Throughout the long, chilly night, Khuldral does not move. That does not mean that nothing moves it. Only, it does not do the moving.

It just sits there on the bank of the river, eyes fixed on its target, breathing great plumes of steam into the frigid air.

It watches and it worries.

It worries that the man might die before it gets the chance to drag him bodily into the abyss to which it belongs. It worries that the man might cross the river safely and survive such that he would force it to find some way to go around the body of water and search him down again. It worries that there might not be a way around the moving body of water that does not encounter other obstacles that it cannot pass.

It worries that the witch was right. Unavoidably right. It will be obsolete. There will be no needs for creatures that prey upon the guilty to scare the tempted into behaving according to the rules of correct action and just behavior. It worries that there will come a day when it the world has no need of it.

It dreads that day.

All those years trapped beneath the hangman’s tree have given the purpose-built creature a yearning to rip and cut and mutilate the guilty that cannot be abated. If it could reach that which had imprisoned it, then it would crawl upon its belly, show its throat, and beg for the treat. That is a mere chance to fulfill the need to destroy. If it could reach that which had imprisoned it, then maybe it could find out why it was imprisoned. It does not know.

It sits in the profound darkness of the forest by night and stares fury into yet breathing carcass on the unreachable island of stone. Darkness does not hinder its vision.

Dawn arrives not with a sudden leap but with a graceful slide. Pink light peeks over the tree tops long before the golden eye of the sun glares directly through their branches.

As light touches the man on the rock, he stirs with shaky, pain-filled movements.

The monster can taste the delightful sensation of his broken body. It knows the ways he has suffered damaged much better than the mere human could ever realize. It smells the blood and hears his rattling breath as it catches in his chest with each quiver of pain. It cannot tell what the man is thinking. It does not know thoughts.

The man makes his slow, agonized assessment of the situation in the weak light of the morning sun. The beast watches with unblinking eyes.

Khuldral vibrates with anticipation as the man slides into the icy water. It sees the swirling currents and hopes for the possibility that it will sweep him close enough for capture.

The distance to be crossed in a linear sense is dangerously short. If the man had not already been so injured, it is possible he could have jumped the length of it. Khuldral wishes that he had tried. It would stretch the frozen moments with his fear. It would be a wonderful seasoning upon the meal.

The man’s failing attempts to swim against the current are amusing to watch. Khuldral licks its teeth with its long, forked tongue and waits for him to fail.

But he gives up.

Admissions of defeat are not things that the monster can taste in the man’s history. It does not know where this sudden surrender comes from. But the man turns, and swims with the current. Khuldral stands from its low crouch and whines at the change in circumstances.

From below the deep channel’s surface, a long, stiff antenna emerges. A second one follows it not long after.

Khuldral recognizes that there is a weakness to its reliance upon the stink of sin for understanding its surroundings. Animals and fellow monsters are without this aroma. No creature that lacks mankind’s awareness of right or wrong action can corrupt itself in such a way.

It is thus that Khuldral realizes an enormous catfish may devour its target.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

And it can do nothing about this.

It lets out an angry bark, snarling at this theft of what rightfully belongs to it. It snarls and growls and the catfish breaches the surface only briefly. The monster’s fins delineate a body that is even longer than Khuldral’s own. The mouth that briefly gapes at the surface opens wide enough that it could consume the enormous hound in a single gulp.

There is nothing in the world that actually has the power to frighten a creature such as Khuldral with its own mortality. It feels assured that as long as it is necessary, it will exist. Multiple millennium underground put a slightly altered perspective in place.

But existing and being eaten by a catfish are not mutually exclusive. And Khuldral does not desire to be eaten by a catfish, no matter how novel the experience would be.

It is so distracted by the enormous fish turning and thrashing in the water that it does not even notice how far the man has gotten from where he started until he is nearly out of sight around a bend in the river. It has to hurry to catch up.

It does not have the best of traction with its dull claws that scrape along the pebbly beach. And it does not want to take any risk that could put it down in the water with that blind old inland leviathan. Khuldral skids and slides as it tries to scurry down the riverbank.

Its enormous bulk works to its disadvantage. It has to maneuver around the same slippery stones that pitched its target into the river. And there is a bend that curves away from it where a stand of sturdy willows stalwartly defends against its advance. It cannot both maintain a line of sight upon the water and also stay dry.

So the creature must go around.

It ducks behind the willows, but their long draping branches further impede its movement. The draping branches loop over its haunches and pull at its long hair. It is slow going, and the creature experiences the extremely familiar sensation of frustration.

A tree has held it back before. This is not new.

But it cannot pass its bulk through this hanging screen. It withdraws to organize itself for a counterattack upon the position. But there is no need to pass directly through the willows themselves. If they are stubbornly going to defy the manifest action of just punishment and prevent it from filling the task to which it exists to serve, then it will simply go around.

And it does.

The beeches and oaks that stand guard around the willows are much more amenable to its passage. Their twisted roots push forth from the forest floor, but the growth that takes decades to achieve is not swift enough to push forward and deliberately cause anyone to trip.

The creature prances gaily as it makes its only slightly delayed way through the forest. It is smug and confident of its success. It has certainly not acted too soon. It will certainly accomplish everything that is required of it by ancient dictate. It pays no mind to the gentle upward slope as it travels out of sight of the river.

And that is when it finds that forces much greater than itself have changed the terrain.

The forest here has been rent in twain by a deep crevasse, with a tiny little tributary to the river trickling away at the bottom. The monster snorts sourly and then howls, long and low.

And it goes around. The journey takes it several hours. When it moves the river, it realizes too late that its quarry has passed much further down its length than it prepared to follow. The landscape itself has yet again been an obstinate obstacle to the execution of its task.

The creature fills its lungs with anger and starts again on the long hunt. It can still smell the stink of him in the wind. The villain is not far away. It only needs to follow that scent of crime to the source of it all, and it will achieve what it must.

Pushing through the undergrowth brings the beast to an unexpected sight. The gentle downward slope of the river’s passage abruptly ends. The woods had been hiding their elevation most successfully.

The creature looks out over the edge of a cliff. The water crashes down its side, tumbling on a long, slippery rock to reach a deep pool far below.

It can smell him. It can sense that he must be nearby indeed, for the scent is of the animal musk of his damp woolen clothing, his garlic sweat, his rusty blood, and the ammonia tang of his fear. The monster can separate each of these distinct aromas from the bitter lemon of the oaths he’s broken and the rancid meat of his many murders.

It looks across the water to find any sign of him on the high end of the cliff, but the man is nowhere to be seen.

It can smell him.

It can taste his pain and his vicious streak. It can smell his blood. It can directly smell his blood.

The monster’s eyes track slowly down the steep incline of the slippery rock. The last several feet of the slope include concave undercut where the water falls freely though open air. Erosion, that unbeatable force, has created here an enormous pool of cold water.

And down there, in a heap of damaged flesh, is the man that Khuldral has been chasing all this time. He lies on his back, running sore fingers through drying hair. He is resting. He thinks he is safe.

It takes a long slow inhale, savoring the scent of its soon-approaching victory.

The man is on his side of the river. The monster needs only to descend the cliff and it will be upon him.