You and Noir both creep softly down the hill and into the dark woods ahead of you, slowly and carefully. Being a cat, Noir is far more graceful than you could ever be. Still, you do your absolute best and pour some of your Temperance into yourself. The better you can control your movements, the quieter you can be.
The further you get deeper into the woods, dusk descends further, and everything becomes darker and darker. Silhouettes of the world around you deepen and dim the more the night matures, until they become indistinguishable to you.
Even your enhanced eyesight can barely keep up.
It's almost completely dark, and you can just barely tell what's going on. In fact, you can only tell when something is in front of you if it's less than a meter from your face. Certainly, being lost in the middle of a dark forest would be beyond frightening in any circumstance, and you easily feel that anxiety sink into your bones. It makes your fingers tremble somewhat, though you do your best to calm yourself.
Soon, it becomes outright impossible to spot Noir even though she's literally right in front of you. You can't see her, or hear her even with your senses on full blast.
You're forced to open a Network with her just to be able to sense where she is at any given moment. In this way, you can locate her psionically and with absolute precision, beyond your capabilities with your ESP-enhanced physical senses.
Plus the two of you can communicate directly, without emitting sounds or unshielded Telepathic waves. That's a nice, big bonus without a doubt.
But even then, the Network doesn't stop you from stubbing your toe on a tree root and nearly falling over in the dark. You try your best to remain cool despite not being able to see a damned thing around you.
I'm having a tough time seeing what's around me, you transmit to her. I'm basically floundering out here.
Dunno what to tell you, Noir replies. Always been able to see just fine around this time, so not sure what kinda advice I can give you there.
You can't really. It's down to us having two different kinds of eyes.
Oh, in that case, just change out your eyes.
You nearly snort with a laugh, but stop yourself just in time. Not just to retain your stealthiness, but also because Noir kind of has a point.
Well, you can't actually swap out eyes, but maybe you could use Temperance to adjust them a bit? Kind of in a similar way to how you make your blood flow smoother, or your muscles more efficient. Maybe you could play with the inner workings of your eyes to make you see better out here…
Gimme a sec, you tell Noir.
You lean up on a tree for support as the energies of Temperance flows through you. At the same time, you sense your eyes shift and move and adjust in various ways.
You sense your vision sharpen, then expand, then widen. At one point you try to narrow it, then reduce your focal length. As you do so, you adjust your natural sight picture until the world around you becomes more gray and less black.
The world around you becomes a kind of mix of greyscales and all manner of silhouettes come into focus. You continue to adjust your eyes to get used to the darkness to reveal the trees and shrubs and fungi and vines and grass around you.
Noir also becomes clearly visible to you, who appears to be waiting rather patiently for you.
You're fairly astounded at what you've done. It's one thing to have given yourself a kind of night vision, and another thing that it's actually good! Things are relatively clear to you, if in a low-contrast grayscale. You don't exactly see thin and small things, such as Noir's whiskers or the very tips of leaves - your vision is a bit fuzzy and lacks fine detail. And the world doesn't quite exist beyond 30 meters or so. It's simply totally dark past that.
But that's fine. What you can see is more than enough to keep going. More importantly, enough for you to stop stumbling around.
Okay, I'm set, you tell Noir. I can see again. Kinda.
Good, she replies.
Then the two of you continue on your hunt, deeper into the woods. The two of you trot further for some time - perhaps about an hour in total. At least, until the hill flattens out a little bit more. As you do so, she imparts her hunting instincts to you step by step. She tells you how she locates a good hunting ground, how to find a good position to start from, and how to locate the right prey once inside.
You try to soak up her knowledge, but it's a bit hazy to you. Mainly because it's coming from the perspective of a cat, a natural hunter. Some of her reasons simply don't make sense to you, a human and natural scavenger.
Still, you take in as much as you can, though in exchange you pay little attention to where you're going. You're not entirely sure where you are in the grand scheme of things, and you're fairly certain that you'd be completely lost without Noir, or without any psionic powers at your disposal.
Okay, we're deep enough, Noir thinks. Let's begin.
You sense her slow down and lower herself, so you immediately attempt to mirror her. She's an absolute expert at this, at stalking at night, and you can barely hear her footsteps on the ground. You're certainly being as careful as you can, and make as little noise as possible. But it's incredibly difficult to do so.
You're simply not used to the movements themselves - sneaking around in the city's shadows to evade predators is far different from sneaking around in a forest's shadows to catch prey. The former being faster and nimbler, while the latter is much more careful and calculated.
Your muscles strain from holding your stealthy pose for so long that your legs begin to shiver. Every step becomes harder and harder to do. Worse, despite how careful you're trying to be, you're still not perfectly silent. Part of that is your growing fatigue, another part is your size - your boots simply have more area to tread than Noir's paw.
As a result, you hear the soft crunching of dry leaves and sticks as you move. Hearing it annoys you to no end.
Stop, commands Noir.
You do as instructed and stop mid-step. Then you slowly lower yourself down until one knee is on the ground, stabilizing you. You also lean forward with your upper body, to lower your center of gravity and profile at the same time.
Can you sense the wind? she asks. Which way its flowing?
As she does so, she pokes her head up slightly so her nose is up high, then sniffs slightly. She turns her head ever so slightly as well in both directions, then dips her nose back down.
You immediately get the feeling that she's measuring the wind - where it's coming from, how fast it is, and so on. Of course, you've got no idea how to do anything like that.
Well, sorta. You do that thing you've seen in a few TV shows and movies, where someone licks their finger and sticks it in the air. Though you're totally unfamiliar with it, you do sense a very light breeze cooling your wet skin. When you spin and turn it, you can just tell where that same wind is coming from. But it's not very accurate at all.
Still, you turn your whole body to face that direction.
That way, I think, you reply.
More or less, Noir says. Now that we're here at our hunting spot, we want to stay downwind. Like I said, we wouldn't want our prey to smell us coming at 'em.
In that case, won't that freak out whatever animals are downwind of us? you ask.
You Scan for animal thoughts in every direction, for about 50 meters. And as you have predicted, any critters downwind of you seem to be moving away from you. Some more hastily than others. You also note that there's relatively few of them, at least in comparison to how many dozens are out that are upwind of you.
Oh, absolutely, says Noir. But if you're doing a good job setting up your hunting spot, you shouldn't have much at your rear. If you need to run for whatever reason, it's best to have a path out of the hunting grounds without running into anything else.
Gotcha. Makes sense.
Anyway, I'm gonna go forward and actually score a kill. You stay here and keep an eye out, alright? Pay attention to what I'm doing, and try to note why I'm doing what. But save your questions for when I'm done.
She slinks off upwind after you nod to her psionically. As always, she moves incredibly stealthily with very precise and silent steps. You note that she's moving towards some kind of mouse a dozen meters away. You don't exactly see it - it's too small for you to spot even with your night vision.
More than likely, it's hidden in the underbrush and foliage.
Your scan reveals kind of where it is, roughly, and kind of what it's doing, sort of. The thing seems to be nibbling on something - a mushroom perhaps. You can't tell exactly what it is, only that you can just about hear its teeth gnaw through something relatively soft and mushy.
Beyond what you sense normally, your Scan reveals thoughts and emotions that are of satisfaction, and the single-minded pursuit of it.
There's hunger as well, of course, that universal need to eat. Certainly nothing like the Chimera's bottomless hunger. The mouse's impulse is no more powerful than the fear that sometimes spikes through it. Or rather, it feels a kind of intense anxiety which bubbles up every so often, one that's filled with a deep sense of self-preservation.
You realize that it's worried about predators while it eats. Rightfully so.
Noir skulks closer and closer to the mouse, which is still munching away happily. Her movements are slow, deliberate, and barely discernible. If you weren't already paying attention to her, you wouldn't even have known that she was moving.
It reminds you of sniper training from a documentary you watched long ago. Or maybe it was a movie? Whatever it actually was, the trainees crawled through tall grass incredibly slowly, until they reached their instructor. Or at least, as close as they could manage without getting spotted.
Then they had to fire their weapon, again without getting spotted.
You remember it being impressive. But not nearly as impressive as what Noir's doing. This is the real thing happening right in front of you. The mouse is practically oblivious as she gets closer and closer, as its death looms.
At some point it perks its head up suspiciously, which causes Noir to stop dead in her tracks, midway through a step. She only continues once the mouse's fear and anxiety ebbs enough for it to focus on its meal again.
Noir gets to about a meter of the mouse before she stops outright. You sense her rear up and gather up her psionic energies. She then unleashes all of it into her Temperance and shoots forward in the blink of an eye.
She practically teleports to her prey in a fraction of a second, and slams into it claws-first. But she doesn't tear into it, or cut it up. She simply holds it down and stops it from struggling, then in another fraction of a second, she bites down at the base of its skull.
You hear a soft SNAP, then all of the mouse's thoughts and emotions deflate and fade and vanish quickly thereafter. Thankfully, the kill was so fast that it never even realized what had happened.
A few moments later, Noir pads back towards you exuding all kinds of pride from her psyche. In her jaws is her prey, lifeless but still warm. She plops it down right in front of you, like some kind of morbid gift or offering. Or perhaps, as some kind of trophy to inspect.
You also get a sense that she's desiring praise for what she's done, so you give her a few pets on her head as reward. She purrs healthily in return.
Just like that, she tells you. That's how hunting is done. Questions?
Of course, you kind of got the gist of it all but still have so many questions for her. How did she find this particular hunting grounds in the first place? How did she pick that one mouse to kill? Or maybe the question is why - why not the other mouse a meter or two to the left? Or why not a different hunting ground close by?
Instead, you decide to think it out.
You already know that you've got vast physiological differences between you - sight, smell, and so on. So however she chooses a certain path, it probably doesn't apply to you. Maybe these hunting grounds are just populous enough. Maybe the mouse smells just the right way, or maybe it was the less skittish of all the other choices.
Or maybe she simply needed an easy example to show you the basics.
It occurs to you that it doesn't matter how she came to those decisions, at least not to you. You gotta figure out your own prey for your own needs. All that matters is that you learn from her technique, which you think you understand.
I don't really have anything right now, you tell her. I think I got it, for the most part anyway. Be quiet, be invisible, be thoughtful. Then, strike fast.
Okay, great! she replies. Now it's your turn!
You're stunned speechless the moment Noir tells you that it's your turn to go on a hunt. There's no way that you're remotely close to ready. After all, you've seen her do it once ever, and haven't had any time to think about any of it or process her techniques.
How does that make for any kind of lesson?
What?! you protest. I thought you said I didn't have to worry about hunting this time around. You know I'm not ready.
I said you didn't have to worry about killing, Noir retorts. Didn't say anything about you not needing to hunt.
I'm definitely going to mess this up - I've never done this before, ever!
It's alright to mess up. That's all a part of learning. And besides, you've still got some food, yeah? If you screw up, you've got that. So however many you have left, it's best to think of them as how many chances you've got to get it right.
You grimace in protest, but wipe it away shortly after. Noir is right that you have to put yourself out there and make any kind of attempt, even if it's going to fail. You could spend a month watching her hunt and kill over and over, but that won't really teach you much.
To truly figure out how to do it right, you've got to do it yourself. Learn from your mistakes, and all that happy horseshit people have been telling you all your life.
You then lift yourself up back into a crouching, stealthy position and take a few steps forward. But Noir interrupts you before you can get too far.
Did you do a wind check? she asks.
Yeah, when you went to go hunt that mouse, you reply.
That's old air. You want new air.
You crinkle your brow curiously, then as instructed, you lick a finger and raise it in the air to check for the wind again. It's a bit lighter than before, but you can still tell that it's coming from a different direction altogether. It seems it has shifted in the meantime.
Now it makes more sense that she told you to do a wind check - obviously it's constantly shifting, and you have to pay attention to see if you're still downwind of your target.
After making a quick adjustment to your heading, you perform a conical Scan in the new area in front of you. Out there, about a dozen or so critters are scattered about. Most of them seem as though they're foraging, and have similar mindsets as the mouse that Noir had killed.
You try to locate a larger critter, certainly something larger than a mouse - that tiny thing doesn't quite have enough meat to satisfy you, that's for sure. Although you ultimately find one relatively larger critter, one that seems it's about rat-sized, you note that there are a number of smaller critters in between you and it.
A part of you wants to simply move right past the smaller ones, but the wiser part of you advises not to do that, and to sneak around them instead. Simply, you don't want them running into your prey and scaring it off prematurely.
You turn around slightly to look at Noir, to ask her for advice, but find that she isn't back where you started. Instead, she's right next to you, most likely because she's observing your actions more closely.
You're trying for that opossum, huh? she says. Not a bad pick. They're a bit skittish, a bit stinky. But really tasty too.
Should I go around everything to get to it? you ask. Not trying to make anything run away accidentally.
Good question. But it's a slightly wrong mindset. You wanna be invisible. You don't want anything to know that you're here at all. So yeah, move around it, not because you don't want to startle anything, but because you don't want them to know you exist.
Isn't that the same thing?
No.
You turn back towards your prey with Noir's advice at the tip of your mind. Then, you draw yourself inward as much as you can, physically and mentally. Almost as though you want to be as small as a cat yourself. Then, you move towards your prey. Slowly and carefully and quietly, of course.
It seems to take you ages - dozens of minutes seem to fly by as you practically crawl your way towards your target. And as advised, you wisely steer clear of any critters in between you and the opossum and give them a wide berth. Perhaps more than necessary, but hey - you're still learning.
And thanks to how heavy you are and how large your feet are, you go extra slow in order to truly keep yourself silent. That certainly adds to how much time it takes you.
As you go, you find that you have to constantly adjust your approach. Not only are you having to go around random other critters, but the opossum itself keeps moving around. Which certainly makes sense - it's going around foraging for food as well.
But this means that you find yourself constantly stopping, checking the wind, adjusting your approach, advancing slowly, over and over again. If Noir did this during her hunt, you didn't even notice. Your hunt seems to take you so much longer than hers, and every minute that passes seems like hours.
You suppose that's the difference between an experienced hunter and a newbie like you.
But you ultimately end up as close as you can get to your target - a somewhat fat opossum. You creep up as far as you dare, roughly a meter from it. You're almost certain that if you get any closer, it's going to hear you and bolt. Regardless, you make it to your goal, and a sense of elation sweeps through you.
You're definitely close enough to see and hear it - the thing seems to be scrambling around the dirt, digging up things just under the surface. It makes soft crunching sounds as it bites into whatever it is, and chews on it.
A part of you doesn't really want to know what it's eating - probably an insect - but your stomach grumbles loud enough to shut that part of you up.
You notice that the woods around you have gotten significantly lighter since you started your hunt, and when you turn to look eastward, find that the sun's light is peeking up from the horizon. It won't be long until it's dawn, so you need to be quick.
But when you turn back to the opossum, you realize that you don't have anything to kill it with. You draw your survival knife instinctually, but you know there's no way you're going to get close enough to use it.
Now what? you ask Noir.
I'll take care of it, she replies.
She then pads up silently ahead of you and rears back. At the same time, you sense her psionic energies pool up inside her, swelling just as it did earlier. And just like before, it erupts suddenly and darts forward at the opossum itself.
Though this time she doesn't use the energies of Temperance - this time she uses Telekinesis.
Noir's Telekinetic claws shoot forward with incredible speed and smash into the opossum ferociously. But instead of pinning it down like with the mouse, one of them instead cuts right through its neck, decapitating it with ease.
The opossum's head flies off and lands in the bushes nearby as its body falls over with a soft THUMP, dead. Any other critters near you flee at the sound.
You whistle psionically, wholly impressed with how lethal Noir can be. Of course, she preens as a result.
Both of you then sneak over to the corpse, which is now bleeding profusely from its neck. Its blood leaks out into a small pool, but is absorbed hungrily by the soil around it.
Then you grimace when you realize that you've got to skin this thing, which you have absolutely no idea how to do. You want to ask Noir, but she's never done any such thing in her life either, and wouldn't be of any use in that regard.
You figure that you need it to be as drained of blood as much as possible, if only to make your job easier. So you tip it up tail-first for a few minutes. It's enough for even more blood to flow out of its neck wound and into the ground.
It doesn't quite stop bleeding even after a few minutes, so you eventually set it back down on its side on top of a flat rock. Then you take your survival knife and attempt to cut its hide. You make the first incision down its chest and belly, from the open wound all the way down to the base of its tail.
It's tough at first since you have no idea how to do it, but it becomes easier to actually slice open the further you go. Organs come spilling out of the cut, along with even more blood. And also a kind of stink that really puts you off the whole thing. But you've gotten this far, may as well see it through.
Food is food in the end, whether it stinks or not. All you can hope is that it isn't diseased or something.
You attempt to skin its furry hide off, starting from your initial cut, but you're bad at it. So very bad. You practically mangle its skin and fur, even though this critter is fatty enough that it should be easy to separate from the muscle. The best you can manage is to take off strips of its skin, rather than as one or two large pieces. And this gets your hands monumentally bloody as a result.
But after working at it for several minutes, you eventually end up with a somewhat bloody and skinless corpse. You then work at slicing the muscle off the bone, as though you're deboning a chicken. You're terrible at this as well, having never done anything like this in your life.
Instead of cutting off the meat cleanly and uniformly, you end up with a number of small chunks of fatty meat. It's unsightly and disorganized, but at least you've got more than enough to feed you and Noir for a day.
Not knowing where to put them, you wrap them up in a couple of large leaves, which you carry in your still-bloody hands. You sigh at the sight - it's so messy. Plus there's that lingering metallic smell, which causes your stomach to turn ever so slightly. You realize that it's a smell you're going to have to get used to from now on. If you want to eat, that is.
You do attempt to wipe your hands off on various leaves and on tree bark and clumps of moss, but without water you're never going to get them spotless.
A part of you hopes that the blood won't stain your skin permanently.
You then glance back at the dead opossum, or rather the mess of skin and fur and bones and organs and blood, and wonder if you should do something about it. It seems a bit weird to you to simply leave it out there like this.
What about the corpse? you ask Noir. Feels kind of a waste to leave it here like this, just out in the open. Should we bury it, like the Chimera?
Nah. Consider it an offering for everything else that's out here, Noir answers. They gotta eat, too. So don't worry - it's not gonna go to waste.
And what about that mouse you killed earlier? Are you gonna eat it? Do we go back to pick it up?
No need. That was just for fun.
You shrug your shoulders, then look around the forest. You try to spot where the rest stop is, but can't really make it out of the trees. You do know that it's vaguely uphill from you, but not exactly in which direction.
Also, um, I've no idea where home base is, you tell Noir. Kinda sorta lost right now… Could you maybe lead the way back?
You sense Noir laugh psionically before she pads off ahead of you. Presumably towards the rest stop.
Sure, follow me, she tells you. But you'd better learn to figure out how to navigate in the future. That's all part of the hunt.
How do I do that?
Best way is to follow your own scent back.
And if I can't do that?
Dunno what to tell ya in that case.
Not knowing what else to do, you hike back up the hill right behind Noir, towards your temporary home base. As you go, your stomach grumbles lightly, clearly anxious to try whatever meat you're about to feed it.
Visions of delectable cuts of roasted meat dance in your head - a luxury you haven't been able to enjoy in literally years. The only thing you've truly subsisted on since the end of the world has been packaged or canned food. And that definitely gets tiring after a while.
You work your appetite into a near-frenzy at the very thought of actual fresh meat. Your steps become lighter and you work your way up the hill faster at the very thought.
And then, you realize you don't have a way to make the fire to cook it.
También te puede interesar
Comentario de párrafo
¡La función de comentarios de párrafo ya está en la Web! Mueva el mouse sobre cualquier párrafo y haga clic en el icono para agregar su comentario.
Además, siempre puedes desactivarlo en Ajustes.
ENTIENDO