Chapter 10: Hunter and Prey
He felt it as the monsters died, one after another. He wasn’t entirely sure why it was that he could sense when their lives were extinguished, but the connection was there. It had always been there.
In the earlier days of his change, it had been a boon, as it let him hunt down prey with little difficulty. The monsters had been smaller then, but so had he. They had made for a filling enough meal then. He knew it was better for him to consume the monsters than it was for him to eat any people who stumbled into his territory. However, over time they had become less satisfying, and less filling. In many cases consuming them now only served to take the edge off his hunger, rather than satiating it as they had before. Of course, there were exceptions, those larger and stronger ones that stood out to his instincts, they were still sufficient to dull his ravenous appetite, but only just.
He supposed that he should have at least been somewhat grateful for their existence. Since they meant that he didn’t need to devour more of the local animals, or prey upon people in the nearest towns. But at the same time, he hated the sight of them. They were like him, twisted, warped, wrong! What they had once been was gone, subsumed by their new hunger and instincts, leaving only a monster that once had been a normal animal. He couldn’t help but wonder if that was what was going to happen to him. Was he going to end up a mindless thing that did nothing but kill and eat?
Maybe that would be better, some dark part of him thought. As things were, he was more of a passenger in his own body than anything else. Any time the hunger surged he would find himself overtaken by it, unable to do anything but watch as his body dragged him along to hunt prey.
Almost as though that thought had been some sort of trigger, he felt his limbs begin to stir beneath him. In the next moment, he’d risen from his resting state and was already moving between the trees. As always, he was astonished by the strange liquid grace of his inhuman form. Despite his size he was still somehow slipping through the trees, his form flexing and shifting to squeeze between the trunks without mowing them down. His long limbs slithered out, finding purchase about the older and thicker trees, and using them as grips to help pull him along.
Massive as he was, fast as he was moving, he was silent, eerily so. His form was making some noise, snapped branches here and there, rustling leaves, but it was all so much less than it should have been. He sounded more like a fox on the prowl, rather than the monster he was. It was the stalking of a predator, one that didn’t want to alert his prey.
He could feel the power of his prey, the way that it burnt in his mind sang to him of how potent it was. Magic, that was what he could feel, magic that was strong and deep. The artefacts that he’d found had possessed magic of their own, and for a time they had been able to satiate the hunger. The elf girl had had magic flowing in her very blood, and the hunger had enjoyed her when it took her. There was even some magic in the monsters that he ate, even if it was diluted and tepid in comparison to his other finds. His body craved magic, he was sure of that. Maybe it needed it to fuel his growth, maybe it was for something else, all he knew was that the hunger sought it out whenever it could.
Whatever this was, it was drawing the hunger just like blood did a shark, and as always, he was being dragged along as it took control of his body.
In fact . . . now that he thought about it, he could actually smell blood in the air, the enhanced senses of his body alerting him to the scent on the wind even as he drew closer. There was blood, lots of it, and the smell was exciting the hunger, causing claws to extend from their sheaths, then slide back into place as his body readied itself for battle. He was close now, he was certain of it. The scent of blood was growing thick, and the feeling of the magic was almost electrical upon his skin. Soon he’d be able to see who had roused him from his sleep. Soon he’d see-
His body slithered between two trees and gave him a clear line of sight at the site from which the smell of blood was emanating. What he saw . . . it was as though his thoughts had suddenly frozen into place. Strangely, his shock even seemed to affect his normally rebellious body, because it went still as stone along with his train of thought.
The undergrowth had been torn up and flattened, leaving a sort of small clearing between the old trees. The area was all but covered in the remains of the warped animals that had claimed this part of the forest. It was easy to see where the scent of blood came from, because not a single one of those beasts had died peacefully. Some of them had had their skulls crushed into pulp, others had received the same treatment to their entire bodies, and others had just been ripped in two, their internal organs having fallen out to stain the plants about them a mixture of red and black.
It was a scene out of a nightmare, and under other circumstances, it would have sickened him. But today he ignored it, saw it as nothing more than background to the sole object of his attention.
A young man was hovering a few feet above the carnage strewn about him. He couldn’t be that old, the man-become-monster guessed that they might have been about the same age. The floating man had great white wings growing from his back and had a frame that denoted physical power and training.
On top of that, the floating man was beautiful in a way that was so rare in men. His body was a living sculpture of the masculine ideal, his features fine, curving and straightening in all the right places. His hair, his eyes, his skin, everything about him was flawless, as though they had been imagined and crafted by some divine creator. Above his head hung a circle made of floating pieces of metal, a halo to go with the wings of an angel.
But this was no angel, as even over the scent of the blood the monstrous man could smell the humanity upon him, the scent that didn’t belong to monsters or elves. He should know, even underneath all the warped changes his body had undergone he could still smell the lingering traces of humanity, traces that he clung to to affirm to himself that he wasn’t just a monster.
The scent of humanity on one that clearly had divine power.
A demigod.
Deep inside the man-become-monster something uncoiled. It was something dark, something twisted, something venomous, something hateful. It had been something that had been curled up tight within him for so long that he had all but forgotten it was there. An angry spiteful lump of emotions that had bound itself into a knot as he forced himself to endure and remain sane through his endless ordeal. But now . . . now in the face of this, it was coming undone.
Because he could see that the winged man was another demigod!
The knot came undone, and rage spilt forth. Crimson-red rage that seemed to dye the whole world before him.
Perhaps that was a taste of the future to come, some tiny part of him coldly noted. After all, a world dyed in blood was what he wished for most at this moment. Never mind his hunger, never mind his earlier despair, none of it mattered.
All he wanted to do was tear this demigod apart!
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When the last of the monsters fell broken to the ground, I felt a wave of relief pass through me.
I’d been right when I thought that the business of defending myself would be bloody, but I had vastly underestimated just how bad it was going to be. It was as though the things had no sense of self-preservation, they simply kept coming after me regardless of how many I killed, or how gruesomely they died. Darting down from the air, leaping from branches, clambering over the bodies of those already slain, it didn’t matter, they seemed to be relentless!
Any other animal would have fled as the overwhelming smell of blood and viscera choked the air, their instincts driving them to escape such a dangerous area, I was sure. But these warped monstrosities had no such instincts, instead, it was as though reaching me meant more to them than life itself.
Maintaining my shield required concentration. Despite the horrific mutations that the animals had undergone they weren’t overwhelmingly strong. Some of the largest animals might have been able to shatter my defences, if they had been able to charge them with their full strength, putting their massive bulks behind it. But their numbers were working against them, the creatures getting in each other’s way. The bigger ones lacked the clear path they needed to gather force, so all the horde of beasts could manage was to bite, claw, and butt at my shield, trying to force their way through it. But that wasn’t happening.
Still, keeping them at bay wasn’t easy. Every time one of them bit or clawed at my protection I had to focus energy to repair and reinforce it. Not much, but some. I had to keep splitting my focus many times to keep the shield intact, even as I was striking back.
It was difficult, multitasking had never been a strong point of mine. Handling two draws of power at a time had been difficult, but by being able to rapidly switch between them I was able to keep up. In brief moments of respite, I was able to lash out, breaking or crushing one or more of my attackers before I had to return my attention to my defences. At first, it was slow going, but as I managed to thin out the numbers I found more and more opportunities to go on the offensive. It had taken some time, but in the end, all of the creatures lay dead, and I took a moment to gather myself.
That had been brutal, there wasn’t really any other way to describe it. I’d known what it was Joan and Hadriel had been training me for, but I’d never been so viscerally aware of it as I was at that very moment. Yes, I was being taught so I could defend myself. But I was also being trained so that I could kill when the time came. Maybe it hadn’t been a big part of my education in violence yet, but I knew that it was going to be an important part of it. How could it not be?
All in all, things were not going as well as I would have liked them to.
Taking a deep breath I tried to see if there were any positives to this, no matter how small. I had at least confirmed the fact that these twisted creatures existed. And by the looks of it I’d gone a good way towards thinning their ranks. The way they all came swarming at me at once made me think that the ones that lay before me must make up all the population of at least the immediate area, maybe even a large portion of the forest.
Maybe I should take to the air again, it seemed to be my best option. If I got high enough then not only would I be out of range to most attacks, but I’d also be able to get a better view of the area.
I started to slowly rise higher, away from the strewn remains of the monsters. Soon I was just passing the canopy and could see the spreading field of tree-tops before me. I was just about to start in the direction I’d been following before when . . .
“HHHHYYYYAAAASSSSHHHHKKK!”
All further thoughts were cut off as the . . . roar ripped through my eardrums and seemed to rattle my brain. For a moment it was as though I couldn’t think, all I could do was hover there, slack-jawed, as my mind tried to reboot itself.
The iconic roar of Godzilla flashed through my thoughts. A roar that had been created using a double bass and a resin-coated glove. The result was something monstrous and unnatural, but organic at the same time. A roar that was almost as famous as Godzilla itself.
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The roar that had rattled me was kind of like that, in that it seemed impossible that it could have come from a throat of mere flesh and blood. It had been too loud, too forceful, it had almost hit like a physical force! The world spun, slipping in and out of focus, then came back into clarity just in time to see the monstrosity coming at me.
For a brief moment, I thought that this must be another one of the warped animals, maybe a latecomer to the frenzy. Then I got a good look at it and all such thoughts fled my mind.
The thing looked as though some malignant god had decided to combine the worst traits of a snake, a spider, a centipede, and some sort of tentacled sea monster into a single unholy terror, and fed the result growth hormones its entire life . . . I don’t think I could have found anything more alien if I’d made my way to Mars.
The monstrosity was long, its front portion as massive as a cargo hauler truck, then tapering out to a longer and narrower tail that reached back into the trees. I couldn’t tell just how long it was, but it had to be at least ten metres, maybe even more. The front of the creature was dominated by a single massive maw filled with teeth. It reminded me of the classic depiction of a fantasy monster called a sandworm, but worse. Rather than simply being a hole lined with fangs this seemed more predatory, more designed to bite and crush than it was to simply swallowing something whole.
Both under its bulk and to the sides were clusters and rows of limbs. The clusters were to the sides and beneath the mouth and were the longest of the appendages it seemed to possess, while its sides were lined with uncountable smaller limbs as a centipede would be. However, these limbs weren’t the armoured and segmented appendages that would have been natural to some giant insect. Instead, they were curving sinuous tendrils, each as black as obsidian, each armoured in small flexible plates of chitin. The thinnest among them were still as thick as my wrist, while the largest of them were slightly wider than my whole ribcage. The longest of them extended from the front and sides of the thing, making me think of some mutated spider. Other tendrils, the ‘legs’ of the centipede, ran down the length of the body, the ‘legs’ growing shorter the further they went until they were little more than nubs.
The front ones though, were terrifying. Muscular, thick, long as telephone poles, and sheathed in chitin to the point where it looked like they were armoured. The thinner tentacles ended in barbed points, claws clearly meant to impale and subdue prey, while the larger ones seemed to have retractable claws like some deep sea Kraken.
It came like a living avalanche, all stealth suddenly gone! Trees were forced aside, wood snapping beneath it’s weight, I think I even heard the sound of breaking stone. A natural disaster made of flesh, muscle and claws.
Then there was no more time for careful observation.
The monster came at me shockingly fast! Nothing so massive had any right to be able to move like that! It just coiled up, then shot out at me as though it had been launched by a catapult.
I dodged of course, or rather I tried to. But even as I darted to the side those long tendrils lashed out, trying to snatch me out of the air. I felt the shock of the impact as the limbs crashed against the sphere of my defences. Then I sensed the shield begin to break under the pressure as the tentacle wrapped around the globe. The underside of the limb seemed to split open like an overcooked sausage, but rather than blood or viscera spilling forth it was as though the thick tendril was unfolding, revealing a concealed inside.
Suckers clamped onto the outer surface of my shield, the round suction finding purchase upon the glass-smooth protection. I only had enough time to blink in surprise once before there was another impact as a second tentacle latched on! Then a third, and then a fourth! The sphere I’d encased myself in was a good four or five metres in radius, giving me room to comfortably half-spread my wings if I wanted to. It was quite large. Even so, more than half of its surface was now obscured by the crushing tentacles wrapped about it.
I didn’t have any time to think about it though, because I suddenly felt a sharp drag downwards as the monster’s weight was reclaimed by gravity!
It . . . it was too much! I was having to concentrate to maintain my defences, and that was leaving me with no spare attention to devote to staying aloft. I could feel myself being dragged downwards. It was slow, even with the huge weight my magic seemed to be resisting somewhat, but it was happening
“EEEEEEEHHHHHHHHH!”
The roar rattled my defences again and set my ears to ringing. But this time the roar seemed to be somehow muted. The edge taken off it. Because of my frantic concentration on maintaining my shield, it took me a moment to understand what was happening. I was so wrapped up in the monster’s limbs that they were muffling its own roar. For some reason, the irony that it was unintentionally protecting me due to its eagerness to get me struck me as ridiculous. But I couldn’t afford to be distracted, not with how things were!
“EEeEhhHHhhHH, EEeEEeEh TTtTttEeeeeHh, eEeehh . . . EEEHHH . . .”
The roar came again, but it sounded different now, more broken. Rather than the all-encompassing cacophony it had been, it was stuttered. I was sure that meant something, maybe even something important, but I really couldn’t spare the attention to work it out.
I could feel the tentacles tightening around me. I could feel the way the pressure was being applied, but there was method to it. The beast was after any weakness it could find, anywhere it could break through. I was holding on, but I was starting to feel all too much like a delicious morsel hiding behind some all-too-fragile glass!
I . . . I had to fight back!
There wasn’t really any choice. This thing had the power to break through, and it had the size to do it in multiple places at once. Defence was only a delay, attacking was the only chance I had to survive!
One of my hands twitched from where it had been pointing as I directed my magic to shore up my shield and instead aimed at one of the tentacles trying to crush me. A plan crystalized in my mind even as my arcana reached out. I’d crush the tentacles one after another, then deal with the main body. Once it was taken care of, I’d try and see if I could follow its trail back to wherever it came from. Given its size and sheer monstrosity, it had undoubtedly received much more of whatever had twisted the other creatures, so following its trail back to its lair might get me closer to the source of the twisting.
However, all thoughts of my future actions vanished as my arcana wrapped around one huge tendril . . . and dissolved as it tried to crush it!
Shit!
The curse echoed through my mind as I realized what was happening. Unlike the earlier creatures I’d killed this one had the same magic resistance that kept me from using this trick on either Joan or Hadriel. That meant . . .
The realization that my arcana couldn’t directly harm the creature slammed into me just as the left side of my shield cracked! There wasn’t any sound, but there was a sensation in my head of something breaking like glass. My eyes whipped around, and I could see it, a jagged crack forming across my shield, one that was growing even as I stared at it!
Frantically I reached out, reinforcing the globe, strengthening it even as I repaired it. As I watched the crack faded, the shield returning to its previous unmarred surface.
Then the air shook as the creature bellowed again.
“TE . . . TE . . . TEEE DEESSS DEESSS! TE TTTEEE . . . EEEE TEEEE . . . DDEEESSSSS!”
Again, there was that roar, but now it wasn’t sounding like just some animal noise. Rather there was something off about it, as though I was missing something important. But I wasn’t at my most attentive.
Instead, I was trying to frantically find more options, ones that would keep me alive. Telekinesis was the magic I was best practised in, but right now it was of minimal use. Sure, I could have switched to using TK blasts to attack the tentacles, but that would take more concentration than I had to spare.
My mind seized on that, the notion that at that moment retaliation was impractical. This thing was stronger than the other monsters, larger, faster, and it had magic resistance. Just what it was, I had no idea, but it was dangerous, taking it on directly wasn’t the smart move, not yet.
Using the spell vial did cross my mind, but I dismissed it. I didn’t need a rescue, I just needed to get away, get some range, get some space to think. It was a decent enough plan, but there were some problems with it!
Those damned tentacles were wrapped tight around my shield and even if I were to dismiss it and try to escape, I didn’t think I’d be able to slip between them. Maybe, if I moved fast enough, but I didn’t see it as all that likely, a bad gamble to make. No, if I wanted out then I was going to have to think more creatively.
I wouldn’t say that inspiration struck. It was more a case of another part of my shield cracked, and I acted out of sheer desperation, trying to throw myself away from the direction of the tentacle in question. There was absolutely no direction or control to the movement, just purely frantic action. It was just a gut-level reaction that sent me, my shields, and the monster holding onto them, all crashing to the side.
I knew that the creature had dragged me down, but I didn’t know how far, and I couldn’t really make out any details as my vision was obscured by the very tentacles that were trying to get at me. So, I was caught by surprise when my shield barrelled into a tree that was thicker at the trunk than I was wide at my shoulders.
My shield was pretty strong though, and even though I ploughed into the trunk at speeds roughly equal to a car on a freeway, it didn’t break. The poor tree shuddered and creaked, but it didn’t fall either, and I found myself resting up against it. The impact had come as a sharp jolt to me, one that made my head ring even as my defences kept me from suffering more damage.
The tentacles that had been wrapped around my protection on the other hand . . .
“TTEEE DEESSS! EEEEE TTEEE DEEESSS! DEEESSTTT!”
Again, those shrieks, less like animal roaring and now sounded disturbingly close to human. Of course, any human trying to shout those words so loudly would probably end up shredding their own vocal cords, but that didn’t seem to be slowing the monster down. It was strange, I would have expected its roars to be inhuman wails of pain, not something getting closer to human sounds.
The reason for that pain was all too clear to me. When the monster had latched onto my shield it had done so with four of its main forelimbs, the longest and thickest of its tendrils. One of them had lost its grip due to my sudden movement, and two of them had clung to where they were, though they were now only hanging on rather than trying to break through, and it was the last one that caught my attention as I reoriented myself.
That one had been caught between my shield and the tree as I’d crashed into it. The limb had seemed strong, but uncurling as it had to use its suckers had left it somewhat vulnerable. Being caught between the wood and my shield at the moment of impact had crushed the centre part of it into bloody mush, causing the ‘head’ of the tentacle to flop off my defences.
The shortened remains pulled back, trailing blood as it went, the movement reminding me that I couldn’t afford to get lost in thought! I had a chance, I had to take it.
My shield fell from around me, the tentacles that had been clinging to it suddenly finding themselves hanging in the air. My right wing lashed out, the sword-like feathers slashing at the dark flesh with all the power that the new limb possessed. As I did so I focused as hard as I could, dragging all the arcana I could muster into a single bolt the size of an apple and launching it at another tentacle on my left.
The blast wasn’t the greatest I could have managed. I just didn’t have the time or focus to spare to manage that. Still, using pure telekinetic force was my best bet, given my limitations. Sure, I could cook up a potent fireball or lightning bolt, given enough time, but time wasn’t something I had too much of.
My attacks were met with mixed results. The blade-like feathers of my wing did bite deeply into the large tentacle to my right, the slash going two-thirds of the way to severing it completely. My TK blast was less successful, the impact managing to knock the large appendage back, but doing little else to it. Still, it was enough, for a brief moment I was free.
I didn’t waste the chance. My wings snapped closed behind me, and I spun through the air, an almost pirouette-like motion, coming around so that the tree was now directly between me and the creature trying to get at me. Before me, a tentacle came stabbing out but struck the trunk where I had been a moment before instead.
“TTTTT . . . EEEE . . . TTEEE! DDEEE . . . TTEESSSS . . . TTEEE . . . TEEE DEETESSSTT!”
My eyes darted to the monster as I realized that it was talking! Yes, its words were distorted and inhuman, but they were recognizable as . . . French?
My moment of stunned surprise cost me because the tentacle that struck the tree did . . . something. It wasn’t a move that a human could have ever duplicated, in fact, I doubted anything that had an endoskeleton could have done it. The flexible limb seemed to move like a wave as a single ‘ripple’ moved down it, then slammed into the tree.
It was a thick tree, one that had taken my impact and only lost some of its outer bark. People often forget that tree trunks are extremely tough, so much so that you can drive a runaway twelve-wheel truck into one and more often than not it will be the truck that ends up totalled and the tree would still be standing there, scratched and torn, but upright and firmly rooted.
So, I was rather justified in my shock when the ‘ripple’ reached the tip of the tendril, made the limb snap like the end of a cracked whip, and a large chunk of the tree trunk exploded into splinters!
Thankfully I’d already re-established a shield before me, though in this case, it was only a simple round one, rather than a complete sphere around me. Still, I was glad it was there because it was large and strong enough to protect me from the hail of splinters that would otherwise have pincushioned me. I might be tougher now, but I’d learnt the hard way that I was a long way from being invulnerable, sharpened wood could still cut me.
That was only of secondary concern though. Far more worrying was the tree that was coming down.
Whatever the creature had done had smashed out a hole more than halfway through the trunk, and with a great snapping groan the remaining portion gave way to the weight of the mass of branches above it. More snapping could be heard above, as the branches of the falling tree got entangled with the bows of its neighbours, then broke them as its weight tore them loose. Fortunately, the torn-out section had been mainly to the front of the tree, so when it collapsed, it was to the side rather than on top of me. Unfortunately, that collapse meant that I was bereft of the moderate cover I’d previously been hiding behind.
“TE! TE! TEEeEeeeEE . . . JE TeEee dETesTe!”
The words came again, distorted, but all too recognizable as human speech. I threw myself backwards, trying to open distance even as I frantically worked to spread my shield to fully encompass me, but as I did so I finally got my first good look at the monster.
And I finally saw just what was talking!