**4th Draft - 12/31 1645 EST
Chapter 4: Clear Trail
Blake and Evan manage to catch up to the monster they are hunting.
It isn't making any effort to hide its tracks, and it's running in an almost straight line.
Looking ahead and scanning in front of me, I followed the beast's tracks. They looked almost human, except the toes were heavily clawed, and the claws remained extended even when running, a lot like a dog's. The feet were very large too, but not giant. A really big human might have feet the same size. The gaps between footprints were definitely not human. Based on the extraordinary distance between footprints and the fact that it was throwing up bits and pieces of frozen dirt along its back trail, it was definitely a powerful runner, but it was also very heavy.
I really wished Evan could fly at that point. I felt exposed, and I knew that if the thing had any intelligence at all, and it was still suspicious from almost detecting us three times at the van, it was going to try to set a trap for anyone following it.
Then I considered the storm. Visibility between thirty and fifty feet, even with my vision - which was rather good at night. With visibility this bad, I'm not sure Evan being able to fly would do us much good. He can see much better than I can, but he can't see through obstacles, like heavy curtains of snow. This is a bad storm.
Shaking my head, I stopped woolgathering. The thing we were chasing was clearly not all that smart, since it pulled the doors off the van by pulling inwards, rather than pushing them out. Unless it was simply so strong that it didn't care that one way would be easier than the other. Or maybe it's just clueless about mechanical stuff.
I continued running and thinking, following the tracks, holding the Hyena at the ready, prepared for ambush. Unlike the monster we were chasing, I ran on top of the snow. A few seconds with a couple bushes shortly after we started the chase had allowed me to absorb some branches and expand my feet like snowshoes. My feet weren't anywhere near the size of real snowshoes, but with my low weight, they didn't need to be. The extra width gave me enough surface area to run on top of the snow, and would let me dig into the snow with a great deal of surface area if I needed to maneuver. If we caught up to the monster, whatever it was, I wanted all the maneuverability I could get.
The monster's trail turned left slightly, and the tracks changed. Something was different. No more dirt and leaves mixed in with the trail.
I peered ahead, looking at the tracks I could see. Why were they suddenly no longer marked by loose dirt and leaves? Based on the spacing of the tracks, our quarry didn't appear to have slowed down.
I, however, slowed down, then stopped, and Evan immediately commented "What's wrong?"
Raising my hands in front of my mouth to muffle my voice, I spoke when the wind grew louder. "The tracks changed, Evan, just being careful."
Evan spoke into my right ear. "The dirt and leaves missing from it's trail? It's running along the stream bed, towards the lake. The ice is thick enough that it's not gouging dirt out of the ground with its nails any longer. If you look close you can see it's throwing up chunks of ice instead."
I saw that he was right when I looked closer. I considered that it was now running towards the lake. A wide, flat tabletop of ice, which would likely have little in the way of heavy snow buildup. The monster had foot claws and was very heavy, which let it get traction on ice. I had snowshoe feet and almost no weight, ice would be about the worst possible terrain for me to fight something very strong and heavy.
Stepping out onto that ice would be a death sentence for me, I was almost certain. If the beast had any intelligence at all, and any caution or concern about being followed, the lake's surface would be a trap. It's where I would try to ambush a pursuer if I were in its shoes.
I might be building this thing up too much in my mind, but thinking it's stupid could be a deadly mistake.
I lifted my hands to my mouth again, and whispered as the wind blew. "Coming from this side of the lake, Evan, if you wanted to set up an ambush to let you run back along your back trail and catch a pursuer, where would you come off the lake for the best ambush point? I know this lake is probably a little different, but as far as I remember, the lake was never developed along the shore, other than the marina and a few private docks. I haven't seen any sign of development here either."
Evan thought for a few moments, then hopped around a little and started speaking in my ear again. "If the monster has been living around here long enough to know the lake, it could have made all sorts of hiding places. If not, visibility is so bad the best bet would be just to cross straight over. I've got no good answers here, Blake"
I'm not going out on the lake chasing this thing.
Evan and I chose widdershins and wasted twenty minutes running around the lake. As we returned to where the monster's tracks went out onto the lake ice, I was annoyed. "Did we miss where it came off the lake, Evan?"
"No, Blake, not unless it miraculously got a lot better at hiding it's tracks. All the rocks were covered by snow, so it didn't jump from rock to rock. I watched for that trick. It's still on the ice. Maybe it froze to death?"
"Can an Other freeze to death?" I muttered under my breath, thinking the answer was no.
Evan heard me and cut straight to the point. "Not in this weather. Not in our world. Well, maybe fire or heat based Others. But we're not in our world, and he didn't look like a heat-based Other." He paused. "I'm not really sure. All I know is what I read over other people's shoulders when they were reading about magic stuff. I learned a lot, but there were a whole lot of words I didn't know."
Did Ty, Tiff, Alexis, or Rose even consider that Evan could read, and how good his vision is?
I stepped out onto the ice. "This feels like a trap, Evan. Extra careful please."
Evan hopped a couple times on my shoulder, then jumped up onto my head. "OK Blake. I'm on it. I'll knock on wood if I see something." A moment later, he pecked lightly at the branches that defined the shape of my head, and commented. "Testing, testing."
I smiled and slowly moved out onto the lake, carefully following the path left by the claws of the monster. Man is supposed to be the most dangerous game, but I don't think that author ever hunted Others.
My thoughts drifted a bit at the thought of hunting Others. Am I really unable to resist being drawn into scenarios where the only option is fighting, unless I am distracted, like Alister was saying? I don't feel like I'm picking fights, or avoiding non-fighting solutions. Fights always seem to find me. I just don't turn away from them.
After a couple minutes of slow forward progress, Evan pecked me on the head, lightly enough that I didn't hear it, I only felt it. My inner rational person tried to make sense of how I could feel but not hear something tapping on me in a body made of wood and bone, but rational Blake gave up. Rational Blake had been losing ground for weeks, even before Ur.
I stopped carefully. Evan hopped over to my left ear and demanded, quietly. "Put me in your left hand again, the same thing we did before, at the van."
Slowly, I moved my hand as requested, and a few seconds later as I looked down Evan's wing as if it was some old style iron-sighted rifle barrel, Evan showed me what he had spotted. About sixty feet away, intermittently visible in the heavily falling snow, if I squinted, was an arm. A very large arm. Not impossibly large for a human. If the body were to human proportions, the monster would be the size of an extremely big man. It was almost entirely covered with short white fur, with a tuft of much longer fur hanging off its elbow, blowing wildly in the wind. The palm was pitch black as were its heavy claws.
I watched, motionless for at least five minutes. The arm was immobile, sitting on top of the ice, palm down, fingers and claws pressing against the ice, like someone lying face down getting ready to push themselves up off the floor. Everything beyond the shoulder seemed to be buried in the ice.
There was no movement from the monster at all. I moved a little closer. From the slightly closer vantage point, I noted a large pattern of fracture marks in the ice where the ice had collapsed inwards from a single point. It looked like our monster had been running across the lake and hit a weak spot and fallen in. The pattern started about ten feet from me. The broken shards of ice were chaotically angled against one another where pieces had frozen together. Some pieces of the ice were stacked up on top of one another where the beast had presumably struggled to get out of the water. It seemed like the ice was around two inches thick before it had broken, and it was already refrozen at the surface solidly enough that none of the ice flexed in the wind.
Evan was hopping back and forth on my head. "Good it's dead." He seemed to be in good humor.
I wasn't so sure. I wanted to be sure. Green Eyes had been able to live under this very same lake when it was frozen.
Green Eyes. I closed my eyes a moment, then brought my thoughts back to the now. Worry about later, later.
I didn't need to breathe, I had no idea if this monster needed to. It might just be trapped in the ice, not dead. I moved slowly, carefully over the shattered, refrozen ice, getting closer. Carefully, moving slowly, each step accompanied by a delay to feel if there was any movement of the ice.
When I was about five feet from the body, my weight collapsed a crust of ice that had formed over a shallow drift of snow on the surface of the lake. A small cracking noise, and I fell a quarter inch. The ice beneath the bit of drifted snow held my weight without difficulty, immobile, and I relaxed.
The monster's fingers, claw tips pressed against the ice, twitched. Then the ice began to crack loudly and heave. I felt the ravenous hunger again. It froze itself partially under the lake to block its vision, hearing, and sense of smell, and was using only touch to try to detect whoever might be following it. I knew it was a trap. I still came out on the ice knowing it was a trap. Alister might just be right.
I didn't even look at the monster as I turned and ran directly away from it. Any direction would take me to the lake shore. I needed to be on snow to fight it, for my best mobility. I could feel Evan clutching my hair with his claws, and knew he would be trying to break connections. I could feel that it wasn't working. The hunger would wane, briefly, and then return.
"We're too close!" I shouted. "Help me open up distance!"
I heard a very loud sloshing, splashing noise behind me, punctuated with the sounds of ice knocking together as I felt the wind across the lake gather at my back, helping to push me, accelerate me, away from the hole in the ice.
"On it!" Evan shouted. I felt him grip my hair more tightly, and there was a rhythmic pressure on the hair, like a heartbeat. I suspected Evan was beating his wings like as if he were flying, but gripping my hair because he couldn't fly with his injuries.
There was a tremendous splash behind me, and I imagined the monster had let itself sink to the bottom of the lake and then leaped up and out. I heard multiple light thumps that sounded like hard objects hitting one another, as well as one very loud, softer sounding thump. There was a shower of small pieces of ice and a spray of water cascading over me as I ran, making me fairly certain I was right. I felt the ice vibrate strongly under my feet and the ravenous hunger got even more intense. It was hard to think. I wasn't afraid. That was a sensation I hadn't experienced in a while, but I was beginning to have difficulty thinking coherently as the hunger from the beast behind me crowded out my own thoughts.
I was having a hard time getting traction on the ice, skating with Evan's help more than running, but the monster wasn't having that difficulty. More heavy thumps sounded behind me as the beast began to run, the timing between each successive thump was rapidly decreasing as the sounds were growing louder and the hunger grew more overpowering. I heard ice cracking with each thump.
I was about fifty feet shy of the nearest trees, when Evan shrieked "Blake!" I felt myself being pushed to my right, as a head-sized chunk of ice hummed through the air beside me and exploded into ice shrapnel in front of me. Most of the fragments from the explosion of ice sprayed harmlessly in front of me. Immediately after that, I felt myself being pushed left as another chunk of ice passed me on the other side. Another explosion of ice in front of me, with no harm done.
Evan had helped me dodge the two incoming projectiles, but in order to do so, he'd stopped pushing me forward, away from the monster. The side to side motion, right, and then left, in quick succession caused a worse problem than just slowing down my forward acceleration though - I lost traction on the ice and fell.
The hunger behind me peaked as I fell, but there was no sound from the hunter. As I wildly tumbled across the ice, I caught my first glimpse of the beast, other than its arm. In silhouette, the monster appeared human, but it was clothed only in white fur. The face was covered with white fur except for a minimal amount of pitch black facial skin around the eyes, nose, and the lips. The gripping surfaces of the hands and feet were the same pitch black, as were the claws. Heavy tufts of long white fur at each major joint, and at the hips. My first impression was that it was very precise in appearance, almost like a show dog, cleanly groomed. My second impression was that it was extremely focused on me as I tumbled across the ice, less than ten feet in front of it. It was running towards me with arms extended like a goalie chasing a loose ball.
I managed to get my legs underneath me and leap, but it wasn't a clean leap. A hand gripped my lower calf, and I immediately stabbed the forearm connected to that hand strongly with the Hyena. There was a howl of pain as the monster threw me violently, back towards the center of the lake, keeping me on the surface where it had an advantage.
I skidded across the ice for twenty feet or so, then rolled to my feet and kept moving in that direction. My lower right leg was damaged from the monster's grip and throw, but could still support my weight. After a few moments trying to run in the direction I had been thrown, it was clear that even though it could support me weight, my injured leg was slowing me down too much. I would easily be run down, even with Evan trying to help, so I turned to face the monster.
"Evan Do what you can to help me be faster, and slow it down. Any little bit will help."
"Sure thing." He replied, sounding confident.
I tapped my chest, and Evan fluttered off my head to my shoulder, before disappearing into my chest cavity.
The monster was standing about thirty feet away from me, holding its bleeding right arm, looking at the wound with apparent confusion. Then it roared at me, exposing teeth that looked very human, except with exaggerated incisors, and charged on all fours, looking a lot like a charging gorilla from a nature show.
I couldn't count on being able to move from side to side on the ice. With the lack of traction, the only reliable direction to move was up, so I jumped up as it ran at me, right before I was within its reach. I felt myself get a little boost from Evan as I jumped.
The monster seemed to have been expecting my jump, and didn't hesitate as it also jumped on the last step it took before reaching where I had been. Evan apparently worked against it, as I saw it move a little to the side in the air while reaching towards me, twisting as it passed underneath me. I sliced its left wrist heavily as it grasped towards me.
The monster lost its footing and slid across the ice a short way, before righting itself and standing back up rapidly. Its right forearm and left wrist were bleeding on the ice, and it snarled at me, clearly infuriated. I started backing away from it, hoping it would be cautious enough to allow me to get off the ice.
No such luck. It pressed the attack, starting to walk towards me rapidly, and the projected aura of hunger grew to enormous proportions. I could barely think. I didn't dare turn my back on it, so I started walking sideways, looking for anything protruding from the surface of the ice that I might use for a spot of resistance to give me the option of rapid sideways movement. I saw nothing useful. The monster's foot claws dug heavily into the ice with every step giving it traction that I envied.
It sped up until it was walking at a near-jog, confident, arms held in front of it with elbows extended away from it's body, a lot like a greco-roman wrestler. As it approached within a few feet, it reached out towards me again, with its right arm. I saw the tension in its left side building. The right arm attack was clearly a feint. I struck anyway, and severed the pinkie and ring fingers of its right hand. The left side attack never came as the monster stopped, standing still, staring back and forth between its fingers laying on the ice and it's right hand.
The monster was bleeding out slowly on the ice. Its reaction to injury seemed to be more confusion than pain, which made it seem to me like it was used to regenerating, or at least not used to bleeding. The Hyena would prevent healing. The monster might not even recognize the danger it was in from blood loss.
If blood loss even effects it. It clearly didn't need to breathe under the ice, so it doesn't need blood for oxygen. I don't see gills.
Others typically didn't carry around much more body than what they needed to define themselves. If this thing didn't need blood, it probably wouldn't have blood. Like I didn't have blood. There was probably a weakness there if I lived long enough to find it.
It's big, and I haven't opened up any arteries yet, so it's really not bleeding much. But it sounds like it's getting really angry. Not sure if that's good, or bad.
It was growling, deep in its throat, and rushed me again, arms spread wide. This time I grabbed its right hand with my left and pulled as hard as I could, while ducking, using the monster's arm as my source of leverage, since the ice offered me none. I could feel Evan accelerating my movements, and as I passed under the arm of the monster, I sliced upwards towards the white beast's right armpit as hard as I could. It managed to dodge to some degree, and I only managed to cut into its triceps, but it was still a substantial cut.
As I slid out from under it's arm and tried to open up a few feet of space between us, I stumbled as my damaged leg partially collapsed. The monster's left hand crashed onto my left upper arm, and I frantically cut the gripping hand with the Hyena, but not fast enough. I was raised into the air and dashed to the ground with tremendous force, landing flat on my back with the sound of many broken branches and bones.
The right foot of the monster pressed down on my hip, claws digging heavily into my pelvic area. I cut its leg viciously with the Hyena in my right hand as it ripped my left arm off at the shoulder. The beast looked quickly down at it's right leg, and hobbled away, still holding my left arm in it's left hand, and holding it's right calf with it's mangled right hand.
I couldn't feel Evan helping any longer. I hoped he had only been stunned by me hitting the ground. The damage to my body from being slammed on the ice and then having my left arm ripped off was severe. The structural integrity of my torso was gone. I couldn't stand. The beast was limping heavily, its right leg bleeding profusely on the ice, it's right arm bleeding heavily as well from the upper arm cut.
It snarled at me and approached again, limping, holding my left arm by my wrist as a club in its left hand. It smashed at my right arm three times with its improvised club until I lost my grip on the Hyena and the broken sword skittered away on the ice. As soon as the Hyena was out of my grasp, the beast dropped my left arm, rapidly tore off my right arm, and then ripped off both of my legs.
After the first leg was torn off, I played dead. I hoped Evan was stunned and wouldn't recover and begin to make noise. After tossing my last detached limb onto the pile of limbs next to me, the monster sniffed at my torso and head, curled its lip, and then grimaced, staring at its arms and leg.
No fat or tasty bits here, just a little facial skin and hair, some old bones and sticks. Go bleed to death.
Tottering a bit on the leg I'd stabbed, the beast stood and walked over to where the Hyena lay, a few feet away. The leg wound was bleeding heavily, and the upper arm wound was bleeding steadily but not as much as the leg wound. The monster reached town and gingerly touched the Hyena's spiked hilt with its right index finger, then jerked the arm back and stared at its hand. I could see the blood flowing on it's fingertip. It licked its finger, and grimaced. Then looked at me and growled. I could see the pool of blood beginning to form at it's feet as it stood in one place, bleeding heavily from arm and leg.
Die from blood loss, you bastard, and you better hope that Evan is OK, or I'll piss on your grave after I manage to fix myself back up.
A moment later, I watched as the monster hesitantly bit off the end of its right index finger. The fingertip regenerated, and was no longer bleeding. The beast spit out the chunk of finger and spit again, twice more, grimacing. Then it began biting at all of the hand and arm wounds that it could reach with its mouth. Each bite was accompanied by grimaces that weren't timed right to be pain. It was clearly not enjoying the taste of the Hyena-tainted flesh. Or maybe it just doesn't like the taste of its own flesh.
Soon, it only had the wound on its lower right leg, and triceps remaining, both of which were still bleeding fairly heavily. It tried to reach the triceps wound with its mouth, but couldn't. It then sat on the ice and twisted its leg around, contorted its torso, and managed to bite out the entire leg wound after three attempts.
The only wound remaining was the arm wound. The beast was still bleeding, but didn't seem weak. It was feeling the wound under its right arm with it's left hand, and snarled again, this time at the Hyena, laying on the ground a few feet away from where it was sitting. After a few moments, it pulled it's left arm away again, seemingly hesitant. Then it growled loudly and reached under its right arm with its left hand once more.
After another moment's delay, the monster gripped the Hyena-damaged flesh under it's right upper arm with it's left hand, snarled, started pulling powerfully at it's own flesh. On the second pull, a mass of muscle and skin ripped almost completely loose. On the third pull it managed to rip the chunk of Hyena-damaged flesh off its arm, dropping the chunk of furred skin and ripped muscle at its feet. It licked it's hand clean of blood, making irritated noises and expressions as it did so. After a couple minutes grooming, it reached under its right arm with the left hand and brought the hand back in front of it's face. It repeated the movements several times, clearly checking for blood.
Finally, it stood and walked back over to where the pile of my parts was and settled onto its haunches. staring at me with something resembling curiosity. As it stared at me, it groomed the rest of it's body carefully, occasionally grimacing and spitting something out.
I continued playing dead, not even moving my eyes, praying that Evan wouldn't make any noise, hoping that the thing couldn't tell that I was still alive.
After grooming itself for a couple minutes, the beast sniffed the air and started sorting through the pile of my limbs, sniffing each in turn until it found my left arm, and started sniffing at the hand. It carefully sniffed around the fingers, before starting to break them off one at a time, sniffing each finger before discarding it.
The ring. It smells the ring, or the blood on the ring.
When the pinkie finger was ripped off the brutalized remnants of my hand, a silver flash fell towards the ice and the beast grabbed it in midair.
The reaction was spectacular. When the fingers gripped the ring, the beast's hand burst into flame instantly, fur blackening in a fraction of a second as I heard it gasp in a huge breath of air. The beast then screamed "JENNY!" in a very human-sounding voice as it dropped the ring and panicked, scrambling away into the storm, leaving the ring spinning on the ice next to the pile of my broken and mutilated body parts.
