Chương 88: 86. Monster vs. Monster

"Rawr! Got you, Lark!"

"No you didn't!" I protest.

"I dodged!"

"You can't always dodge, Lark!" one of the other kids protests. His name is Danny.

"It's no fun that way!"

"But I'm the hunter!" I protest.

"The hunter gets to win! Pchew pew!" I fire some more invisible arrows at the menagerie of whiny monsters before me, many of whom shriek excitedly and pretend to dodge, many more of whom gasp dramatically, lolling out their tongues as they roll over in a comically tame facsimile of death.

"But it's more fun if we get to hurt you sometimes!" Danny insists. I leap and teeth sink into flesh, ripping out a delicious, oozing chunk of human meat as I rush by. I am too fast, and five different retaliations miss me at once as I swallow my prize. Humans taste so good! Dashing back through a bush, breaking line of sight and fleeing to strike again at the next moment of vulnerability, I laugh with joy. This is so much—"Fun, huh?" I mutter softly. It used to be, didn't it?

I wonder how fun it would be to eat Danny, right here and right now. Humans would go on high alert instantly, they'd converge on me from all sides. But I know now that all humans are different, and the vast majority of them don't even begin to approach the kind of strength that I have consistently outmaneuvered in the past. It would be exciting, in a way. To prove my superiority over every single human in this massive city.

No matter how much the hunger in my belly screams me to do it, however, I know that there's not a chance I could convince myself to follow through. Not anymore. Only revulsion, only heart-clenching agony remains, no matter how vivid my memories of joy. Once again, I have gone many days without eating. The constant hunger is joined by pain, an aching need that gets progressively more and more difficult to resist with each passing hour. I suspect I am probably starting to die.

"Lark! We're going to get you!" a girl named Sabrina giggles, jumping at me from behind. I step to the side, and she careens past me, laughing all the while.

"Pew pew," I say, shooting two more arrows.

"I have slain all the monsters. Someone else can be the hunter now." The kids erupt into a gleeful contest over the right to be the next hero in the story. Most of them, I know, are between five and six years old. Six years. I can't possibly understand that much time. It's so strange to me that humans take so long to learn and to grow. Is it because they forget? August said that he's many many times that age.

I am only a few months old, not even one year, and yet I'm already starting to feel like these human children are a bit… simple. Maybe that's the hunger talking, however. These games are usually super fun. Humans apparently get pretty grumpy when they are hungry, and perhaps I am the same. I am different from humans in many ways, but it is the similarities that hurt me. In some ways I wish I'd never met August, never learned his lessons. But I did. And now, I can't forget. Ever.

As I settle back into pretending to be the monster, getting comfortable in my role as a thing to be killed, I suddenly feel death start to approach. Not the fictional death I expected or even death from starvation. No, this is the kind of death I faced in the forest all those days ago. I shiver, muscles instinctively tensing. Another monster is coming for me, it seems. This is a very odd feeling. I never expected to encounter another monster within the human city. I smell it, though.

In some ways it is familiar, but in most ways it is new. What sort of monster would be in the city and not cause a panic? I suppose the answer to that is obvious: a monster like me. A monster that the humans do not see or do not recognize as not one of them. Indecision keeps my body still. Okay, so I smell a monster in the city. So what? If the humans haven't noticed it, it probably isn't hurting anyone. So do I just… stay here and keep playing? Sure, why not. I like playing.

It may as well be what I do while I starve to death. Unfortunately, however, it soon becomes clear that the monster is getting closer to me. In fact, though it's certainly taking its sweet time, I'm pretty sure it's headed right for me. I glance at the others. My friends, I think, even if I don't know any of them particularly well. I don't know what to do. Do I stay and try to protect them? Do I leave and lure the monster somewhere else? I spend so long hesitating that the decision is made for me.

I feel the monster circling around the clearing. Er, the courtyard, I suppose it's called. It smells much more powerful than I am. Not that I'm particularly intimidated by this; fighting things stronger than I am is how I survived the forest. But as it moves, I soon find myself assaulted with more familiar scents. It's the group that took Claretta! They're also here, albeit missing two members. Hopefully I can just hide and they'll fight the monster for me. Although…

if it's a monster disguised as a person, could that possibly be the ideal meal? Strength and food without losing the body I feel so attached to now. Yet as the monster finally gets close enough for me to spot, all that anticipation drops to nothing. As she steps into the courtyard I and my friends have monopolized for a rousing game of hunter versus monster, I recognize the person approaching me. She smells like a monster, but I've met this one before and called her human.

Thinking back, the smell is an obvious evolution from that of my memories. The hunter that always knew where I was, that foiled every ambush, is back. There's no chance she doesn't recognize me in kind. As the last time we met, she is dressed for battle. Unlike other humans that wear many things, the short woman's leather armor fits her so naturally that I struggle to imagine her wearing anything else.

Her long, black hair is tamed only by the cheap, hole-covered hooded cloak that trails lightly behind her as she approaches. Uncaring for the stares it evokes, her spear is drawn, something about the tip catching my eye in the same way that I keep trying to focus on invisible flashes of movement around her body. Her face is blank and expressionless, almost frighteningly so compared to the variety of emotional displays I'm used to seeing on humans. And her eyes… they're different from last time.

Blue instead of green, with the pupil elongated ever so slightly on the top and bottom in a way that reminds me somewhat of the many katzels I once consumed. Yet it's still unmistakably her. I did not think humans ever changed their eye color, but perhaps I am wrong. Or perhaps I should trust my smell, and not consider her human. Still, no sense being impolite. August insists I always be polite.

"Hello, Vita," I greet her, nodding politely once she gets close enough. Her head tilts to the side as an expression of very mild surprise passes over it for a moment. The reaction is a bit chilling, however, considering that she does not at all look in my direction as she makes it. Nor when she responds. She's here to fight me to the death but it's like I'm barely even being considered.

"Hey," Vita answers me.

"This… isn't really what I expected, but I can work with it. Sorry, kids, but you're all going to have to leave now."

"Lark, do you know this person?" Danny whispers to me. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Yeah," I say.

"She's a hunter. She kills monsters."

"That's so cool!" Danny fawns.

"You should listen to her and leave," I tell them, "because she has a spear." The other kids consider my impeccable logic and agree that yes, they should probably listen to the hunter with the spear. Regretfully they disperse, seeking other areas to pretend to stab or eat each other. Vita's gaze sweeps around as they leave, eventually settling partly on me… though still not entirely.

"My team didn't think that would work," Vita comments.

"They thought you would take hostages, or just outright start having snacks. But you changed a lot, didn't you? I'm surprised you remember my name." I swallow, stepping back as she steps forward.

"I remember everything," I tell her.

"My memory is perfect."

"Really?" she wonders.

"That must suck." I can't help but laugh at that, for some reason. There's just some dark humor in the knowledge that this person somehow understood immediately. She and her team are the only ones in this city that know what I am and understand what it means, so naturally they're here to kill me. How can I not laugh? She takes that opening to attack. I expected her to be faster than before, but not this fast. The spear jabs outwards and I twist away, catching a cut across my upper-left arm.

My blood stains the tip of the spear black, and as it pulls away I feel some part of me go with it, hunger taking a firmer hold on my mind. I leap backwards to try and make as much space as I can as shocked and outraged gasps erupt around us. Vita may have cleared the immediate area, but we're hardly alone. Very few places in the human city are, and now I know it looks like she just randomly tried to skewer a child.

"Hunter business!" Vita shouts at them. I don't really have the luxury of sticking around to figure out how effective that is, nor do I really care. My limbs feel like they're moving through water as I agonizingly push myself to flee, only to find that this hunter can keep up with me! I'm fairly injured and have barely started to move, but already I'm panting for breath and feeling the burden of exhaustion. I haven't eaten anything! I've been waiting for death, yet now the only thing on my mind is the fear of it.

The spear stabs me again, and I get hungrier. Perhaps more importantly, it tears through my cloak, revealing one of my extra arms hidden underneath. I suppose I shouldn't bother holding back anyway. I tear my mask from my face, expecting to need peripheral vision… not to mention access to my teeth. My blood starts to boil, filled with the certainty that everything I have started to love here is now, in this singular moment, gone forever. With the thing behind the mask revealed, I can never return to this city.

I would have left them all alone! I would have died peacefully. But if this... Vita, whatever Vita is, wants to force my hunger out? She can be the one to quiet it again. Something invisible streaks towards me and I bite down on it, eliciting a wince from the hunter. Finally, I reach the edge of the courtyard, clambering straight up the side of the building. Humans struggle with the vertical, and I need to make as much space as possible so I have the time to fight smart. Here I go again, I suppose.

Already, the thought of victory against unassailable odds fills me with unwanted anticipation. It's fun to fight hunters, but... that's wrong. Hunters are good guys and they're supposed to win in the end.... No, no time for these stupid thoughts. I need to focus. Now atop a roof, my assumption that I've bought myself a little time is swiftly shaken as Vita attempts to leap up to the top of the building in a single bound.

She doesn't quite make it, says one of the words August insists I should never say, and presumably starts to fall, though I don't stick around to watch. I'm halfway to the other side of the building when she jumps a second time, more than exceeding the height of the building on her follow-up bound, swearing again as she lands hard on the stone roof. Woah! I've never seen a human do that before! At least she seems bad at it.

When I reach the edge of the roof I immediately jump off of it back to ground level, which to my mild amusement elicits another exasperated curse from Vita. Now in an alley between two buildings, I can start actually fighting. I shoot a spread of webs from one hand, anchoring them to the wall of one building before pressing their other end into the opposite.

When Vita runs down this path after me, she will inevitably hit my webs or at least be forced to cut them, which will give me an opening to— I look up, eyes going wide as a chitinous, hungering speartip plunges towards them. I dodge too slowly, avoiding the deathblow to my skull at the cost of letting the spear open a gash from my sternum to my belly, maybe twenty degrees off from impaling me through the chest.

Rather than jump off the building where I did, the hunter leapt all the way to another rooftop, bypassed the alley entirely, and struck from above. Like she knew what I was planning! I forgot, I'm not fighting monsters. I'm fighting creatures as smart as I am with the strength of monsters. I'm no stranger to deadly fights, though. Even as the cut sprays my blood on the ground, I see the inevitable outcome. Vita is falling.

She can't change her trajectory, and the landing won't be something she can instantly move out of. I've sacrificed a nasty wound for it, but in return I can bite out her throat. Her mistake, her loss. But I take one look at her face, even as blank as it is and I bind her in webs instead of ending her life. With the swipe of my claws, five threads get planted on her body, elongating at my command and letting me circle around her, binding her tight.

I feel multiple invisible things jab towards me, and though I manage to bite one the other two push into me, filling me with such insurmountable dread I cannot choose any option other than to cut my threads short and leap away as fast as possible. I've lost my chance to tie her up as thoroughly as I'd hoped to, but my threads are still on her and they are strong. It should be enough to stop her from—"Untie me," Vita orders. At first I'm confused. I don't follow that command, because why would I? But my threads do.

Impossibly, they obey her. They come apart of their own apparent volition as I scurry away, a grin blooming on the Hunter's lips as for the first time her eyes lock directly onto mine. Not a human, my instincts scream. Not a human at all!

"Catch her!" the monster orders. She lunges at me again, a burst of speed so fast I'm sure I hear something in her body crack. Even expecting it, I fail to dodge, her weapon opening a deep gash right above my hip bone, once again rousing the ever-present roar of my hunger to greater heights. Fine. If that's what she wants, fine! My own threads, attached to her body, reach for me as I leap towards her in kind, but nothing cuts through my threads as easily as my own claws.

I destroy the traitorous strands, mouth aiming for my favorite target: the knee. Once again, Vita's wild strike gives me a clean opening to make my assault, and this time I don't hold back. Teeth tearing easily through layers of armor and muscle, I quickly swallow the first bite of proper meat I've had in days, feeling it charge my body with ecstasy.

It's the greatest thing I've ever tasted, so much power flowing through so little space that my smaller wounds close in mere moments, the blood I've been losing replenished as my mind and my strength greedily drink that power dry to return me to working order. And best of all, I've hamstrung her, which means I've as good as won. The back of her knee is gouged so deep I see more bone than tendon. That whole leg is useless.

Then Vita draws a knife and pivots on that leg anyway, cleaving straight through my bicep and removing one of my arms above the elbow. Immediately, I feel the invisible force surrounding her strike towards me again, but I don't bother to bite at one this time. She's not human. She's barely even a monster! I think back to just seconds before when I had the arrogant idea that not biting out her throat was sparing her and almost laugh at myself. Would that have even done anything?

What can I do if injury doesn't injure!? Fear far outstrips my instinct, my apathy, and my hunger, and I turn to flee as fast as I possibly can. I don't know why I bother. I've lost everything now, so why not my life too? The monster moves to chase me, but a shout slows her.

"Vita! Don't you dare!"

"Wh— Penelope? I've almost got her!" Vita protests.

"No!" comes the responding shriek, rapidly getting quieter as I make distance.

"Let the others handle it! You are going to stay right there and let me treat you before you bleed out all over the road! What were you thinking, starting the fight here? Why didn't you stick to the plan?"

"Stuff happened, I improvised. Don't worry, she's not going to..." Gasps of shock and screams of terror drown out the rest of the conversation as I dash through the city, bleeding and exposed for what I truly am. Nothing but blind panic fuels my decisions now. Down on five limbs I sprint outside the city, flee past the merchant stalls, and soon find myself in the only place I have left to go. The one spot in the world that I've been promised will always be safe for me.

Clothes torn, mask lost, body dripping darkness, I lock myself in the bathroom of August's hut and start to cry.