Chapter Text
Wretched and beastly, the creature snarled.
It clawed with hands tense and aching from thundering adrenaline, pain and seething desperation. Its body felt so overheated that for once the terrible winter cold did not register, even as it gouged its unfamiliar, clawed fingers into the snow and frozen earth. The fervour of its task left it panting, chest cavity heaving, tongue lolling, and drool frothing at its monstrous, toothy muzzle. Even still, it was almost entirely lost to its berserk state, and continued tearing away at the hard ground, unimpeded by the exertion.
Out of sight, but not out of its hearing, others like it yowled and snapped at each other, crying out amongst the snow and barren trees. They were without voices that could form words. Their throats and their mouths could do nothing more than tear at raw and innocent, screaming meat, or roar their bloodlust to the repulsed and pitiless heavens.
And woe that both were happening in abundance.
The night had left the world bleaker than ever, moonless and frigid. A cold wind cut through the trees, and on it came the scent of fresh blood, and fear and death. It smelled metallic and filled the creature’s stomach with something like hate, and something like hunger.
Furiously, it ripped deeper into the ragged trench it had dug, as if it could somehow distract itself from the pungent smell, and that hollow feeling in its gut. It bowed over its digging hands with the hope that the weak scent of the cold dirt might overwhelm the blood and give it a reprieve from the heady, thick perfume that filled the mountain air.
The memory of a time when the earth had been its solace, a source of duty and service, of bounty and peace, flickered through its scattered thoughts. Its snarls deepened into something distraught, and it sagged further as if only just realizing the furrow it had dug would serve just as well for a grave in which, with enough time, it could freeze.
When had it all gone so wrong? When had it lost everything to the beastliness singing a foul hymn in its skull, poisoning its wants with sick violence? It felt that it had not be so long, but time had started to lose its meaning in the cycle of confusion and bloody hunts.
It offered up a plaintive whimper to the slowly coming morning. If only the nightmare it was living would fade with the incremental brightening of the sky.
A far-off scream twisted through the predawn gloom. The beast's hunting party, more an animalistic pack than anything, cried out a chorus of jolly enthusiasm, before falling into the quieter snuffs and snorts preluding a hunt.
Something had happened down in the village, something painful, something absolute. The area that had once been off limits, bustling with weak and soft humans, had become a hunting ground.
Prey had been plentiful, such that the glut of them had left the whole valley echoing with the triumphant cries of other packs like the beast's own. All manner of monster gorged themselves on the horror-stricken masses as they fell like wheat before a farmer’s scythe. Now, though, there were only a few straggling survivors, and the beasts were mostly satiated. They sought bloodshed for the sheer pleasure of tormenting and then snuffing out the last of their victims.
Through it all, the beast had stuck to the woods, trailing behind its hunting party, forming a perimeter to catch any runners. They’d fanned out, within easy earshot of each other, and when one had come across prey, it had called its brethren close to partake in the kill. Still, their feast had not been so bountiful as the ones who’d gone into town, and they craved any last morsel that could be added to their total.
It had simply endured, wrestling in the mayhem with the sudden sweeping tide of depravity.
Pausing in its frantic, mindless digging, the beast glanced up in the direction of its pack as they moved out to stalk their new quarry. It had no desire to fill its gullet though, even as it automatically tracked the sound of harried movement through the undergrowth by tilting its head this way and that. It could smell urine and excrement, vomit and drying blood. Whatever its pack went to find, they would only find a terrified and broken thing.
Its stomach roiled again, and tension ran like boiling water through its arms into its hands. It flung itself back in the snow and thrashed violently, grinding the back of its skull into the ground, and flinging chunks of bloodied snow into the air, battling against the instinct to get up and chase after its fellow beasts.
How easy it’d be, to fall into their ranks, to lose itself into the bloodlust and the ritual of killing.
It smacked its head again into the earth, over and over.
Eventually it fell still, panting.
When would the fever and hunger lessen? When would the pain and buzzing in its head that wanted to tear and bite and grind ease?
It groaned, the sound deep in its chest.
Above it, snow fell from a sky of dark pewter; old, leaden, and poisonous. Even the encroachment of dawn had done nothing to bring light to the world.
Its panting eased as its pack moved off out of earshot, and at last it was truly alone. The snow that fell on it tickled before melting on its feverish skin, and it felt like that was as close to peace as it might ever get again.
And then it heard, in the opposite direction its pack had gone, a faint crunch of snow.
That could have been anything though. The woods made all manner of sounds from the few animals that still dared to linger there, to the creaking of trees, to the shifting of earth and ice, to the frosty wind, and the occasional sound of snow falling in clumps from high branches.
Still, it shifted so its ears were not blocked by the snow where it had buried its head, allowing it to more easily track the sound.
There it came again, a soft crunching too consistent to be anything but footsteps. And as the sound neared, soon it could also hear laboured breathing. Not so bad that the creature was dying or wounded, but nervous and feeling the toll of slogging through uneven and difficult terrain.
Slowly, the beast dragged itself to its feet, hunched like a racer ready to spring from its mark. Unlike the struggling person somewhere in the thicket of trees, the beast’s breaths were slow, quiet and controlled. Its eyes were steady as they scanned through the undergrowth for movement that was out of place.
There, just before the figure vanished into a rocky gorge that would guide it to an overlook of the whole valley, the beast spotted it. Human. Male. It, he, was coming from the direction of an outlying house but the beast knew as surely as it knew the scent of blood and offal, that he was not a local.
He was unaware of its presence, alert but not looking for something like it, not ready to be hunted by beasts seeking his flesh.
Rather than hurl its self through the undergrowth to tear into the human and add it to the corpses littering the wilderness, it slunk quietly after him, curious. Its familiarity with the terrain leant itself to the beast’s stealth as it took the high ground, skulking along the upper rocky ledge that penned the human in. The poor man had no idea how helpless he would be, should the beast decided to drop, unseen and unheard, from above onto his soft, breakable little body.
It waited as the man came to the overlook where the whole valley opened up before him. Across the bowl was the great spire of the castle and to either side, the old ruins, and a windmill. They were ominous silhouettes against the winter sky, each in their own way. It might have looked stunning, or peaceful, if the viewer didn’t know any better.
The beast knew that it was nothing but a mire of torment, a coliseum of slaughter.
The man spoke, the words carried out of his mouth by his shock. “Were the hell am I?”
He was not expecting an answer, the beast was sure, and there was no eloquent explanation it could give when its lips could barely form forgotten words, had pulled back to make way for sharper, larger teeth, and easier tearing of throats.
Still, it chuffed and snorted, hot breath steaming when it met the cold air.
The man startled at the sound, yelped, and lost his footing. He slipped down the steep embankment into the valley proper with a strangled gasp.
The beast watched him go out of sight, before dropping down from its vantage point. It peered over the ledge to where the man was picking himself up and brushing himself off. He turned to stare back up the embankment, likely seeking the source of the sound that had first unsettled him. The beast hastily drew back, not so willing to give up the game just yet.
As it did, it caught the scent of fresh blood carried by an updraft. Animal blood, and nearby it scented another monster like it. If the man wasn’t careful he’d be joining the dead much sooner, rather than later.
Instinct drove a snarl up through its throat, the desire to keep its mark for itself becoming known. Whichever hungry beast was down there wasn’t from the same hunting party as it, and while whatever was already dead down there was that other beast’s to fill its belly with, the man had come from the woods and that meant it was prey belonging to the ones guarding the perimeter.
So it decided, anyway.
The beast dropped silently down the embankment, on top of the hut where the man had vanished, and watched the other monster skulk into the yard to collect the corpse of the horse. The other one paused to listen and scent the air, eyes flickering to the hut where the outsider had vanished, and the beast on the rooftop bared its teeth in warning.
The one on the ground bared its teeth back, but didn’t push the conflict further. It made do with the horse carcass, and just as it disappeared back beyond of the fenced-in area, the outsider stepped out of the house.
He froze as the horse was dragged out of sight, and waited for a long, tense moment before moving again. The beast on the roof could hear the way his breath caught in his throat and stayed trapped there while the danger passed.
Little did he know he was akin to a sitting duck, as the creature breathed quietly over his head, watching to see what he would do next.
The man began to creep forward, and peered down the muddy path in the direction the other monster and its prize had gone. There was nothing to see there, the beast on the rooftop knew. Its own vantage point and keen understanding of its kind told it that the man would not see the monsters waiting in the shadows until they were ready to spill his guts on the snow.
After a moment of hesitation he began to skirt his way down the same track. There was no way to return to the woods: the other direction was blocked off by a smoking, old truck tipped on its side. The only route was deeper into the village.
As he went, the beast followed silently along. It wasn’t the only one. The other had alerted its fellow monsters and the unwitting human had a whole salivating entourage.
This was a problem. Without its own pack, it would surely have to cede its claim to the force with the greater numbers, unless they were bloated and full enough that they allowed it to fall in with their ranks out of sheer apathy.
And what then? It’d followed the man like a cat unable to stop itself from stalking an unwitting mouse. But the hunger, the violence in it was still as repulsive as it had been before. Even if this particular human wasn’t a terrorized ruin pleading for mercy or a swift end, the thought of slaughtering him sent the same frantic distress that had plagued its night buzzing through the beast’s scattered thoughts.
It gnashed its teeth in frustration and shook its head like a dog with flees in an effort to clear its mind.
The human rattled a locked gate, before returning to one of the last houses that had a light flickering above its door.
The beast snarled lowly, knowing the house was covered in the stench of death, knowing there was another human still lurking in there, and knowing that made it a very tempting lure for the hunters circling it. The man had become a fish in a slowly tightening net.
The creature hesitated, pacing in circles on an adjacent roof, as the other monsters closed in, prowling closer and closer to its mark. They bared their teeth at it, knowing it had strayed from its pack, but seemingly content to leave it be so long as it did not interfere with their fun.
The first gunshot broke through the air like thunder, and was quickly followed by frantic voices. The prey had become aware of the teeth at their throats. It was all the sign the monsters needed to end their quiet lurk and begin harrying the humans.
The first to go was the local, an old man who died quickly and with a pitifully futile resistance, his shots hardly finding their mark, let alone doing any damage.
And then the outsider was the only one left.
The beast huffed and snarled in agitation, unable to see what had become of the man. The majority of the pack was hanging back, making sure that if the prey should break free of the lone hunter they had sent into the house, he would not escape in the end.
The beast heard the crashing of wood, and shouting, and then more crashing.
The smell of new, unfamiliar blood filled the air with its heady stench, and then the man was hurled out through the house into the snow, screaming in pain as he landed. Dark red stained his hand, and spilled onto the ground. It looked like he had lost a good chunk to the assailant that was now chasing him out into the open, its maw stained with the same hue.
The monster was overconfident in its victory though, as the man cursed in a pitched and thready voice. It took its time to loom over him threateningly when it should have gone for the jugular. In that span, the man revealed that he was not so hapless. He lifted a gun and fired round after round into the beast’s chest, the impact of it staggering the creature before it could regroup and take the man out.
None of the watching beasts intervened or showed remorse. They might have been pack, they might have hunted together, but there was no loyalty there. There was only a shared hunger for flesh and violence, and the awareness that numbers made the acquisition of food more convenient. But they were not necessary.
On the rooftop, the man’s persistent tagalong felt pleased that its prey was strong enough not to just fall to the first onslaught. The man’s durability was not a credit to its own might, but it felt satisfied the hunt had not ended so easily all the same.
As it observed, the man continued his search through the town, cutting his way through the locked gate to the house on the other side where a radio buzzed with static and gore stilled dripped upon the plaster.
Distantly, the beast wondered what he was looking for. Others of his kind? Did he think numbers would lend him safety? They wouldn’t. It was sure that what numbers he could find, if any, were no match for the numbers the monsters had. His only hope was to find a way out of the town; to get far, far away. Even that was ruined now that he had been sighted. The moment he got close to escaping, the masses of bloodthirsty monsters would snatch his hope from him.
It was only a matter of time.
As if prompted by its morbid thoughts, the pack began to surge towards the house the man was in, throwing themselves at the boarded up windows, the gaping wounds in its roof and walls, eager to test the man’s mettle again. The air filled with their snapping growls, distracting the man as another of their number slunk in to harry him.
It seemed a weak tactic when he’d had no trouble dispatching the first scout, but if the goal was to bleed him out over time, and numbers were of no concern, then there was no reason to end it too quickly. The more of their brethren fell, the less they had to share, after all.
The beast snarled in understanding. Did the human know he was being toyed with?
If he hadn’t, when he stepped back out into the open, he surely realized. The other monsters were no longer making an effort to hide themselves. They crouched on the rooftops in plain view, corralling him and herding him with vicious playfulness.
Moving as if it was one with the hunting party, the beast from the woods followed after him, going from rooftop to rooftop, for the best vantage point. It was being pulled inextricably to witness the scene play out. The stench of fear and the bloodlust of its fellow monster's hung hot and tempting in the air, luring it to fall into the same ferocious fervour.
It felt keenly attuned to the human’s struggle, to his proverbial death-throws.
He darted up over the stairs, into another house, and the beasts dropped from the eaves to circle him from the outside. Like a rabbit being chased through the undergrowth, moments later he popped out from under the house, on the far side, a new weapon in hand.
It wasn’t enough and the beasts rejoiced that he was in their sights again, closing in as pairs while he made a beeline for more shelter. There was an instant when it seemed like he might not manage to pull a barricade across the open door in time; one of the monsters reaching out to claw and tear against it, in a contest of strength he had no way of winning.
Without thought, the beast who’d followed him down from the woods and had watched his death creep ever closer plunged down from the eaves, knocking its brethren aside. It turned and snarled into the man’s face, unsure if it was threat or warning it gave. It was witnessed by him for the first time since it had begun its hunt, so close it watched its breath stir his hair, was reflected in in his terrified eyes, and saw bloody spittle land on his cheeks, just as he finally heaved the barricade across the gap.
The other beasts snarled and snapped at it for getting in the way. It bit back, teeth clacking against each other audibly, but retreated, outnumbered two to one.
The man would have to work fast or hope his weapons were good. The blockade between him and the outside would not hold, not with the way his pursuers were bludgeoning it in a blind fury.
It spotted a monster slightly larger than the others, equipped with a weapon that suggested it was perhaps higher up in the hierarchy, begin to circle.
That wouldn’t do. The weapon was little more than a rock strapped to a stick, but it’d bust down the decrepit barrier even faster than bare hands would.
The beast snarled and used the mayhem to plunge its claws and teeth into the weapon-wielder's back, latching onto it and dragging it back from the house before it could break through.
Just in time. With a burst of heat and noise something in the shack exploded, filling the air with the stench of smoke and burning flesh. If it had been any closer, it would have suffered from the concussive blast.
Not that there was any time to appreciate the moment. The monster in its grip thrashed and roared in outrage. It whirled its hammer in an effort to shake loose its attacker. But the beast held on, gnashing its own teeth and burrowing its face deeper into the wound it was goring in the monster neck, feeling hot blood gush into its mouth and onto its face. With its legs wrapped around the other monsters middle, it used it hands to tear, and jab, and rip at the softer flesh of its opponent’s sides, like it was still in the woods, madly digging at the ground.
Its foe fell with a pained, furious roar, before going limp.
The chaos had only heightened while the beast had been distracted. The human was up on the rooftop firing shots into the circling monsters below. Flaming arrows rained out of the sky, and the old wood of the roof was already beginning to catch. It wasn't the only thing; trees and fences were beginning to burn as well, and flankers danced and popped in the air.
Down below the errant beast snarled and paced back and forth, barking at the human in the hopes it could prompt him to make his move, before darting out of the way when it saw the human’s gun turn warningly in its direction.
He couldn’t stay up there if he wanted to win. There wasn’t enough space, especially with the fire spreading. Soon enough it would consume him, or the other monsters would grow impatient and overtake him.
When he did give up the high ground, he did so on the other side of the house, and for a moment the beast lost sight of him. It dashed around the edge of the building, but drew to a halt at what it saw.
Easily twice, or maybe even thrice the size of the others, with a thick silvery mane, and the most intact remnants of human attire out of any of them, was the boss. Uriaș. He was wielding a proper hammer big enough to flatten both the human and the smaller monsters. The flat of it was spiked to add to its devastating power, and fresh blood dripped from it.
He was the boss because he was the biggest and the strongest, and when he saw the other smaller beasts he growled in command. It didn’t matter which pack what beast was from. They were all of them now merely an extension of his own claws.
The dissident beast felt the yoke of weakness and thus obedience fall on its shoulders as the Uriaș leaned back and roared into the smoke filled sky. Beyond the him, the human scampered away, guarding fresh injuries, eyes wide as it witnessed its doom clearly. The other, lesser monsters pursued him with renewed vigour, closing in, barely giving him space to move as he stumbled back into the cold waters of the shallow mountain creek running down through the village.
The death blow would now belong to the boss though. Their only job was to pen him in so he couldn’t move about as the larger, slower creature, hampered by the weight of its mighty hammer, took its time stomping toward him.
The human flung himself away from the first unwieldy swings, right into the waiting claws of a nearby monster. It clamped down and savaged his forearm with its teeth before he broke free and fired a shot into its face.
Higher up, the beast that had followed his struggle since he’d stumbled upon their bloody valley watched on, alternating between growling directions the human could neither hear nor understand, and flinching at the blows he barely avoided.
Meanwhile, the fires had grown, the cold creek now a gully for Uriaș to take its time killing him in.
The man fired a gun into a wooden barrel that burst into light and heat, taking out some of the lesser ones, but doing nothing to boss who swung his hammer back and forth, back and forth, allowing the momentum of each swing to carry the hammer into another new murderous blow.
The man ducked and scrambled around it, sloshing through water and kicking up snow. His voice rang out in agitation over the crackling fires as his head swivelled and his eyes flew across the area in search of an escape that did not exist.
And then the arrow struck him, piercing through his leg and sending him stumbling. In that moment one of the many beasts that had stayed on his heels walloped him across the cheek, dropping him face down into the water.
The game was already lost, and the beast from the woods listened as its brethren closed in, eyes narrowing in something it distantly, bafflingly, realized was defeat. It watched as the other monster baring down on the human snatched him by the ankle and hurled him into the rocky shore.
It had known what was coming. It had known that the only fate left to the human was not a good one. Why it had waited, why it had watched, why it had bothered to intervene it didn’t know. Its head was ringing with the jubilation of the other beasts. Riders galloped in, corpses on pikes, mouths and chests smeared with warpaint made of their victims innards. Others surged onto rooftops, and skulked along the bank, all looking down in vicious delight to see their game finally come to its conclusion, to see their prey finally meet its end.
The human rolled onto his back to face his death; sodden, his bloody face pale. Even from a distance it was clear that his eyes were glazed from the blow he had taken to his head.
Uriaș leapt down in front of him, the force of the landing shaking the ground, and sending a cloud of water and snow up around them both. After taking a protracted, conceited moment to inspect the man's face, the boss leaned back and roared in triumph to the heavens.
The beast hung back on the outer edge of the pack. While they all celebrated with their boss, beating their fists on their chests, barking and raving in tandem with their leader, it gnashed its teeth and twitched with restrained vexation, venting the surge of tension by grabbing the nearest object; a small tree that it tore out of the ground, and hurled it at a nearby fence.
The boss leaned toward the human, ready at last to finish gloating and end him, when he paused.
Silence fell over the crowd as Uriaș snapped his head head to the side, looking towards something unseen.
When the massive monster straightened and leapt away, his hoard of followers chasing after him at his barked command, it seemed an improbable twist.
The beast from the woods realized it should probably follow its brethren, or at the very least seek out its own hunting party. Something had clearly changed, and it had already deviated too far from its place. It was disconnected, a stray without direction. If it acted too independently, it’d be put in its place, or put down.
It lingered though, eyes pulled inexorably to the human that had survived, once again, against all odds.
The human didn’t seem caught in hesitation the way the it was. The moment he thought himself alone he tore the arrow out of his leg with grunt and, after taking a chance to inspect his mangled hand (missing its smallest finger, and a chunk of the adjacent one), he pulled out a roll of cloth and began to wrap his wounds.
A survivor, by luck and by temperament, the beast realized. But for how much longer could he last? What more could he endure? And for what reason? What gave him the will when others had been overcome by the horror and fear?
Something that it thought at first was hunger boiled in its gut, but then it realized the sensation was different. A desire to keen for the hollowness behind its ribs filled it, but something seemed lodged in its throat, keeping the sound from escaping. The agony of the feeling rippled through its body, and it curled in on itself protectively.
Still, it could not tear its eyes from the human as he slowly, each movement pained and beleaguered, hauled himself back to his feet.