"Click, click, click, clack, clack, clack," the unknown, unseen hunter, a brain so alien to that of the prey it stalked so as to be unrecognizable even as the lizard brain native to the land creatures of fur and warm blood which it stalked. This was the brain of a shark, an octopus, something reverted so far beyond the teddy bears as to harken to the primordial beginnings of life. This was a mind that knew only movement and not movement, meat and not meat. This was a mind that was hungry. Not with the physical sensation of desire for sustenance but with the urgings of a darker mind. It cared not for the flesh of that which it stalked. It had a taste for darker, more primeval reward. It would make trophies of the lesser beings which walked, beeped, hummed and made merry unaware that an eye was upon them, the eye of God. It would make them bear witness to the trophies it took, the shattered remains of those of their kind, the pathetic waddling non-beings would cry in terror when they discovered the rib cages torn asunder and the spines wrapped about poles with the viscera still attached as though flowering vines. They would see, and they would know fear.
It ran a pair of armored fingers across the bark of one of the jungle trees which comprised the outskirts of the camp, itself a veritable tree village. There were too many of these non-beings in the center to strike there. They could not, would not see It even if they were three feet away, but they would see a glimmer pass over the broken body of the first which It claimed, and should they turn upon the glimmer with their weapons they would catch one another in the crossfire and cause massive casualties to themselves in their folly. It would not let a single one of the lesser beings bring death to another. Death was It’s and It’s alone, and would be delivered to the moving balls of fluff and viscous wet only when It deemed it the proper time and place for them to meet the void nothingness of non-movement. It had no notion of an afterlife, and cared not if these beings believed in a God or Gods, some metaphysical representation of the planet their mother and progenitor. It was God, and It like the cold dead nothingness of space cared not for these beings save for their value as meat trophies and the validation they offered It in the eyes of the other Gods.
Their’s was a shared understanding that the moving world must kill to continue moving, and to prove themselves worthy of their mark as Hish-qu-Ten they must take trophies to prove themselves Gods among Gods and differentiate themselves from the spawnlings, who were mere Gods over animals and lesser beings. It would take trophies, and would return Hish-qu-Ten or not at all. The first thing that must happen, must always happen, was to establish the killzone. There was no strategic meaning behind this principle, whether aimed toward giving It the best chance at victory or otherwise. This was a principle which must be observed, a law of the Clan, the Gods among Gods. The killzone ensured that after the first several kills which would be carried out in secret, hidden from the other non-beings and done in complete silence to keep from alerting them would allow It the opportunity to construct a shrine to house and display It’s trophies in a place close enough that the teddy bears would find it when they went into the wood around their village in search of those missing members of their kind. They must see It’s trophies before the hunt began in full, must witness and know the fear of the outsider, the unknown hunter in the wood.
It was some three hundred meters from the lesser being’s village and had made It’s way around the perimeter by use of the trees and It’s immense physical power and bodily control never having stepped foot onto the solid ground below. It had noted the crude traps which the animals laid out around the camp, and if It was less focused on the task at hand It would have mocked them for their clumsiness. Their traps focused entirely on beings which must walk on the ground to reach their settlement, and were constructed of felled trees, boulders, and other nonsense which marked them so clearly as the lesser being when compared to It, their God for the time being. It could simply be in the center of town without ever having set foot on the ground, the things lived in scalable and defenseless trees. It assumed they were not very good climbers, or else they would have been killed long ago by another group of the non-beings which lived around them. Among the Hish-qu-Ten to leave such a breach in defense would invite the reproach and assault of another clan and with the full endorsement of the Exquisitely Blooded Great Hierarch, likely resulting in the total destruction of the Clan’s Mothership and surrendering of their lives and planetary holdings.
It would touch the ground however, but only once a proper teddy bear strayed too far from the center of camp and the supposed safety of their number. It had no concern for the tactical reason of taking one who was alone. It could launch an orbital strike from It’s Recon Ship and annihilate their species should It so choose, or even prime It’s control panel and lob it into the center of their town awaiting the inevitable explosion which would follow and vaporize everything within the camp leaving not but shadows of what once was burned onto the scorched earth which served as the foundation of the tree village. It stalked in the trees invisible, hunting for visible heat signatures which had strayed too far from the others not because It feared them, but because it was the law of the Clan, and as It was God over the teddy bears the Clan were Gods over It. This would be no longer after today. It would be dead and cast into the void of non-movement, or It would return to the clan Hish-qu-Ten. That came later, It knew. Now was the time to wait, to take three or four of the lesser beings by surprise and with absolute silence and then to construct It’s Shrine for them to find after they noticed members of their kind unexpectedly missing from their number.
