Nommo [Predator One-shot]

A/N: So, this is a story I wrote this afternoon on a whim, after bingeing my way through Predator and Predator 2, as well as reading about various Malian peoples. The basic premise of the story is a look at how one pre-modern culture may have tried to counter the occasional Predator hunt in their land. In this instance, I am using the Dogon, a people who live in what is known nowadays as Mali, and this story is set in the 14th century.

Keep in note: there is a popularish crackpot theory regarding the Dogon and Ancient Aliens, based on some shady-as-fuck anthropological work done by a French dude in the 1940's. I am not endorsing such poppycock in the slightest, and am simply using a neat story idea. Likewise, I tried my hardest to actually research the Dogon and their beliefs, and as a result there may be some confusing elements. If you have questions, or would like to correct me, feel free.

Nommo​

When the Hunting Star comes into the sky, and men are made into trophies, I am needed. This is no certain thing; a generation can pass between the comings of the Star, for it does not behave like the other stars, the ones that the elders trace. It moves in the sky, and never takes the same path. Some in the village said that the Star meant nothing.

And yet, once men are found with their skulls removed or their skin flayed from the meat, these same nonbelievers are present for the ceremony as I am prepared for my task. They sing the ancient songs and move in a dance whose origin only the Hogon knows, their masks bobbing gently with each movement. They all wear masks. Masks of men, of spirits, of animals.

I, too, wear a mask, but it is not like the others. It is a facsimile of another mask, carved from wood instead of strange metal, and only others like me may wear it. To let others wear it would set free its nyama, and make it worthless.

The mask sits heavy upon my face as I kneel before the Hogon. The elder looks at me with glassy eyes as he repeats the chants I have been told since childhood, since I was born under his tutelage. He thanks me for what I am to do, and I thank him for his lessons, so that I may maintain harmony. My lessons are repeated in brief, and then the next part of the ceremony commences.

A large clay pot is set down between us, and the Hogon reaches inside, pulling out a handful of clay as red as the skin of the peoples who lived here before. He smears it over my skin with arthritic fingers, covering every inch of my skin. On such a hot day, the cool touch of the clay is refreshing, but that is not why I wear it.

It is one of the first lessons I was told. The Nommo is like the chameleon; when he is still, he cannot be seen unless he decides to be seen. But he, too, can only see the heat of living things; to wear clay is to become invisible to him. Only the unseen can hunt the unseen and live, says the Hogon.

Once the clay has settled upon my skin, I am given my weapons. The traditional forging is not used against the Nommo, for he seeks it when he hunts. There is no metal for me, only a pair of assegai and a stone knife. That is another lesson I was taught in my youth; a true hunter must learn to make weapons for the situation, if they are to prevail against the Nommo.

The ceremony ends, and the village quietly disperses, as if afraid to be near me. Silently, I rise to my feet, and begin to trot away from the village, towards the brush. The ground is hot beneath my feet as I move, but I am used to the feeling. When he was still spry, the Hogon would take me trotting along the rocky paths and through the trees, honing my body as a weapon that may have never been used.

Half a day passes in silence as I move further into the brush. I take water sparingly, as to make myself less vulnerable. The Nommo stays near the water, always. His skin is like that of the frog; the sun is his enemy.

The sun is my enemy, too. I must stay in the shade as I move, lest I overheat before I even find my quarry. As it is, my discipline is pushed to the limit as I try to limit my quests for water.

It is during one such quest that I find my first hint of the Nommo's presence. The scent of smoke reaches my nose as I stoop to collect water, and my thirst is forgotten. Gripping my assegai tightly, I jog towards the smell, and soon I can hear the crackling of a fire. The air grows heavy as I grow nearer, and the smell becomes almost overpowering.

I enter a clearing to find the source of the fire. A burning cart lays before me, already blackened and shriveled. Three bodies lay near it, staining the sand with their blood. From their garb, I can tell they are not Dogon, but the peoples from the desert. Slavers, perhaps; they have been known to come here to take our children and women.

I kneel by one of the bodies, and see a familiar gash running up his back, culminating in a hideous cavern in the back of his head. For a moment, there is acid in the back of my throat, but I push it back down.

This was the Nommo's work. Always, he took something from his kills. Skulls, skin, weapons... like a hunter taking a lion's tooth, or an elephant's tusk. I look up to see more bodies, hanging upside down from a tree. Blood drips from their skinless frames, and their lidless eyes seem forever opened in terror.

I offer a silent prayer, and move on. I cannot pause to cut down the bodies, not when the Nommo is near. I must find him now, before it he leaves with the Hunting Star.

Thankfully, it is not hard to track him. The same sorcery that makes the Nommo unseen also makes him silent, but he is heavy, unnaturally so. He leaves deep footprints, and his passing crushes plants and breaks bramble. The Hogon taught me this, by having me track elephants through the bush. They, too, moved silently, but left hints due to their size.

It is not long before I find such footprints in the sand, and track them into the brush. I nearly lose the trail a few times, but it is never long before a broken branch or scraped trunk puts me back on the right path.

Night eventually comes, and I take shelter in a tree, taking care to smudge as little clay as possible. After all, there are more than one type of hunter in this forest; it would do me no good if a lion or pack of jackals cut my search short. Thankfully, I only hear their calls in the distance, towards the plains; I am undisturbed for the night.

When dawn comes, I am already back on the hunt. I am tempted to move with urgency, but I maintain my pace; patience is the second greatest tool of the hunter. The Nommo never strays far from his lair, and he, too, needs to rest and eat. No time has been lost, I remind myself.

My patience is rewarded with distant screams. I move towards the sounds, gripping my assegai tightly as I prepare for what may await me. Yet the screams are distant indeed, and it is nearly noon when I find the bodies by the river.

Again, skinless men and empty heads await me, but these are not desert slavers. With a pang of sadness, I note that they are Dogon. Hunters, doing nothing more than finding food for their families. I do not know what possessed them to venture into the bush when the Hunting Star is in the sky. Perhaps they had not been told of the news, or they had taken it upon themselves to seek the Nommo themselves.

Or, perhaps, they were so desperate for food that there was little choice.

I feel an ember of fury in my chest as I kneel by the bodies. For reasons we could never fathom, the Nommo chose to hunt those who had weapons. I did not weep for the slavers, or for soldiers of distant lands; they were killers of men, and to die in a fight was expected. But the Nommo was not discriminate in his killings. What reason was there to make trophies of men who simply hunted to live?

I stand back up. It is good, then, that I exist, to hunt the hunter.

For a few moments, I look for signs of where the Nommo may have went, and I am awarded with a bloody trail in the dirt. Silently, I creep after the trail, noting the seemingly random twists and turns the Nommo made as he drug his catch back to his lair. Occasionally, I find fresh blood on the leaves of low-lying plants, or in patches on the sand, most likely when the Nommo paused.

It is nearly dusk when trail ends, and I find myself near a tall tree. Faintly, I can hear the bubbling of the river nearby, as well as a few distant bird calls. Slinging my assegai back over my shoulder, I crouch in the shrubbery, and wait. Despite my fatigue, I can feel a new energy within me as I realize that the most difficult part of the hunt has now come.

It is not long before a phantom emerges from the brush, and the birds become silent.

My breath hitches at the sight. All there seems to be is a faint shimmer, like on the horizon when the day is hot, but this shimmer moves almost like a man. It takes a moment for me to realize there is an antelope being drug behind it, lifeless eyes staring at nothing.

Then, suddenly, the antelope is pulled up into the tree, and I watch it disappear into the leaves. A few moments pass, and the sound of something eating reaches my ears.

A fool may try to attack now, but I know that a beast is most alert when feeding, and the Nommo is no exception. To attack now would be suicide.

I wait until the sun is low on the horizon, and the shadow of the Bandiagara looms over me, before I move again. I first creep to the river, so I may drink deeply and replenish my disguise with fresh clay. Then, I unsheathe my stone knife, and set to work.

The first step I take is to make a spear-thrower. There is no need to fashion twine, like for a bow, and they fit my assegai snuggly. Once that is done, I make crude spears of my own, and hide them across the area, taking care to move silently. The next step is to fashion a cudgel from a branch and hefty stone, and throw it across the river into the shrubbery. The Hogon always imparted onto me the importance of having more weapons laying in wait, in case one needs to abandon what they brought with them.

That is a weakness of the Nommo, he told me. When his ancestor rebelled against his fellow Nommo, he lost the wisdom of new creation. He is a master of freeing nyama, far better than the best nyamakala, but what is lost cannot be regained. He cannot make new weapons to use against me, if he loses his old ones.

There is another weakness, too.

My final preparation is to gather what bramble I can, spreading it near the tree, and to start striking stones. Time is of the essence, now; the Nommo is most active at night. Mostly.
With a lucky strike, there is a spark, and there is fire. I run away from the growing flames, then prepare my assegai, slinging it over my shoulder as I watch the tree.

It is difficult, trying to search for something that can become as unseen as the wind. For a moment, my mind wanders to the training I received from the Hogon and other elders; forced to find them while blindfolded, or to spar with closed eyes, I was taught that sight was not everything.

I wonder if the Nommo learned the same lesson.

There is a lurch from the treetop, and something lands on the ground, kicking up sand. A faint silhouette appears against the flames, and I hear a distinct clicking, unlike any earthly creature.

The time has come.

I grab a stone from the ground, and throw it over the Nommo's head. As soon as it hits the ground, I see the silhouette shift, and lightning flies from it, smiting the spot where the stone landed.

I choose the time to strike. Hefting my assegai, I heft my weight into the swing of the spear-thrower, letting my arm extend fully. It has barely left my hand before I run closer to the tree, where more spears wait, and an inhuman roar assails my ears. I turn to see grass-blue blood spurting from a hidden wound, and the assegai discarded like refuse.

Again, the Nommo uses its sorcery, lightning striking the shrubs I had hidden in and setting them ablaze. There are flames surrounding us, now, and I can feel their heat cracking the clay on my skin. I ignore it as I notch another spear into the thrower, and let the dart fly again. Again, grass-blue blood drips to the ground, and the Nommo roars.

I dash to the side, stone knife in hand, and run at the Nommo's flank as it focuses its wrath upon a hapless rock. I feel its tough skin give way as I slash at the wound I made, and I continue running in another direction, hearing the magic of the Nommo crack the ground near me as I run for safety.

This time, however, the Nommo does not stop. More and more of the trees around us are set ablaze or split apart, and I know that I cannot stay where I am, lest I wish to have my skull made into a trophy. I run once again, and leap through a small gap in the flames, stifling a cry as my feet blister.

I run for the water, and dive right in. I swim to the other side, then clamber onto the bank, panting. Behind me, I can hear the Nommo clicking again; it certainly heard the splash I made, and now I have no clay on my skin.

But that can be an advantage. There is another lesson the Hogon and other elders taught me- the Nommo may hide itself as air, but it cannot change its skin.

I can.

Running for the bush where I hid the cudgel, I shove the assegai underneath, and remove my mask. Cutting my shin with the knife, I smear the blood on my face and chest, and throw that away as well. Backing up against a tree, I begin to scream, trying to sound desperately terrified. It is not difficult.

There is a splash in the river before me, and the Nommo walks to shore. The shimmer sparks, like the striking of flint, and suddenly his magic fails him, and I can truly see my enemy. A lumbering brute in a mockery of a man's shape looms over me, with mottled mud-red skin like that of a frog, face hidden behind a mask of metal. Twin blades extend from the metal band around its wrist, and snake-like tendrils on the Nommo's head quiver with fury as it steps towards me.

But it does not see a hunter- all it sees is a naked, screaming woman.

The Nommo grabs my hair with a clawed hand, and studies me with hidden eyes, clicking as it turns my head from side to side. I force myself to babble, pointing towards the cliffs.

The Nommo stares at me, then looks down at my stomach. I wait with bated breath, hoping that the ceremony of three nights prior has succeeded in providing me with the ultimate defense.

A few moments pass, and then the Nommo shoves me back, clearly frustrated. The blades retract into its bracelet, and the creature stalks off in the direction I had pointed towards. I wait a few moments, then creep towards the bush. Slowly, I reach for my assegai.

The Nommo has no time to turn around before I throw my spear into the crook of its knee, piercing deeply into its flesh. A shriek assails me, and I duck behind the tree in time for lightning to split the earth I had stood on a moment before. I bite my tongue as I feel my shoulder grow hot and wet with blood. Then, there is only heaving grunts as the Nommo disappears deeper into the forest, with a most uneven stride.

I scramble back for the bush, and retrieve my mask, along with the cudgel I had hidden. I pause at the river's bank to put water over the wound on my shoulder, as well as to put on a thin coat of mud over my skin once more. Then, slowly, I stand up and follow after the Nommo.

The blood is an important reason to hunt at night. Without the light of the sun, I can easily see the grass-blue splotches on the plants and ground, shining like hot coals, but there is no heat to them. It is a trivial matter to follow the blood, far easier than when the elders trained me to follow the red droplets left by a wounded gazelle.

When the sound of labored breathing reaches my ears, I slow down, and look for more of the glow. I soon find my discarded assegai, broken in the middle, and pick it up. It is then that a drop hits my shoulder, and I look up to see that the Nommo has taken to the trees, perhaps in an effort to hide the trail.

It could not have gone far, however; out here, further from the cliffs, the trees become sparse. Shouldering the cudgel, I shimmy up the tree, then slowly crawl on one of the thicker branches, following the trail of blood on the bark. From here, I see that the Nommo is likely at the tree near the edge, close to the tall grasses. There is nowhere else to go; he has made the mistake of cornering himself.

Climbing back down, I slowly creep towards the tree. The heavy breathing grows louder, and I realize I can see the Nommo crouching by the tree, hunched over a bowl of hammered metal, with a sky-blue flame rising from inside. I watch the creature rip bark from the tree and throw it inside, then grab something from a metal case on the ground near it.

Whatever sorcery he is practicing, I cannot allow it to continue.

The Nommo seems surprised as I slam my cudgel into his face, and he falls back against the tree. The next blow strikes the fetish on its shoulder it uses to throw lightning, and I can see sparks like struck flint as the stone impacts metal.

Then a clammy palm slams into my chest, and I can hardly breathe as I hit the ground. Pain is a familiar sensation; the Hogon and the elders made sure I knew what it was, when they taught me how to hunt the Nommo. I roll into the tall grass, then scurry back as the Nommo swipes widely with his blades, cutting into the grass and kicking up sand.

The Nommo shakes his head from side to side, then slaps a hand against his mask. Then again. Finally, it pulls at a black tendril in its face, and I hear a hissing sound. Then, slowly, the Nommo pulls his mask off, and I am greeted by a hideous visage, with a quartet of tusks around a lipless mouth.

"You... are one ugly motherfucker," I pant. The only words I say.

The Nommo's only response is to bellow, and swipe at the ground, closer to where I lay. I reach for the cudgel, then slowly back away. The Nommo looks around for me, but without his mask, he is even more blind than before. He gives no sign of knowing where I am, before the next strike from the cudgel strikes him in the face and shatters a tusk.

I back away again, avoiding his wild slashes, then wait. When the Nommo turns his back, I lunge forward again, and strike at his knee, the one I had wounded before. Blood pours from the reopened gash, and the world nearly turns black an elbow strikes me in the face. That mistake could have cost me dearly. I resolve to pull back, and wait.

The Nommo continues to swipe wildly for a few moments, but each movement grows more and more sluggish, as blood continues to flow from his now-ruined leg. Falling to one knee, the creature struggles to right itself, then moves to touch the metal band on its wrist, the one with no blades.

The elders had warned me of such sorcery. A previous hunter had scarcely survived her victory when the Nommo unleashed the greatest thunder the world had ever known, and that was solely because she had unknowingly left the creature alive as she made her way back.

And so, I lunge forward with the cudgel, and slam it down on the Nommo's wrist, shattering his fingers and ruining the fetish. My next blow spatters my face with foul blood as I strike him in the already-broken tusks, and my cudgel snaps in two. It has served its purpose, however, and I watch as he falls to the ground. Tossing aside my cudgel, I unsling my assegai, and raise it high.

For a moment, I simply stand over the Nommo, and let him understand what it is like to be prey.
Then, I drive the spearhead into his throat, and it is done.

Silence reigns, save for the rustling of grasses in the wind. I look up at the sky, and watch the stars. I remember a story one elder told me, of how a hunter had been greeted by the other tribes of Nommo after making her kill, and watched as the half-spirits carried away their slain cousin. I wondered if they were the same Nommo who had gifted us knowledge, or if such creatures could every actually give us such things.

I was not eager to wait and see if the other Nommo would come. I had restored natural harmony, and all I desired was a return home. But first, there is another task to complete.

With a fire-hardened wooden tip, removing a head is not easy. But remove it I do, and I carry it with me as I slowly make my way back to my village at the base of the cliffs.

It isn't until the dusk of the next day that I return, carrying the Nommo's head with me. I am greeted with open arms, and I sit myself back down before the Hogon for another ceremony. The skull is cleaned of flesh, and hung inside our temple, along with nearly a score of others.

Again, the ritualistic thanking is completed, and I am finally allowed to rest, but not before the Hogon's son kneels down and kisses my bare belly to thank my future child, the one he had planted inside me the day before I left to hunt the Nommo.

I wonder what the future holds for my child. If my child is male, he will be raised to train the next hunters, and to help lead the village. If I am blessed with a girl, then she will be a hunter herself.

Many of the women wish that we, as hunters, have girls. As the Nommo's discord comes from a lack of duality, a being of duality is needed to fight them, the first Hogon decreed. In the first hunts, when they still foolishly used men, they were uncut, allowed to keep their feminine part. Likewise, I, and all other hunters, are allowed to keep their masculine part.

Regardless, my time as a hunter is over. Now, I will assist the father of my child in training the future hunters. For the Hunting Star will return, as it has for centuries.

And we will continue hunting the hunters for centuries more.

 

I am inordinately pleased that this line is here.

I'm not sure what this refers to. Explain?

 

The Dogon believe that boys and girls are born with both masculine and feminine traits. The foreskin is considered feminine, and the clitoris is considered masculine.

In other words, the hunters get to avoid female genital mutilation.

 

Ah. Alright then.