Skelter

[Skelter]

Young Skelter the Furball, sat with the others in her litter. They were being weened it seemed, and a fresh, juicy arm from a captive human was tossed onto the floor by their mother. Skelter was the only girl in the litter, and didn't really seem to realize what being a girl entailed. She fought vigorously for the arm, punching and biting her brothers with zeal. And winning. Her mother had birthed many litters and usually the girls were separated from the boys at weening, or, being smaller and weaker, they tended to starve. True, Skelter was still smaller than her brothers, but there was no danger of that one starving. The breeder trolloc was quite happy that she didn't have to bother with feeding her apart from the others, but the girl was something of a freak...

Generations ago...

Aginor stepped out of the gateway and onto a platform above the breeding pits and frowned down on the mess below. Oh, there she was, trouble if he'd ever seen it. They were supposed to breed and do little else. It generally worked. Generally.

She was not the first, only the most recent. As far as he could tell, they certainly could breed. They just didn't seem to have any desire to. He had thought that since they tended to try to kill any male trolloc that tried it, and succeeded more often than not, they would have been bred out by now. They seemed to be occuring more frequently instead. He hated being wrong.

But something had to be done with her. Leaving her with the breeders did not seem to be working at all. Over a dozen undeformed, trainable male trollocs had died to her already, and he was really only just now getting a stable population. Such losses were intolerable. Still, it seemed a pity to waste such a beast... she was, without a doubt, exactly what he had set out to create... except, of course, that she was not a he. Well, it seemed the thing to do was to stick her, and the others like her, somewhere else, and see what happened. If they formed a warrior society, like the males did, that would work. And if they killed each other off, that would work too. They just needed to be out of his breeding pits...

And so...

The eyeless plucked the little furball known as Skelter up by the scruff of her neck. She squirmed and writhed, looking lustily down at the nice, juicy arm...

And the fade hissed, 'This one was born an Ahf'frait, but she belongs to a different tribe.' And he walked out, the squirming whelp dangling from his clenched fist. As he exited the breeding pits he tossed her down on the rotting earth of the Blight and hissed, 'Pay attention.' Her ears pricked up and he hissed, 'If you want to live, and you want to fight, you must find others like you. Now go. Serve the Great Lord, or perish trying.'