Chapter 19
When Spider and Delta woke up later that day and told the news, they were relieved. However, Delta didn't apologize for what he had said and Spider didn't feel like pressing for one. Spider did apologized for his own behavior and said that the rage they witnessed was something he was hoping they never would have had to see. They all accepted his apology, save for Delta, who just snorted; but they were expecting that.
A week later, as Tilic said, Invy rejoined them. She was a little weak and all apologetic for being so stupid; but Spider told her not to worry about it and that the most important thing was that she survived.
After waiting a couple of days to allow Invy to resettle, Spider and Shriek started up the lessons again. They finished and reviewed the tracking lessons and moved on to the biggest lesson of all: hunting.
Spider had the group watch from a distance as he and Shriek demonstrated how a hunt went, using the resident elum herd as the prey. That night...they had the first meal that was not provided to them by the feeders at the compound. Naturally, they were a bit squeamish at first, save for Charr...who practically dived in. Eating the meat of a fresh kill ended up being a lesson in itself and they were all messy afterward, which naturally meant that they took a while to clean themselves off...
Over the next few days, Spider had the group try their hand at hunting themselves, breaking them up into groups of three or four. The first day they didn't catch anything and a couple of them even ended up being chased up a tree by an enraged elum bull. That following night Spider stressed the importance of teamwork and using strategy. The next couple of days they still didn't catch anything, but were getting better and again Spider coached them on what they did wrong. On the forth day, they succeeded and the group rejoiced. The following days they continued to improve, though they still missed a lot, which is normal for predators.
One night Steinix came out to them to congratulate them on their progress. He also took the time to finally tell all of them the reason for all this training. It came a bit as a shock.
"You mean..." Hoth said surprised, "that we were created to restore a race that was lost?"
"That is correct." Steinix said, "It would have been better if there were an equal number of males and females between you, but unfortunately the females proved difficult to create. We are lucky to have the females we did manage create."
"A question." Spider said, "One that I've been meanin' ter ask. Why didn't yer jus' keep creatin' more of us, usin' the formula my father used ter create me?"
"We wanted to, but before we were able to preage all of the Cartel spies out of the project they destroyed all the copies of the formula we had. Try as we might, we weren't able to recreate it. You are all we have."
"So...its up to us..." Felth muttered, "A daunting task...but we will try our best."
"It is all that we as of you, to try your best." Steinix said, "And we will continue to try to recreate the formula even after you are released."
"Just curious..." Kilk said, "But what was this 'race' called?"
Steinix thought a moment, "According to the few references we have on them, they had refered to themselves as 'Drakkics'."
"Then I'd say..." Felth said standing up, "if we are going to be restoring this race...we should call ourselves the same thing, 'Drakkics'. Don't the rest of you agree?"
They just didn't nod in agreement...they howled....
The next morning was foggy, fog as thick as pea soup. It didn't disturb them like it did the first time they encountered it, they just called to each other and got together to groom. Soon the fog began to lift and the group started to prepare for the morning hunt.
Suddenly there was the sound of a loud explosion and the whole group jumped in surprise.
"What the **** was that!?" Delta asked.
"Somethin'...bad." was all Spider could say. He was staring in the direction the sound came from. "And it came from the compound..." He was praying it was just an accident, a boiler overloading or something. But when he saw Tilic run up to them with a panicked look on his face he realized it wasn't...
"Tilic what's going on?" Kilk asked anxiously, "What's wrong?"
"The compound is under attack!" Tilic cried, "And yer have ter get out of here!"
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