The Breed

Introduction:

It is said that: In the Iliad, the river Styx is the only river of the underworld; born from such a river came Kafus, the Dalon – fierce hunter and guardian of the underworld, half man – half-ancient beast. A shape-shifter that took on human form by day and hunter by night.  He was the last of its kind.  It lay sleeping for over a dozen centuries; unknown to humans and the ones that began to hunt its kind.  Having evolved and mutated throughout the ages gave it the distinct ability to adapt to its surrounding, to change at will and go undetected for more than a three hundred millennium.  During its time, its kind was the hunter – the dominant species and they continued to reclaim that title over the years.  Kafus, whose ancestry traveled on all fours, resembled that of the ancient Greek monsters Ladon and Cerebus – serpentine land dwellers that spent an eternity guarding the underworld.

Kafus was different.  He had evolved well beyond his kind and had the ability to change features at will without further aid of evolution for over seven centuries.  He was able to blend with any species over the years, resembling those that feared him.  He was the master of his realm and a superior hunter.

For centuries, those weaker than itself were forced into servitude; servants to the hunters of the underworld and, when the time came for breeding of the species, it took what was needed.  Shelled in its humanistic form, many would blend in well with the “earth dwellers”, attack and rape the women of the villages above ground on the night of the red moon in an effort to procreate the species that was fast becoming extinct.  The Dalon would seek out those at the ripest age to carry their offspring and dwell within the underworld to care for the new and serve as needed.  The Harvest Moon comes between the ninth and tenth full moon, allowing the breeding rituals to last for three days like clockwork.  Kafus, unfortunately, had become instinctively hungry for human companionship.

It is forbidden for Dalon to breed with Dalon, as the consequences were much too dire.  A curse brought on by a sorcerer eons before had forced them to find ways of existing beyond their realm before their kind became extinct.  While breeding with other species similar in nature and skeletal structuring proved to be an improvement, they found it a more viable alternative to have offspring from human spawn in order to evolve at an accelerated level and to blend with other species.  Those that did not breed from humans would be damned and destroyed.  It would create a rift in the underworld and cause for the deformity of the Dalon.  Hideous creatures cast out by their own species; decaying flesh and maliciously deformed on the brink of a rotting corpse if you will.  Many would die early on after creation, while others were destroyed shortly after. 

One night, during the time of the red moon, hunters from another land caught wind of their treacherous doings and came in search of the Dalon hoping to destroy the foul breeders.  The battle waged for more than a year until there was nothing left of the land and cobblestone dwellings that once stood above the ground had been reduced to ash and rubble, and what seems to be the sole remaining Dalon, Kafus, was forced to find solitude below the earth and lay in slumber until it was time to awaken – and hunt again.