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Slow breaths. Slow. Steady. Fast breaths were shallow breaths and wasted precious energy. They also sent the body into a panic. Panic would not do. A hunter must not panic. Panic is the way of the flame-beset beast. A hunter may know fear; a hunter must not know panic.
The Hunter thus stood, crouched and ready to move, his cane held ready, pistol clenched tight. He stared at the beast, the hulking horror oozing out rancid, rotted blood from its flayed back. With hungry eyes it gazed back, approaching him slowly, padding its way lazily, drooling through its long, sharp teeth.
Soon it would pounce, patience expended. The Hunter played his gambit out. The beast came closer, closer, but if it came too close it would be too late. Closer. Closer.
The cane fell from his hand, held fast by the strap across his wrist. His hand went to his belt, grabbing a bottle. With a single fluid motion he struck the wick of linen atop the cocktail across the patch of fire paper sewn on his shoulder, igniting the molotov, before throwing it directly at the beast.
The effect was dramatic, if minimal. The beast wailed in shock and panic as the fire burst across its face. The Hunter repeated the motion again, landing this time on the beast’s back. It reared and writhed and shrieked, shaking his nerves to the bone. With a few shakes of its putrid, flapping body, the beast doused the flames, barely harmed but scorched all the same, and most important: shaken.
Standing straight and taking a single deep breath, the Hunter brought his cane up to his shoulder, striking it against another patch of fire paper. The length of the trick weapon was wreathed in dancing fire, and the beast roared in rage at the despicable display. The Hunter held firm, and with a click of the handle mechanism and a flick, the cane split apart into its trick form. With a flourish, he brought the flaming length of whip all around him, challenging the beast with his bravado.
The beast launched at him, and deftly, the Hunter stepped aside its lunge, striking the burning whip across its throat, then again across its shoulder. The beast lurched around, biting at him, but he ducked under its long, spindly arm, underneath the flaps of its flayed back. He realized his mistake too late: the poisonous ichor dripped onto him, and he could feel it soaking into his coat, into his shirt, his skin, diffusing into his blood stream, burning more and more. With urgency, he dashed down the length of the beast, and brought his whip up before the beast could move, bringing the burning blades into the beast’s side and tearing it away. As it held in the air upon coming free of the beast’s flesh, he brought his whip back down to slash into the beast once more, but the creature hopped away with more dexterity than its form suggested.
He watched as the creature held its arm up, as if in twisted mockery of a sign of peace. Then it was barreling towards him. With a dash he avoid the massive claws, twisting around to slash the beast again, but just as he meant to follow up the strike, the beast turned, and he was face to face with it. Putrid blood spat out of its roaring maw, toxifying him further.
Retching with disgust, the Hunter shifted his grip on the trick weapon, clicked the hand, and with a forceful thrust, shoved the reformed cane’s tip into the beast’s eye. In the heat of the moment, the Hunter’s aim slipped, and it connected only with the beast’s minimalist nose. Still, the force was enough to bring the beast to a stagger.
Drawing his strength from darker corners of his heart, the Hunter let his cane dangle by its strap, and, with inhuman power, shoved his hand into the beast’s skull. Feeling the viscera within, the Hunter squeezed, and pulled.
The dark force of the attack knocked the beast backwards, and it wailed in pain as its skull hemorrhaged. The Hunter breathed deep and slow. The rush of the hunt was getting to him. He ignored the pumping of his own heart, the sloshing of the blood across his body. The urge to strike again was heavy on him, the desire to be bathed in that blood, to feel its searing heat all over him…
The Hunter took out a pouch of small white pills, consumed them whole, and sighed. The burning in his body receded. But the urge for that hot blood did not.
The beast gathered itself and shrieked. The gushing blood from its skull already had turned the same putrid shade as on its back. It wiped the blood away with its claws and growled, menacing with its dripping, toxic claws. The Hunter watched, ready to react to its choices. He would not let the blood dictate him. He was a man: he had strategy, intent. More than bloodlust.
The beast charged, and the Hunter held firm. It lifted an arm to strike, and he saw his chance. Raising his pistol, he fire a double shot into the creature, hoping to off-balance it. But the beast was massive, and even two blood-bullets were insufficient to slow its momentum: the claw came down, and mauled the Hunter.
Knocked to the ground, the Hunter groaned in pain. The toxin flamed inside of him, but only for a moment; the exposure was insufficient. The wounds, however, were deep, and bloody. The beast wailed in bloodlust as the scent of fresh blood came to it.
In that moment, he knew panic.
The Hunter took a vial from his belt and jammed its needle into his thigh, taking the blood hard and fast. The relief came quickly, and the wounds scabbed over like they were a month old rather than new. The Hunter stood, just as the beast was fully upon him, eyes wild and hungry, arm up high, ready to end him.
The Hunter shot again. The beast had no momentum to interrupt, and was blown back by the firepower of the repeating pistol. The Hunter approached, malice and the rage of a pained predator burning inside him, and shoved his hand without hesitation into the beast’s rancid flesh. He felt some vile, inhuman organ within, swollen with infection and writhing in his grip.
He crushed it, and ripped out the remains.
The beast wailed pathetically. It only made the Hunter angrier. He took out and lit another molotov, and smashed it into the wound he had just left, alighting it with a pistol shot. He caned the beast hard, with strength that was not human, slashing and stabbing into it. The beast wailed and shrieked in pain but the Hunter continued, unrelenting, unmerciful, uncaring. With a click, he released the whip form, and brought it down onto the creature with vengeance and hatred. He didn’t pay any mind to the toxic blood showering him, except for the warmth of it all.
Finally, as the beast lay writhing in pain, a bloodied mess, the Hunter reached into its neck and tore out its throat.
The beast was still. Quiet. Yet the Hunter could hear screams, could hear the blood, tasted the blood, craved the blood. The Hunter looked and saw beasts upon two legs approaching. Voices came, as offensive to his ears as the beast’s roars. He panicked, and decided that he would never let anything panic him again: he would sooner kill it than grant it the privilege of bringing him panic.
A two-legged beast came to him, slowly and carefully, asking questions of concern, and he wished to end the creature, for that was the Hunter’s way. His vision hazed with red and black, until finally, his pupils collapsed under the weight of the blood, and all was horror and death.