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I made a mistake.
I turn on my heel and sprint into the thicket. When the guard tripped me, I was almost there. While I know this beast is faster than me, I’m smaller than it, and I dive into the gnarled branches and bushes and keep running in between the trees.
Its roar echoes throughout the forest, and I realize that while this thing saved me from my captors, I’ve only traded one predator for another. The back of my eyes sting, but I refuse to cry.
I slide down a small cliff side, covering myself with mud in the process even as I try to remain upright.
Nothing has changed. Either I live free or die by this monster. Both options are better than the Dark Market.
The creature pounds its limbs against the ground as it chases me, and I hope that the mud has been able to conceal whatever scent I have. I don’t know what it is, but I have no doubt its senses are better than mine, and I need all the advantages I can get.
I hear trees cracking under the monster’s strength as it fits through the thicket to get to me. Even as my arms keep getting scratched and I’m sure my feet are bleeding, I don’t stop. I bob and weave my way around until I reach a small area where I can spot a little alcove.
Salvation.
I rear back my arm and throw my stick into the forest in the opposite direction to distract it, then run and hide against the muddy wall.
I hold my breath to make no noise.
The creature makes a chittering sound as it reaches where I was, but to my horror, it doesn’t follow the noise of the stick.
Once again, I lock my eyes with the creature and feel a shudder go down my back.
I barely step away from the alcove and duck behind a tree and towards the forest again with a pit in my stomach.
This thing, animal or monster, it’s not dumb enough to be fooled by silly tricks.
I should have known when I saw it rip apart the dark elves, but what I had then attributed to a savage animal I realize now belongs to a crazed monster.
The beast is gaining on me, I know it, and the forest only grows darker as I run deeper into it.
I keep running anyway.
Whatever this thing is, it’s going to have to work to eat me.
6
ZYRANTH
My prey hurdles through the forest, stumbling around erratically, into hollows, between trees, and down hills, as though it can lose me. It is slower and weaker than most of the creatures I hunt and rip into daily, but still, it perseveres.
I can smell it, lingering on the precipice. This human woman evades my claws, thinking she could escape me, that she has any hope. But there is no hiding from a creature that can smell your essence dozens of miles away.
As I encroach on her, her fear warps and intensifies, the clear origin of her fear mutating. It’s in the subtleties of the smell, the intricacies of my senses. From the time that I have observed this creature, its original fear has shifted three or four times. The threats toward its life have not just been me but multiple external sources.
And I find that fascinating. The joy of hunting sentient creatures is in the complexity of their emotions. The layered factors that all contribute to the final taste of the fear when you rip their skulls open at last and get to savor the experience you’ve created.
She doesn’t understand that she’s already lost, that she is my entertainment.
But why?I ask myself.Why play with her when I could just go for her throat and end this now?
She has obscured herself beneath a large, malformed boulder adjacent to the rushing river, away from my view at my former position and angle of approach. What she fails to understand is that my senses form a kind of secondary vision.
While she hides, thinking herself imperceptible, her breath still radiates. The flow of adrenaline through her body, the ever-present stream of blood moving through her veins, the sweat that coats her skin, and the dirt that clings to her feet… They all form a perfect view of the contours of her form, so that through my senses, she’s as real and tangible to me, even behind an obstruction, as if she were standing in front of me in plain sight.
Whatever is restricting my approach and keeping me from savoring the taste of this creature, I need to overcome it. I cannot disguise the sentiment as play anymore. This callous disregard for my own survival is entirely frivolous.
I approach her and move above the boulder, hovering in place.
