Hunting time.
Unlike usual however, he does not focus on his usual demographic for prey, no.
The Rapidama, an Insectoid of human proportions; standing on two limbs, a crouching posture
that protects the soft underbelly, a green shell protecting any other body part with small
grooves and holes adorning parts of its back and sides. It is highly capable of immobilizing
insects larger than its own size by slicing open wounds on their body with its large scythe-like
claws and injecting neurotoxins through the filaments adorning the claws base. They are
mainly female in gender, their reproduction has not been sighted or researched as of now.
The Ranga-Lopez, a 4-legged mammal colored in brown and neon green. The Ranga-species
contains a wide range of 4-legged herbivores. Their defining feature is their characteristic
dwelling, which functions both as an artificial greenhouse for its food as well as a guarding
mechanism against their foes.
The Ranga-Lopez neon patterns are luminescent at night and attract a high density of spirits,
mainly symbolizing fertility and growth. In combination with their dung, the density of spirits
in their lair will accelerate the growth of moss and thorn-covered vines both being their main
source of food. The vines are soaked in a combination of spiritual and actual poison that is
highly lethal against most invaders and ineffective against the Ranga-Lopez, making the cave
their main settlement.
The Lulula-Pasa, a carnivore specialized on eating the Ranga-Lopez. Black fur and three legs,
two hind-legs and one front-leg. Their face is a black void with barely protruding moles for its
nose and ears, the spot for its eyes being empty cavities.
The Lulula-species is highly perceptive for the spirits of Fauna while their bodies are presumed
to be made of earth and shadow. These types of carnivores possess the ability of assimilating
with their surrounding ground and rushing in on their prey like large predacious fish ravishing
a drowning or wounded animal.
The Lulula-Pasa in particular are highly in-tune with the spirits associating to the Ranga-Lopez’
and capable of assimilating with the mossy ground. Once they start the chase their hind-legs
silently grow together into a long and slender fin while their front-leg starts slimming and
sharpening into a drill-like horn with grooves covering its sides. The tip of the horn is capable
of spinning rapidly and combined with their high-speed movement the Pasa-kind is capable of
inflicting major penetrating damage to the Lopez while also being a high contender in this
jungle’s beast’s hierarchy. Nobody messes with such a beast carelessly…
Such a being is now nothing more than a limp carpet of black hanging down mindlessly from
the mouth of ‘Aran’.
It is night outside and a steady trickle of heavy rain falls down. The sound of pearls of warm
water falling and colliding with the tree branches and leaves of this forest is loud and heavy on
the ears, almost intimidating.
‘Aran’ is sitting comfortably inside the cave of a Ranga-Lopez he has hunted down and is
eagerly devouring the remains of today’s spoils of war.
The Lulula-Pasa was the easiest catch of the day. After smearing his body with the Lopez’ fat
and blood and bathing in the scorched remains of its body ‘Aran’ simply strolled through the
forest with the heavy scent of prey wafting around him, chasing him like the real prey was
chasing it, not-knowing and without cause or mind.
‘Aran’ was plenty capable of detecting the spirits of nature symbolizing flames and fickleness
and had a rough hint about the Pasa’s location but the real help he needed to hunt these
things down was in the form of Gondo, who could provide even better abilities as a sentry
than himself.
Then it was just a matter of timing his movements to the incoming attack and catching them
off-guard.
‘Donmir’ is capable of gathering high amounts of spirits around Imog’s body by
communicating with them and amplifying Imog’s natural attractiveness to the spirits as bait.
Thus he creates small layers of spirits mimicking Imog’s body-line while the actual body is able
to somewhat change locations a small radius around the original projection.
Combine that with ‘Aran’’s intrinsic ability to create bundles of scorching heat using a principle
similar to ‘Donmir’ and you get the picture of a Lulula-Pasa rushing straight into a gas of heat
and being the detonator for a big explosion. Needless to say, the black carpet around Imog’s
mouth is showing burn-marks all over its body.
The Rapidama was a bit trickier since its offensive and defensive capabilities were hard to
match with ‘Aran’’s current body.
Instead he used a slow tactic by letting ‘Donmir’ send out massive amounts of cold spirits over
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
a long period of time and later emitting a high density of flames at once by himself.
The target of this attack were the joints connecting the insect’s body together and the clash
between the spirits caused a high brittleness to appear around those areas. Apparently this
insect did not possess nerves transmitting pain to its brain and thus regardlessly swung its
large claws resulting in the monster self-destructing only for ‘Aran to finish it off in the end.
The hardest foe to defeat was the Ranga-Lopez the quartet trio originally stumbled upon by
pure accident. ‘Aran’ was in the process of acclimating to this new body and eventually fell
down into this nest of thorns while simultaneously getting poisoned.
Since the poison possessed both spiritual and physical properties, the group almost died on
that encounter. In the end they opted for a strategy where Gondo absorbed all the particles of
metaphysical nature into his body and dealt with in on his own while ‘Aran’ and ‘Donmir’ dealt
with the startled Lopez as swiftly as they could. This left the already in a dangerous state
Imog’s body to deal with the consequences of the physical poison mostly on his own.
Luckily the physical poison possessed a lot less lethality than the metaphysical one. Imog’s
body was able to survive after an entire week’s worth of danger.
The Lopez’ flesh and body-fat played a vital role in getting him through the worst of it.
Since Imog’s body still needed nutrients to survive, ‘Aran’ controlled the unconscious ‘corpse?’
to eat and drink the remains of the Lopez and after noticing that the poison’s effect lessened
with the supply of Lopez flesh the trio decided to increase his meal-size and ‘Aran’ went to
hunt another Lopez(this time searching for one outside their special cave) to feed it to Imog’s
body. Needless to say, he did so while being inside the poisoned boy’s body.
With their joint effort over the span of those 7 days Imog’s body survived the poison and even
built up enough resistance against it to permanently stay inside the diseased Lopez’ cave until
further notice.
Imogyeran himself has still been unconscious ever since last falling off the cliff and falling into
a coma. Currently both ‘Donmir’ and ‘Aran’ are taking care of maintaining his body in a state
that can barely be called ‘alive’ while Gondo is mostly sitting on the sidelines and provides
minor assistance along the way.
After falling off the cliff the first thing ‘Aran’ tried to do was taking possession of Imog’s body
to try and heal his wounds faster than they naturally would.
The Altara says to himself that this was the scariest moment he has ever experienced; he met
the shadow of Gondo inside Imogyeran Ashenwald’s mind.
As he later learned from Gondo and the little ‘Donmir’, whom he hadn’t even noticed next to
Gondo’s presence, Gondo is a spiritual being familiar similar to ‘Aran’ in that his origin does
not revolve around Imog like ‘Donmir’.
Gondo was born as ‘Gon’ a spiritual being symbolizing death and decay a long time ago. His
age is ancient to say the least and it seems to ‘Aran’ that he does not want to share all of his
history with himself, which is understandable considering they just met.
What’s important for now is that Gondo evolved into his current form after meeting
Imogyeran and is currently following him around for the foreseeable future.
The story seems to be a bit more complicated than he says but it must suffice until Imog
regains consciousness.
‘Donmir’ on the other hand is the polar opposite to Gondo. He is likable and energetic and
radiates a bright aura while at the same time being transparent about the deeper sadness he
inherited from his master. Communication with him would be a lot easier if he could
communicate but for now reading his expressions and impressions through their common
bond Imogyeran was enough to establish some form of it between the two of them.
Aside from those two ‘Aran’ also got to make acquaintances with two other spirits on friendly
terms with Imogyeran Ashenwald:
‘Mabo’, the spirit that in some sense of the phrase got Imog to fall into this pit of dangers as
well as the silent ‘Naga’, who has secluded herself from conversing with anyone but ‘Donmir’
and just silently strays around the group, guarding them during moments of carelessness.
‘Mabo’ has ever since gone from his erratic and mysterious behavior into a state of guilty
melancholy. Though his personality is highly psychopathic in nature, there is also a largely
responsible property to ‘Mabo’ that is not obvious at first glance.
Him and ‘Naga’ have been making plans silently on what to do after Imog wakes up, whether it
is atonement or newfound loyalty driving them. Aside from sparse interactions the duo mostly
separates itself from the quartet.
All that is left to know for ‘Aran’ is to learn more about the lead singer.
Speaking of which and jumping forward in time another trio of weeks from Imogyeran’s arrival
in Medalia Jungle, how is the boy’s body holding up now?
First of all, Imogyeran was able to survive on eating(being fed through body-possession) the
local beasts’ flesh and bodily juices.
His body-fat however has drastically reduced. Apparently the human body wasn’t able to
adapt to Imog’s new diet and the local animal remains were unable to be properly digested by
him. Or maybe it could be some kind of germ accelerating Imog’s metabolism.
As a result the amount of food Imogyeran was given quickly reached tremendous amounts
large enough to make a group of three grown men drop their jaws to the ground.
Additionally though, ‘Aran’ has become a sort of bio hazard*, that destroyed the tender
balance of the jungle’s ecosystem due to his frequent hunting.
On the upside the wounds, sprains, fractures and dislocated body-parts got enough nutrients
and spiritual energy supplied to them to regenerate on their own and are now mostly in a
normal state.
The few chronic side-effects of this peculiar treatment include the permanent swelling and
discoloration of his feet(through excessive use and the environment’s influence) as well as a
welt on his head, which is hidden underneath the ruffled black hair, that stands off in every
direction.
There is also a red mark between his right leg and the connecting foot, which would remind
the boy’s body of what had happened on that dangerous day.
The biggest aftereffect would not show itself until several years later:
In order to guarantee his well-being and to facilitate the proper environment for healing his
body from within, ‘Aran’ had to constantly force Imogyeran’s body to move against its natural
capabilities. He made up for the body’s damage with spirit-channeling. This was the most
optimal choice the group could think of. But it also came at a cost.
Imogyeran got a chronic growth deficiency and would never grow up to be taller than
145 centimeters or the size of
the average Estican boy of 15 years of age.
For reference, if somebody calculated the average size of Gaia’s adult population, it would be
around 160 centimeters if you excluded the dark skinned and athletic Karade-tribe as well as
the prone to illnesses and disabilities Boparma-tribe.
The average height within the respected Karade-tribe is about 167 centimeters due to their
natural athletic built and genealogy while the average height of the looked down upon
Boparma-tribe is measured around 150 centimeters, though the latter number would be
highly non-representative for the race’s natural height for various reasons.
At least for now however Imogyeran’s physical condition was stable. There was only one thing
left to confirm:
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After three weeks of constant threats and dangers to his life Imogyeran Ashenwald has finally
awoken from his deep coma!
*Bio Hazard in this case: Bio=Life Hazard=Danger/Problem
In this case ‘Aran’ acts as a destabilizing force destabilizing the natural ecosystem. He is actively
hunting down a majority of animals within certain parameters and thus directly contributes to
the long-term environmental damage both concerning Flora and Fauna.