Author's Note: I wrote this story on a whim with minimal planning. I've never really hunkered down and written something like this, so try not to flame me too hard. Enjoy.
Despite being clad in solid iron boots, the man's footsteps were silent as a corpse as he meticulously placed his next step with the utmost carefulness; the quietest snap of a twig, or the smallest sound of a small animal scurrying away could alert his prey. Too much time and effort was invested into this hunt to fail, so the man went through all the necessary precautions to ensure success. He had discarded his cape back at his campsite, as the risk of it snagging on a branch or shrub was too great. His armor and strange metal hand moved seamlessly and without a sound, its black color blending into the dark of the silent night thanks to some oiling and a fresh coat of paint. He ate a full meal so his stomach wouldn't rumble and filled his canteen by the river his one-man camp was occupied next to so the water wouldn't slosh around inside. The man tried to get a good rest in before heading out to prevent a sudden bout of yawning and overall lack of awareness, but alas sleep never came easy to him these days. Nevertheless, the man was no amateur to the sport of hunting, and minor setbacks such as a lack of sleep were common for him and would hardly throw him off his game.
While his footing was cautious and silent, he moved swiftly, for he had to keep up with his target. It was a full moon, but the thick forest the man and his prey currently occupied prevented any of its faint white light from breaking through. While the average human would struggle to see his own hands right up against his face in these conditions, this man was anything but an average human. The prey moved in a casually fast manner back to its home, not seemingly caring about how much noise it made nor its surroundings. The man gave chase while keeping pace with his target for some distance, his superhuman stamina never showing the slightest hints at fatigue.
The pursuit eventually concluded as the man noticed a speckle of light, indicating a break in the treeline. Simultaneously, the man's prey slowed to a meandering stroll, a lighthearted whistle starting to emanate from its lips. He took note of this and shifted into the next phase of his hunt, quickly moving ahead of his prey and diving behind a cluster of boulders just a few meters in front of the treeline. A single eye peaked through a slight opening between his cover, giving the man a wide view of a circular grassy clearing illuminated by the moon glimmering directly overhead.
He had put some distance between himself and his prey to reach the boulders, and after a few minutes of settling into his cover the whistling and sounds of feet crunching twigs and dead leaves resonated in the man's ears. He watched from his vantage point as his prey walked out into the field, its features becoming fully visible under the light.
It looked exactly like a human male. He had a long, bony face and wispy grey hair that waved lightly in the gentle night breeze. His ragged brown robes held together at the waist with a piece of rope signified his status as a common lord's peasant. To average men, this "prey" was nothing more than a lowly farmer.
His pursuer, however, knew full well that this man was no peasant.
The man in the clearing sniffed the night air, smiling slightly, before bending over and reaching to grasp the earth below him. Tugging on a fistful of grass, the peasant-looking man uprooted a sizable chunk of dirt, revealing a large burrow below. He took another sniff, this one much larger, and smiled a more broader smile before climbing into the burrow and placing the natural manhole cover back on top of the entrance.
Behind the boulders, the man averted his gaze from the clearing and turned back to look into the blackness that seemed to span infinitely into the forest. A slight, all too familiar tingling sensation began to make itself known on the back of his neck, and when he reached a hand behind to feel it he felt something wet. This did not worry the man, however. No, it was just the opposite — it excited him. The hand he used to feel the wetness on his neck reached further back and grasped the hilt of his gargantuan iron sword that no mortal should have the power to wield. The man unsheathed the weapon and from his cross-legged position behind the boulders thrust it out before him, its menacing tip pointing into the unknown darkness of the forest.
Guts was going to add another apostle to his kill list tonight.
This was an especially interesting one, this apostle. He stalked it much like he had done so tonight for about a week. Like every apostle he hunted, Guts observed its daily routine from the shadows, learning about its strengths, weaknesses, places of interest, and of course how it likes to brutally murder its victims before eating them.
This apostle seemed to target entire families, which was a first for Guts as most of these demons seemed to kill one human at a time to prevent too much suspicion from rising. Every other day as soon as the sun fell below the horizon the apostle went out into the town just outside of the forest and climbed the rooftops, jumping from house to house in search of new food. Guts would always follow from the streets below, sticking to the back alleys and low light areas in order to remain unseen. Then, when a suitable home was found, the apostle would slip in through a window and systematically knock each resident unconscious before tying them up and hoisting them onto its back and running back into the forest without anyone knowing a thing — save for Guts.
Guts would then shadow the apostle, who now had four or five bodies on its back, back to the clearing. The apostle would unceremoniously dump the family onto the grass and patiently wait for them to regain consciousness. Once they did, it would tell all of them to look up at the stars and the moon and explain to each one of them how this would be the last night they would ever see again. From there the apostle dragged the kicking, screaming, crying family members down into its burrow. Guts never got to see what actually happened inside that burrow, but the sounds that came of out it and the resulting stench the following morning made him not too terribly enthusiastic about finding out. Guts never really tried to stop the apostle before tonight partly because he didn't care about the families, but mostly because he wanted to be sure all of his information was in line before striking; blindly charging into a fight with an opponent as deadly as an apostle was borderline suicide for someone even of Guts' caliber.
As Guts thought back to the hunt of this apostle, turning over all the information he gathered in his head one last time before heading out, he smiled sinisterly. He hadn't had a good apostle kill in about a month, so he would make sure to take his time with this one and squeeze every last bit of enjoyment out of it. Guts checked to make sure his repeating crossbow and arm cannon were both loaded before standing up, Dragonslayer in one hand as he stretched after sitting for well over an hour. He gave his sword a few practice swings and turned to face the clearing, the faint smell of death lingering in his nose from previous butcherings committed by the apostle. Guts jumped up onto one of the boulders and peered out into the clearing, and immediately a warning bell went off in his head.
The cover for the apostle's burrow was gone.
The sudden sound of brush being disturbed instantly grabbed Guts' attention, but before he could react something with the force of a battering ram smashed into his abdomen and sent him flying out across the clearing and into a tree on the other side, nearly splitting it in two.
"Did you really think you could deceive me, mortal?" A hideous voice rang out into the night. Guts groaned and slowly stood up, using the Dragonslayer as support. He regained both his footing and breath, and his eye took in the apostle he was up against.
It was red all over, having no type of skin or scaled to hide its meaty insides. Four horse-like legs stemmed from its main, grotesquely spherical body along with two giant arms that bent at the elbow at strange angles. A thick antenna sprouted out from the top of its body with a dozen beady black eyes, and an enlarged mouth situated itself from its sagging underbelly.
"I've known about your little spying game since day one," the beast yelled out to Guts, who was staring the apostle down with a look of nothing more than indifference. "That is the problem with humans like you, always so cocky and full of yourselves."
Guts sighed and pointed his sword towards the apostle. "If I had a gold piece for every time one of you slimy fucks said something like that to me. Now, I haven't had a good kill in over a month, so I'm kind of in a bad mood right now. Why don't you come on down here so I can remedy this situation, hmm?"
The apostle's twelve unblinking eyes stared astonishingly at Guts for a brief moment before bursting into a roaring laugh. "Heh! Ha! Ha ha ha! This is a first for me, a mere human challenging a great apostle! You are either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid, and since you are nothing more than a mortal I will assume the latter!" As soon as the words left its mouth the apostle burst forward towards Guts, arm cocked back and claws extended.
With inhuman reaction times Guts shifted his body weight forward and turned the face of his sword towards the enemy just before impact. With the force of a thousand stampeding horses the apostle slammed into the Dragonslayer, a large gust of wind getting kicked up and sending sticks, leaves, and bits of dirt flying in all directions.
Guts bent his knees and elbows to absorb the impact and began to push back, startling the apostle who didn't expect both Guts and the Dragonslayer to be so strong. Guts pushed the apostle off of his beloved sword and delivered a swift roundhouse kick to the creature's mouth, knocking out teeth and sending blood spraying into the air. The apostle flew back across the clearing and skidded several meters before shakily trying to regain its balance. "What was that about being greater than us mortals, hmm? Come on, I've fought cocks that are stronger than you," Guts teased.
"No mere human should be able to do that," the apostle sputtered between coughs of blood. "W-what are you?"
Guts gave no immediate reply. He simply glared at the apostle, murderous rage in his one eye that caused even his demonic opponent to cower in fear. Guts suddenly cleared the gap between the two faster than someone could blink, and with one swing of the Dragonslayer he decapitated the stem and its eyes from the apostle's body. The creature cried out in agonizing pain, but only for a split second before Guts' boot found its place in its mouth.
"I used to be a humble mercenary," he said coldly, a shower of blood raining down on him from the arteries in the apostle's stem. He smiled slightly as the warm red liquid covered his body. "But now, thanks to you fuckers, I'm stuck killing shitbags like you. Now, unless you'd like to die an even more horrible death than any of those families you tortured, can you please tell me where the God Hand is?"
"G-G-Gaw H-Haw?" the apostle whimpered, his voice muffled by both the pain and Guts' foot. The Black Swordsman sighed, knowing the answer he'd get after hearing that response dozens of times in the past. Guts raised his sword over his head to deliver the final blow, when a faint rumbling sensation began on his chest.
Perplexed, and with one hand still hoisting the amazingly large sword up in the air, Guts reached down underneath his armor and shirt to feel the Behelit he got from an old crippled man awhile back. When his fingers reached the strange artifact Guts pulled it up out of his clothing and turned it towards him. His blood stopped cold, and he almost dropped the Dragonslayer he still held with his free hand. The Behelit was splotched in the blood of the defeated apostle, some of it having soaked through both Guts' armor and clothes, and its facial features were slowly rearranging themselves while the shaking grew more tumultuous and blood tears ran down from its eyes.
"No! No no no —" but before Guts could say or do anything else a sudden, blinding light encompassed the world around him and his senses became overloaded. Guts felt weightless, and as if time and space itself came to an end. Then a pulling sensation overwhelmed his body in every direction and a horrible screeching noise blasted his ears and strange voices were talking and endless images of random things assaulted his eyes and then darkness.
It's short, I know, but this is an Eva/Berserk story, not just a Berserk one. I wanted to dive right in, but I knew I needed to give some kind of exposition/reason for Guts traveling across dimensions. Also, be prepared for a few minor changes to the canon story for the sake of plot convenience in the coming chapters.