A Troublesome Pair, Indeed

Months later, Shayde was tasked to kill parents that were terrorizing the surrounding countryside. But these were no ordinary parents. They were the King of the Skies and his mate. Rathalos and Rathian. The red and green wyverns.

Shayde and Jet were deployed to the forest and hills zone, near where the bird wyverns had made a nest. They were a troublesome pair, especially if fought together. The Rathalos had scales of bloody red and dark spikes all over. His tail ended in a thick cudgel- like knot, adorned with more spikes and a needle that could inject a deadly poison. His counterpart, Rathian, was a deep forest green, and her upper back was blanketed in a mat of poison pins.

The Rathalos preferred to attack from the sky, shooting fireballs from his maw and swooping down to insert venom in his prey. Rathian stuck to the ground, pulverizing foes underfoot or pulping them with her tail. The danger level was high, but Shayde had a plan.

"Do not fight them together," he cautioned Jet. "They'd kill us in seconds. Instead, we're going to assassinate Rathalos while he patrols the countryside, then sneak in and kill his queen as she guards the eggs. If they come to each other's aid, we will fall back to a more defensible location."

Jet meowed his assent and shifted his acorn pack on his small shoulders. The hunters trekked across lush fields and through patches of woodland, alert for the huge wyverns. At last they came to the top of a ravine and a steady boom, boom, boom of a wyvern walking. They peeked around the corner and saw Rathalos looking almost placid as he gazed out over his territory.

"That bastard is about to have a bad day, nya!" Said Jet.

"Hand me a flash bomb," murmured Shayde. He shouted to get its attention, and once the Rathalos turned in surprise, he chucked the bomb toward it.

Shayde and Jet ducked back around the stone shelf as the bomb ignited, flashing brighter than the sun. The Rathalos roared in shock and reeled back, blinking furiously to clear its eyes.

The hunters ran under it as it snapped blindly at them. They slashed at its legs and soft underbelly. Blood fell like rain onto the grass. The Rathalos immediately spread its wings and soared off, circling them from above.

Shayde sheathed his poisoned scythe to run better, and motioned for Jet to do the same. As the Rathalos swooped down like an owl onto a mouse, Shayde and Jet dived to either side. The wyvern's talons snatched up grass instead and it landed heavily.

It turned in time to see Jet running straight at it. The Rathalos let out a bellow and shot a fireball. Jet's eyes opened wide but he had no time to dodge. His dark outline was visible for a split second as the inferno swallowed him. His burnt form was tossed away, and the Rathalos roared in triumph.

Shayde stood there, a terrible snarl on his face. His partner was injured if not dead, and the beast before him was about to die. Badly. The Rathalos saw him charging, scythe held high, and shot another fireball.

Shayde slid on his knees under it and swung a vicious uppercut to its chin. The curved spike of his weapon actually pierced both jaws and poisoned it. Shayde's outline seemed to glow with the red aura of the god Asura himself.

The scythe twirled in deadly arcs, and with each arc it slashed open the Rathalos' scales, weakening it a little more. Its wings were reduced to bloody ribbons, so flying was no longer an option.

The tail swung around, but Shayde ducked and swung his scythe to meet it. There was a high pitched shriek, and the Rathalos pitched forward, off- balance now without its tail. Fire frothed from its maw, and it snapped at the hunter.

Shayde sidestepped the bite and slashed its throat open. The Rathalos immediately lost balance, stumbled, and fell.

Shayde glanced around for any signs of the female and ran back to Jet's side. The front of the Felyne's armor was blackened from wyvern fire. His breathing was shallow. As Shayde approached, Jet meowed weakly. "Hello, fearless leader,"

"You're going to be okay." White faces began to peek out around rocks, over grass, and from holes. It was the Felynes, who had heard the fight and come to investigate, hopeful that someone had gotten injured so they could heal the unfortunate individual for coin.

Shayde saw them and fairly shouted in annoyance. "Well, come on then! Come get him!"

Spurred into action, the Felynes dashed forward with a cart. Carefully, they lifted Jet onto their travois and meowed a question to the human. Shayde pointed them back toward his campsite.

He straightened and turned towards the hill where the Rathian was undoubtedly standing sentinel over her clutch of eggs. He wound his way into the knolls, trying to come up with a way to beat a giant, angry mother without his companion.

The Rathian, as he predicted, was nestled atop her nest. Her sides moved in time with her breaths, and each time she exhaled, it was with a low contented growl.

Shayde strode over, scythe in his hands. His foot hit a bone from a past meal and she jerked awake, eyeing this intruder with angry disbelief.

How dare he come into her territory and defy her and her mate Rathalos? Even know he stood in front of her, unafraid. A long curved claw was brandished in front of him.

She sniffed the air. There was none of the fear- scent that was normally on this puny type of prey. She unfurled her massive wings to make herself look bigger. Still the small intruder did not waver.

She flapped her wings to get off the low shelf that her eggs were on. The Rathian charged, flames billowing out of her open maw.

Shayde dove out of the way just in time. As she struggled to stop her momentum, he weaved in and out of her legs, cutting them open. Rathian snarled and stepped back, trying to disentangle him from her.

Shayde kept up with her, lacerating her underbelly. She screamed in pain and used her wings to fly back a ways. The winds knocked Shayde on his behind. Rathian drew back and shot a fireball at him. Shayde flattened himself against the cavern floor.

Rathian shot two more successive blasts, which Shayde had to scramble away from on his hands and knees like a crab. Rathian charged again, and Shayde grabbed his scythe, preparing to dodge.

Something seemed off about her movement, though. Shayde hesitated, and was glad he did so when the Rathian whipped around and brought her tail down exactly where Shayde would have been if he had evaded.

As she struggled to remove her spiked tail, Shayde was seized by sudden inspiration- or stupidity. He ran up her tail like a ramp and balanced on her heaving back.

Raising his scythe like an axe, he hacked down at the nest of poisonous hair- like spikes on her back. There was little armor there, and it was a good idea to get rid of the extremely deadly filaments.

She yanked her tail out of the ground, and bucked around, trying to shake him. Shayde knelt and grabbed a thick crevice in her armor. She jerked upwards and took flight, apparently hoping that this would dislodge the hunter.

He gritted his teeth and hung on doggedly as she circled the cavern in tight loops, her wingtips brushing against the walls, making a shower of dirt below.

Then she flipped upside down.

Rathian wasn't as accomplished at flying as her mate, but in this situation she was willing to try everything. Shayde immediately felt his grip loosen as the rest of his body dangled into space.

The Rathian's wings were suddenly flailing around in a panic. She must have lost control! Thought Shayde. The Rathian started to lose altitude, and the cavern floor was rushing up rather fast.

Rather than be crushed by her bulk when they landed, Shayde let go early, flinging his scythe away so that he wouldn't stab himself accidentally. He experienced a moment of pure, terrifying weightlessness.

Then he hit, attempting to roll to dissipate the force. A sharp pain jabbed his foot when he landed and as he rolled, his elbow smashed into his gut. Wheezing, he looked up in time to see the Rathian plow into the ground, carving a shallow furrow in the soil.

For a moment, Shayde hoped the thing was dead, but as he watched, she got to her feet and swung around. Smoke curled from her nostrils. Shayde had a now familiar oh shit moment and felt the urge to flee.

Too late.

The Rathian tore toward him. Shayde sprinted for the rock shelf, wincing every time his right foot struck the earth. He had left his scythe where it had fallen. He hauled himself up and jerked back as the Rathian's beak snapped closed where he had been a moment before.

Before she could rip him to shreds, Shayde hefted an egg from her nest beside him on the shelf. He unsheathed his knife and placed the tip against the egg, which was almost as big as he was.

As small as her tiny brain was, the wyvern seemed to understand that she couldn't attack him without destroying her precious offspring. Her head weaved back and forth, trying to get an angle where she could bite him.

Shayde moved around, using the egg as a shield, keeping it between himself and the Rathian. She hissed with frustration. He smiled coldly and plunged his dagger into the side of the egg.

Without pausing, he stabbed the egg several more times. Fluids began trickling out of the holes. Rathian inhaled, smelling her offspring's yolk as she realized what he'd done. Rearing back, she bellowed in rage and grief.

Her head snaked down to engulf his body in one bite. Shayde nimbly dodged, and her beak struck the shelf instead. As her head began to rise, Shayde stepped forward and stabbed her in the eye, sinking the knife blade up to the hilt.

She reeled, making guttural groans. But the blade had pierced her brain, and she died quickly, still twitching.

Shayde remained standing for a moment, comprehending that he had survived once again. As his adrenaline died down, exhaustion set in like a hammer blow. He sat down hard on one of the eggs in the nest.

Shayde reached into a pocket and withdrew a pipe. In another pocket was some wyvern grass, a plant that was highly treasured for its rarity in the wild and smoking applications.

He stuffed some into the pipe and lit it, inhaling the fragrant smoke. For a while he just sat there, staring at his fallen enemy, the embers in the pipe illuminating his dark eyes under the hood each time he puffed.

After a while he stood, careful to put weight on his good foot. He retrieved his scythe and sheathed it firmly on his back. He did not destroy the remaining eggs. They could fetch a high profit if he returned them to the Hunter's Guild.

Instead, he rolled them under the Rathian's body in hopes that her flesh would retain enough heat to keep them warm overnight. They were very near hatching. Perhaps one of them might actually escape.

He blew smoke over the eggs thoughtfully. Part of him hoped, despite the odds, that they did hatch and grow up. After all, where would he be without monsters to hunt?