A/N: Winter is coming.
Chapter 4: Hunt
Dah'Mei jolted awake, pulse slamming blood and not-prey fever through her body. Something was wrong. She stayed silent and still, eyes shut as though asleep, ears cocked, nostrils flared. Her ship hummed and reverberated soothingly as the prey-monitors scanned continuously. A timer, keeping count of the days, clicked once. Not another sound could be heard, no footsteps of any prey large or small. Not a whine of an insect or footpad of a mouse. Engine fluid burned a little less cleanly keeping the necessary systems running while her ship was at rest; she would have to change it before leaving. The faintest stale stench of blood and her own body odor lingered, the last remains of air not yet filtered out by life-support during her thrilling last hunt.
No other sound, no other smell. No alarms blared, no monitors unexpectedly turned on. Opening her eyes, she was met with a domed ceiling and familiar blinking lights in the exact tempo and colors they were supposed to. Carefully she levered her body out of the firm cot.
Though stiff and sore from the most violent hunt she could remember—more so even than the sentient horned equine she'd confronted fifty years ago—her medi-tech had been up to the challenge. She flexed her hands equally painlessly, the nearly destroyed wrist perfectly functional once more. Medi-droids had turned her deep chest wounds to fine scars. Swiftly donning her armor, new cannons and a new helmet from the spare parts in storage, she relaxed into the familiar weight and comfort of technological-heightened senses. A hunter once more. Now to find out just who or what had foolishly disturbed her sleep. As befitting any centuries-old hunter, she trusted her instincts more than technology. Something was out there.
Passing her massive serpentine skull trophy, Dah'Mei activated an in-depth surroundings scan. Nothing, not even one of the tiny suicidal prey-pests of this planet or annoying, hovering parasites. Snapping her wrist-blades out, a spear in one hand, a gun tucked in her belt, she opened the door. A wave of pine scent hit her, along with the slightest hint of something else. There. To the left, laying on the carpet of brown needles was a scrap of cloth, stiff with dried blood. What was this? Had her prey passed by here unknowingly while she healed? Crouching, Dah'Mei studied the thin material.
Instinct alone saved her.
A tension gathered behind her, something beyond her senses but present like the breath of death against the back of her throat. The stare of a predator.
"Lucis." A whisper on the wind. She sprang aside.
A beam of concentrated light, like her own laser cannon, shot silently through the center mass where she'd been crouched. Dah'Mei dodged. Too slow. The beam caught part of her armor in its vaporizing ray. The piece of cloth lay undisturbed beneath. Bait. Daring not stay in the same place again, she zig-zagged, evading another blast of light and looked up.
At first she saw only her ship's nearly-invisible outline, a barely-there mirage due to cloaking. Before her disbelieving eyes a ripple appeared above it, as though a fellow Yautja crept toward her beneath their cloaking. The figure was about the right size and shape beneath the distortion but why in the universe had another of her own kind been so rude as to interrupt her hunt? Did they cloak themselves to hide their shameful face?
And why had a hunter shot her?
The soft footsteps were unfamiliar, not Yautja at all. They halted. Another beam of light seared the top half of a cannon. A puzzle piece clicked in her head. She dodged faster, trying to fire accurately at a nigh-invisible enemy. Impossible as it should have been, Dah'Mei was not facing a fellow Yautja at all.
He was a Predator though.
Laser-fire glanced off the cloaked figure. As skillful as her evasions of his light-beams had been, Dres-den learned from his mistakes. His next attack formed no spear of fire but a rain of arrows, each so bright they hurt to stare into. One drew a line of scorching pain across the side of her throat. Another burrowed deep into her leg, through the muscle and bone itself. She collapsed to one knee, white-hot agony burning in the core of her leg.
When did humans know how to cloak?
His cloaking vanished.
Dried blood caught between black twine on a painfully-furrowed face. Yet no pain dulled the bright flames of fury within Victory Blade and he struck with the same unnatural swiftness as their last desperate battle. An arc of light threatened to cleave her in two like a spear-blade.
Disbelief nearly ended her. For the briefest of micro-seconds she was stupidly unable to comprehend being hunted. In all her centuries of experience she'd had humans occasionally try to track her down and shoot her with their silly weapons, as though she were a mere animal.
They hadn't hunted her. Victory Blade stalked her beneath cloaking of his own. He fired blasts of light akin to a laser-cannon, was armored against her best weaponry and had somehow tracked her to her den. Casually he stepped between her and the cloaked ship. This was perverse. It was wrong. Predator was not supposed to hunt predator. Prey was not supposed to hunt predator. Yautja was not supposed to be prey.
Threatening laser-fire forced her further away.
Victory Blade's movements were only a hair slower than they had been the last time, his fury slightly less arctic. The laser sheered muscle away from her side, carving a trench through flesh and cleaving her spear in two. Blood and molten metal splattered to the ground, her decapitated spear-head landed in the pine-needles. She cloaked herself and sprang over another force blow, but the wound told and another chunk of armor and flesh vanished. In the space of a breath he disappeared. Beneath cloaking, she could still see the heat he radiated.
Hopefully he could not see her in kind.
Cloaking veiled any weapons he had brought along. What did he wield against her? A staff and gun, as before; against her cannon he shot a golden laser. There had been more, she was certain.
"Forzare!"
An enormous hand, glowing with inner fire, grasped her in its massive claws. As it clenched the breath from her, Dah'Mei aimed her remaining cannon at the construct. Laser-fire tore at the creation until it released her, shreds of white-blue power fading. How was such a solid construct possible? Hard light technology?
"Assaultus!" A bar of force nearly tore her head off her body. No time to hypothesize. Dodging the force, she rolled to her feet and circled close, striking swiftly with her wrist-blades at his legs. The length of wood slammed into her forearms but she snatched his stave and twisted, intending to fling him to the side as he had her.
Dres-den released his grip, letting her momentum carry her off-balance. Swift as any predator he sank a blade in her chest. Netting fell away as steel gashed at her sternum, drawing a howl of agony. With the dagger buried deep, he placed his free hand on her chest and snarled a word, flinging her away with unknown power but keeping hold of the blade. The knife was torn free, flaps of flesh spilled blood down her torso.
"Ventas Cyclis!"
Invisible power wrenched his staff from her slackened grip and back into his.
Dah'Mei fired again but he dodged the laser, the burn barely scraping his cheek. His next strike shot for her torso. She dropped to her knees. The light carved a furrow through the top of her helmet; the pulse of heat where Dres-den stood flickered and died before her eyes. Not-prey fever infested her heart; she was hunting blind. His next blow tore her other cannon off.
No cannons. Hunting blind. What a battle this would be. What a hunt. What a story. But doubt crawled into Dah'Mei's mind. Only a single gun and her natural senses against the most difficult prey ever hunted? She could lose.
Heroics weren't worth her life.
Alone Victory Blade had nearly disarmed her completely. His staff moved with an audible whoosh for her torso and she had only her blades and a dying gun to counter. She crouched into a roll, barely avoiding the physical and metaphysical blow. He could win. She could die. No. Not with her ship right there. She had more equipment. Another set that he would not destroy so easily as this one. Springing to her feet, Dah'Mei sprinted for her ship.
Power gathered, just out of reach of her senses, heavy as the earth. She flung herself to the side in a desperate bound. If she could just get back home…
This time his voice came not in a whisper but like rolling thunder.
"Gravitas!"
Gravity vanished beneath her feet, turning her leap into a hovering flight for the briefest fraction of a second. Caught in mid-air like a fly in amber, Dah'Mei was unable to move her body an inch. Completely helpless against another strike. But she was not the intended target.
Gravity left her and the area as far as she could see—pine needles and branches and leaf-litter rising as though in space—and multiplied a million-fold beneath her faithful craft. A hammer-blow from God. Metal capable of withstanding the worst of the merciless vacuum of outer space and the harshest of lands crumpled beneath the onslaught of energy like aluminum foil beneath a fist. The open door flat lined, engines shattered, the entire ship and all its expensive, advanced technology screamed a last, high, deafening squeal. With one divine blow the hardiest technology she possessed was rendered into so much scrap metal. Her feet landed on the rim of a crater. Her former home.
A strange tremor shook her heart like that spell had shaken the earth.
This. Was. Legend. Myth and rumor and whispered tales of disappeared hunters never again seen; a persistent fable of humans who were more than human. Who could do the extraordinary—wield the elements as weapons, vanish into the ether, call forth monstrous beings and raise the dead to their bidding.
Magic.
Like every experienced Yuatja who heard the tales of humans hurtling lightning or teleporting Dah'Mei had dismissed them as ravings. Tales of surprised hunters encountering some strange new human weapon. As she had with a gun. A few predators always vanished on Earth, adding tantalizing mystery to the allure to the planet.
She had hunted several humans who could have killed a young Yautja, or one who let arrogance overcome ability, but very rarely the experienced and powerful hunters also vanished. What could possibly have killed them, Dah'Mei had wondered?
She had her answer.
Limbs shook. Heart trembled. Her ship. Dah'Mei twisted away from another killing blow on mind-numbing instinct alone. The blow awoke part of her and she drew her gun—her last backup—and fired a storm of blazing light. She put everything she had into killing Victory Blade, damn the challenge of the hunt. The trophy. Anything. Had his child been there, she might have been desperate enough to threaten it and damn her honor. Home was gone.
She was going to die.
Victory Blade's shield broke beneath her onslaught but he barked "flammamurus!" The ground beneath her feet went from cool to scalding, from solid to boiling hot magma burning even more powerfully than his ball of fire.
Dah'Mei could not dodge a blow to the very ground beneath her feet. The instant she crouched to do so her legs sank into the molten rock. Magma seized her feet, grasped her ankles, melted the metal-clad boots but she managed the jump.
"Infriga Forzare!"
Boiling plasma turned to solid stone in mid-leap, freezing her in place. Dah'Mei fumbled for half a second, seized by two columns of rock, unbalanced yet unable to fall. Fear took over. True fear which does not fumble with the body like a puppet on strings but numbly controls a machine. The motions of Dres-den aiming some new weapon at her slowed. In the time it took him to line the weapon up to her heart, she pointed her laser-gun and fired: not at him but at the stone trapping her. Blinding light flared. Jagged pieces of rock rent the air. Dust enveloped their vision and she rolled away. His shot caught the shoulder-plate but didn't vaporize her frantic heart.
Fear spurred her on burning, bleeding feet, armor melted and half solidified into weights clinging to her naked, charred legs. Heat sloughed off the skin of her ankles to expose muscle, tendons, even bone but terror numbed the agony. Fear had snapped her awake despite not consciously sensing Victory Blade—what an appropriate name. Terror, dark and all-encompassing as a last shadow fell upon her. Her ship. Her only way home. All her weapons and armor and backups and supplies. Everything she had down to her trophies rendered to scrap metal with a single spell. He had prepared; he was coming after her.
She bolted into the wilderness, fear overcoming pain. The ship she'd lived in since earning it as a full hunter, her home through thousands of trophies killed, the most cunning of humans and numerous of hives was destroyed. No escape. Unless…other Yautja still visited earth to hunt, perhaps another stalked this world now. If she could find a fellow predator, somewhere on this planet, with only the technology on her back to assist her—
While Dres-Den hunted her down like the Great Hunter Itself.
Impractical. Flighty fear fled, leaving heavier, deathly dread to slow her footsteps. Dres-den would track her down and kill her as she had others. Victory Blade would truly have his victory. Dah'Mei felt great, empathetic respect for every prey who had turned to face her despite the inevitable. How had they found such strength?
"No," she hissed, straightening. "How am I to die? As prey…or predator?" Clawing away from the pit of despair, she sped up her pace, pushing through the pain and brambles. Right, then left, each step piecing together a winding trail through the thickening forest. She crossed paths with herself, doubled, tripled and quadrupled back on her own trail. If she was to die it would not be as a weakling. As prey collapsing before the predator. She would die a Yautja, hunting the last, greatest prey.
By the time her trail was finished she could feel nothing of her legs but if this trap worked she just might snatch victory from beneath the blade of death. A virtual web of tracks and blood led to a stream. Dah'Mei had used every trick she'd ever heard of to lose Victory Blade, but he would not give up. He would follow to the swift-moving stream. Gratefully she stumbled in; the cool water dulled her burns like healing serum and revitalized her with strength.
A foot sank heavily in mud. She wrenched it out, stumbling in deeper water. The cold, forceful current pulled with the inexorable strength of ceaseless liquid. Her toes barely brushed the bottom. Dragging herself through its icy grip, her feet touched mud once more. A tree loomed over the water nearby, leaves grazing the current. Her legs were so badly injured she barely managed to cling to the lowest branch. Hand over hand, she climbed higher through thick foliage. Another tree bent over the water on the side she'd left. Another jump. A leaf fell, green harshly stained with glowing blood for the current to sweep away.
Higher she crept until the view of her own trail was unimpaired, wind gently cooling her face. The stream was her best bet, it would slow Dres-den as he tried to figure out where she had crossed and its current would slow him as he swam. The canopy was thicker along either side of the water. She crouched in it, hidden by the tree, unmoving despite the pain in her chest and legs and the worrying lack of pain in her feet.
Summer's lush leaves and her own camouflage would probably work to hide her but just in case she activated her cloaking, then de-activated the triangulating lights on her laser-gun. Accurate shots without them were difficult, but red dots would grant Dres-den warning enough. She had centuries of practice shooting without any guiding lights; only the apprentices truly relied upon them.
The wait had never been more grueling for her, not even as a young hunter. Then, The Great Hunter had been a foreign, barely acknowledged concept; a thing which claimed only fools and ancient ones. The abstract, far-away notion grew more substantial, loomed closer and higher with every passing year. Only her equally rising skill allowed her to keep her courage.
Now the specter towered over her, so close she could feel the chill from its presence on the back of her neck even as she hunted death. If this trap failed…Dres-den would kill her. She would become but one more hunter inexplicably vanished upon this world, heightening its mystery.
Kill or die.
Her patience, forged and whetted by the stone of time frayed strand by strand from that same rock. Should she have made the trail so confusing? The only scent coming from the wind was pine and her own blood. What if he retreated once more and chose to come back another time? Not a ripple of cloaking gave away an approaching predator. No, he was a hunter. He thought he had her on the run. Nothing drew a hunter out like fleeing prey and she had given the illusion of such with her frantic, fluid-drenched trail.
A steady, light kush, kush, of dried pine needles caught her attention. Footsteps. Every muscle in her body awakened with energy. Victory Blade approached. Dah'Mei let out a silent breath of relief, her heart calming. Finally, death would decide. Silently she calibrated her gun, pointed toward the water so as not to alert well-honed instinct of her most dangerous prey.
Victory Blade paused at the edge of the stream, dark eyes intent on the water rather than the cover of the canopy. Did he think an ambush to come from below? No…he did not search for any sign of something lurking in the stream. Despite the trail leading—obviously to her experience—in the water and out the other side he did not take another step. Was water some form of weakness? Most humans did not hesitate to leap into water fleeing from her, no matter how it's currents frothed. Perhaps the stream somehow interfered with his strange powers?
Even better.
His attention snapped up, zeroing in on a break in the water. A rock. Upstream, not fifty feet from her. If he leapt on it, she would have an excellent shot. His coat and body were too heavily armored for a guaranteed kill but his face remained the least protected. He wore a helmet beneath the hat, icy armor made in haste but a shot through the eye would do it.
His ravaged face jerked to the canopy. Dah'Mei's heart froze but she did not allow herself to do the same, swaying slightly with the wind as a branch would, gun lowered, eyes averted lest he somehow feel the presence of her eyes. Mentally she chanted 'I am a tree, just a tree, just a bunch of leaves swaying lightly in the wind. Just a tree.' Too many times prey had detected her by some sixth sense and detection would kill her now.
Narrowed, dark eyes scrutinized the foliage. She didn't dare stare directly at him. Cold, trigger-guard steel bit into her fingers. If he saw her, she might not get the gun up in time. A bead of sweat formed on her forehead, stung every wound it flowed over, slowly rolled down the grooves of her face, over silent lips to hang suspended from her chin.
It fell.
He looked toward the rock. Her heart remembered to move. That's right, she thought. Come on Dres-den, take the leap. Just one more move. Her gun was ready and aimed for the spot, adjusted for a head shot two point two nine meters above the middle stone. Her finger rested on the trigger. One leap, one small jump, was needed. She would fire the instant his eye came into the iron sights.
Dres-den crouched. Dah'Mei's heart stopped. Gun aimed, trigger ready, she waited like a hawk perched on a wire.
He leapt. Further than any human athlete could he bore himself over the water. Both feet hit the rock with feline lightness. His heavy coat snapped forward like a vulture's wing-beat. Ripples scattered from the stone. Dah'Mei remembered to breathe. He straightened to his full, imposing height, face focused toward the bank.
Never had she wanted to fire as eagerly as she did now. End it, end it, end it. Her patience was tight as a garrote wire, only iron control kept her finger from squeezing that last, fatal millimeter. A predator always waits for the perfect shot. The only shot guaranteed to kill. The eye shot. Her heart drummed faster. His legs tensed. Her breath stopped. Would he take another jump, land on the other side where distance would make a kill-shot far more difficult? Her fingers twitched. If she didn't kill him with this one shot she was dead!
Despite the foliage and her cloaking, his eyes once more met hers across the distance.
Blood roared, a waterfall of noise in her ears. Bullets of sweat poured into her eyes but though it burned like acid her aim never trembled. Her heart beat so fast it stopped.
She fired.
The laser gave no red glow, no noise, no warning. Instant deathly light hit the face of Victory Blade, punching through the back of that gorgeous skull and spraying mud and water in the air as it ripped through the stream.
When the water settled and the mess cleared a second later, Dres-den lay still, skull an unrecognizable mess, body flung onto the far bank from the force of the shot.
Dead.
The hunt was over.
Relief felled Dah'Mei from the tree into a heap. Her gun slid from trembling hands. The bellow of blood died down until she could hear the gurgling river, the swish of pine-needles, her own mad mirth. Standing on shaky, barely-functioning legs, the Predator laughed loud and booming. Fear bled from her like some vicious disease. She'd done it. She'd won. Snatched victory from the jaws of death. Hunted what no other Yautja had succeeded in slaying. Scrambling for the gun, she stumbled to the stream on numb feet.
Or had she?
Suddenly wary she raised the gun and activated both wrist blades. Did he play dead? Had his cobbled-together helmet covered the eye somehow? Was this another magical trick? Keeping the river between them, she shot his face again. Laser-light tore apart more lovely skull-bone. Splinters flew, shining in the mid-morning sun before falling into the mud. Finding every sliver scattered throughout the stream and bank would be a new method of torture but the pain would be worth it. This trophy was worth it. Victory Blade was dead. She had survived the greatest hunt of her life.
Carefully, for he was the greatest and most terrible of prey, she crept through the water to the other side, extended a wrist blade and nudged the body.
Dres-den stayed still.
Her heart slowed. She lowered her gun. The last of her fear bled out and she stood straight and tall to claim her trophy. She had won.
"A good death," she whispered.
Crack.
