THE END OF BEGINNINGS

THIRTEEN (Part 1)

The universe is beautiful chaos.  It is vast and ever-expanding.  It is highly complex and-diametrically-extraordinarily simple.  Moros Aurallio considered this as he crouched low to the muddy ground and a cold rain pelted his hair and skin.  They were words he had heard his father speak on more than one occasion.  He hadn't understood them, especially the first time they were spoken.  Now, years later, as the seventeen-year-old attempted to keep himself as still as possible, Moros wasn't sure he had yet to gain a stable understanding of the old lesson.
A sharp, hushed click teased his ears through the heavy downpour.  It sounded no different than a small twig being snapped.  Moros knew it wasn't the noise of any little stick.  He'd been trained to recognize the sound without mistake.  It was a signal. 
He shifted his eyes to his right, turning his head a few, slow degrees.  He could just make out the shape of his hunting partner more than a dozen, muddy paces away.  The other youth's slender body was covered in a dense paste, making him blend in with the mossy bark of the trees and dripping brush covering the forest floor.  The weapon the boy held tightly in his hands was painted a similar camouflage.  Moros saw it moving in front of his partner.  The finely crafted bow was angled skyward at the ends of the young hunter's long, muscular arms.  The dark, slender stalk of an arrow was balanced between rough, nimble fingers and the bow's tightly drawn string.  Pale daylight glinted off the jagged, crystal edges of the arrow's pointed head.  It made the crouching seventeen-year-old inhale sharply.  The hunt was on.
With a nearly-silent snap, the crystal-tipped arrow sprang off the bow.  Its razor edges hissed against the currents of rain as it rocketed passed the treetops.  As soon as the arrow was slicing into the storm, Moros was up and moving into a sprint.  His bare feet seemed to glide swiftly over the dark, wet earth.  With his eyes staying focused on the uneven path in front of him, Moros expertly used the ruddy, moss-covered roots that jutted out of the mud to launch himself over more and more ground.
The temptation to look back, to look up and scan the churning heavens for the free-flying arrow was strong.  It was very strong, in fact.  But Moros resisted.  He used his ears to track the long, slender bolt as it sailed through the storm.  He had to stay with it, to keep heading toward the same place it was going.  They had to arrive simultaneously.
There was movement ahead.  The bulky shape he had been watching before his sprint was just beyond a thin wall of tangled brush and low-hanging leaves.  It was the game they had been following.  They had stalked its steady trek through the forest since before sunrise.  They had kept their distance from it, waiting until the right place and time to move in, to make all their efforts pay off.
The time was now.  The place was just ahead.  Moros counted down the seconds left until he reached that fated spot.  He could feel the pulse of his heart beating faster and faster with every meter he covered.  The racing thud of his pulse was almost deafening in his ears.  He could still sense the arrow though.  It was there in the sky just above him, descending swiftly between the swaying and rain-soaked branches.  Moros breathed in and pushed himself ahead.
Three...Two...One...
Moros burst through the wall of wet leaves and brush.  His bare feet slapped against a slick patch of dark soil.  He gasped, feeling his body suddenly rush forward.  He kept his balance, but slid unstoppably the rest of the way into the misty meadow.  The exposed earth quickly gave way to thick grass covering most of the elliptical clearing.  It sent Moros stumbling forward several paces before he regained his footing and his momentum came to a breathless stop.
Barely a second passed when the hiss of rain streaming off the razor edges of a crystal arrow head filled Moros' ears.  He turned to look past his shoulder.  The long, slender bolt struck the ground with a loud, thundering, wet THWACK!  The jagged, crystal tip sank into the soggy earth while the fine, white strands of the fletching vibrated from the impact.  Moros was staring at the fast and fleeting quiver of the arrow until he realized he wasn't the only one.
The pair of eyes were a sharp, amber jade in color.  They would have been like flawless crystals except for the black, oval pupils in each one.  Both of the wide, open lenses were nearly as big as Moros' own head.  They were focused on the wooden arrow stalk settling into the wet dirt, but only for a heartbeat.  Then, they were looking at Moros.
The creature standing under the nearby trees was big.  The head the jade eyes were in was wider than the span of most men's outstretched arms, especially Moros'.  Its cat-like brow and jowls were covered in soft, fine fur.  The color reminded the youth of sun-baked clay, a warm and pale brown with a subtle, gray-green undertone.  A thin cluster of wiry whiskers reached out lazily from the damp fur of its muzzle on either side of its flared, triangular nose.  Its powerful jaws were closed, hiding the sharp, bone-crushing and flesh-shredding teeth Moros had been told the creatures possessed.  Only, those teeth weren't about to stay hidden for long.
In the racing second that went by while Moros was looking over the huge face, the creature was regaining its wits.  It had been caught off-guard, surprised by the short spear that had dropped out of the sky and the youth standing awkwardly near it.  Rain dripped from Moros' lean, naked body and the tail of coarse, red feathers hanging down the back of his legs.  They were attached to a cord tied securely around his waist.  There was a smell leaching off his wet skin.  It traveled through the misty, humid air to tease at the creature's powerful olfactory.  Moros' heart skipped a beat when the placid beast suddenly and loudly sniffed.  Things were about to get exciting.
As soon as the scent was in the creature's nose, its sensitive receptors were suddenly electrified.  Moros watched with a silent gasp as its inky pupils narrowed to hair-thin slits.  Its whiskers stiffened, each fiber shooting a faint puff of rainwater off their surface.  Its long back went rigid.  Its furry lip curled slightly, revealing a hint of a pink and brown-stained fang.  The massive beast had practically no wild enemies in the hills and forests of the planet, with one notable exception.  And, Moros Aurallio was currently covered in that animal's smell while wearing a garland of its scarlet feathers.
Moros saw the long hairs covering the beast's humongous body stiffen.  The tips of each one changed color, blushing to a hue he had been told meant danger, that it was time to run or be killed.  He shifted his eyes back toward the creature's face.  Their eyes locked for an instant that seemed to freeze in time.  An overwhelming feeling of danger flooded the youth's senses.  An echo of raging anger thundered through his mind, but it wasn't from Moros.  It was...her's.
Raindrops whipped off the red feathers stretching out behind him as Moros sprang away from the grassy spot he'd been standing.  The ground trembled under his feet.  The creature had taken the bait.  It pounced at the patch of grass where the boy had been.  Moros didn't have to look back to know what was happening.  The creature was chasing him.  He could feel the impact of its heavy, clawed paws on the ground.  He could feel the wind rebuffing off its huge, charging body.  And, he could sense that powerful anger drawing closer and closer.
Moros breathed deep and leaned forward, running-literally-for his life.  The open meadow disappeared, replaced by the mossy trunks of the tall trees.  He weaved wildly between them, ducking effortlessly under low, leathery branches and leaping over the gnarled roots that snaked across the damp terrain.  He slipped once as he turned suddenly to his left, regaining his balance quickly before the tip of a claw came swiping through the falling rain at his back.  The powerful, razor-sharp nail splintered the bark of a nearby tree.  It left a chunk the size of Moros' head missing from one side of the wet, wooden column.
The miss hardly slowed the beast down.  It roared voraciously.  The deafening sound waves shook the forest and rattled Moros' nerves.  He glanced back once for the fleetest of heartbeats.  The creature was close, too close.  It could reach out and grab him if it had the chance.  Moros heard himself yelp at the sight.  He looked forward again then shifted his course, veering wildly to the left.
There was a thicket of thin trees just ahead.  The frantic seventeen-year-old practically dove into the narrow gap between a pair of the outer saplings.  His body glanced and ricochetted off the next one, spinning his panting torso around just as the pursuing predator arrived.  The creature didn't stop when it reached the first trees of the small grove.  Instead, it smashed through them, head-first.  Its dense skull turned the smooth, pale trunks into splintered pulp.  The trees might as well not have even been there as far as the big beast was concerned.
Moros cringed at the stinging that erupted from his shoulder.  The spray of splinters had burst through the rain to find his skin.  He didn't slow down, though.  He couldn't.  Instead, he suddenly veered away again, this time to his right.  He spotted a lump of granite sticking out of the dark clay.  He aimed his body toward the weathered boulder.  Behind him, more of the small trees exploded and crashed to the forest floor.  The angry beast roared once again.  Moros felt the vibration of its loud voice move through the air.  He sensed the tremor of its shifting weight through the wet ground.  He glimpsed its shadow sweep across his body.  The creature had gone airborne, leaping toward the same spot Moros was heading.
The boy got there first.  His feet touched the smooth surface of the rock just before the huge beast.  The surface was slick but his calloused skin found just enough grip to keep from slipping.  In the same second as he arrived, Moros pushed his weight down into the boulder, then jumped.  He was in the air just as the creature's front paws touched the ground behind Moros, the garland of red feathers teasing its fur.
The slope past the bulging boulder was steeper than Moros realized.  He sailed over more ground than he had intended.  When he finally landed, it hurt.  The soil was too slick to stay upright, his feet slipping out from under him as soon as they touched the mud.  Moros was on his back in a dizzying blur.  But, he was still moving.  He blinked away the spray of mud and rain to see the base of the hill racing toward him as he slid faster and faster down the wet ramp.  From behind him came a loud and heart-stopping snarl.  The creature was still in pursuit.  It hadn't given up the chase yet.  Moros was glad for this.  But the speed of the wild and growling beasts' slide down the steep hillside made his pulse race and a loud yelp escape his throat.
Moros yelped again when he suddenly hit the flat ground at the hill's base.  He stumbled frantically forward, finally finding his footing at the end of a fallen log.  It had long ago joined the forest floor, becoming a natural bridge across a dank and narrow gorge.  But it had also decayed past the point of being useful.  Two steps across the moss-laden log and Moros felt his feet crash through the ancient, woody corpse. 
As his body fell through the shattered, hollowed-out tree, the creature chasing him sailed by overhead.  It had tried to pounce its red-feathered prey once more.  It missed, landing on the other side of the muddy gash that cut its way through the forest floor.
Moros didn't fall far.  Murky water splashed up around him as he broke past the surface of the narrow stream.  The heavy rains had made a distant river flood and overtake its banks.  The low lying stream quickly became a relief channel as fast-moving water flowed down its long, zig-zagging course.  The water's depth came to Moros' shoulders.  He felt his toes dragging across the bottom as the powerful current carried him down the soggy crevice.
The seventeen-year-old coughed out muddy water he hand't meant to breathe in.  At the same time, there was a loud snarl and roar above him.  He looked up to see the furious creature was still chasing him, following the lip of the narrow gorge as Moros floated just out of its reach.  He felt himself smile at the sight.  The plan was still in play.  He was still leading it to where the others were waiting.  Only, now he was a little safer.  Moros laughed a little, flaunting the end of the red, wet garland at the beast above.  There was nothing that could hurt him down there.
Well, actually, there really was.  Moros suddenly sensed it more than saw it, at first.  From a water-logged burrow in the steep wall of the stream bed, a long, leathery body slipped smoothly into the current.  Moros stopped waiving his tail of feathers.  He spotted the black, oily scales emerge out of the water's dark depth.  The long-snouted head of the deadly serpent rose out of the murky stream, hissing hungrily.  Venom-laced fangs filled Moros' gaze.  He heard himself gasp.  He turned away from the poisonous predator, turning his idle trip in the flooded channel into a panicked and urgent swim.
The undulating ground under his feet was causing a long series of rapids to form as the narrow gorge turned sharply to the right.  Muddy water was kicked suddenly upward.  Wild, murky waves crashed and broke against the damp channel walls, spraying back at Moros and the long, hungry snake.  The youth was getting pummeled by the fast-flowing waters, impeding his escape.  He had to find a way out of there.  He'd rather deal with the creature racing to keep up with him above the canal's edge than battle the growing rapids and the animal about to get him.
A loud hiss stabbed at Moros' thoughts.  He glanced back, blinking away a stinging splash of the stream's spray.  The serpent was closing in.  Its pointed snout was nearly on him.  Moros yelped, diving forward into the rushing current.
Above the stream, the dim light fighting its way through the sagging rain clouds had begun to brighten.  The midday sun had started coming through the dissipating storm.  In the pale, misty daylight, Moros spotted something that gave him hope, and then, something that filled him with even more alarm.