The beast hunted.
The stag erupted from the underbrush, leaping over the beast’s back, evading snapping jaws by a hair’s breadth. The chase ensued, and the beast ran the deer down on silent paws, hooked claws digging deep into the loam. At the end of the chase, the beast roared, rending the stag’s belly, drinking in the hot rush of blood as the creature thrashed, and then leaving before it finished its death throes. Once the deer could not run, it was no longer interesting.
What became interesting, though, was the open fields and rolling hills of the land the beast was roaming. Men, large and small, dug in the dirt of the fields as the days grew warmer. Some traveled with large birds or sheep or cattle {shepherds}, moving from field to field each day. It shut away the voice within, almost able to ignore its obsessive naming of things.
The men were the best prey, with the sweetest blood.
A small man {a girl}, long brown hair on its head and long clothes covering its limbs {skirts}, following a cow with heavy udders. The clothes ripped easily under the beast’s teeth and claws, and the beast closed its jaws on the delicate flesh of the throat, the sweetest blood soaking the grass and the beast’s mane and pelt, hot and alive in the beast’s gullet. The beast slashed at the cow and left it dying.
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A group of wooden dens {cottages} huddled together on the hillside, and provided the best sport. The beast hunted the men {villagers}, large and small {the children, o the children, the soft voice wailed in guilt and despair}, reveling in the sport of it, only stopping to eat or sleep when it could no longer run and rend and tear. When it slept, it dreamed of more blood, and pain, pain, always pain, and it woke enraged again and sought out man and beast alike.
Under the hot sun, a group of men followed the beast’s own footprints across fields and through the shade of forest. The beast doubled back, hunting them for a day and a night, even as they hunted it. Noticing their weapons {dragon spears}, something in the flash of them sang to a part of the beast that was locked away, gibbering with madness. They died just as easily in its jaws.
When dawn began to touch the clouded sky, the beast stalked yet another small man {a young boy} as it walked with large birds {geese}, their wing feathers cut so they could not fly.
It heard something new, a chiming of metal on metal and the grinding of wood on the road as it took the last silent steps, leaping among the nervous birds, its jaws closing over the boy’s arm at the shoulder. Before blood could spill, sunlight crept through the clouds, a finger of light and warmth touching the beast and calming the small voice within. The beast collapsed, panting, at the goose-herd’s side, on the grass where he lay, its limbs twisting, changing as the sound of wagon wheels and chiming bells came closer. The chiming fell silent, and gentle hands touched the shackle binding the beast’s leg. It fell away in pieces.
Weyland wept, burying his face in the grassy earth, shame and agony and vivid memory of every kill consuming him as the madness faded. Aodhan the Tinker gently covered Weyland’s nakedness with a rough blanket, speaking soft words of deep compassion.