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I can feel her hope that perhaps she has finally lost me, that she might be safe at last. But hope has an unappetizing taste, far too bland. I cannot have it seasoning my meal.
She thinks I have stopped to search for her, but I plummet down with my claws and deliver a strike to the boulder capable of destroying its core. My claws penetrate the rock, and from the point of impact, cracks rapidly emerge and spread throughout the boulder’s structure, until what was once a safe refuge for her becomes several small rocks that pelt into the ground around her.
She rotates to face me, and I can see the depths of her fear reverberating through her gaze. No longer does she plead for her life. She has accepted her demise, and it terrifies her.
I flap in the air, savoring my victory, looking forward to consuming her. The elves were wonderful appetizers but this? This will be delicious and filling, a suitable main course for a creature of my splendor.
But I should have already torn into her flesh and picked her apart. Why am I not diving forward to devour my kill? All around me, my vision lights up, and I can sense other potential targets, even though this human would be the most delicious thing of all.
I can already imagine myself savoring her wonderful taste. But for some reason, some part of me, deep within, is unable to move forward and end her life, drinking her blood and every majestic taste contained in her body.
A seething rage burns within me.
In retaliation, I drive my claws sharply into her arm, reopening an old wound and sending my irritating toxin through her bloodstream. She wails as the catharsis motivated by my pause vanishes. I carry her off, my claws firmly gripping her, never relenting.
Old, buried emotions overtake me as I soar through the landscape and dangle her just beneath me, narrowly avoiding trees and cliffs to exacerbate her terror. I am supposed to be a simple creature, motivated purely by my most basic biological drives. What has this simple woman unleashed within me, and why?
I return to the cavern where I left the orc remains and revel in this woman’s horror at seeing the green blood decorating its facade and the two dismembered heads greeting us at the entrance.
For opening a deeper part of me, and transforming me beyond the simple creature I’ve adapted to, I will make this woman suffer.
But she is mine to inflict pain upon, not theirs. Those unsatisfying elves will never find her here, hidden behind the terror-striking cavern entrance.
I carry her past the simple opening and deep within, flying beyond jagged rock formations and chiroptera. This place shall become my new lair, now that I have evolved beyond my most simple drives.
The cavern ceiling drips constantly, a nearby spring illuminating the dark environment with the bioluminescent boletus that grows beneath its surface.
I set her down on the hard rock surface, satisfied with this new location. She begins to run away from me, fleeing through the caverns, but I stop her, prodding her into the jagged cavern wall with my claws.
“Stay,” I growl.
Her eyes open wide with terror, but her voice stammers.
“You can s-speak?” she asks.
But I do not have time for such frivolous questions. I carry her back up to the area situated near the spring, where I am satisfied she will remain.
“Drink,” I say simply, pointing outward toward the nearby spring.
I want to slam her against the wall. In fact, being around her at all is a constant source of suffering, because her blood courses and oozes so loudly through her capillaries. To open her up with my claws, mangling her flesh and consuming her blood and organs, would be such a satisfying release.
She runs over to the spring, and despite every base instinct within me telling me to stop her, I allow it.
“Is it safe?” she asks, still trembling wildly.
I am willingly ruining my meal and spoiling good food. To enjoy this delicacy in its purest form, I should be savoring the adrenaline that courses through it, the rush of chemicals that fill its brain at the moment before its death, and the petrifying fear that adds so much deliciousness.
“It is water,” I growl simply. “Do humans not drink water?”
“R-right,” she says. “But the boletus…”
In one swift movement, I rush over to her, my wings gusting in my wake. My claw approaches her throat but remains mere inches from it – from finally opening her veins. I try to drive my claw forward but tremble, as though through some compulsion, I am unable to harm her.
Her eyes are wide, her body motionless, as she watches my claw with intense focus.
“Drink!” I roar.
For some reason unknown to me, she has been spared from her demise and my maw.
