This is it, the final chapter of my little tale. A lot's going to happen, some things you may have seen coming and, hopefully, a lot you didn't.
Chapter 9: Fleeting
Eva didn't come back that night, nor did she make her presence known the next morning, and as mid morning began to roll by without any indication she planned on returning, the hunter was left with no choice but to come to her. He found the room where she had been spending her nights, a room he remembered choosing for her because the gutters here didn't bang against the outer walls as much when the wind of the recent storm blew, and he rapped his knuckles against her bedroom door.
"C-come in," said the voice that issued forth, and he obeyed its bidding to find her sitting on a large canopy bed with her bags resting nearby. It was a pleasant room, dressed with a tranquil light filtering through sheer curtains to illuminate the edge of golden bed sheets patterned with leaves, a picture of luxury that was a far cry from the dank and muddy environment that lay just on the other side of the red-painted walls.
"Going somewhere, my dear?"
"Razoff," Eva said, though her gaze remained ahead of her, "I'm sorry about last night. I'm sorry I ran away, but—"
"There's nothing to apologize for," he said, and he lowered himself into a chair in the line of her vision. Reclining back in his seat, he continued, "But, I don't recall ever getting an answer to my question."
Now she chose to look upon him, and that secret he saw in her eyes the night she first arrived was back, though closer to the surface than he had ever before seen it. "Yes, I remember. We were-" Her eyes retreated again as she rose to her feet as if in some sudden remembrance. "Oh, but I must return home. It's still wet out, but I think it's always going to be somewhat wet, and-" She attempted to head for the door, her stiff march slowed down by large bags trying to be carried by thin arms, but froze as soon as he spoke.
"Eva. Sit."
She set her bags back down and did as she was told, though she remained straight-backed, with her hands lying palm-down in her lap.
Razoff arched an eyebrow at her. "Why are you suddenly in such a hurry to leave? Just yesterday, you were sobbing over having to return home so soon, and now you seem eager. If you really do remember our promise, I should say, I'm a bit…offended at your response."
She shook her head. "Oh, Razoff, no, it's not that. It's just…I remember our promise, I do, we…we were going to get married, once you came back. But, that's not why…" A finger lifted to her mouth that she appeared very much to want to nibble on. "Oh, how can I possibly say this?"
"Say what? Eva, you're going to want to speak up, and soon, or else I'll have to assume the worst. Isn't that what you always say?" But, his smile didn't incite the same from her, and he slouched further in his chair as he steepled his fingers. "Well, now? Speak."
By now, her gaze had fallen to the rug, with no signs of being jolted from that spot anytime soon. "Razoff." Her voice was a breathy whisper. "Razoff, I-I'm…engaged."
He remained silent for a time, the entire room awaiting his response with bated breath, even the clock's ticking muted, and she began to fidget under his gaze. "You're engaged," he repeated.
"Yes."
"And to a man that is not myself, I presume."
She nodded.
"And why didn't you tell me this sooner? In fact," he caught her squeeze her eyes shut, "why did you even come here to begin with?"
Her head jerked up with enough speed, one would think her at risk of whiplash. "Oh, but I wanted to see you, Razoff! I missed you ever so much, but…you must understand! I waited years for you to return. Decades. I—"
His hands alighted on the armrests. "So did I."
"That's not the same thing! You-you see, I knew him for a long time, but I spurned his advances because I was waiting for you. But, eventually, a day came when I could wait no longer. I just…"
"So this was all a charade, then?" He made a sweep of one hand. "You came all this way, and yet you had feelings for—"
"Razoff, I loved you!"
She stiffened as soon as these words left her lips, and she watched him with wide eyes as he became silent again to think this over. At last, he spoke, "Is he fine with this? With your…visit?"
"Ye-he…he doesn't know. He thinks I went to see a friend."
The hunter released a single laugh. "I'm glad you at least retain some pleasant sentiments towards me. But, it only leaves me to wonder, do you always make a habit of lying?"
It was her turn to grow silent, and her eyes swiveled left and right as her mind attempted to digest this accusation. "Lying? What do you mean, do I- No, I never lied to you, Razoff!"
"No?" He pushed himself to his feet. "What about your name? Your family name is not Bellevere, is it, Eva, my dear? In fact, you are not even of noble blood, though you did a fine job of perpetuating this story for all the years you so faithfully awaited my return."
She jumped to her feet, as well, her jaw working to find the words to say, and when she spoke, these words came out in a squeak. "Razoff, I-I-" She searched about the room for some escape from her current plight, and she licked her lips. "How…how did you know?"
"I always knew." He strode by her to gaze out the window at the bleak landscape below with his hands clasped behind his back. "From the moment I met you, I knew. The mannerisms in you speech. The quality of your clothing. Your obvious attempts to recall details of your life that, in fact, were not true to begin with." He looked back. "No one forgets their own surname for that long, Eva. Or should I say, Eva Bellevere?"
"Stop it."
"You had to know I'd find out one day. Or did you plan to hide it forever?"
"Stop."
He turned to face her fully. "Oh, but that's right. You ran off and found another while my back was turned, so I suppose that lessened the need to keep a secret long term didn't it, my de—"
"Stop it!"
His ears rang with the volume of this plea, and with the flow of her speech returned to her, she continued, "Just stop it! I'm sorry I lied to you, but I didn't think you'd want me otherwise. I—"
The hunter stepped towards her. "Do you really think I'm that shallow?"
"I don't know, are you? The only reason you could stay so…so loyal was because you spent the last three decades alone. Don't deny that you wouldn't have found someone else yourself if you weren't isolated in this…Polokus-forsaken wasteland for so long. That's why you never introduced me to your parents, wasn't it? Because they would know I was…a…a common girl, too. W-wouldn't—"
Both hands went to her mouth, but they couldn't stop the tears from falling, and she sobbed in squeaks and hiccups, and with the conversation at an end, he strode by her in silence, but he was halted in the doorway when a broken question reached his ears. "R-Razoff, what…what are-are you hiding…i-in your basement? What are you keeping down there?"
"I've already told you," he said. "It was the squealing of a dying furnace. That was all."
He returned to his office, for lack of a better place to be, save for out on a hunt he didn't currently possess the proper soundness of mind to have any success at. He sat for a time in silence, or paced this way and that before the crackling hearth, a securely bolted door between himself and the world.
Yes, he had known about her secret, for no hunter worth his salt would miss the obvious flaws she so unknowingly displayed. The Shoedsackovski's knew all the noble families within a hundred miles, and they would have known hers, if they had existed. Not to mention he had tracked her to her home one day, a shoddy hovel just as crooked and wretched as what all the rabble in her village lived in. But, he had loved her, for it was the fault of all young men to so easily throw their hearts away to anything with a pretty face.
He should have known her sort would be unfaithful. No better than animals, they all were.
He caught her in the act of slinking away an hour later, for his hunter's intuition told him she would try such a thing, and she froze like any animal would, as all creatures did when faced with the approach of the predator they sensed would bring about their end.
"I suppose it's farewell, then," Razoff said as he strode towards her with arms folded behind his back, and she watched him, waiting for him to speak further, but he didn't.
"Yes. Yes, I suppose it is."
He inclined his head in but a single nod, and she dropped sad eyes to the floor.
"I just…wanted to see you one last time."
"Well, now you've done it."
Her eyes returned to stare at him, her lips moving as if ready to say more, so much more, until she turned away. She opened one of two great double doors, and she stopped in the doorway, speaking but one final farewell, and then she was gone, the hand slipping from the doorknob the last thing he saw of her before she was no more.
His feet moved with a mind of their own, and he did a good deal more pacing about the quiet rooms and halls of his empty mansion, before these feet took him to the basement door, which he opened with no semblance of his usual hunter's stealth, and the door struck the wall as he marched down the stairs without caring to close it behind him.
"You did this," he said before he had even reached the cell he had in mind, and he said it again when he stopped to glare into the darkness imprisoned behind those bars, and he caught the glimmer of eyes in the gloom.
"I see."
"She's gone. She left because of you. If you hadn't—"
"My only crime comes from revealing to her your own. So if that is what you're accusing me of, then yes, I am guilty."
The glimmer disappeared as she turned her head away, and Razoff struck the bars with the palm of one hand. "I am not through with you yet! Look at me when I speak to you! Look at me! What gives you the right to meddle in someone else's business?"
Her head snapped back in his direction, and her large eyes almost seemed to glow in the darkness. "I didn't reveal anything to her she didn't already know! And as for rights, you are the least qualified to speak on such a topic!" The orbs of her eyes rose as she stood, and she came to him and pressed her face to the door of her cell and wrapped her fingers around the bars. "Look me in the eyes and preach about rights!"
He leaned in closer, not once shying away from her gaze. "I can do as I please with my property. My property…is not meant to talk back…or attempt to teach me some kind of lesson I care little to learn."
"I wasn't wasting my time with you. I was only trying to help her."
With a snarl, he pressed the end of his rifle up under her jaw, and she released the bars and tried to step back, but was unable with her head forced upward in such a manner, she had to stand nearly on tiptoes.
"What's stopping me from killing you! You lost your powers the day you were wounded! What's stopping me! I saved your life, and I can just as easily take it away!"
"Do it, then!" Her voice echoed off the walls of her cell. "Kill me! I died the day you locked me in here, so what difference does it make?"
The hunter pulled his rifle away, only to aim it at the paluchard in the cell across from her, and it attempted to press itself into the shadows of the farthest corner.
"No!"
"What's stopping me?" Razoff asked.
She stretched one arm through the bars, her fingers grasping for him. "Don't hurt it because of what I did! This is between you and—"
"You should have considered the consequences of your rebellion before you acted it out!"
"Please. Don't."
Her words went unheeded, however, and she slumped when he fired his rifle, as if she herself had been struck.
"I don't understand," she said as she slid to sit on the floor. "I don't understand what you get from death. The world is filled with it. Why do you want more?"
"I am a hunter."
"This is not the same thing." She paused to lick her lips. "I was injured, to the point of death, and you helped me. You bound my wounds. You tended me. We spoke before the fireplace while I lay wrapped in blankets on the sofa. You did all of that, only to lock me away." She turned her eyes to him, glittering with unshed tears, and his gaze upon her faltered. "Is my hatred for you more satisfying than my gratitude?"
Razoff burned the letters that night. He tossed them each in turn into the hungry flames of the hearth where Eva and he had once sat and discussed all manner of pleasant things, before events had to take the turn that they had, and he sat in his chair and watched the flames lick away the last shreds with a numb heart.
He fell asleep in that chair, and there he spent the night, and he awoke the next morning with an aching back and a grumbling stomach he thought had been left neglected since two evenings ago.
He fed himself plain toast and tea, and then he spent the rest of the day waiting, for the most important moment of his life was tonight, the night he would hunt the elusive rybex he had searched so long and so hard for. He had waited thirty years for another chance to subdue the creature, and now no one was around that could get in his way, for he was Count Razoff Shoedsackovski, and he was the last great hunter left in the world.
He set out with the arrival of dusk, when the sky was a somber blue and the tentative chirp of insects was just beginning their nightly song. He bundled up in a warmer coat tonight, as crimson as all his clothes, for it wouldn't do for low temperatures to hinder his movements and dull his wits, and he walked a path he had traced in his head countless times since first treading it.
It took him a good two hours before he reached the place in question, that lonely copse of trees where rested the beast's nest. A careful perusal showed it to be presently empty, and he hid amongst a thicket of reeds, where he laid on his stomach with his rifle at the ready. Now all that was left was to wait.
The hunter could occupy himself with little else but thoughts of his imminent victory, thoughts he attempted to focus on all the more in order to ignore the uneasiness he could feel creeping up on him like the tickle of a spider web one had inadvertently walked through. It was silent in this part of the bog and deadly still. Not a toad croaked nor an insect chirped, and he caught no movement save the occasional mud beetle. Not even a bird was to be found winging overhead, and though he tried not to think of these things, this effort only succeeded in causing his mind to lock onto these thoughts and refuse to let go.
It was several hours into his wait that he felt it, a tremor in the earth beneath him, but when he waited for it to repeat itself, he was met with nothing. He was flicking away a bug that had had the nerve to crawl onto his nose when he felt it again, a stronger, more obvious force this time, and he stiffened, for he thought he had heard it, as well, a distant thump, followed by the crunching of reeds being pushed aside and an ominous exhalation of breath only a creature of immense stature could produce.
It was here; he had found it, at last. And now, he had but one thing left to do.
Razoff's heart jumped when a shape came into view from behind the shriveled, old trees, and he caught the outline of cruel horns and a beastly snout. And the glitter of eyes in the dark that never failed to unsettle him, even after a life spent as a hunter.
The hunter slid one hand further down the rifle's barrel, ignoring the cry of stiff muscles as he aimed his gun at the creature's throat. Hitting it between the eyes was the best bet for a quick kill, but he couldn't afford to sully it in such a manner. Oh, what a trophy it would make.
Its head snapped in his direction just as he fired, and the arrow missed the artery he had been aiming for, and the creature shrieked as it was hit, rearing up and thrashing about with a fierce rage he had seen in no other beast. He aimed again, but was given no other choice but to roll out of the way when it charged in his direction, and he just missed sharp horns and trampling claws, and it spun around with no shortage of agility as he sprung to his feet. It loomed high above him, gazing down with almost a noble air, of a king staring down at a mouse, and he was stilled just as if he was paralyzed, and he could do no more than freeze in its cold, hard gaze.
It raised an arm, and before he could react, it struck him with one quick motion, and he cried out as he was thrown through the air, ribs surely smashed by the sheer force of it, and he groaned as he landed on the muddy ground a dozen feet away.
The ground shook as it approached, but even though it could so easily crush him into the mud with its own, mighty footsteps, it did little more but circle him, but he knew this temporary mercy wouldn't last for long. Ignoring the knives of broken bone that screamed at him from within his battered chest, he sat up from his spot on the ground and raised his rifle, and he fired again, and it shrieked before it came at him with jagged teeth, and he was reduced to beating it off with the barrel of his gun and his own fists, an act that hardly fazed it. It came for his throat with unforgiving jaws, though his rifle became caught in its mouth, and he fired again and again before it could jerk back. It swatted his rifle from his grasp, and, thoroughly defenseless, he attempted to back away, but it lunged again, and he was picked up as its teeth clamped down on his shoulder, and he was flung aside, no better than a doll in the hands of a child.
Razoff lay broken and bleeding in the mud, gasping in pain and struggling for air when each breath brought nothing but agony. The creature approached him again, and he attempted to lift himself up once more, only to fall back again, and the rybex considered him with those cold, yet strangely intelligent, eyes. He winced as it lowered his head, but rather than meeting the sharp teeth it had so recently displayed, he felt naught but the hot breath of its nostrils on his face, and he couldn't prevent a whimper from escaping him. He had faced death more times than he cared to count, but never had it been so close, so inescapable, as it was now, and the only solace he could come up with was the fact that, even if he had succeeded in the goal he had spent a lifetime seeking, he had nothing left to go back to anyway.
The hunter's eyes were met with a piercing, white light, but he knew it wasn't the rumored light one saw when death had overtaken them, for he could smell blood and feel a dull ache in every fiber of his body, which turned sharp and unbearable whenever he moved. He winced as his eyes adjusted to the bright, new light of a morning he never thought he'd see, and he attempted to survey his surroundings, but could hardly coax his broken body to move.
How he had managed to survive that ordeal last night, he couldn't possibly say, and he lay panting for quite a time, feeling like weeks were passing him by rather than mere hours, before he could no longer ignore the undeniable truth that lying here would get him nowhere.
He gasped as he pushed his head off the ground just enough so that he could more easily look about him, and he found his rifle not a terrible distance away, but when he reached for it with the arm that felt less resistant to movement, he still did not come close to touching it.
Without thinking of the consequences, he began to drag himself forward, only to cry out and go still again. Breathing heavily, he pulled himself forward again, and once more, and it was only then that he managed to take hold of his rifle, muddied, but surely not to the extent that he was, and pulled it to him.
He dropped his head into the dirt again, cold and damp against his skin, to pant and try his best to ignore the feeling of being cut to pieces and sewn back together again, but when his clouded vision sharpened, if only for a second, he jerked up and blinked several times at the sight before him.
The rybex, that most savage of creatures, that had brought him low not once, but twice, lay slain, several of his arrows sticking out from it at varying angles, and he had to squeeze his eyes shut and open them again before he could accept that such a thing had indeed happened.
He had killed it. At last, he had done it, not only fulfilling the tradition of his extinct family, but proving his father to have been wrong all along. And yet, alone out here, in the middle of a barren wasteland people rightly avoided…
Who was there to know?
Razoff began to crawl forward again, before he gave this up in favor of struggling to a hunched standing position with the help of his rifle, and he limped towards the body of the beast with no small amount of groaning. When he reached it, he fell upon it when his waning strength gave out, and he ran a hand over the coarse and silvery fur of a chest that no longer heaved with the breath of life. It was his, all his, and its head would adorn his wall, and…
He went still, blinking again as his vision alternated between varying levels of focus. But, how would he get it home? Especially in his broken state. The beast would take ten to move, and even then, it would require hours of backbreaking work to get it the distance he had travelled to find it.
Alone.
It simply couldn't be done alone. And if he couldn't do what was required in order to preserve proof of the greatest victory of his existence, one which he would be hard pressed to match, here it would remain, to rot and return to the soil, until all evidence of what he had accomplished would be forever erased.
A couple tears slipped down his cheeks before he could prevent any more from falling. And he couldn't return home without it, either, even if he had wanted to. Not with his body in such a sorry state. Though, even once he had gathered the strength to make such a journey, with broken bones and tattered clothes died a crimson they were never meant to possess, how could he possibly leave it behind? How could he possibly forgo even one second of gazing upon what he had accomplished?
Razoff slid down to sit in the mud with his back to the rybex, and he took up again his rifle to hold in his lap as he gazed out at the cold, dead landscape that had been his home for decades and would remain as such for decades more, a landscape he had never before felt so much a part of. And the hunter kept watch over his prey for as long as he was able before his greatest joy wasted away to nothing and no sign of its existence remained.
So fleeting was the greatest victory of the greatest hunter.
Well, the story's now over, and I must admit, it's a rather strange ending, but I went over several possibilities in my head, including him succeeding, failing, returning home injured, and nothing seemed right but what I went with. I think. I hope.
Anyway, thank you all who took the time to read this and see it through to the end. I hope I did Razoff justice, as I wanted to make him a far deeper character than what's seen in the game. Please review and tell me your thoughts. I'd love to hear them.
