The interior of the cave was dry and quiet. The captured prey has long ceased its struggle and has resigned itself to its fate. The Pale Hunter crawled towards the still form of the prey, a human female – heavily pregnant, still alive. The prey’s heartbeat was steady, but was slowing down. Its flesh would still be warm when the Pale Hunter would next take a bite out of it. But it would be dead soon, claimed by cold, hunger, or thirst. Fresh and warm or dead and cold, it mattered little to the Hunter; flesh was flesh and it would eat its fill.
But, living flesh tasted best. Cold and dead meat was not its preferred choice, but it was still edible.
The prey stirred awake; its eyes widened immensely, before screaming loudly. “GET AWAY FROM ME! HEEEEEEELP!!!”
It tried to fight the Pale Hunter, but was incapable of doing anything more than flail as it hung from the ceiling of the cave, suspended by its feet, using a combination of resin and animal droppings. The Hunter also broke the prey’s spine to ensure it couldn't run away if it did somehow escape the ceiling through excessively flailing its arms.
Urine began streaming from between the prey’s legs and drenched its second skin, a layer of external skin humans were fond of wearing over their real skin. Sometimes, the second skin would be armored, but, in most times, it was just as soft and easy to rip as their real skin.
The prey screamed and screamed. Most living prey did so; it was only natural. This one struggled more than usual.
It was afraid for its life and the life of its child, the Pale Hunter surmised. But it did not need to fear, not yet. The Hunter’s hunger was slaked and its thirst sated; it had no need for more food, at least, not for the next few days. And if the prey died, the cold would preserve its flesh for a long time; if the cold intensified even further, then the meat would never spoil at all, frozen solid, but edible all the same.
The Pale Hunter eyed the screaming human for a moment and wondered if it should take a bite, but decided against it. Perhaps, it will do so later; hunger was a distant thing, for now.
Uninterested in examining its food any longer, the Pale Hunter turned away and crawled to the mouth of its cave, where it sniffed the open air. More prey was always good – more food to eat when it grew hungry in its cave. A single human female, despite the addition of an unborn child in its womb, would not suffice.
The winds blew in from the west and towards the east. The air was much warmer today than it was yesterday; perhaps, the rivers would thaw and it could enjoy a nice dip in the cold waters.
Blood!
The Pale Hunter’s head snapped to the left.
With its sensitive nose, it breathed in the frigid winds. The Hunter’s maw hung open at the scent; jagged teeth that were sharp enough to cut through solid rock were on full display. Its black talons lengthened and its muscles coiled beneath its luminescent skin.
The Pale Hunter breathed in once more.
There was fresh prey out in the open, a fair distance westwards, where the Big Horns often grazed with their calves in the tall grasses that peeked out of the snow. The Hunter had no quarrel with the gentle giants; it couldn’t eat their flesh or the flesh of their young and neither could it eat the flesh of any other creature, save for that of the flesh of humans and their taller and shorter ilk. It was the taller men with pointy ears that tasted the best. But the blood in the air was not of the pointy-eared men, but of the short ones, whose flesh was far less flavorful, but far more filling.
The Hunter leapt to tops of the tall trees, where it began leaping from branch to branch, steadily moving westwards, following the scent of fresh blood in the air. This was its preferred mode of movement in the woods; very few humans ever deigned to look up and, when they did bother to, it was usually too late for them. Ambushing its prey was the safest and most efficient method. The Hunter’s Claws were sharp and its teeth even more so; the Hunter’s skin was durable enough to shrug off the bite of a bear, a fellow hunter in the wilds. But its preferred prey had their own ways of fighting back. Prey that fought back was annoying. While the Hunter was more than capable of a frontal attack if the need ever arose, doing so was a waste of energy and, more than likely, it would give its prey the opportunity to escape.
Ambushes were perfect, safe and efficient, especially when used against wounded or vulnerable humans.
The other reason it stuck to the branches atop the tall trees was the presence of other Hunters on the forest floor.
There was a natural pecking order in vast and icy wilderness the Hunter called its home. At the bottom were the mundane beasts, Giant Boars, Big Horns, and the Ice Bears that hunted them. The Pale Hunter worried little about the mundane beasts; they were mostly harmless, even when they did attack. Above those creatures were the more dangerous of beasts that were somewhat capable of hurting the Pale Hunter in specific circumstances, but not quite enough to be a true threat; these beasts were the Ogres, Tree Horns, Wyverns, Ice Wolves, and White Horns. Standing at the top of the order, however, were the creatures that the Hunter actively avoided, apex predators that suffered no challenge save for those that came from each other: Dragons, Giants, Dogmen, Red Horns, and Thunder Horns.
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The Pale Hunter stuck to the trees, because the apex predators ruled the world beneath. The only other creatures that lingered in the branches were birds and rodents, beasts of no particular note – not a threat. Such beasts were not a part of the pecking order. No predator hunted them and so they proliferated.
The Hunter continued further westward, cold winds blowing against its face, bringing the scent of blood. Not only blood, however, as the winds also brought information. The prey was moving eastwards – very slowly, but steadily. The Pale Hunter sniffed the air once more; the prey’s injuries were not fatal, but were serious enough to hamper its movement.
The Pale Hunter hurried onwards.
Below, the ice-covered forest floor shook as a herd of Big Horns passed, gargantuan beasts with curved horns whose ramming charges were powerful enough to shatter trees; their thick, fatty, and muscular forms were covered in an even thicker layer of wool that protected them from both the cold and the predation of those that actively hunted them. True enough, adult Big Horns possessed hides thick enough to withstand the crushing bites of Wyverns and small Dragons, which was why only their young were targeted by predators. The herd passed underneath the Hunter. The trees shook, but did not bend. There were hundreds of them, mothers and fathers and their children.
The Pale Hunter eyed them for a passing moment, before leaping away to another branch. Big Horns were gentle and often passive, but will charge if provoked or otherwise threatened. Many humans learned this the hard way, impaled to death by the beasts’ massive horns or crushed beneath their massive hooves. And, each time, the Pale Hunter would be there to gorge on the remains.
The Hunter’s prey neared, still moving slowly across the snowy woods. It sniffed the air and noted the smell of blood had lessened; the prey must’ve used some strange human tool to close its wounds. The Pale Hunter had seen such things occur often; wounded humans would drink some oddly colored water from a container of clear ice, causing open wounds to stop bleeding or close entirely. Humans were, in general, a physically-inferior species when compared to other predators. They were weak. Their muscles were soft and their skins lacked fur to protect them. They possessed no claws and lacked sharp teeth. Most of them ran slow; sure, they were capable of running for hours without stopping, a feat that most predators were incapable of, but they were slow and very easily caught, especially by Ice Bears, who bore a preference for human meat.
The Hunter increased its pace, blurring from one tree to the next.
It stopped and circled the trunk of a massive redwood tree that overlooked much of the snowy lands. The prey was close, within viewing distance. Resting on the roots of a gnarled and dead tree was the stout form of the short human subspecies; it was still wounded, a fact that was made clear by the blood in the air, though it did not appear at all to be seriously injured, beyond the gash on its right thigh and several other cuts across its body. Its second skin, made of interlocking plates of some gleaming, dull grey material, was ruined and covered in holes and rends, whereupon the prey’s wounded flesh was exposed, bleeding slightly through the second skin and onto the snow. The human was lucky to still be in one piece; the other predators in the woods still hadn’t noticed its presence.
They will – soon. The Ice Wolves will soon come running down the hills, teeth gnashing in hunger as they poured out of their caves.
The Pale Hunter had to move quickly to secure its prey. And so, it crept from the tops of the trees, making not a single sound. The Hunter’s lithe form meant it was lighter than most creatures, such that its weight did not disturb the old branches that would’ve snapped if the Hunter had been any heavier. Despite its lightness, however, the Pale Hunter was strong – much stronger than it had any right being; it’d long noticed this of course, after the course of many hunts. Somehow, the Hunter was stronger than all the beasts at the bottom of the food chain – strong enough to easily overpower an angry Ice Bear, despite a clear lack of natural bulk. It was also capable of picking up scents over great distances, chewing through rock, or slicing open trees with its black claws.
It didn’t make sense, but the Pale Hunter did not question its circumstances too much; it was strong, it was fast, and it was silent. All these things allowed it to capture prey and eat to its hearts’ content. There was no need for further questions. All that mattered was the Hunt; everything else was a passing and fleeting fancy.
The Pale Hunter moved from atop the branches of the tall and massive trees of the woods, observing its prey.
The prey was exhausted its breaths were quick and its heart hammered in its chest – exhausted and afraid. Although it was frantically scanning its surroundings, even aiming its sharpened stick thing at random places, the prey never bothered to look up. The Pale Hunter stalked down the bark of the massive tree, upon whose roots the prey rested, weary and fearful. The stench of urine and musk permeated the air, mingling with the scent of blood. Its head and its neck were its most vulnerable parts, exposed as they were.
The Pale Hunter paused for a moment and considered its next course of action. When it struck, it would have to be decisive and immediate; the prey could not be allowed to fight back or else the Hunter would find itself in a prolonged fight that would waste valuable time and energy. Worse still was the possibility of other predators arriving to steal the Hunter’s prey or the prey itself would simply find a way to escape. The Pale Hunter wasn't perfect; it had failed in its hunts before, especially when it was… younger and lacked experience.
The best course of action, when hunting humans, was to immobilize them and then paralyze them. Paralysis was easily achieved by breaking the lower portion of its spine, quick and efficient.
The Pale Hunter stayed in place, watching, and waiting for the perfect moment.
The prey below huffed and made pained noises as examined the massive wound on its thigh, no longer bleeding, but still very much open and painful. Still, the stout human forced itself back up onto his legs, seemingly deciding that it was safe and all was well. It began limping away from the tree.
With the human’s back turned, the Pale Hunter surged down and clamped its jaws around the prey’s shoulder, its sharp teeth punching through its armored second skin. The prey immediately screamed in pain and fear, blindly flailing its arms in a panicked struggle. Its efforts were for naught; the hunter’s maw was locked and the only way the prey could escape was if it tore out its own shoulders.
As the short and stout human continued struggling and screaming, the Pale Hunter reached down, grabbed its waist, and twisted hard.