Chapter 81: Pet with a Death Wish
’My pet has a death wish.’ Au’dtair thought to himself as he watched his pet allow the voragyvis to jump onto it, its venomous fangs millimeters from its neck. At least it was wearing its armor. It should prevent too much poison from going into its veins should the monster choose to attack.
Surprisingly, that didn’t happen. In fact, the voragyvis seemed almost content being in his pet’s arms like that. Did it have something to do with the pheromones that it released? Even the Saalistaja stayed as far away from the creature as they could, knowing what a slow and painful death they could expect as a result.
Or did his pet just make a pet?
Au’dtair froze as his pet saw the offering of food he had placed at the bottom of the tree for it to find. It cocked its head to the side but didn’t get any closer to it. It seemed to be studying it. He grunted in approval; maybe his pet was smarter than he gave it credit for. He would be wary, too, if there was a random offering of food left in the middle of nowhere.
It was the voragyvis that approached the food first, inspecting it. It let out a low rumbling sound as it turned to Au’dtair’s pet. It then tilted its head up and down. Whatever that signal meant, his pet approached the pile and crouched down.
Once again, Au’dtair froze as his pet was close enough to be pounced on by the voragyvis. That species, especially when hungry, weren’t known for sharing its food. It grabbed the konjin that Au’dtair had skinned and held it up in its front two legs, almost like offering the food to his pet.
His pet gently took the food out of the voragyvis’ legs and put it back down on a leaf. Then it unsheathed a set of three wrist blades and, with a flick of its wrist, cut the konjin into three pieces. Au’dtair narrowed his eyes as he watched his pet retract the blades, not bothering to clean them or anything. The fact that its armor had three blades where all of the other Saalistaja only had two made him wonder if the technology really was Saalistajaian or if, like everything else around his pet, it morphed to be better suited for it.
Still, he would have to teach it how to properly care for its blades. You couldn’t put away bloody blades like that. It was just not acceptable.
Au’dtair shook his head and watched as his pet offered one-third of the meat to the voragyvis. The creature chirped and took the offering slowly in its front pinchers and started to eat it.
His pet, on the other hand, started to look around the jungle floor for something. Finding leaves and twigs, it brought them over beside the food offering. Then, it laid them down on the ground and started to arrange them in a particular manner. Satisfied, it stepped back, and a beam of a laser came out of its helmet and shot at the debris in front of it.
If it wanted it destroyed, why did it bother to collect them in the first place? Au’dtair was a bit confused. It looked similar to the way that they made a campfire, but they didn’t use those types of materials to do it. Did his pet know something that his species did not? Not if it was trying to blow it up with a laser it didn’t.
But the laser didn’t blow it up. It must have put it on a lower setting, causing the debris on the ground to catch fire, but not so much that it destroyed it. His pet was very smart. He felt proud to have such a good pet. At some point in time, he should tell it that. But now was not the time.
He continued to watch as she pierced the flesh of the konjin with a wooden stick and then put it over the fire to burn. Au’dtair wrinkled his nose in disgust. Meat was best eaten raw. You never tried to burn your prey in a fire; how was someone supposed to even eat meat like that? In fact, not all Saalistaja even bothered to skin it before eating.
Au’dtair tried to think of a species within the Alliance or even inside of the known galaxies that tried to burn its food before eating it, and he couldn’t come up with a single example. Once again, Ye’tab would know, but he was still not willing to share his prey with his comrade. Pet, not prey... pet.
Once the konjin had been burnt to his pet’s satisfaction, it took a bite and seemed to let out a sound of pleasure. If Au’dtair thought that his muscles, vision, and reaction time increased simply by scenting her pheromones, it was nothing compared to what his body did when it heard that sound.
His two hearts started to pump more blood into his muscles, causing his armor to have to frantically recalibrate in order to not shatter. His vision sharpened to the point that he didn’t need his helmet’s setting to be able to see the different light waves in front of him. For the first time, it was possible for him to see color without help.
He wanted to rip off his helmet and armor, giving him more freedom to truly experience the changes in his body without his helmet sending off warning after warning about the changes he was undergoing.
He could feel himself become more agitated as hormones coursed through his system. He could feel himself responding to outside stimuli in ways that he had never even heard of happening. He thought that he could even take on a Zmaj all by himself and win. And that was nothing compared to what was going on with his root. Not even when he had to mate with the females of his tribe had it ever reacted like it was now.
And that was all because of a single sound made by his pet.
He needed to think of more ways to make that happen again.
