Chapter 12: Prey.

Nero leapt out of the way half a moment before the Face Eater’s form crashed into the campfire. The impact of its landing shoved a cloud of debris into air, filling it with dust and obscuring its form.

Nero saw a shadowy death move within the cloud, but it was too late. The Face Eater was on him, claw wrapped tightly around his arm and dragging at him.

The thing’s wings beat powerfully against the air, yanking Nero’s feet off of the ground. It was trying to take him to the sky, to its domain. Nero couldn’t let that happen, he’d be as good as dead if he did.

He reached for a tree and gripped it by the bark. The beast continued to flap its great black wings, forcing Nero’s fingers to slip further and further.

With his right arm being pulled one way and his left another, Nero felt like he was coming apart at the seams. His muscles burned with exertion, but it wasn’t enough and soon Nero had lost his grip entirely.

Wind roared past his ears as the Face Eater took him up higher and higher. He was approaching the height of treetops when his hand lit up. It’s back! That was one silver lining in this absolute shit-storm.

He pulled his arm back, readying to throw a punch. He knew however that the Face Eater was quite resilient and Nero didn’t want to waste what little time he had left with his Lightbreathing on a feeble effort.

So he punched with intent to cause maximum pain, aiming for the softest thing he could find, and the Face Eater howled in response, letting go of him. It was, all things considered, lucky that this happened to be a male and that the monsters of Hell just so happened to have genitalia, but he knew better than to question little mercies.

Especially when a bigger problem was rapidly approaching.

That problem being the ground itself.

He was falling, and falling fast. He couldn’t fly, couldn’t glide, couldn’t really do anything that could make this better so he braced himself for impact as he smashed painfully through tree branches. All he could hope for was that they might slow him enough to make his landing less brutal. That wasn’t how things worked in real life- in real life he’d be more likely to get skewered than slowed- but with his new, impossible resilience maybe the wood would give before him.

He would never find out though.

The Face Eater screeched again, shooting in between trees and coming straight at him. Nero braced himself and still had the wind taken out of him as the thing’s large form smacked into him, sending Nero shooting downwards into a tree, cracking it on impact and leaving him to fall limply onto the ground.

He met the earth hacking up spit, still alive, but he knew he wasn’t even nearly in the clear. The screeching told him the beast was coming again, and if he stayed on the ground, he wouldn’t be hacking much longer.

Nero got to his feet, saw the predator swooping down like an eagle and leapt out of the way. This time when it struck the earth he was ready for the dust cloud and was ready for its second attack.

He met its approach by stepping to the side just in time and slamming his fist into its form. The beast was sent rolling out of control, slamming through a tree and grinding to what looked like a dazed stop.

Nero let himself enjoy the sight of its anguish and dreaded how quickly it faded. The Face Eater spread its wings and began flying at him again, red beady eyes more furious than he thought could be possible, the ghastly face of the man he’d last killed staring right at him.

He waited for its approach again, stepped to the side when it reached him and struck at it while it was flying past. Nero’s fist met air instead of muscle this time as the beast changed directions midair.

A feint.

It's changing tactics.

That betrayed a dangerous level of intelligence, specifically when coming from a creature which was already this physically powerful.

As it reached high up above the tree, Nero let himself humour the idea that it might perhaps be fleeing. Then it turned and he knew he wasn’t going to get off that easy.

This was Hell after all.

Nero thought, assessed the limited number of options before him and began running away. He dashed past the trees, hoping that the dense forestry might be enough of an obstruction to hinder its flight. That was how he got away from the last one after all.

Now he just had to find a similarly sized cave to crawl into like before time.

That however, did not seem very likely.

He took a glance back to see the Face Eater flying at him, twisting past trees with a supernatural grace and leaving them to bristle behind as gale force winds washed over the leaves.

Nero urged his feet to move with as much intent as he could muster. It was all to no avail, the monster was too fast and he was too slow.

It was almost on him again.

Nero leapt to the side far too sluggishly, it clipped him mid jump, sending him to the ground hard. Nero bounced, rolled and came to a painful stop.

He was barely up to his feet when the Face Eater’s talons wrapped around his ankle and yanked him up into the sky.

The ground retreated away from him and trickles of blood followed. That told him he was bleeding from the head. The light in his hand died, he urged it back to life with a thought but received only a flicker in response.

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Fuck.

It was hopeless, there was nothing he could do, Nero was going up against an enemy that was simply too powerful. He was dead, he should just give up, let it be over and done with.

He would have too, if not for the annoying light that continued to fly around his head. Ember was a blur now and the sounds she was making were unintelligible to a mind as dazed as his.

Still he could guess the sentiment, she was probably screaming his name, begging him not to die. All that whining. He didn’t have too strong of a sentiment on whether or not he got to keep his life, he’d had one before and he’d made quite a shit-show of it. But he’d long since made a promise to himself to keep on going as long as Ember lived.

I’ve broken too many promises to pick which ones I keep.

He drew his free foot backwards and slammed it against the monster’s body. It was a feeble blow, he could swear the face eater hadn’t even felt it.

“Hear that, you ugly fuck… You don’t get to kill me.” He told it, words slurring, mind drifting.

He slammed it in again, and again, and again. Nothing, it was a feeble attempt, senseless, useless, the definition of insanity. But Nero swore he would keep at it until his legs simply didn’t work.

The beast howled after another hopeless kick. Nero’s eyes widened, for a moment he humoured the nonsensical idea that his attacks had somehow had an effect. A glance up told him the truth however.

There was an arrow poking out of the monster’s eye, it shrieked, this time in clear pain. It let go of Nero which filled him with a perfectly balanced mix of relief and raw terror while he fell.

The fall came to an abrupt stop when an arrow shot through his shirt, pinning it and by extension him to a tree.

Nero found Selvas far down below, sliding another arrow into her bow.

“Thank you!” He yelled out.

“It’s coming around, get down from there!” She growled.

She was right, the beast was circling down towards him again. He had no intentions of letting it get close. Nero ripped the arrow out of place, landed on a branch and leapt from it onto another.

Nero lost his footing, slipped and met the ground with his back. He coughed, groaned but forced himself onto his feet. “Fuck…”

“Are you okay?” Selvas asked, eyes up above, watching the circling beast.

“I don’t think so, no.” He cleared his throat and felt a sharp pain in his side. “Yes, definitely not.”

“Well, we’re not out of the woods yet.” Selvas warned. “It’s still on the prowl.”

“Ah, perfect.” He groaned.

“Take my dagger.” Selvas said, eyes flicking to her belt where a hilt poked out of a sheathe.

Nero withdrew the blade, not at all surprised to see the runes etched into its metal surface. “Done.”

“Here’s the deal, we can’t kill it.” Selvas started.

“Lovely.”

“But we can hurt it, really, really bad.” She finished. “Right now it’s unsure if we’re still worth the effort of being prey, what we're going to do is make it decide that we in fact are not.”

Nero nodded. “My guess is that’s going to be easier said than done.”

“Good guess.” She replied.

It was in fact a good guess. The beast was circling the air above them now, letting out that occasional deafening screech Nero was coming to expect from the Face Eater.

It was going to come down soon, when it wanted, when it had decided that for whatever reason it was the perfect time to strike them down. Nero didn’t like that, he didn’t want to give it that luxury. He was going to force it into action.

“I have an idea, a bad one.”

“Oh no.” Ember sighed, face tight with worry. It made sense, she’d seen his ideas, they often had a trend of ending up with him one wrong move away from death. All Hell’s fault and none of it his of course.

“Go ahead.” Selvas said, lacking any hesitation. Her eyes were fixed ahead, pupils tracking the winged beast.

“I’m going to run, and when it chases after me, you’re going to shoot it’s other eye out.” Nero told her. “Can you manage that?”

Selvas, frowned in thought for a moment and then shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out, go.” She said.

Nero would have preferred to have needled out a more concrete answer, given that it was his life at stake, but he supposed that was just one of the many luxuries of time; a luxury he did not currently possess.

“You- you’re not actually going to do it are you?!” Ember pressed, apparently she could see the consideration in his eyes.

He answered by pulling in a deep breath and sprinting for the trees.

The sound of Ember’s shock was drowned out by the roar of the Face Eater. A roar that much to his deep displeasure, he could hear was getting closer.

The Face Eater shot past Nero, circled around and was coming straight towards him, its one red eye filled with murder. Nero charged forwards, roaring and doing well to make a very loud and distracting meal of himself.

He heard Selvas’ bow spring lose, felt the arrow tear past him and saw the Face Eater twist out of the way. Shit, shit, shit, shit! The beast shot behind Nero and pounced on Selvas.

It knew it was a trick. Well of course it knew, it was smart enough to figure that the true threat to a flying predator, any flying predator, was ranged prey. You’re not still on earth Nero, the animals here are smart, capable, and fucking deadly.

Now wasn’t the time to beat himself up however, now was the time to fix his mistake.

Selvas was pinned against the ground, trying and failing to wrestle the Eater off as it sunk its claws into her arms. He heard her scream, it was a piercing thing, and then she glared up at the monster and spat in its face.

Nero was running before the beast could retaliate. He leapt onto the Face Eater’s back, it was unwise, foolish and ill advised, but the time for level headed decisions had long since come and gone.

Not a moment after Nero found a grip, the Face Eater shook and spun with such violence as to nearly send him shooting into a tree. The world was a swirl of mass and shapes as Nero struggled to hold on, brain sloshing around in his skull at speeds he knew no doctor would recommend.

It was only a matter of time till he was swung off. That was bad, he didn’t want to lose this advantage. It didn’t matter that it could barely be called one.

When fighting with an animal, be animalistic.

Those were the last thoughts burning through his mind before he opened his mouth and closed his jaw around the thing’s neck, sinking his teeth into its skin.

The Face Eater clearly hadn’t been bitten before, That made sense of course, anything inclined to bite a Face Eater was either powerful enough that it would be unlikely to survive the encounter, or just plain insane.

Nero ignored what that said about him and focused on the moment. The creature was shocked, confused, it had stopped trying to jostle him around. That wouldn’t last long however, so Nero capitalised.

He raised a hand and slammed the blade right through the monster's eye. The metal struggled against the tissue far more than Nero would have expected but eventually went through with a wet squelch, ruining the beast’s one good eye.

That it seemed was enough to force it out of its shock. It spun again and Nero’s grip would have had better odds catching water than holding onto the Face Eater.

He smacked into a tree and landed on his side, spluttering.

His pain however seemed a mild discomfort when placed next to the Eater’s. The creature’s screech reached a new pitch of agony that Nero had once thought impossible and his ears were regretting entertaining such naivety.

He winced and closed his palms against them.

Nero had expected panic from the creature, he’d wished to see it flailing around. What he’d certainly not hoped for was for the creature to wear a deathly calm.

With ruined eyes, the Death Eater turned its face directly towards Nero.

“I…It can still see you.” Ember whispered.

Echo location.

That was what the screech was, it was not one of pain. It was emitting a pulse.

Nero’s gut sank, he tried to scramble onto his feet but his body was having none of it, meeting him with agony where he demanded action.

The Face Eater had no such problems, for it was already spreading its wings.