Private Gnawing Hunger

[Warpriest Prime]

I HEAR THIS VOICE KEEP ASKING ME
IS THIS MY BLOOD OR IS IT BLASPHEMY​

O B J E C T I V E | Apex Hunting Ground
L O C A T I O N | Felucia
T A G G I N G | Ixtili Razorclaw

​

Felucia breathed like a living dream.

Great neon fronds sighed overhead, pulsing slowly with bioluminescent veins. Mushrooms the size of walkers swayed like titans in the wind. The ground was soft, warm, alive, glowing faintly with every step, as if the jungle itself acknowledged the intruder stalking its heart.

Prime felt it all.

No armor.
No cloak.
No skull-helm of the Iron Clergy.

Just a strip of fur across her shoulder, a braided leather skirt, runic ink on her scales & skin, and a spear in her four hands. The pure, unburdened barbarism of her ancestors. Her horns crackled faintly with natural energy, little arcs of blue dancing across them like lightning tasting the air.

This was where she came to shed civilization.
To remember she was a creature first.
A preacher second.

Behind her, the hounds prowled.

Three fully grown beasts, plated in darkened beskar, fangs capped in ceremonial alloy, eyes scanning the jungle with a predator's stillness.

And then...There was the pup.

Shorter. Softer. Thrice as loud.

His armor plates were too big for him, clacking and bumping together with each enthusiastic hop. He had the energy of a thermal detonator with legs, and the attention span of a fruit fly.

Every twenty steps he bailed off the path to chase something:

A glowing beetle.
A buzzing spore cloud.
A mushroom that looked at him funny.
A plant that wasn't looking at him at all but could have been.

"Runt!" Dima hissed, voice a guttural whisper as she parted two massive glowing fronds. "Stay on the trail. The others are tracking prey, not hunting snacks."

The pup proudly returned with a squeaking rodent dangling from his jaws, a creature barely the size of her thumb.

Dima stared at it.
Then at the pup.
Then sighed.

"That's not prey. That's seasoning."

The rodent squeaked again, indignant.
The pup dropped it, barked, and chased it into a bush.

The adult hounds ignored this. They were locked onto the scent, deep gouges in a massive fungal trunk, heat signatures bleeding across the ground, the sort of prints only a colossal Felucian apex predator could leave.

Exactly what the Xeno Barbarian wanted.

Her nostrils flared as she inhaled the humid, fungal-heavy air.
She felt alive.

One of the adult hounds gave a throaty growl, the signal.
Tracks were fresh.
Very fresh.

"Good," she murmured, tightening her grip on her spear, her four arms flexing with eager tension. "We'll feast well tonight."

She strode forward, barefoot in glowing moss, moving with the silent, grounded cadence of an apex hunter born to this kind of world. Her tail swept low behind her, steadying her balance as the hounds spread in a hunting formation.

The jungle shifted around them, enormous leaves lowering, spiked tendrils retracting, as if something massive had just passed through.

Prime smiled, tongue flicking over a fang.

The beast was close.

And then-

CRUNCH.

She froze.
The hounds froze.

Slowly...slowly...she turned her head.

The pup had wandered off the trail again.

And was currently wrestling a screaming, flailing, bioluminescent lizard half his size...inside a glowing, very obviously carnivorous flower.

"DROP. IT. NOW!" Domina whispered harshly, as the flower's petals twitched.

The pup did not drop it.

The pup shook it harder.

The pup barked.

The flower lunged, snapping closed around both of them.

Domina blinked.
The adults groaned in unison.
Somewhere, the jungle sighed at the foolishness.

"Hold on," she muttered.

With one long stride she crossed the clearing, jammed her spear into the flower's stem, and pried its jawlike petals open with two hands while her other pair of arms scooped the pup out by the scruff.

The lizard scrambled away shrieking.

The pup wagged his tail proudly.

"You're lucky you're cute," she informed him, setting him back down. "And lucky that flowers here don't know who my god is."

She turned back to the tracks, spear raising slightly as her posture shifted from "harassed babysitter" back to "divine apex huntress."

Felucia rumbled.

Something enormous cried out in the distant deep.

Domina's grin widened, eyes dilating with predatory delight.

"There you are…"

The hunt was on.

And if the beast didn't kill her hounds first she fully intended to drag its corpse back to The Ark by its spine.

 

[Ixtili Razorclaw]

Tag: Warpriest Prime ​

The jungle swallowed his footfalls as he strode through Felucia's tangled undergrowth clutched at his legs as he ran, each leap between bioluminescent pools of light pushed him further a head. Ixtili did not look back. The hounds were already too close. Their distorted howls shivered through the fungal trees, rising and falling like something half-starved.

Heat clung to his skin, thick as the spores drifting in the humid air. Every panted breath tasted like sap. He pushed harder, weaving between towering stalks that glowed a poisonous blue, feeling their rubbery surfaces bend beneath his fingertips as he steadied himself. A root snatched at his ankle, but he caught his balance with a hand against a swollen mushroom trunk and hurled himself forward again.

The next howl cracked through the trees, closer than it should have been.

He spotted his escape then. A felucian tree-giant rose ahead, its bark shaped like spiraled plates, each one jutting outward like a rung. Ixtili darted toward it, using momentum to vault onto the lowest ridge, then the next. His fingers curled into warm grooves, his claws found narrow ledges carved by time and storms. Snarls erupted below as the hounds burst into the clearing, claws skidding in the spores he had scattered.

He climbed until the canopy swallowed him, until the air shifted cooler and the glowing leaves cast a soft green wash over his face. Settling onto a thick branch veined with bioluminescent threads, he steadied his breathing. From here he could see the jungle flex and breathe beneath him like a living sea.

The hounds circled below, muzzles lifted toward his scent, their voices sharpening with frustration. Ixtili pressed his back to the trunk and drew quiet into his lungs. Up here in the cradle of the canopy, he could almost pretend the world had paused.

From high in the canopy, Ixtili leaned over the branch and cupped his hands around his mouth. The hounds circled below, snapping at spores and snarling up at him with furious confusion.

"You cannot climb!" he shouted, tail flicking with triumphant arrogance. "Your legs look like wet noodles!"

The hounds barked harder. He barked back.

"You smell like old marsh puddles! Stop that noise! I am not a snack!"

One of the beasts tried to jump. It failed spectacularly, skidding backward through a patch of glowing moss.

"Shoo! Go away! Get! I said get!" His feathers fluffed with the thrill of being alive and above danger. "Your mother was a fungus frog!"

 

[Warpriest Prime]

I HEAR THIS VOICE KEEP ASKING ME
IS THIS MY BLOOD OR IS IT BLASPHEMY​

O B J E C T I V E | Apex Hunting Ground
L O C A T I O N | Felucia Jungle
T A G G I N G | Ixtili Razorclaw

​

"Costello. Greisha. Bah- oh what the hell~" Dima wheezed as one of the pups suddenly veered left, nose high, tail stiff, and far too excited for its own good. They were following massive tracks, ancient, heavy, the kind that promised a worthy meal. And yet her idiot puppy caught some new scent and took off like a missile. The entire pack followed, barking their fool heads off.

Dima stopped dead on the trail, dragged all four claws slowly down her face, and muttered a prayer for patience the gods absolutely ignored. By the time she stomped after them, her hounds were a full chorus of snarls and frantic yelping somewhere deeper in the glowing jungle.

The nearer she got, the louder the yelling became, actual yelling. Words. Complaints. Something with lungs and too much confidence.

Her brows dipped. Someone was definitely up a tree.

Curiosity, annoyance, and mild disbelief all tangled in her chest as she approached the clearing. Without a word, she chose a tree adjacent to the one her hounds were assaulting and scaled it with all four arms, claws sinking effortlessly into the rubbery bark. The canopy swallowed her in its bioluminescent glow as she hauled herself higher, slipping through the warm greenery like a stalking jungle ghost.

When she reached the top, she spotted him instantly, crimson scales gleaming beneath the canopy's soft light, feathers puffed, tail twitching, the reptilian stranger perched high above her pack and barking back at them like a deranged tree gremlin.

Dima froze, five eyes widening with genuine awe. He was, well, adorable. Brilliantly colored, sharp in all the wrong places, and absolutely losing his mind at her hounds. He looked almost like her...just smaller. Softer. Less likely to disembowel a rancor with his bare hands.

She was enamored before she even meant to be.

In one easy leap, she vaulted from her tree to his, claws digging into the trunk beside him. She was close enough that her breath stirred the scales along his neck. She opened her mouth to speak-

And then he yelled that the hounds' mother was a fungus frog.

Dima's ears snapped flat. She hissed like an offended teakettle.

"H–HEY! I am not!" she sputtered, voice hitting a bizarre octave as her tail rattled defensively. Her hounds immediately fell silent when she clicked and chittered at them, dropping to their bellies as if someone had unplugged their entire personalities.

Only then did she turn her attention back to the scaled interloper.

"You're ruining my hunt!" she complained, swatting at him with one of her upper hands, playful, almost harmless, though the size and talons made the gesture threatening by accident. "We were on the trail of a beast, a big one! And then my pup caught your sweet scent and dragged us off course!"

She leaned in closer, inspecting him with narrowed eyes and a twitching tail, torn between fascination and irritation.

"I don't care if you're cute and colorful," she grumbled, "you're distracting the pups from their first hunt!"

Her stomach growled loudly, resonant as distant thunder.

"And it's getting late," she added, glaring toward the glowing horizon. "And I'm hungry. So if I don't get back on that trail soon, something is getting deep-fried and it could be you!"

 

[Ixtili Razorclaw]

Tag: Warpriest Prime ​

He gleaned downwards watching the blue glowing woman. "You are their mother. No one told me the fungus frog had a terrifying lightning goddess consort. This feels like important information." He turned those golden eyes towards studying her and tilting his head curiously, "I mean impressive," he corrected in a rush, words half muffled. "Very impressive not frog at all. Regal. Apex. Your legs do not look like wet noodles. Your legs look like they squat temples. Yes."
Her threat about deep frying finally caught up with him. His eyes widened.

"Deep fried," he echoed, horrified. "You mean you would roll me in crumbs and... and... put me in oil. Like a snack? I am not even properly seasoned. I am mostly anxiety and feathers. That is a terrible flavor profile."

He scooted sideways along the branch, tail coiling around it like an extra safety harness.

"You want a hunt, I understand," he said, trying for dignity and hitting somewhere closer to frantic salesman. "But I am clearly a side quest, not a main course. Yes."

He jabbed a clawed thumb toward the deeper jungle, where the glow thickened into dangerous green.

"The beast went that way. Big thing. Very stompy. Terrible attitude. It stepped on a whole mushroom family and did not even say sorry. Yes."

He clicked his claws together, inspiration striking.

"I can help you get it~!" he offered quickly. "Look! Look at me. Look at me. Ixtili is light. Ixtili is is Agile. Climbs everything. Very hard to catch, very easy to point at danger from a safe height. You keep your mighty hunter dignity, I keep Ixtili's skin un-crispened. Everyone wins. Yes."

He peered down at the hounds, eyes narrowing further with suspicious intent.

"Also," he added, louder, "I was not running from them, I was performing a super special tactical repositioning to higher ground. Tell them that. Please. They keep calling me snack with their eyes. Ixtili is not snack, yes. "

One of the pups yipped borking up at him. Ixtili pointed a singular claw accusingly.

"You hear that tone?! That is a 'nugget' tone. Yes."

He turned back to Dima, feathers settling just enough to make his grin look cocky instead of terrified.

"If you absolutely must deep fry someone, I suggest the big apex thing with the bad manners. Much more meat, fewer bones, probably lower anxiety content. You can call it revenge and I can clap from a tree. I am very good at clapping from trees. Ixtili is besteses at this . Yes. "

He paused, then added with exaggerated seriousness, tapping his own chest.

"Ixtili Razorclaw. Professional distraction. Excellent scout. Terrible drumstick. Yes. "