Carne whistled a merry tune as he watched numbers on the bidding board go up. This had been a difficult hunt. Tawny’s Hissy had sent him off with the promise of a rare albino Vestrian shark. He had indeed found his shark as promised but had happened upon a Icarus and Siren as well. He had a strong feeling that had Hissy known they were there she would have sent him somewhere else. Carne couldn’t really blame her. He may have been hunting since he was old enough to walk, but he preferred to hunt the non-mana beasts. It was strange to find an Icarus and Siren in such close proximity. They had been sharing the same small spring. The siren even had an egg in her nest. Usually the bird winged Icarus, whose feathers tend to shine like jewels and can summon winds like to live in mountainous areas and stay in the higher elevations. The sirens on the other hand have to live near a body of water. They can walk on the land but cannot live outside the water for more than a few days at a time. In the water their true forms are revealed. They have glittering scales and tails like a fish and have voices that can mesmerize the unwary. Like all creatures with mana, a substance in the body that allows them to use strange inexplicable abilities that most of the known universe calls magic they are both on the hunter’s payday list. People will pay a lot of money for the feathers and bones of an Icarus and for the scales and voicebox of a siren. Mana that can be extracted from the body is sold at an insane price for it allows species without mana to use magic.
Carne preferred live captures. No matter how many times his father and grandfather berate him for not getting the most out of his hunts, he still insists on live captures. He has good solid reasons for his stubborn refusal to change his methods. Tawny’s Hissy is the one who gives him most of his good leads, which is why unlike most hunters he is always in steady business and as soon as he starts to kill what he caught he has no doubt that Hissy would stop sharing the information. Hissy already hated him with a passion and has more than once sent him on a lead that has almost gotten him killed. The look of disappointment that crosses her face every time she sees him alive makes it so he treats each and every lead with a good dose of caution. Some people have advised him to find another informant, but Carne wouldn’t. What most people didn’t realize was that Tawny was one of the few people who had successfully tamed a Moonstone dragon. Not an easy feat, one that requires perseverance and control over the dragon’s greatest treasure. There could be no better informant than a Moonstone dragon. The tall thin ice dragons are also gifted with psychic abilities. Some can read the minds of the creatures around them, some can see the past and parts of the future. Hissy is a powerful Moonstone who can summon visions of the past and future. The Moonstone already hated helping him as it was, if he killed his prey, especially another mana creature then not even Tawny’s hold on the dragon could get her to help him again.
Looking over at the cages that held his prizes he frowned. This had been a very strange hunt. One that had left a bad taste in his mouth. Instead of flying away on his wind while they were busy with the siren the Icarus had attacked them as soon as they got close to the siren and her nest. It was almost like he was protecting them or something. The Icarus probably would have escaped had it not done that, but it had caused wind gale after wind gale while screeching at the siren who had grabbed her egg and made a run for it. They had brought the Icarus down with heavy metal netting and had been able to easily outrun the siren on land. Specialized ear plugs made for hunting a siren were in the tool kit of every serious hunter. More than worth the small fortune they cost. Now the Icarus’s cage and the siren’s tank were seated next to another. The sight made Carne’s breath catch. The Icarus had his arm and hand outstretched through the bars of his cage, cooing softly. The siren had one arm around her egg, while her other hand and arm were pushed as far as she could through the grating at the top of her tank. Their fingertips could just brush each other. The Icarus was crying as he stared at the siren who was mouthing something, little bubbles moving around her head as she spoke silently. The numbers were still climbing for his albino shark, these two had yet to go up for auction. Biting his lip Carne flipped through the private pre-auction offers he came across one from a research and preservation group. It had heard the story of how the two were caught and were interested in buying the pair and the egg so they can keep the two together and study the strange interspecies relationship they seem to share. Carne looked at the numbers and winced. The offer was not a great one, he would get so much more if he sold them apart in auction. He looked at them again, the way that they reached out to another as if it was the last time they would see each other and were trying to memorize the other. He knew that he was giving them emotions and motives that weren’t there but… with a sigh Carne accepted the offer. It would be for the betterment of science and he could chalk it up as a charity deduction he decided. Turning away from the disturbing scene he went to find the auctioneer to let him know that the others had been sold and needed to be removed from the catalog.
Another bonus of only doing live captures was that Carne was able to use the legitimate auction houses and did not need fuss about the black market and all the trouble the “sell to me or die” crowd there brings. The rare times that he was roped into selling his father’s merchandise in the black market auction houses has had more than one deal made at gunpoint and in one very memorable occasion in a standoff between three different groups who all wanted the mana that his father had sent him there to sell. It was one of the reasons why he refused to harvest and sell the stuff. Sure one payload of mana would be enough to let him live rich for a whole year, but it wasn’t worth the risk and hassel. Mana had to be extracted from a living creature, and no matter how many years it has been since he had done it he could still hear the screams. Nothing was worth hearing that sound in his dreams, he had decided that when he was twelve and his father had made him help extract mana from a small skulk of kitsune. There had been seven of them, four adults and three children all living in a small network of tunnels on Yedera. The adults had each produced three vials of mana and children a vial and a half. The money made from selling their tails had put Carne through flight and engineering school, important things for a hunter who wants to lead his own party. The money from the mana had bought the family three top line ships to replace the old ship and containment unit that they had been using until then. One of those ships had been gifted to him on his graduation from school. Sighing as he made his way back onto the sleek black transporter. Unlike the commercial transports that carried people from planet to planet this was a fast machine made to carry goods and people from place to place at high speeds. Much more expensive and not as large, but very comfortable and perfect speed and cargo space for a hunter. Their cargo doesn’t usually take up too much space on a ship. Once he had double checked to make sure that the payment had gone into his and his crew’s accounts he made the call to return to the ship. By morning he knew his crew would be back and ready for take off. Carne only traveled with a small party, no more than four of them. It wasn’t easy to find all that many hunters who are willing to do live captures only and no mana retrieval. Most hunters are in the business of mana retrieval after all and even those who prefer live captures will repeatedly harvest mana until they can sell their haul at auction. Carne had been lucky that Hissy had told him where to find some people that would do no mana work in exchange for the unspoken promise that he would not kill those he caught. The crew had been more than willing to forgo the payload from a kill and mana sell when they heard that it would get them leads from a Moonstone dragon.
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