Adventure of Xalli Tekuani 1

Xalli drags the slain deer beneath the third cedar, its weight carving a dark furrow through fern and mud. His glaive remains wedged across the ravine behind him.

Rainwater gathers in fresh impressions along the side trail. Hoofprints mark the deer’s flight, but broader tracks interrupt them, each bearing three deep toes.

The heavy footsteps continue beyond the trees, keeping pace somewhere parallel to his route. Trunks and wet foliage conceal their maker, though the ground trembles faintly.

The deer’s antlers snag a low branch. Xalli must wrench the carcass free, and the sudden crack carries through the dripping forest toward the unseen approach.

Behind him, the ravine and abandoned glaive vanish behind curtains of rain. Ahead, the three-toed impressions turn sharply toward the same narrow trail.

Xalli coils his powerful grasshopper legs and springs across the ravine. He lands on the opposite bank, claws gripping slick earth as rain beads along his chitin.

He wrenches the glaive free from the roots. The heirloom comes loose with a wet crack, its haft intact and its blade unmarred despite the violent impact.

Xalli plants the traditional hunting weapon point-first in the ground. Its shaft shivers under his grip, carrying the ravine’s faint tremors through his many limbs.

From behind his dark mask comes a microscopic pattern of precise chirps. The sounds scatter into the rain and return as delicate echoes through trunks, roots, and stone.

The returning vibrations assemble into a new map within his senses. He detects the ravine, the deer’s body, the branching trail, and the heavy three-toed presence moving beyond the trees.

Xalli launches through the dripping canopy, crossing branch to branch in a blur of rust-colored wings and hooked feet. Below, the forest remains blind to his passage.

He follows the returning tremors beyond the deer trail, bending his route through cedar crowns where rain and leaves swallow every careful landing.

A thorned limb catches beneath his yellow-orange cowl and tears a shallow line across his neck plating. He does not break stride, though blood beads beneath the scarf.

Xalli reaches the vibrations' source: a moss-dark hollow beneath a leaning stone shelf. Three-toed tracks circle the entrance, their fresh impressions pressing water from the soil.

He settles into absolute silence above the hollow, body flattened along a rain-slick bough. Even the antennae become still, while his senses hold the presence below.

Something heavy shifts beneath the stone, close enough to tremble through the branch. The hidden creature has not seen him, but the torn cowl carries the faint scent of blood.

Xalli lowers from the bough and drags the deer to the hollow’s mouth, carefully freeing its antlers while leaving the skull intact for himself.

He gathers thornwood and straight roots, carving them into a concealed fan of sharpened stakes. Bent saplings hold the spikes beneath the carcass, ready to spring when the bait shifts.

Mud, leaves, and rain-smoothed moss hide the improvised trap. Xalli circles through the hollow’s rear passage, glaive balanced in both hands, and waits in darkness.

The stone shelf groans. A massive, low-slung beast emerges, its slate hide slick with rain, three-toed feet spreading the mud, and a blunt horned head testing the air.

Its jaws seize the deer and tug. The hidden saplings snap upright, driving the sharpened stakes into the creature’s armored underside and dropping it with a thunderous bellow.

Rrraaaagh!

Before the beast can recover, Xalli steps from the rear passage and drives the glaive into the back of its skull. The bellow ends, and rain resumes its quiet tapping.