Chapter Text
He had no idea how long he had been there, he had lost track of time a long time ago. He sat alone in the dark, inside of a cell covered with filth.
He no longer had any will to escape, as he had nothing to return to. He had no children, he had no mate, and he had lost his one and only friend long ago.
He was a half-breed, a hybrid between a Yautja and a Thwei-Kya, and that made him undesirable. Both of his parent species saw him as tainted blood, neither would ever want to have a child with him. It was something that never mattered to him, as it was a fact he had known his entire life.
He had always known he was different, he looked vastly different from his peers in the village he was raised in. Physically, he had the body of a Thwei-Kya, yet he was the same height as the average male Yautja. His coloring was very different as well, while most males had muted coloration - green, brown, yellow, gray being the most common colors - he had dark green skin with blue patches. Instead of the typical brown or black tresses, his were a bright red.
He was treated as an outcast for most of his life - seen as an abomination. He discovered why he was so different from the others when he was very young, too young to hold anything heavier than a stick.
He had hoped that he might gain some degree of respect when he passed his Chiva and killed a kiande amedha. Unfortunately, it never happened and likely never will.
It wasn't long before he discovered why he was treated the way he was. He was a descendant of Nightstorm, a Thwei-Kya Elder who lived thousands of years before his time.
He was the one who organized one of the first Chiva ever held on planet Earth. He was also the first one to suggest using humans as cattle for the kiande amedha.
Nightstorm was a nearly forgotten figure to the Yautja, but virtually worshipped by the Thwei-Kya for his views on hunting and the Code of Honor. He was a great and powerful hunter, a force to be reckoned with to anyone and anything that he came across, but he saw the Code of Honor as redundant and tedious, believing that there should be no restrictions when it came to hunting, seeing all prey as equal.
It was this philosophy that was soon adopted by the other Thwei-Kya of his time, seeing it as a new beginning for them. The Yautja, however, saw it as a threat to their entire society, a culture built on honor.
It was for this reason that the two species separated, and a blood feud has replaced what they had before. Before, both species lived peacefully along side each other, even organizing hunts together.
He wanted to hate Nightstorm for severing the ties between the Yautja and the Thwei-Kya, but the past is in the past. Instead, he hoped to honor his ancestor by preventing history from repeating itself.
He had learned that he was a great hunter in his time and he decided to model his armor and weaponry after his. After deciding that Earth would be the location of a Chiva, Nightstorm forged his own artillery in the image of the gods the humans worshipped. He personally speculated that his ancestor was convinced that he was the reincarnated form of one of the two gods they worshipped themselves, Paya and Cetanu.
The Chiva would be held in a dry desert environment that was hundreds of miles of sand with little water, it was an area of Earth known as Egypt. The people of Egypt had many gods, but the one that Nightstorm was the most fascinated with was Anubis, the god of death, mummification, tombs, and the Underworld.
He saw himself as a harbinger of death, in the sense that he was going to kill the humans regardless of whether or not they were to be used as hosts for the kiande amedha. He wanted them to remember him, to make them believe their god of death was angry with them and wanted their lives.
With Nightstorm erased from the historical record of the Yautja society, he believed no one would understand why he wanted to forge his armor after the likeness of mythological figure of a human culture, but he was wrong. Once his armor was finished, he was treated with more contempt than before, shunned for admiring a dishonorable Thwei-Kya.
It was seen as though he was fully embracing the Thwei-Kya half of him, and abandoning the Yautja half. That could not be further from the truth, he was honoring his ancestor, but for his life as a hunter, not his philosophy and beliefs about the Code of Honor.
He would not tolerate it, the mistreatment for his choice and heritage, for the rest of his life. He decided that if they were never going to accept him as a half-breed, he would leave civilization.
He took his hunting hound, Shur'ie-guan, with him, the one living thing that would never mistreat him, never leave him. The hunting hound had even saved him from a kiande amedha that had somehow escaped him.
He hunted alone with only Shur'ie-guan for years, never affiliating himself with any clan, having disbanded from the village that raised him. There were times where he would temporarily align himself with hunters he respected. He once allied himself with a hunter nicknamed Cracked Tusk, with an outcome that ended with an ambitious Young Blood Yautja fighting face to face with a kiande amedha, likely getting himself killed.
One day, he decided to go into one of the clans he had aligned himself with in the past for medical supplies, having used the last of it to heal Shur'ie-guan after he fell down a ravine and twisted his ankle. After paying for what he needed, he was suddenly approached by a younger Yautja who wanted his help in subduing a small landlocked population of Bhu'ja-Ju'dha. It wasn't something he would have normally done, but he accepted the offer nevertheless.
Upon arriving to the planet, which was a game reserve, he felt there was something... odd about it. He wasn't alone, he remembered how Shur'ie-guan suddenly began to growl at nothing, as if sensing something.
He, along with a small hunting party of four Yautja, including the one who approached him, began to search for the Bhu'ja-Ju'dha. When they finally found one, it was dead, from a blast to the head, most likely from a Plasmacaster. That was when they all realized that they were not alone.
All at once, a hunting party of three Thwei-Kya surrounded them. The four Yautja were killed before they could flinch, death was instantaneous. He was more fortunate, he was able to escape, in part due to his mixed heritage.
He wasn't able to get far though, while he was half of a Thwei-Kya, they were purebred and easily caught up to him. One of them had their Plasmacaster aimed at his head, he was not ready to die and did the only thing that might have saved him, he removed his Bio-mask.
They saw his Thwei-Kya face, seeing that he was one of them. The Leader of the trio interrogated him about his association with the Yautja, forcing him to explain that he was a half-breed of the two species.
They looked at him with the same contempt-filled eyes he had seen his entire life and he thought they would kill him. Instead, they disarmed him, stripping him of everything he had, and taking him to their clan ship.
He was thrown into the cell he currently residing in and to show him what would happen if he tried anything, they brutally killed his hunting hound in front of him. He thrashed against his cell as he watched Shur'ie-guan bleed into a puddle on the floor. Never in his life had he ever felt so pathetic.
As he was consumed by his thoughts and memories, the door that led into the dungeon he resided in opened. He watched as a Thwei-Kya dragged a new prisoner in the cell adjacent to his own. The prisoner was the last thing he ever expected to see, a human female.