The Story of the Bastento (The Story of Bastento Grove)

"OK, now lets try this stuff out," Hilif said to his comrade, Rezneka.

They had worked on a liquid juice that was supposed to enhance the intelligence of a human child. Now was the first test, on a bastett child named Thykrest. They had decided to test it on a bastett since they didn't know if it would work or not. They didn't want to risk the life of a human.

Thykrest struggled against the ropes that bound him to the pillar, just outside of Hilif's adobe. They forced the liquid down his throat, holding his nose until he had to open his mouth to breath. Bastett aren't very good at holding their breath. The child let a long, mournful meow.

"Stupid bastett. We don't need it anymore, nothing happened. Tell someone to kill it, or do it yourself, Rezneka. I'm going to work on this stuff."

Thykrest's eyes burned in rage. He remembered how these two had leaded a small group of warriors to his village and attacked it. They had captured and killed his parents, his friends, and almost every other bastett in the village. And now they would kill him, just because their stupid test potion didn't work.

"Hey, what the hell's the matter with it? Why is it shaking like that?" Hilif asked. Rezneka only shrugged.

"Humans, you will pay," the bastett said, calmly, yet full of rage.

The two mages unsheathed their daggers. "I'll do it myself!" Hilif shouted angrily and slashed at the child throat.

Thykrest's arm broke free with lightning speed and the bastett sliced through the mage's wrist with his claws. "Arg! Burn you little bastard!" Hilif shouted and began to cast a spell.

Thykrest answered only by breaking free of all of his ropes and leaping at Hilif, who had foolishly dropped his dagger to cast the spell. The mage was knocked unconscious, but never woke up, since his throat lost capability to breath.

"Hey! What the hell is going on?!"

Thykrest turned from chomping on the mage's throat, and bared his fangs viciously. The human who had just entered backed away slowly.

A low, menacing growl rumbles from the small bastett child's stomach, and the human turned to run. Thykrest was much faster and caught the fleeing man, ending his life with a twitch of his hairy wrist.

Thykrest searched the area. The bottle had been dropped by Hilif and laid broken and spilled in the grass. A small home was a few feet away, and besides that, the area was mostly forest.

He burst through the door, and was surprised to find six more bastett children tied against walls and such. The odd part was that they were all female. Thykrest was familiar with two of them. His older sister, Hannamura, and his favorite female of the village, Emzerila. He quickly freed all of them.

"Thykrest, I'm glad you're safe!" said Emzerila and Hannamura almost in unison.

The other children patted him on the back with quick words of thanks and praises.

"We must find a good place to live. Our village has been-" his sentence was interrupted by a sudden rumbling noise just outside.

All seven of them rushed outside to find the source, and each of them inhaled sharply and quite audibly at the site before them. Two trees were growing at an astonishing pace, and both were already two tall for any of the bastett children to see the top.

"Amazing," Hannamura said in awe.

"This is perfect!" said Thykrest to the others, rushing towards to rapidly growing trees, "We can live here!"

Epilogue

The two trees continued growing until Hilif's adobe was embedded in the middle of the tree. As it turned out, a few of the females had been tested with earlier versions of the potion also, they were much stronger also.

Thykrest, seeing his important role as a male, mated with all of the females (save his sister) many times. Thykrest decided that this new, stronger, smarter, and longer living species needed a new name. The name should be close to Bastett, however, so that his race never forget their origins.

They were called the Bastento, and their home, the Bastento Grove. When the Bastento first contacted their ancestors, the Bastett, the Bastett were misunderstanding and proclaimed war on Thykrest's people. The Bastento used only defense until the Bastett gave up and became friends.