CHAPTER 37 – THE VANAGOJI


    The conversation will always lead to one inevitable topic. Mitakahn had come to realize this at an early age, all evidence to his waistline. For some obvious reasons, his time on the road had reminded him of the ultimate drive of man.


    “How are we on food?” checked Anilithion.


    “Not good, we are going to have to start hunting more. The loaf is gone, and we have been out of fruit and meat for days.”


    “We should go hunting tonight.”


    “That’s not a bad idea,” reflected Mitakahn, “I’ve actually got some spare energy.”


    The two cousins rounded up their gear. Anilithion equipped his quiver filled with arrows and picked up his bow. Mitakahn securely tucked his father’s hunting knife into his belt and took his sword just in case. The two warrior princes were ready to hunt. They walked from their camp trying to find a good spot to post.


    “What’re the odds?” retorted Mitakahn as they came upon a single tree standing in a surrounding field of tall grass. They helped each other up the tallwood tree and sat on its thick branches. Now all they had to do was wait for something to come their way.


    This was the kind of thing that could take all night. Sometimes the hunt was really just the luck of the wild. They made sure they were upwind. That way their scent would not deter any potential prey. Out of sight and out of smell were good starts, but they were in a foreign land and were not familiar with the migration patterns of the wildlife in the meadows east of the lion kingdom.


    Who knew how far they had to get away from the road before they could find evidence of wild animals that they could hunt? Mitakahn could not help but wish he had already met up with Excelsior. Not only was this prime wanderer territory, but even if they were both out of their comfort zones if they were on the fringe of society Excelsior would still be able to track game.


    The academy taught Mitakahn to hunt anywhere, but it could not give him the tracking trait inherent to every member of the canine kingdom. They didn’t have anything to bait with, so their only tool was time. Hopefully, over the course of the night, an oblivious animal will cross their path. Mitakahn waited for something not too big to take down and not too quick to get away, no easy feat. The odds of them finding something with the right prerequisites on their first attempt at hunting was highly unlikely. They would probably end up spending most of the night talking softly as to not scare off any potential prey, and then giving up and falling asleep until morning.


    Luckily for Mitakahn, his cousin was one of the best entertainers he knew. Anilithion always had something to talk about and often made Mitakahn laugh. Right now, the topic was how his younger brother Mortikahn would always reach for the hearth-fire as a baby, no matter how many times their father Anilithyìstad would yell at him. Anilithion learned early that he would have to look out for his younger brother and make sure he didn’t play with fire.


    As they got older the meaning behind the phrase playing with fire became different things, these days, more often than not it meant courting women. That was the moral of Anilithion’s quiet conversation. Girls are dangerous and his brother had a generous appetite. They managed to keep their voices low, aside from when Anilithion got worked up. Anilithion talked about his brother a lot. Mitakahn could tell that they were closer than he was with Axion. It didn’t bother him much because he knew it was mostly due to the age difference. Mitakahn’s parents waited far longer to have their second born than Anilithyìstad and his wife Ninabi did.


    They spent more time talking about Beach and Spike, a popular ball game from the Shorelands. Mitakahn spent plenty of time at Metuchen to develop a love for the game. He always fancied himself a competent spiker. Anilithion played the beacher position. The difference being the spiker scored all of the points. Mitakahn was only in it for the glory. A beacher had to keep the spikers from gaining ground and they were the backbone of the team.


    Beach and Spike was one of the harder MagnaThoran sports to learn because it was the only ball game played on horseback. There were no sports local to the lion kingdom, but there were several local Carrier champions, a big city stadium game played professionally in Crucifire Plains. The lion kingdom held true to the old ways. They participated in tournaments for jousting, archery, and dueling. It used to be fights to the death, but as society modernized the rules became much more…family friendly. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    Anilithion was obsessed with Beach and Spike, but with Carrier he was very particular about who he rooted for. Mitakahn saw a lot of his father in him when Anilithion talked about sports. Anilithion lived in the moment and hung on every last word. Mitakahn always had a harder time focusing, his mind juggled several different perspectives. For example, his peripheral awareness enabled him to spot movement out in the wild night while Anilithion was talking.


    “There!”


    “What?”


    “I see something,” pointed out Mitakahn.


    Anilithion struggled to see what Mitakahn was looking at. Some distance away, on the top of a ridge, the grass parted.


    “Mitakahn, I still don’t-”


    “Sshhh!” quieted Mitakahn.


    Anilithion hurriedly fumbled his bow as he tried to get an arrow out of his quiver. His bow slipped out of his hands and Anilithion instinctively lunged for it. “Mitakahn!” he screamed as he, himself, slipped out of the tree.


    Mitakahn snatched Anilithion’s hand before he fell to the ground. Mitakahn shifted his weight to support Anilithion, now dangling from his hand. Mitakahn looked up and noticed the parting grass picking up pace and getting closer. Whatever it was… it sprinted right for them. It must have heard them in the tree.


    “Quickly, cousin, quickly!” hurried Anilithion as Mitakahn tried to lift him back up to the branch.


    Out from the grass came a vanagoji charging with fierce boney horns. Mitakahn put all his strength in one pull and lifted his cousin up just in time to miss the vanagoji’s charging head-butt. It hit the tree and shook their grips loose, making Anilithion fall to the floor.


    The disoriented vanagoji did not notice Anilithion on the ground. Mitakahn laid there motionless. He did not know what to do. Anilithion hid on the ground, and took refuge in his cloak, which covered him from head to toe. The fat boneheaded beast sneezed and exploded. Or that is what it looked like to Mitakahn. Anilithion heard the explosion and tried his best not to squirm or call out in fear of being burned alive.


    In reality, its purple skin briefly ignited with flames during the sneeze, a weird organic chemical reaction of the beast when subject to exhaustion and sudden massive head trauma. The vanagoji caught its breath and resumed its siege on the tree. Mitakahn looked down at the aggressive beast. The vanagoji was twenty-five percent bone and seventy-five percent blubber, with a fat tail and four stumpy legs. Most of the bone was on its head save for brief spots leading down its spine. He could not see Anilithion anymore. As the tree trembled Mitakahn clung on and screamed out for his cousin.


    Little did he know that Anilithion was hiding on the floor right below Mitakahn. The cloak protected him. Now he blended in perfectly with the floor. Time after time, the vanagoji narrowly avoided stomping on Anilithion and never once noticed him. As the beast once again shook his head to gain his orientation back, Anilithion poked out his hand and waved to his cousin to reveal his position. Mitakahn saw him and registered yet another unique property of the cloak.


    “Anilithion!”


    “Hold on!” he yelled from the floor as he ducked under the cover of the cloak again in anticipation of another vanagoji sneeze. The ground exploded and then they continued.


    “I’m going to drop my hunting knife right beside you the next time the beast rams the tree!” informed Mitakahn.


    And sure enough, after the boneheaded beast hit the tree, it once again stumbled around, looking like it had gotten into a batch of hard cider. Mitakahn dropped the knife and Anilithion swiped it underneath the cloak without being seen.


    Kaboom!


    Anilithion took a deep breath. If the vanagoji came around for another charge, he knew its course would bring it directly over him. When the vanagoji crossed over him, he lifted himself up on his hands and knees, bumping into its purple belly, and threw the beast off balance. It tripped onto its side. Mitakahn swung himself down from the branch and jumped onto it, pinning it down. Anilithion slit the vanagoji’s throat without a moment’s hesitation. It writhed in pain for a minute or two and finally fell limp.


    “Gods! The smell!”


    They choked on the sulfuric smell of the vanagoji’s blood. Mitakahn went to pick up the beast, but Anilithion stopped him. “It was my kill,” he excitedly stated, “Allow me to carry it back to camp.”


    “As you wish...”


    They returned to camp victorious to find everything exactly how they left it. Mitakahn took a big risk ignoring the fact that thieves could strike at any moment. This harsh truth still kept him awake at night. It is a good thing he was ready for any future conflict, thanks to Zora. They cooked the entire beast over the fire, except for the head that Anilithion decapitated while he cleaned it. Anilithion kept the horns as a memento of his accomplishment.


    “You are obtaining treasures left and right,” complimented Mitakahn.


    That instantly sparked another conversation about the cloak and its powerful abilities. They thought about what else it could do. Both decided to separately think about experiments they could perform to uncover its entire arsenal of properties, as they both retired to bed after quite an eventful day.