By Kaylena Radcliff
Morning light filtered through the jungle mist, bedewing the dirt below and the life teeming within it. Kithoor adjusted her weight in the saddle and pressed her bare, malachite-hued legs against the sides of her mount. Snorting, the scaly, barbed monstrosity turned its crested head. He clawed the mud and bellowed.
“Patience,” Kithoor cooed.
The champing X’thorak eyed his mistress, his rippling muscles coiled yet unmoving at her command. He clawed the mud and snorted again. Flecks of spittle fell from the rows of pointed fangs as he inclined his reptilian head toward a rustling in the brush.
“How long this time, Your Majesty?” Out of the undergrowth padded another X’thorak and its rider. The speaker, among the youngest of the huntresses in Kithoor’s kingdom, surveyed the dripping jungle with sharp black eyes.
“Not long, Rikaan.” Kithoor answered with a knowing smile. “It never is.”
“He has a three-day head start.” Rikaan’s gaze darted to the jungle floor, but her voice hardened. “Your Majesty allowed him more time than the others.”
“I did.” Kithoor’s eyes narrowed. “Am I not just? He shall have time to prepare or to flee.”
“But to challenge your throne—”
“He will not get far, Rikaan. No creature has ever outpaced me. Not in the Viild, and never when my fiend here catches its scent.”
On cue, the X’thorak’s keen snout searched the breeze voraciously. A low growl rumbled in his gullet, and he pulled at Kithoor’s tight rein.
“The criminal must be close,” she mused.
Rikaan snorted. “Would he dare stand his ground against the Most High Huntress? He must be a fool.”
Kithoor leaned over and rested her hands on her saddlebow. “What do you think, Rikaan? What is The Hunt for?”
Like all good huntresses, Rikaan sat at attention and quickly recited the creed. “The Hunt is a kindness. It is a choice. Any condemned to death may seek mercy from the Viild, either to war against the executioner or flee to safety beyond her domain. Only this can redeem the condemned. And as the gods live, all can call upon The Hunt for vindication. No one living, not even the Most High Huntress, can overturn this sacred law.”
“Well spoken, young huntress. Let us judge our quarry. Is he a runner or a fighter?”
“Pah.” Rikaan waved her hand. “A fighter? That would be something. On The Hunts I have joined thus far, the quarry fled. And when the cowards do not escape past the bounds of the Viild, what do they do but beg and bribe? Sniveling, Your Majesty, up until the moment I part their contemptible souls from their condemned bodies.”
“Yes, this is the way it has been.” Kithoor patted her scarred hand against the leathery hide of her mount, hiding an amused smirk. Such hubris. And yet what could this babe know of The Hunt? Fond memories of her earliest expeditions, before she was crowned Most High Huntress, returned to mind. “It was not always so. Once there were glorious battles—wars full of ingenuity, bravery, heart.”
Kithoor sighed and scanned the undergrowth. Will I play the reaper and nothing more for the rest of my reign? Her attention returned to Rikaan, who had crossed her arms over her chest with an insolent smile.
“It has been said that the gods pardon even the most heinous sinners who die honorably in The Hunt.” Kithoor cocked her head. “Atonement, young huntress, and I tell you, it is true. I, the dealer of death blows, have seen the guilty cleared—it was those who stared death in its red-rimmed eyes and smiled.”
“I long to see it, Your Majesty.”
Rikaan could not have sounded less convinced. Kithoor grinned, her sharp incisors gleaming. “Follow closely, Rikaan, and perhaps you will.”
The Most High Huntress goaded her warbeast on beneath the cloak of the jungle canopy. Rikaan fell in beside her, the earth-toned face of the young huntress obscured in shadow. Kithoor breathed in the primeval paradise, at home and content in its verdant chaos. She was lost and alive in the Viild’s embrace, one with the merciless jungle, predator of predators, chief hunter of all hunters. And in her heightened commune, Kithoor registered an alien rustle.
Her head snapped toward the sound just as the arrow sliced across her cheek. The arrowhead sunk into Rikaan instead, who tumbled from her mount with a soft groan. Kithoor raised a hand to her own wound; it came away wet with blood.
Laughing, she pulled sharply on her X’thorak’s reins. The monster reared, its roar reverberating about the Viild.
The Hunt had begun.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Awesome dialog, great building of the characters. The jungle setting was vivid.
Malachite hued legs – we’re not in Kansas any more…
“Viild”. Good fantasy name– evocative and foreign all at once.
Oooh! This is such an interesting world!