The Brital chirped quietly, unaware of my presence.  As slowly as I could, I shortened the distance between me and it.  I could smell its scent, and there was no fear to its scent… It hadn’t detected me at all.  The wind was on my side, the rains were heavy, and the light was low.

A near-perfect hunt.  If I could only get a bit closer, the beast would be within range of my bow…

A stick behind me cracked, breaking my concentration for a moment.  Then, almost right behind me, a loud clap of thunder rocked the rain forest with sound, nearly deafening my sensitive ears.  Spooked, the Brital tore off through the jungle, the stripes on its hide taunting me to try to find it again.  Its hooved legs caught traction easily on the rain-slicked forest floor, and it wasn’t a moment later that it was gone.

I growled low in my throat, my ears pinning themselves to the sides of my head as I picked myself back up off of the ground.  The rain continued, washing away the dirt from my fur as I stalked away in disgust.

Britals were getting harder and harder to find, now that the pack had nearly doubled in size over the past few years, due to an extreme increase in pups born that survived past their first year.  And though I wasn’t anywhere near being the Alpha Male, I had been given plenty of opportunity to hunt along with the other hunters in the pack, since food was such a priority now.  Most males were only allowed to hunt in times of extreme need, and though we weren’t to that level yet, the food supply was getting closer to that level by the day.

I looked down at my hands for a moment, wondering how, exactly, I was going to return home without any food yet again.  The fur on my hands and arms hadn’t quite turned over to silver yet, though within another year I’d look like the rest of the pack.  My fur had just taken longer to change than normal, though I didn’t quite know why.

A voice spoke from behind me, jarring my thoughts.  “What’s wrong, Moc?  Lose your meal again?”

I spun, the fur on the back of my neck bristling.  Standing against a tree and whistling innocently stood Ere, the pack mage.  Now I knew where the thunderclap had come from… his rust-colored fur was still tinged with the aftereffects of the magical usage, and most of it was standing straight up. 

I spat, “What the heck do you think you’re doing, Ere?  I *HAD* that Brital right there, and we’d have had food again!  And don’t think I won’t tell Bor about this.  Once the pack leader learns of your foolishness…”

He stopped me with a wave of his hand.  “He won’t find out about it, Moc.”  He sneered at me, his demeanor changing instantly from annoying to sinister.  Now the fur on most of my body was standing up, partially from fear and partially from rage.

My voice was quiet, and strangely calm considering how I was shaking inside.  “You wouldn’t dare.  Fights outside the pack circle are forbidden…”

“And this means anything to me?   Please.”  He raised his hand, and an orange glow started to grow in his hand.  I sprang to the side just as a beam of orange shattered the ground I had been standing on, and I darted off into the jungle, trying to put some distance between me and him.  If I could get around him and backtrack…

It was with an ironic grimace that I realized I’d left the bow behind with Ere.  I was now defenseless unless I could get close enough to bite him.  And with his magic, that would be next to impossible.  My only chance right now would be to…

The tree next to me exploded, throwing me to the side and interrupting my thoughts.  Dazed, I looked in the direction that the magic had come from, and the sight of Ere approaching malevolently filled my heart with fear.  Weak from the concussive force of the blast, I shakily tried to get back to my feet, but my tail had been trapped underneath part of the destroyed tree.  I slipped on the moist soil and fell backwards, hitting the ground with a groan.

“The pack will be mine, Moc.  And don’t worry, you aren’t the first male I’ve killed.”  Ere chuckled, advancing warily.  “And you won’t be the last.”

My heart sank.  Two males, Ibu and Rop, had been missing for six light cycles, and their scent had just suddenly vanished.  It hadn’t made any sense until now.  My voice was dry in my ears, and sounded hollow even to me.  “The pack will know eventually.”

“Does it matter?”  Ere, seeing that I was trapped, had stopped and was now calmly staring at me, chuckling.  “There are only four full grown males left in the pack, including yourself.  The pups will follow whoever shows the most dominance.  Giy is too stupid to be of any bother or worry; and once I dispose of Bor, Giy will do whatever I tell him to do.  Then the pack and all the females will be mine.”

I could tell by his voice… I was going to die.  I had only one hope left, and I’d never used it in all my twenty-two life cycles, and even now I wasn’t sure how to.  My hand slipped to the strange object my father had discovered, over forty life cycles ago.  It was cylinder in its shape, though there weren’t any openings on any side to possibly indicate its function, and was still slightly warm to the touch from my body’s warmth.  A small handle was attached to it, of a substance that was completely alien to anyone who’d been shown the object.  The handle slipped into my own hand with a comfort I wasn’t aware would be there, and the weight of it was surprisingly balanced.

Ere laughed at me as I raised the object.  “And what, exactly, do you plan to do with that, Moc?  Your father couldn’t figure the purpose behind it, and no one from the pack that’s ever examined it had any idea what it could do.  And I tire of this banter.  Time for you to die, Moc.”  His hands began to glow again, and his eyes lit up in anticipation of my death as he raised his hands to release his magic.

I nearly dropped the object when three holes opened up soundlessly on the base.  Shaking, I slipped one of my fingers into a hole just to the left of the handle, and nearly fainted when a voice sounded inside my head.  A green light appeared just in front of my eyes, along with some garbled words in a language I couldn’t understand.  However, the voice in my head was speaking directly to me somehow, and the conversation went as fast as I could think.

Command?

“Who are you?”

Command not recognized.  Command?

“I don’t understand.”

Help command acknowledged.  Available commands are shoot, drill, dig, shield, armor, help, and menu.  Help command finished.  Command?

“Shoot?  Like a bow, shoot?  I don’t know what you mean…”

Shoot Command Acknowledged.  Commencing.

For a moment, I expected there to be something happening, something major, something I’d never seen or heard before… but there was silence.  Nothing had happened.  I was going to die.  Resigned, I turned my gaze away from the object to Ere… and gaped in horrified terror.

Ere’s body was sprawled out on the ground, twitching in its final death spasms.  His head was completely gone, vaporized just above his collarbone, replaced with an emptiness that chilled me to the bone.  No blood fountained from his body like I would expect, which oddly puzzled me even in my fearful state.  Numb, I turned my gaze upward a bit toward the forest beyond his body, and felt my heart drop into my stomach at the sight that greeted me.

A hole stretched as far as I could see through the thick foliage of the rain forest, in a nearly arrow-straight line away from me.  It was circular, perfectly and insanely circular; and though the forest was even now moving into the spaces that had been vaporized by whatever the object in my trembling hands had done, I could tell it stretched on for many, many passings of the light in the same direction.

Shaking, I dropped the object onto the soggy ground at my feet and sank to my knees.  This… this wasn’t allowed, this couldn’t be.  Only the appointed mages could use magic, and whatever this object was… for a certainty, it had to be magic at the least.  Speaking into my head, complete devastation like what it had done… only magic could have done something like that.

It would have been better for Ere to have killed me.  I was now rogue, I could never go back to the pack, and I would be forced to live the rest of my days in the wilds, alone.  I could not handle this thought… my mate, Kyr, and my pups were still back with the pack, and the pack would never understand.  Likely the pups would be killed by the Alpha, to prevent the possibility of whatever had made me go rogue would pass on to the next generation.  Kyr would be shunned, and would likely follow me into rogue status after my death and perish as well

My four pups…  they’d only just passed their second year, and were only now really starting to get a handle on the pack laws.  They’d never understand, and would never be allowed the chance to really grow into the packmates I felt they would become.  Kyr deserved to watch her pups grow up, even if I wouldn’t be there as well.

 A thought came to me…  If I were to die, here and now, they would not be disgraced.  The pack would assume I had died at the same time as Ere.  My death would allow them their lives… I made up my mind.  With Kyr’s face firmly pictured in my heart, I grimly picked the object back up and faced it toward myself.  I slipped my hand into the handle again, and again the voice echoed in my head.

Command?

“Shoot.”

Shoot Command Acknowledged.  Commencing.

* * *

An error had been made.  On the rain forest side of the Planet, populated by the hybrids set there thousands of years ago, something had happened many years ago.  During the construction of the Planet, one of the workers had left behind a laser digging tool.  It’s location was never discovered, and eventually all records of it were stricken from the databases.

It was assumed that, even if the digging tool was ever discovered, it would be extremely doubtful that they would ever figure out its purpose, much less how to effectively use it.