The blur disappeared abruptly, and I stood in a meadow a third of a mile from the picnic table that I had recently shared with my son Ken. I reached out carefully with tendril senses, and felt the minds of animals around me. Birds on trees, deer in the grass, a pack of hungry wolves running from forest to meadow and back. There were no humans. There was something else, though: enormous energies I could not quite identify. I reached for the nearest one, and felt a slash of.. pain?... like a knife in my mind as a wave of mental static washed over me. In my surprise, I lost contact with the mind, but I continued to feel the energies.
I was lying on the ground, my son Ken standing over me, a look of horror frozen on his face.
"Dad," he said again, "Dad?" The mental connection was reestablished much later. Slowly, I noted my son's face, the feeling of intense shock and horror that had engulfed him. I blinked, and saw the scene again. He had stood over me; I saw that now. A group of men, perhaps fifteen in number, stood in a clump around the picnic table. I didn't see any food left there, but a Ketchu group-mind led by a human stood seconds away, and seemed to be gathering it. I watched as the men showed expressions of anger at the human action. It was as if they were all placed in one frame, and could not move, even if they wished to.
The fifteen men seemed to be wearing strange looking blue masks, with jagged, vertical slits for eyes, and a vertical scar from the bottom of the jaw to the top lip.
I couldn't ignore the patient, deliberate movements of the human group. They had already piled their own food on a pile. Atop that pile lay a body, the head lolling forward at the neck, the body facing the sky.
I felt a sudden blaze of hatred, and found it difficult to contain. Since when did humans join in on Ketchu group-minds? There was no jostling or pack-energy in the Ketchu: these men were poachers.
The sneering smile came to my lips before I could stop it. I was about to laugh as the thin man in the center of the Ketchu group-mind turned his back on the food, and easily strode into the gathering of poachers. He seemed to be a human, a brawny man with a square, dark beard. His eyes were hidden by thick, industrial goggles, but he wore a leather jacket, blue jeans, and work boots. (I later atoted that these were all signs of the Hunter sect. His blue face mask was lined with glittering gizmos and gadgets, from the flat one on his smooth face, to the bulky backpack on his back.)
Slowly, with a smooth motion, the man in the blue mask pulled out a shiny silver gun from his leather jacket, and pulled it to his shoulder.
Logic told me to reach my mind out for the man's, and I obeyed the thought without question. The man's name was Thomas, and he was a Hunter in the Lone Star Sect.
My connection was broken before Thomas had a chance to fire his gun. At that moment, I realized I was a target, and started to fall to the ground. I slapped my ears with a burning hand, and glanced sideways to see my son standing over me.
My son Ken had been carried away by the poachers.
The realization burst over me again, not as fiercely this time. Instead, it was gentle and steady, like the dropping of a heavy object into a still pool of water. It was in this instant that I fully realized the facts as I knew them: 1) I was no longer a father. 2) The world of the Ketchu was slipping away from my comprehension, a faster thing vanishing behind gray clouds. 3) My mind was sinking into a nightmare of darkness. 4) My son had been taken from me.
I sat up slowly, a rhythm to my actions; were they mine alone? I had no peace of mind to think of it.
There were now only twelve poachers left, and they stood staring at the dead humans lying in the grass. Thomas stood with his gun at his shoulder, and his eyes seemed to be gazing into a faraway place.
"I didn't want to do it," Thomas said to the other Ketchu, "but I had to.. to get them all." He was calm, no fear on his face, as the soft meadow air around him was filled with the sounds of hungry, snapping jaws. Thomas walked to the pile where the other humans had been killed, and stared at the pile with a blank expression. The poachers watched him, bold and strong, and stood strong against the smell of blood and death in the air. Their red and green masks stared at Thomas with jagged, dark slits for eyes.
"We didn't enjoy choosing the food," Thomas finally mentioned, his voice soft like velvet, "but we had to.. to get them all, and all of the food....." He motioned to the body, standing upright as if in a pose. And, I noted, they had not been buried. It made no sense, but I forced myself to ignore it.
"We were on lunch break," Thomas continued after a long silence, "when we saw the game crossing the meadow a few hundred yards away. All of us had our guns drawn in a second, and..." He stopped, and turned to stare at the dead poachers. "I promised myself I wouldn't shoot people like this... but they had taken our food!" Thomas had turned to the soft meadow, though there was nothing in the watery distance. His eyes were sad, but reminded of how broken he truly was.