TW: Mentions of Animal Abuse.
Saturday Night September 14th, 546 ALW. Fennur's Maw, North-Eastern Glacial Regions. ….
Konan had made a friend.
After learning the word— after meeting the feline, he felt like he was always with them. It was a bizzare feeling. One he couldn't process right away.
After Konan and the sabertoothed cat killed the bear-mutates, they immediately tore into the smaller of the two bears right where they stood. But not before removing its head. The cat was strangely adamant on that.
The five-hundred pound bear was packed with just enough nutrients to give them the energy— and boosted healing required, to drag along their main meal and not enter a much needed food coma.
The mother bear.
After finishing the smaller bear and leaving only it's wire laced bones remaining, the sabertoothed cat got to work on the mother bear.
She was massive.
Over eight hundred pounds of foul mystery.
The cat used his knife-like serated fangs to make deep cutting bites around the bears midsection until it was only held together by threads of flesh and the bone within.
From there, the cat began pulling and wrangling the corpse.
The sudden violence scared Konan at first.
And then he remembered friends erased fear.
To help, he grabbed the opposite end of the carcass and they engaged in a game of tug of war.
With purpose.
They pulled and slid on the ice and growled until the carcass was torn in two with a snap and crackle of torn innards.
The lower spine hung out of Konan's half which was the legs and lower body.
He studied it in discomfort.
The bone was a greenish hue and smelled too acidic— like the last bear. Worse even. And black metallic wiring laced the spine with pulsing nodes and keys.
It didn't match the visions.
It didn't make him feel good.
Even so, he trusted his friend.
And the two got to work in dragging their halves of the kill to a new location.
They didn't have the energy for much movement. Konan's arm was a cut up mess— as was the cats body.
They fled the mountain and traveled a few miles east, finding a new cave after walking across a plain of unstable ice.
It was there that their kill was buried beneath packed snow and they slept for hours.
Konan's dreams were different. It was the overall same pleasant shifting memory, but the details were off.
The lycans bones glowed through their skin in unnatural shades of chemical green. The red haired woman shedding her clothes had red eyes instead of gold.
The humming tune was interrupted by mechanical beeps and flashing orange lights.
It wasn't so pleasant of a dream anymore.
Konan eventually— and thankfully, awoke to a symphony of echoing cracks and crunches in the distance.
He opened his eyes to find that he was still laying at the mouth of the cave.
The sabertooth sat up on its long front-legs beside him.
In silence they watched the valley of glaciers continue to crack and split. Ice and snow shot towards the evening sky in streaks of white and blue frost.
The chaos ended with an entire glacier flipping due to the shift in weight brought on by melting and the mixture of gases created below by….
Other things.
Bright blue waters splashed and rained for miles. The glacial valley rocked and cracked in the water as a new side of pure ice glacier stood.
It had no snow on it to hide the crystalline ice edges.
It reflected the tiny sliver of rising moonlight, casting their cave in hues and shades of cold blues.
It was under the new light that he got a chance to survey his injuries. The bite wound on his arm was scabbed over. The bruising on his ribs was less black-purple. The smaller cuts and scrapes on his arms and legs were little more than red markings on his dark-tan skin.
The sight of the injuries made the memories of the battle more vivid. He feared if he touched them, he'd be forced to experience a vision. Forced to remember the curl of the bear claws and how it dug so deep it knicked his bones. The smell of their chemical musk. The blinding stun of their screams and growls—
Something inside the cave growled then. Low and seemingly right on him.
Konan shot up to his feet ready for war.
It came again— closer— right under him.
The sabertoothed cat stood up slowly, stretching with a yawn before pressing its head into his stomach.
The growl came again.
He placed a hand on his stomach, "Hunger….."
No vision necessary for that one.
The cat walked away— deeper into the cave where the mother bear was buried in two halves.
Quickly they began digging her up out of the packed in snow and got to slicing, quartering and tearing.
But of course, not before removing the head.
It rolled towards the cave exit slowly as they dined.
The cat was Konan's teacher, leading by example with the choice of biting specific portions and spitting out the darker slimier bits of muscle that smelled especially acidic. The cat used his thicker back molars to crush up the tendons and stringy ligaments. Konan did the same.
In two hours they broke down the bear to little more than bones and bits of foul flesh.
Afterwards, Konan had a vision.
Images of working men and women, going beyond just eating their kills. They turned their enemies and meals into armor, clothing, their bones into weapons and ceremonial armor.
It evoked feelings he didn't fully understand.
It was just.
It was good. Even if the specific kind of foul-bear made his skin itch.
So, Konan found himself walking the bear hide across the cave walls, using the cold stones to sheer off the flesh and viscera beneath until he had a freeze dried sterilized cloak of dark fur.
Using tendons he washed with snow from outside the cave, he tied it around his shoulders.
The cat purred as he brushed against the cloak Konan wore.
Konan smiled at the warmth of it.
Quickly, his smile faded as a distant beeping noise filled the cave.
It wasn't new. It was always there— beneath muffling layers of meat and fluid and bubbling gases. He'd been hearing it since the first bear they fed on.
Emanating from the only portion of their kills they didn't eat.
The head of the mother bear sat at the edge of the cave. Clouded red eyes staring straight into him as the mechanical beeping continued to echo from its razored maw.
Beside him, the cat hissed.
Konan's feeling of wrongness in relation to the bears reached a sort of disturbingly interested crescendo that had him approaching the head.
The beeping grew louder— either by the growth of his own senses or something worse. Something unknown.
It increased his aggression in dealing with the head until he was lifting it up and smashing it against the stone floor. To stop the beeping. To find its source. To learn something— anything to erase the unknown—
The head was split and smashed and barely a solid portion after three snarling slams from Konan.
Brain chunks and skull shards dripped from his palms.
Black and green brain trunks with dozens of little silky wires that shocked Konan slightly.
Not that he noticed, he was too busy staring at the black metal ball lodged in the central underside of the once complete brain.
All the wires and lights were born from it. It had an orange blinking core— like artificial fire that produced no warmth. When the lights flashed, Konan found the surface was anything but smooth. It had grooves and divots that were familiar. Shaped in ways he knew— which said something considering his limited knowledge.
The cat watched over his shoulder as he picked up the ball, pulling it away from the shattered skull and brain.
It wasn't right.
The shaping and surface was familiar, though.
He looked at his hands. The prints and details of his finger. Just like the surface of the ball.
He did the obvious and placed his thumb into the finger-print grove.
A reactive shock of orange electricity rippled through his body.
Konan snarled. He felt the energy entering his body— like a shove of heat. Reactively— instinctively, he pushed back against the invasive energy and felt the pulse wave exit his body and get sent back into the orb.
Blue light flashed and flickered, causing the ball to steam once before flashing with focused light.
The ball split open, revealing an interior filled with circles of spinning light.
The light held form and shape as it flashed above the sphere, creating pictures and sounds.
A recording— not that Konan knew the word. But he understood the function. The recording had a runtime of eight thousand hours and showed the final moments of the bears life as it charged at Konan.
It felt weird for him to see himself.
He swatted at the image, slightly surprised when arrows appeared on the screen and sent everything in reverse.
Suddenly, the bear was running across the mountain slopes, jumping and diving down hills before falling into a cave where it sat watching a sleeping shape.
Konan.
It smelled him from miles away in lands he'd never been too.
The realization chilled him in ways the snow never could.
Hesitantly, he swiped further back through the bears memories. Visions— like his own.
The world blurred in reverse through the beasts eyes. Swimming, running, fighting massive sabertoothed wolves with glowing blue eyes and uniquely colored coats.
He went back and back until the scenerie changed. No more ice. No more snow and trees.
The bear was in a pool of green fluids. Tubes and wires split up her vision as she gazed out beyond the glass cage of fluid she floated in.
Beyond, steel black walls and more blinking lights stood.
Red eyed men walked around the room in white coats with flashing pads of light they tapped and spoke into.
"This one's got maximum biological yield and enzyme synthesis. The Eye of the Explorer isn't being rejected after brain stem implantation. The Berserker's seem to be our most reliable source of rural upkeep for the howling sort on the worlds outskirts." One of the lab coated men said.
"How's our Night-Flyer project coming along?" Another asked as they studied the bear.
"Well, considering how well we've made use of the bat dna in the Berserker's, I think we'll be good to go with release strategies within the year."
"Perfect."
Behind Konan, the sabertooth hissed with so much intensity that he flinched as if he'd been hit by something.
Konan turned around to find the cat standing upright. All the fur along his back stood on end and his ears laid flat against his blocky head. Each eye was slitted and focused directly on one image.
Konan followed the cats eyes back to the holographic recording.
Not to view the scientist standing front and center like Konan had, but to view something in the back corner. He would've missed it before.
But now that he saw it, he couldn't look away.
A black steel and glass cage sat on a dark-glass counter-top glowing with biological readings and data etched into the stone.
Inside the cage, another sabertoothed cat laid helplessly. Missing a leg and covered in bald spots where surgical incision injuries lingered. In another cage connected to it, a much younger cub paced anxiously.
The sabertooth cats hissing growls slowly descended into sorrowful groans.
Konan quickly came to a harrowing realization as he looked from the cats in the holographic recording to the one seated behind him.
"…..family."
Konan was immediately thrown back into an old vision.
Back in the caves with the golden eyed people— Lycans, and their cave-watcher feline kin.
Family.
The word echoed in a million languages, emanating from the father and his white feline.
The daughter and her dark furred cub.
A million more.
Family was in everything.
And the red eyed people had taken it. He could feel the pang of loss. The weight of millions— heavy enough to drown him if he let his curious mind venture into the oceans of details. The names and dates and injuries and screams. The red eyed people were to blame. They did it all. Including the bears— Berserkers. They twisted them with wires and fluids and implanted them with orbs of evil.
Konan was brought back to the present. Huffing visible air in the cold silence. Muscles burning. Burning so hot, he steamed. His nails extended into claws and his gums bled as his teeth expanded into fangs.
His eyes were hard on the lab coated men. Hard on the name brandished on their left breast.
The Explorers Foundation. Written over a symbol of fangs surrounding a stylized snowflake.
He remembered the symbol.
From the red eyed men from before. With their drills and Fire-wind guns and greed.
It was all connected.
And he was already on the cusp of a new word.
It came to him as he swiped to the end of the recording and the light shifted until a new image came.
A grid. And a blinking dot, set on a glowing trail towards some unknown destination. Explorer's Bio-Foundry Seven.
The cat nudged him.
Konan looked over and the cat raised her head up and out of the cave.
South, according to the hologram.
The same direction of the trail towards whatever building.
A building belonging to the red eyed people.
Konan spoke his newest word as he got to his feet.
"Anger."
The two left like they were never there.
Now with Konan holding the Eye of the Explorer.
Slowly learning it was a map that would hopefully take him to what he saw in the awful recording.