Nick sprinted across the forest floor, running faster than he had ever run before. His world was reduced to a liquid blur of color and motion, streaks of brown and green blending together to form a chaotic, patchwork jumble.
Nick’s heart hammered like a metronome on methamphetamine. His breath came fast and ragged. His lungs burned as they fought to supply his body with oxygen. He must have sprained his ankle along the way, since every desperate step drove daggers into his joint.
At the moment, he wanted nothing more than to lie down and sleep for a week. To give his battered body the rest it so desperately desired. But such thoughts were a deadly distraction. He ruthlessly suppressed them along with his awareness of the pain in his body. He banished his fears, his doubts, and his suffering to the periphery of his awareness. If Nick stopped now; if he hesitated, stumbled, or fell, it would be the last mistake he ever made. No matter how fast he ran, the lurk was faster still.
The cacophony of the predator’s pursuit was growing louder by the heartbeat. Nick could tell from the racket that the beast was no longer colliding with random boulders and trees, although it was still much clumsier than usual from taking his flashbang point-blank. Due to its temporary diminishment, the lurk made enough noise for him to track its progress, although its movements had become noticeably quieter over the last five minutes.
Although the sounds were growing closer by the footfall, he considered this to be a positive sign. Because when the lurk fully recovered, it would overtake him within seconds. As it was, it took everything that Nick had to stay in front of his multi-ton assailant. He prayed to whomever might be listening that his luck would hold out for just a bit longer.
Nick was fortunate that this path ran along familiar ground. If he hadn’t followed a trail wide enough to run, the lurk would have caught him already. Even still, his effort wasn’t going to be good enough. I’m not going to make it. Nick spared a glance over one shoulder without slowing his stride, catching sight of the beast at last, a menacing profile of tooth and claw jutting between the treetops like an avatar of fury.
It paused to sniff at the air before resuming its half-blind pursuit. Nick realized that the lurk still couldn’t see him from this distance, although its vision was improving rapidly as its eyes recovered from the blinding flash. He had been in the middle of choosing between several, equally poor options, but this observation gave him an idea.
Fifteen seconds later, the lurk caught up with Nick at last. Its big, much-too-intelligent eyes locked onto his retreating form. The massive beast opened its maw to vent its fury, roaring loud enough to cause a veil of leaves to fall from the canopy like rain. The sheer ferocity of its cry caught him by surprise, and he reflexively tensed up while turning to track the lurk’s progress. As a result, he failed to spot the patch of mud that was spread out in front of him, and his boots hit the muck while running at full speed.
Nick’s heart skipped a beat as his legs shot out from under him. The world spun and he fell hard, performing a face-planting dive that would have been funny under happier circumstances instead of utterly terrifying. It saw that I was about to run into the mud and distracted me on purpose. Clever bastard. He wriggled on his belly like a newt, turning his grime-coated torso to witness the lurk’s advance as he struggled to regain his footing.
Completing a clumsy spin, Nick found himself in a perfect position to watch as the lurk pounced, the look in its pitiless eyes conveying an impression of immense self-satisfaction. This time, mud would seal Nick’s fate instead of facilitating his escape, and the lurk seemed to savor the irony. This was his second time witnessing a predator the size of a hunting lodge soaring through the air, and he fervently hoped that he never would again. But none of that mattered now.
If the beast’s talons landed on target, it would be the end of him. He would be sliced to shreds the instant that the lurk’s body slammed into the soil. Although he hadn’t expected to take a tumble in the mud, Nick wasn’t done fighting yet.
As the lurk’s talons came streaking down like an ivory blender, his right arm came up, fingers wrapped around the shaft of his wand in a white-knuckled death grip. A heartbeat before he was eviscerated, Nick aimed the device at the lurk’s left foot and fired. Although the wand packed a powerful punch, the blast wasn’t strong enough to divert the momentum of the beast’s soaring leap. The lurk was simply too massive. But the resulting shockwave was sufficient to knock its leg to one side, causing the arm-long razors jutting out from between its toes to miss his face by an inch and some change.
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The lurk stumbled at the awkward landing, sliding a few feet across the muck before recovering its balance. In the scant handful of heartbeats that the desperate maneuver bought Nick, he managed to roll onto his back, looking up at the consummate predator straddling him like a lion looming over a mouse. This was, to put it mildly, a less than ideal situation. While his wand had caught the lurk by surprise, there was no way that the beast would let the opportunity to end his life slip through its claws. Not when he was lying helpless within easy reach of its jaws.
The lurk took aim and lunged for Nick’s fallen form three erratic heartbeats later, the carrion reek of its breath washing over him with the promise of oblivion. Just before its colossal jaws bit him in half at the waist, he pointed the wand and fired again, consuming its final charge. This time, the impact of the blast caught the lurk square in the jaw from point-blank range.
Its head snapped back like the beast had been slapped by an angry ogre, snout pointing up toward the sun high above. As a wave of saliva poured over Nick’s face, he scrambled back onto his feet, knowing that this brief diversion would only distract the lurk for a few seconds at most. Even a direct hit from the wand wasn’t enough to rattle the massive predator. His best strike could inflict only a moment of disorientation and a bit of light bruising tops.
At this point, Nick would have been well and truly fucked if it weren’t for one minor detail. Exactly nine seconds earlier, a full two seconds before the lurk arrived on scene, he had wedged a flashbang orb into the crevice where a low-hanging branch forked and pressed the trigger.
While he had not foreseen the lurk tricking him into falling in the mud, revealing that the beast was even more intelligent than he had anticipated, he had known two things with absolute certainty. The first was that one way or another, the lurk would catch up to him imminently. The second was that the only way the beast would fall for the same trick twice was if its attention was focused on Nick as it lined up a killing blow.
Thus, while by no means had everything proceeded according to plan, these circumstances were close enough to his predictions to keep him breathing. At least for the next few seconds. The reason why would soon be apparent to the lurk as well. Because that was when, for the second time in less than ten minutes, a blast of intense sound and a flash of blinding light erupted just in front of the lurk’s head, inflicting a fresh round of suffering on its sensitive eyes and ears. This time, Nick was not able to cover his own ears, although his eyelids were shut tight, despite the nearly overwhelming instinct to track the lurk’s advance.
Standing only a few feet from the detonation, the magical flashbang was so intense that it felt like he had been punched in both sides of his head at once. All he could hear was a ringing that reverberated in his skull, although he could feel the vibration of the lurk’s furious roar shaking the mud beneath his boots. While he had known it was coming, the high decibel attack had disoriented Nick as well, nearly disabling him along with the deadly predator.
Part of him wanted to lie in the mud until the pain in his ears subsided and the world of light was restored to his flash-blind eyes. Nick pushed aside such frivolous desires, seeking a path between the lurk’s legs. A space that was obscured by fat purple blobs floating across his field of view. He had to start running if he wanted to survive. He was standing mere inches from the lurk’s razored talons, and he needed to open some space before the beast’s furious thrashings swatted him like a fly.
Nick scampered forward on unsteady feet, dodged a wild swipe coming for his face, then stepped through the lurk’s legs and darted out from under its shadow. As the lurk unleashed a bone-jarring roar of rage, thick with the promise of murder, he turned his back on the incredible hunter and began running once more, ignoring the screams of his overtaxed muscles.
Less than a minute later, the lurk had closed most of the distance. Although it was temporarily blinded and deafened once again, the beast had adapted to this form of attack, now tracking Nick’s location by scent alone. He had no time to ponder the implications of this unwelcome development. No time to do anything other than run for all he was worth, legs pumping harder than they ever had before.
For the first time in his life, Nick found himself drawing on his body’s full power, utilizing every last sliver of the increases that had come with the improvements to his attributes. Despite his groundbreaking feat of athleticism, it was clear that the lurk would catch him sometime within the next ninety seconds. There was no time to place his final flashbang, and he had used up the charges in his wand. In short, Nick had no way to delay the apex predator for a third time.
But the situation wasn’t completely hopeless. At least not yet. By his rough calculations, he had just enough time to arrive at his destination before the ferocious killer put an end to his struggles once and for all.
Not that Nick had any choice at this point. He had already gone all in. Now it was time to call and see where the chips fell.