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The river’s call intensifies with my approach. In the rain, which looks to be abating, the river runs faster. Beside the riverbank, a singular young dae sips from the rushing water with satisfaction.
I find myself connecting with it as I watch. I wonder why this creature finds itself alone and isolated. Does it have a herd?
My approach is entirely unnoticed, even through the blowing weeds. I creep up behind it, extending my tendril-like claws beneath its skin once I’m inches away.
Before it can turn and attempt to flee, I twist, causing the skin to separate and bend as I penetrate downward.
The wind howls.
“I can see you’re in pain, little one,” I growl. “Not much longer now.”
The rain starts to slow as I connect with the dae’s skeleton, my claw now embedded within its bones. I twist harder, and the connected skeleton snaps in all places, blood pouring freely from where the skin has been opened and tendons have been exposed.
I extract the life from the beast, killing it instantaneously.
It’s dead.
I don’t need to check.
I drink from the blood before it can collect in the weeds. I never waste my food. The flow of life nectar is nourishing to me but far too salty for my tastes.
Still, it calms the lethargy and restlessness taking hold from hunger. I’m feeling my concentration return slowly.
As I extract organs individually, deriving pleasure from their unique flavors and reveling in their juices, my ears prick.
My head cranes upward to see two adult dae, a daette and a draek, staring at me.
I wipe my mouth clean with the back of my arm and smile at them.
Creatures run from my smile.
“Have you come to join my meal?”
They turn tail and flee into the woods. I consider letting them escape but know the pain they must be suffering, losing a youngling.
It’s up to me to end that suffering.
I take a few more large bites, meaning to waste as little as possible, before swiftly veering back into the forest, climbing a tiphe tree in two sporadic movements.
Bounding from treetop to treetop, I look over the scenery below. I smell the air again as I peer down over the dense canopy.
I’m startled to find new scents, striking me as far tangier and savorier than a dae’s, and I find the two adult dae cornered in a grove.
Around them, a large tribe of orcs has formed an execution party. I count ten orcs, judging from the number of scents.
Each of the dae has three crossbows pointed at it, and I realize that this is not a fair hunt.
I feel my lip curl back, my eyes widening in fury as the two dae are shot in a fire of bolts. One by one, the orcs unleash a torrent of crossbow bolts into the dae, not even bothering to aim for vital organs or shorten their suffering.
And now I hear their celebratory cheers and amused laughter as the dae struggle on the ground, a river of blood pouring out and getting lost in groundwater.
“Those two went down pretty easy,” one of them says.
“Plenty of food for the camp, boys!”
Two more fire bolts go into the dae’s heads, finally ending their suffering. Their miserable cries ring out over the forest and soon so will I.
Their disregard for the lives they took leaves a bad taste on my tongue. The dae were not given the opportunity to fight. Instead, they were surrounded and overwhelmed.
