Page 21 of Monster’s Obsessive Hunger
THORRIN
I run. The forest is a blur of white snow and black trunks, a landscape I know better than the contours of my own skull-face, but it is all rendered meaningless by the single, terrifying focus of my flight.
Lyssa is a fragile, impossibly still weight in my arms. Her head lolls against my shoulder, her breaths so shallow I have to press my ear to her lips to feel their faint, ghostly warmth.
Every jarring step, every stumble over a hidden root, sends a fresh spike of terror through me.
The snow begins to fall in earnest, no longer the gentle flakes of early evening, but a thick, wet curtain that clings to my bones and obscures the path ahead.
It should hinder me, but it doesn't. My senses are screaming, focused on a single scent marker that grows stronger with every ground-eating stride.
The scent of a rival. The scent of Kaerith.
I am trespassing. The thought is a distant, academic thing, a law from a world that no longer matters.
For centuries, the invisible lines of Waira territory have been as real and as solid as mountains.
To cross one without invitation, without a formal challenge, is to invite death.
Our kind are solitary, territorial beasts, and we do not suffer intruders.
But the ancient laws are dust, the old ways meaningless in the face of the small, dying human in my arms. The only law I answer to now is the frantic, desperate beat of her fading heart.
Ahead, I see them. A line of sharpened femurs driven into the earth, their surfaces bleached white by years of winter suns.
Interspersed between them are the skulls of worgs and dark elves, a clear, brutal declaration of ownership.
This is the border. This is Kaerith’s domain.
I do not slow. I do not hesitate. I crash through the line of bones, the sound of their splintering beneath my feet a declaration of my own desperate war against tradition, against pride, against everything I once was.
I am no longer a Waira abiding by the laws of my kind.
I am a supplicant, a beggar, and I am about to throw myself at the mercy of a king whose throne I have just defiled.
The air in Kaerith’s territory feels different.
Thicker. Charged with a latent power that speaks of a Waira who is well-fed, dominant, and utterly in control of his domain.
The scent of him is everywhere, a powerful musk of ancient stone, pine, and a faint, underlying warmth that I now recognize as the scent of his human mate.
The thought triggers a memory, a ghost of a hunt from years past that rises from the depths of my mind with a bitter, shameful taste.
I was younger then, more reckless, the hollowness inside me a sharper, more painful ache.
A new scent had drifted into my territory, the impossibly sweet perfume of another human, but this one was different.
It carried a strange resonance, a quality that promised a satiation my usual prey never could.
A Keeper’s Balm. I had tracked her for a day, a beautiful, dark-haired human with eyes full of a fire that only made the hunt more thrilling. Her name was Elira.
I had cornered her near a waterfall, the terror blooming on her face a symphony to my starving soul.
I remember the satisfaction, the primal joy of the predator about to claim its prize.
And then, I remember him. Kaerith. He had appeared from the mists of the waterfall like a vengeful god whose wrath whose fury dwarfed my own simple hunger.
He had not challenged me. He had simply moved to kill me.
I had fled, outmatched and humiliated, the taste of my failure a bitter pill.
Now, the irony is a poison in my gut. I am returning to that same territory, a trespasser once again.
But this time, I am not here to hunt his mate.
I am here to beg for her help. I am about to kneel before the very rival who once drove me from his lands in shame, and I am going to ask him to save the life of the human I have broken.
The humiliation is a searing fire, but the fear for Lyssa’s life is a tidal wave that extinguishes it completely.
Pride is a luxury for those who have nothing left to lose.
I have everything to lose, and she is growing colder in my arms.
A shape detaches itself from the shadows between two massive boulders ahead.
Kaerith. He is larger than I remember, his skeletal frame seeming to draw the very darkness around him.
His heart-light is not the calm, domestic gold I saw from a distance on that day years ago.
It is a blazing, furious white, the color of pure, undiluted territorial rage.
He does not speak. He does not need to. His entire posture is a declaration of war.
A simmering rasp, like the grinding of tectonic plates, rumbles from his chest, a clear and final warning. Leave now or die.
My forward momentum ceases. I stand before him, the falling snow a silent curtain between two ancient rivals.
In another life, another time, I would meet his growl with my own.
I would lower my head and charge, and we would tear each other apart until one of us was nothing more than another collection of bones to decorate these woods. But not today.
With a slowness that feels like the movement of mountains, I kneel.
The act of submission is so foreign, so contrary to my nature, that my body protests every inch of the descent.
I kneel in the snow before my rival, an act of utter, complete surrender.
I gently, carefully, place Lyssa’s limp body on the ground between us, arranging her cloak over her as a final, pathetic gesture of care. She is an offering. A plea.
I look up at the furious, blazing creature before me, and I strip myself of the last vestiges of my pride. The word that leaves my lips is a broken, desperate thing, a sound no true Waira should ever make.
“Please.”
His growl falters, a flicker of confusion momentarily tempering his rage.
“She’s dying,” I say. “I… I hurt her. She needs a healer. She needs your mate.”
As the words leave my mouth, a second figure emerges from the shadows behind Kaerith.
Elira. Her human face is a mask of cold, unforgiving fury.
Her eyes, sharp and intelligent, lock onto me, and I see the immediate, visceral recognition.
She remembers the monster who once saw her as nothing more than a meal.
Her lips pull back from her teeth in a silent snarl, and in that moment, her expression is more terrifying than Kaerith’s blazing rage.
Hope, which had been a desperate, flickering ember, threatens to die completely under the weight of her hatred.