Authors Note:
Zeke and Satine are aprrox 45 years old. Ziopons age diff. than humans, but they are still technically adults. Please keep this in mind for the remainder of the story.
Also this chapter has no sexual scenes. Sorry, but I'm telling a story in this series.
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I finished off the squirrel I had caught, licking my bloody fingers clean. It had been nice and plump, but was also hard to catch. I spent half an hour chasing it through trees, nearly getting myself killed in the process. In the end, the chase was worth it. I felt invigorated, like I could run twenty miles.
I never realized I had been starving. Perks of swearing to not feed on humans, I guess.
Satine had left early in the evening, once the sun was low enough, leaving me a note to explain she was going hunting herself, and would probably be gone all day. I sighed after reading it, realizing that thanks to her, I was now officially a member of the village.
I wiped my mouth, then buried the bones of the squirrel. I muttered a silent prayer to Mother Nature (the Goddess Ziopons worship), thanking her for the meal. Then I stood and headed back home.
I looked into the sky, thinking about some of the human books I had read. A long time ago, a Ziopon named Tyro attacked and slaughtered a village. He fed on a few of his victims, then he was hunted by his own kind, being killed a few years later. This incident sparked human's hatred of our kind, as they assumed we were all the same as Tyro. It didn't help that they had a tendency to hate and fight anything they feared or didn't understand. The attack was more of an excuse to hunt us down.
So now our kind hides in secluded forests far from human civilization. There were some towns that didn't mind Ziopons, as long as they refrained from feeding in said town. But even then, we weren't safe from Hunters.
I reached the town square before I realized it, sighing once more. I checked the board by Master Leroy's place for any jobs that were available. However, any that had been posted had already been taken. I growled, then turned back to my house.
Another day of training, I guess.
I quickly headed into my house and grabbed a pair of leather gloves, which I used to keep a good grip on Lightblade. Also I just liked wearing them. Once I got them on I summoned my weapon and slid it behind me, into my belt.
Lightblade was a weapon my mother had left with Master Rahool, before she up and left me alone. I received it when I turned 16. The blade was able to cut through almost anything. If I stabbed someone, I could kill them, but only if that was my intention. It could also simply inflict searing pain without physically damaging the person I stabbed. Or, it simply did nothing. No one knew why it worked that way. Nor did anyone know why only I could wield it. Anyone else would get severely burned.
I spun my weapon in my hand as I headed to the training grounds. I saw a few younger Ziopons like myself were also there, all practicing attacks specifically designed to wound an opponent so we could escape the conflict.
Master Rahool was one of several Town Masters who wanted to live with humans in harmony. He proposed that to do so we needed to show we were not violent. Everyone in the village had sworn to never harm or kill a human without proper reason, nor were we to feed on a human's flesh, bone or blood unless we were offered by a human with proper authority. We could also freely attack or kill any humans who were trying to harm or kill another human, as long as that human was the one in the wrong.
Personally, I didn't like the smell of human blood. It was always rotten smelling, like fermented fish dipped in cat urine. Very rarely did human blood smell pleasant. I preferred the smell and taste of animal blood, such as squirrels or young doe.
