Twelve minutes after impact, the forest responded.

  Movement registered at the treeline, subtle at first, then increasingly overt. Aethernus Vhal’s damaged autosenses picked up heat signatures emerging from multiple vectors. Their approach patterns were not random. They were predatory by instinct instead of the general curiosity he would expect from a haven world.

  The residual energy clinging to him, the same unnatural signature that had ridden the wormhole and now distorted light around his form, was agitating the local fauna.

  Territory had been challenged and anomalous presence had arrived. Instincts drove them to converge and remove it.

  Seventeen signatures at first.

  Then twenty-three.

  Then thirty-five, as more answered an unspoken summons.

  He stood still at the crater’s lip.

  One by one, threats emerged from the trees.

  They weren't uniform. Morphologies varied significantly, suggesting either a hyper-competitive evolutionary environment or extensive genetic manipulation.

  Some moved on six legs, bodies low and wide, covered in chitinous plates that resembled natural armor. Others were taller quadrupeds, built for power and speed, with thick limbs, elongated necks, and heads crowned with compound eyes and serrated mandibles. A third category slid and coiled through undergrowth, segmented, sinuous forms reminiscent of Tallarn sandworms, scaled down but no less predatory.

  His assessment began automatically.

  Each approaching predator received a provisional threat designation. He arranged them into target tiers and mapped an optimal kill order all within seconds.

  Aethernus Vhal had no armour worth naming.

  No conventional weapons.

  He would use what remained, his transhuman physiology and the accumulated experience of centuries of war.

  The first to commit was among the smallest. A four-legged hunter, roughly a metre at the shoulder, spines flaring along its back as it charged. It closed twenty metres in a single leap, trajectory arcing toward his upper torso. It opened a maw filled with serrated teeth meant for tearing flesh.

  Aethernus Vhal stepped aside with precise timing, reading its vector as easily as a ballistic path.

  His open hand struck its exposed throat.

  The blow broke its spine in three locations and crushed the windpipe. The creature hit the ground at his feet, limbs twitching, life already gone.

  The kill shifted the pack dynamic. Coordinated aggression followed right after.

  Six of the chitinous hexapods surged forward in a staggered line, while three of the larger quadrupeds began to circle, seeking flanking angles. The segmented creatures held back, maintaining range like opportunistic scavengers, or patient ambushers.

  He advanced into the hexapods’ charge.

  Mandibles clicked and snapped as they closed, viscous fluid dripping from their mouthparts. Droplets hit the still-hot crater floor and sizzled.

  He updated the threat profile and adapted his plan.

  The first hexapod reached him, mandibles yawning wide.

  He seized its head, fingers biting through chitin until they found the softer tissues beneath. A single violent wrench tore the head free.

  Ichor sprayed outward, splattering two of its packmates and checking their advance for a heartbeat.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Aethernus Vhal used the severed head like a weapon.

  The still-spasming mandibles snapped reflexively as he swung it into another charging hexapod. The impact drove the jagged mouthparts into its carapace, impaling it mid-leap. The creature dropped, thrashing. The remaining hexapods swarmed. One latched onto his leg. Its mandibles scraped at his skin, failing to breach it but scoring superficial damage.

  He reached down, clamped a hand around its midsection, and lifted.

  The struggling hexapod became a flail.

  He drove its body into two of its kin, the blows cracking armour and crushing internal structures. Both dropped to the ground, spasming.

  Aethernus Vhal reevaluated as the circling quadrupeds pressed closer.

  The fallen hexapod at his feet presented a solution. Its carapace glinted with metallic inclusions, suggesting an exoskeleton reinforced by naturally occurring alloys.

  He drove his fist into its thorax and tore free a section of plating roughly forty centimetres long, shaped enough to serve as a crude blade. The edge lacked the refinement of a combat knife but remained capable of cutting flesh and severing tendons.

  The first quadruped reached him with jaws opening to reveal four rows of serrated teeth.

  He stepped into its charge and thrust the improvised blade upward, driving it through the soft palate and into the braincase. Momentum carried the corpse forward; he pivoted aside, letting it collapse past him. The second quadruped adjusted its approach, circling more cautiously after witnessing its packmate’s death. Movement at the treeline signalled escalation as larger forms emerged.

  Apex predators.

  Nearly four metres tall, moving on powerful limbs. Their forearms ended in scythe-like claws. Sensory pits dotted their skulls, heat-seekers, likely. They moved with a fluidity that belied their mass, closing distance with alarming efficiency. Strange effects surrounded them. Fire, cold and freeze, even one that shot bullets of stone.

  Aethernus Vhal recalculated and readjusted his battleplan.

  Immediate threats had been disrupted. The arrival of the larger predators altered priority. He required superior tools.

  The dead quadruped provided them.

  He plunged his hand into its chest cavity, fingers locking on sternum and ribs.

  With one decisive heave, he tore out the entire ribcage, snapping connective tissue and cartilage.

  He assessed components.

  The largest rib, curved and nearly a metre long, would function as a spear. Three shorter ribs could be balanced as thrown projectiles. The sternum, dense and heavy, would serve as a bludgeon.

  Weaponisation of the carcass: 4.3 seconds.

  The first apex predator reached the edge of the clearing and paused to study him.

  He did not wait for them to fire their strange abilities.

  The smallest rib left his hand like a mass-reactive round. It crossed the gap in an instant and buried itself in one of the creature’s sensory pits.

  It screamed, volume peaking at approximately 126 decibels on his degraded helm senses, and recoiled.

  The opening was sufficient.

  He closed the distance in three bounding strides and drove the makeshift spear through its throat, angling up into the brain. The predator convulsed as its nervous system failed, then collapsed.

  The remaining two attacked from opposite sides.

  He pivoted toward the closest and brought the sternum down across its knee joint as he dodges spikes of ice that tore the forest up past him. Bone and cartilage shattered. The limb buckled, dropping the creature to the ground. Blasts of flame washed over his body ineffective as he kept moving.

  Aethernus Vhal turned without breaking motion and hand hurled a second rib-spear at the third. The projectile struck high, punching through neck and shoulder. A major vessel ruptured, spraying dark fluid. He charged the rest. The wounded predators withdrew, dragging damaged limbs as they limped back toward the treeline.

  Their retreat triggered a cascade.

  The lesser hunters broke contact, scattering into the forest.

  Only the segmented creatures remained. They coiled at the periphery, reassessing him. The largest of them moved.

  Seven metres of muscle and armour, its head segment bristling with crystalline protrusions. It launched forward in a blur, the ground between them devoured under its momentum. He could feel strange energies that made it vanish for a brief second and reappeared closer.

  He matched its charge.

  He held a length of bone taken in a brief lull: a femur from one of the slain quadrupeds, repurposed as a final weapon.

  Aethernus Vhal drove the bone upward into the identified point as the creature reared to strike.

  The crystalline structures shattered under the force of his strike. Shards exploded outward in a lethal cloud. Several penetrated his flesh and embedded in muscle and dermis. He logged the injuries as minor, puncture wounds were manageable as long as they did not damage organs. The serpent thrashed violently, segments whipping with enough force to break unarmoured bone. He maintained his grip on the improvised weapon and forced it deeper, severing critical neural pathways.

  The convulsions slowed. Then finally ceased.

  Aethernus Vhal straightened.

  Around him lay the evidence of the engagement, broken bodies of native predators in various states of ruin. Fluids in multiple colours soaked into scorched soil. Bone and chitin fragments littered the crater and its rim.

  His makeshift weapons dripped of lifeblood.

  His own injuries, cuts, punctures, contusions, registered as moderate and already trending toward resolution under the influence of his augmentations and auxiliary organs.

  At the fringes of his perception, heat signatures receded, survivors withdrawing deeper into the forest.

  They had learned what he had known from the moment they appeared. This was not a contest and definitely not a hunt.

  This was natural life existing as the stories had once claimed was true of Ancient Earth.

  It was refreshing to not have to fight another death world.