade
fixed to its end glinting faintly in the pale light.
Even from several yards away, I recognized him—the same native who had saved me from
the cannibal, who had wanted nothing to do with me, was now standing across the clearing
after having saved my life again.
I blinked, unsure what to make of the situation. Why would he come back? He made it clear
he wanted me gone, so why—
Without breaking eye contact, the native reached down and pulled a knife from the sheath at
his hip and strode toward me.
My stomach sank as I realized the look in his eyes wasn't of mere annoyance; in fact it
looked more like he was sick of my continued existence.
I stepped back, pressing myself against the tree as a new wave of fear settled in my mind.
He didn't come back to save me—he came back to finish me off himself...
EPISODE: 6: Old Hatred
POV: AZRIEL
I have always hated humans.
Not the shallow, reactive hatred of someone who has been wronged once and cannot let it go.
Something older than that. Something built from the collective experiences and trauma of
those around me, assembled so gradually that I could not point to the moment it had set and
hardened. I grew up on stories of the first encounters—before my tribe had any direct contact
of our own, when the humans were still something we heard about from neighboring clans
like a rumor of bad weather.
The Fallen, they had been called. The description always carried a note of dark humor: these
were beings who had fallen from the heavens bringing pain and misery to the forest and our
people. At first they seemed more like nuisances, strange aberrations that posed little threat.
The planet killed them faster than we did, so we had no reason to think they would become a
problem. Instead, we watched from a distance and did not intervene.
Then they started falling in larger numbers.
By the time I was old enough to understand what was happening, the humans were no longer
a curiosity—accumulated over years. Most still died quickly. But some didn't. And the ones
who survived long enough to be truly dangerous began to make themselves known. They
started tearing up the forest, wiping out entire populations of the creatures and animals who
had lived in the area before my father's father—mutilating anything they caught in their
proclaimed territory whether it be an animal or one of our own.
Humans did not belong here. That was not prejudice. That was the simple, verifiable fact of
this world. The forests made that truth as obvious as could be when they first arrived, yet like
parasites they just kept coming back.
Eventually though, we couldn't remain neutral to their presence any longer.
The most recent incident had been personal, and for me, it was the last straw.
A youngling from my tribe—eight years old, barely named, barely past the first blade
ceremony—had wandered too far from the village during the last moon cycle. We found what
remained of him the following morning. A human who had been lurking at the edges of our
territory for weeks had murdered the boy, mutilated his body, stole the very blade grown
from his tail, and disappeared before any of us could respond.
As head warrior of my tribe, the protection of my people was my responsibility. And with the
death of the youngling, I had failed not merely my duty but my people. I failed to protect
them, and so it was my responsibility to make amends and get revenge.
I had spent two weeks tracking the man through the deep forest. He was experienced—better
than most humans at reading terrain and covering his trail—and when the rains hit and
washed his tracks away, I had come close to losing him entirely. I had begun to consider the
possibility that the hunt would end with nothing: the blade lost, the boy's death unanswered.
The thought was intolerable.
And then a light fell from the sky.
I had been right about what the man would do when he saw it. Newly fallen humans were
easy prey—disoriented, unarmed, inexperienced with the harsh environment they were
entering into, and the human I had been tracking was well known for killing and preying
upon his own kind. I knew he would move toward the landing site expecting an easy meal, so
I simply arrived there first, located the new arrival, and waited.
I had let him make his move. I needed him distracted and focused on something other than
watching the trees. And then I had ended it.
The boy's blade was back in my possession, his death avenged, and my mission over.
But I had not anticipated the female.
I knew human females existed in the same general way I knew the far ice-mountains existed:
as a confirmed fact with no personal relevance. Our encounters with humans were almost
exclusively male. She did not fit what I had learned about humans.
She was small. She struggled in the forest, the way a creature struggles when it has been
neglected and raised without being taught how to hunt, track, or even evade predators. She
had no weapons and no apparent survival skills. And when I had tried to leave—when I had
made it clear in every way available to me that her presence was neither wanted nor
welcomed—she had tried to follow me, like she thought I would be the one to protect and
care for her—a foolish assumption.
I had left her anyway. I walked away fully content with letting nature decide her fate.
At least that is what I had told myself.
I couldn't help but think about the injury I had inflicted upon her as I left her there stranded
and alone. The lash had been reflex—she had touched me without warning, and my tail had
moved before I processed the contact. The wound was not serious. But I had watched her
expression twist in pain. I saw the fear in her eyes, that mirrored the same horrified
expression she held as the cannibal choked her—but to my shock the fear wasn't directed at
me. Instead, she looked at me with a desperate pleading hope.
I did not understand it.
And for some reason, even after I turned my back on her and walked away, I couldn't get that
image out of my head. Something about the fear in her cerulean eyes struck a nerve in me,
and I couldn't let it go.
She was lost in the forest with nothing to defend herself with and no shelter. But these were
facts that had nothing to do with me. The forest preyed upon creatures that could not survive
in it—that didn't belong—that was not cruelty, it was simply how the world worked. I had
not made the world this way, and I had no obligation to change it for her.
I continued walking.
She would not last the night. That was not a judgment—it was a calculated guess born from
years of living in these forests, learning its patterns and the cycle of the creatures within it.
The sabers came out at full dark in this area. The female had no fire, no elevated shelter, no
awareness of where the dangers lie. Without intervention, she would be found by one
predator or another before the night was over.
I stopped walking, pausing for just a moment.
I stood there and opened my hand and looked at it. The dried blood under my claws was from
the man I had killed, not from her—her wound had been shallow, barely enough to scar. But
it had been mine. I had done it. I had looked at her face afterward, seen the way she looked at
me, with a plea in her eyes—me, a complete stranger, someone who had killed one of her
own kind right before her eyes...
I gripped the spear until my knuckles ached.
She is human. She does not belong here. Every reason that has ever existed to want humans
away from our territory still stands, and nothing about this specific female changes that. She
is small, frightened, and alone, and those things make her look harmless. That is not the same
as being harmless.
And yet.
And yet I was standing in the middle of the path with my village a few hours north, and my
feet were not moving.
I thought about the youngling. Eight years old. His father sitting before his son's body, on his
knees grieving the loss of his son as I prepared to hunt the boy's killer down. My failure
sitting heavy in my chest like a stone I had swallowed and could not dislodge.
She was alone out there. She had survived one night—barely, and only because I had been
tracking the same target she had blundered into the path of. She would not survive two.
That is not my problem, I told myself.
I grabbed my hair and gritted my teeth. My village was a few hours north. My people needed
me. There was nothing complicated about this, so how long was the thought of her going to
torment me? Would the memory plague me forever, never knowing what fate befell the
human female?
If she was gone, there would be nothing left to occupy my mind. My mind would be at peace.
The thought settled into place like a blade into a sheath. It was the only answer that made
sense.
I retrieved my spear from behind the split rock where I had stashed it, slung my travel bag
over my shoulder, and told myself: it was a small detour. I wouldn't get involved, and I
would finally clear my mind.
Or perhaps I would simply have a new weight settle in my chest, born from something else I
had failed to prevent when I could have easily done so.
With that in mind, I turned and ran.