Chapter 1
There are places in these Center Worlds where the wild grows so deep it forgets the names given to it.
And there are creatures in those places that do not run from the living, because they were never meant to.
This is the story of one such creature. And the Hablis who thought they could hunt it.
Dedicated to Inkitt Group Moderator LMCowan, who hinted for me to write this story.
The rain had been falling for so long it felt like the sky was trying to drown the land. This far from the Capitol it was barren. Except for the weather. A hundred kims from the center of the Confederacy Government, well outside the weather towers that ensured the region always had clear sun-kissed skies, it rained. When it wasn’t raining, it was threatening to.
Vigo Calder sat behind his battered desk, bac stick burning low, watching the neon outside flicker like a dying star. He’d been in this line of work long enough to know that the worst clients always arrived on nights like this. Nothing wrong with that. A client was a client. He got paid, they always paid up front. The services he offered, even this close to the Capitol, were far below the legal barrier.
The door opened without a knock.
The Clansman didn’t just walk into Calder’s office, he arrived, the way a storm arrives.
He carried himself like a man born into violence, shaped by it, proud of it.
Calder recognized the posture immediately.
He’d seen it in war.
The man before him, His Clan – Michelab - known across the Confederacy.
A lineage of fighters, mercenaries, and trophy hunters who believed the world existed to test them.
They trained from childhood to kill with blade, bullet, or bare hands.
“I hear you’re the man who can find me a clustercat,” Clansman Michelab said.
Vigo didn’t move. “Some things out there don’t want to be found.”
The Clansman smirked. “Everything wants something.”
Vigo’s eyes narrowed. He’d heard that line before - from men who didn’t live long enough to regret it. He rummaged in his desk and pulled out a standard employment contract, with all the legal waivers and riders. The price was front and foremost, along with the prize.
He slid it across the desk. The other man looked at it.
“Pretty steep price for a cat.”
“One hundred Regals. Two go out, two come back. This is not a negotiation. This is a risky endeavour, even without the issues of Palace security.”
The Michelab clansman signed without reading beyond the first paragraph. He tossed a bag full of coin onto the desk. Vigo took it without opening it. There was no need for deceit. A price paid for a service rendered.
And somewhere far from the rain-sodden shack, something old and patient stirred.
The rain forest greeted them with a wall of heat and rot. Vigo Calder led the way, blade slicing through vines that hung like the veins of the earth. The Clansman followed, muttering about the mud sucking at his boots. He had never offered a first name, and Calder didn’t care enough to wonder.
Calder moved through the rain forest like a man who’d learned to trust silence.
The military had taught him that, silence was a language, and the world spoke it fluently.
The Clansman, by contrast, stomped through the mud like he expected the forest to get out of his way. For a military Clansman he had no idea about discretion. Might made right. Then again, Michelab troops used power armor, laser lance weapons, pocket fusion grenades. Their primary tactic was to land, destroy the opposition, and take over the target. Nothing subtle in their version of war.
“You hear that?” Calder asked.
“Hear what?”
“Exactly.”
The forest had gone still.
No insects.
No birds.
No breath of wind.
Calder felt the hairs on his arms rise.
He’d felt this once before - in a desert warzone, moments before an ambush.
The air had thickened, as if holding its breath.
But this wasn’t men waiting to kill.
This was something older.
Something that didn’t need to hide.
“You sure this thing is real?” The Clansman grumbled. He had taken off his jacket a while ago, it was now stuffed on top of his carry pack. Both of them had one. It contained a few day’s worth of supplies, tools to make a rough camp and shelter. More than enough to live for a few days in the wilds of one of the central Confederacy worlds.
They found the first tracks an hour later—massive pawprints sunk deep into the mud. The Clansman crouched beside them, eyes shining.
“Beautiful,” he whispered.
Calder felt something else entirely. The prints were fresh. But more than that, they were wrong. The spacing didn’t match the stride. The depth didn’t match the weight.
It was as if the creature had stepped into the world only long enough to leave the prints, then stepped out again.
A memory flickered in his mind ...
A poacher he once guided, screaming that the cat had appeared behind him without sound, without warning, without moving.
One moment it wasn’t there, the next it was.
Calder had believed him, because he’d seen it too.
Night fell like a curtain. They made camp beneath a thin cover that did little to keep the rain out. They had eaten a small meal from their rations, now they sat back, watching the deep night wash over them. It would only last a few more hours, then the first of the three suns would rise, washing the land in light for the next eighteen hours. Rather than sleep, the Clansman had popped a stim, and was cleaning his hunting lance. Calder smoked another bac stick, and listened.
Something moved beyond the glow of the heatlight - slow, deliberate.
The Clansman froze. “What was that?”
Calder didn’t answer. He was listening to the rhythm of the steps, the way they paused, shifted, resumed.
“It’s tracking us,” he said.
A panicked shot into the dark. The muzzle flash lit the trees for a heartbeat—just long enough to see nothing at all.
But Calder felt it.
A pressure in the air, a presence.
Like a thought brushing against his own.
The cat wasn’t just watching.
It was reading them; not any words, not searching memories. No, it was looking for their intent.
A hunter raises a rifle - the cat knows before the muscles tense.
A man decides to run - the cat is already waiting where he’ll end up.
Calder had felt that presence once before, years ago, when he’d been foolish enough to track the creature alone. He’d felt his own fear reflected back at him, tasted by something that understood it better than he did.
He never made that mistake again.
Vigo was not a handler back then. He was just a man trying to outrun the military ghosts that followed him home. He took guiding jobs because they kept him moving. Because silence was easier to bear when it came from the forest instead of his own head.
One of his first clients was a Frontier poacher named Rigg. A loud man, a cruel man. The kind of man who believed the world owed him its secrets.
Rigg wanted a rare cat rumored to roam the high ridges. A big one, Grey and white striped. Amber eyes. A special cat, a Confederacy Clustercat.
Calder didn’t believe the stories. Not yet. There were no wild clustercats. They all lived in the palace. In the animal sanctuaries and fighting pits. But he needed the money.
So he led Rigg through the jungle and into the mountains.
The deeper they went, the quieter the world became. Calder noticed it first, the way the birds stopped calling, the way the wind held its breath, the way the trees seemed to lean inward, listening.
Rigg didn’t notice anything, or didn’t care. He stomped through the bush like he owned it.
“Relax, soldier,” Rigg had said. “Nothing out here but us.”
Calder didn’t correct him. There was something else out there. He could feel it. A pressure in the air.
A presence, like a thought brushing against his own. This was older than the enemy waiting in ambush.
This was much older, ancient almost, and it was patient.
They found tracks at dusk.
Massive pawprints; Too deep, too wide, too far apart.
Rigg grinned. “Jackpot.”
Calder crouched beside the prints, examining them. Something was wrong.
The spacing didn’t match the stride, and the depth didn’t match the weight.
Rigg didn’t care, he followed the tracks like a man chasing a payday.
Calder followed because he didn’t want to leave Rigg alone, not out here. Not with whatever was watching them.
They had reached a clearing as the final sun dipped below the horizon, leaving just the twin moons to light their way. Moonlight spilled across the rocks.
And then, The cat was there. Not approaching. Not emerging - Just there.
As if it had stepped out of a fold in the air. A ripple of space bent behind it, fading like heat off asphalt.
Calder froze.
Rigg didn’t.
He raised his lance.
The cat didn’t move, Didn’t blink, Didn’t even breathe.
It simply watched.
Calder felt something then - a pressure in his mind, like a hand brushing against the surface of his thoughts.
Not reading words - Not searching memories - Just intent.
Rigg’s intent was violence. Calder’s was fear.
The cat tasted both.
Rigg fired.
The beam never reached its target. The cat wasn’t there anymore.
It didn’t dodge, It didn’t leap, It simply wasn’t.
A heartbeat later, it was behind Rigg.
Rigg didn’t even have time to scream.
Calder didn’t run. He didn’t raise his weapon, he barely remembered to breathe.
The cat stood over Rigg’s body, enormous, almost twice the mass of the fallen Hablis. silent as a shadow. Grey and white fur blending and standing out, as if it’s body didn’t know whether to conceal or reveal it.
Then it turned to Calder. Its eyes reflected moonlight even though the moon was behind it.
Calder felt the pressure again; the brush of thought, the tasting of intent.
He didn’t think of fighting, he didn’t think of running, he thought of balance.
Of the forest, of the silence, of the way Rigg had stomped through the world like it belonged to him and now it was again silent.
The cat stepped closer. Massive paws touching the ground but belying it’s weight, it had infinite grace, this feline. It stared at him, as if it was measuring his very soul.
Calder lowered his gaze—not in fear, but in respect.
A long moment passed.
Then the cat slipped sideways, a shimmer in the air, a bending of space, and vanished.
Calder exhaled, he understood.
The cat wasn’t just a predator. It was a correction.
A force that removed what didn’t belong.
Calder, what was he? Vigo Calder was one of the few who had passed whatever test it gave him.
