Primal Forest; MIA + story (Patreon)

He was a Hunter. His prey was tracked with ease across the distances that would be undertaken by most people over several days and on rare occasions, weeks. What they left behind as evidence of movement was slight enough to be mistaken as a natural part of the environment; the blind and foolish would ignore felled trees if they could manufacture an excuse to be home for dinner in time. Not here. A hundred miles from the reach of civilisation in a part of the world inhabited once by people now long forgotten. Their structures still stood as evidence of existence but the stone was losing the fight to keep its colour, and nearly all was green now.

There was a rumble as he stepped past the line of trees and into the gentle down and up of a shallow basin. Nothing he could see had the ability to make that level of sound, not the trees or the birds or the kelbi which trotted and bounced around in patterns that he felt were quite natural, if they were spooked then he would be ready for a fight. He did notice that nothing ventured past the line of trees for more than a few steps and internally it triggered a little flag which said to be cautious. His quarry was huge and, as he could not see it in the bowled landscape, he was put to a slight ease which was helped by what he could gaze upon and the breeze which sounded sweet through the trees.

Then he stopped. In the middle of the open was something that did not look like grass, it was far too blue for that and stood out amongst the emerald swathe the longer he looked and the closer he cautiously approached. It was the surest sign of his capability that he had managed to stay on its trail after this long, for the wedge that stuck out from the earth was a discarded scale, perhaps three feet tall by two across with a teardrop shape which was helpful for movement. And beneath it he saw a circular hole that first looked like a shadow.

“It must have come off when it buried itself.” mused Auviere and stayed a little away out of common sense. The Najarala he was hunting was something from a legend, though with the abundance of Monsters roaming it was not difficult to believe that such a serpent could exist; close to fifty feet in length and with a body as wide as his chest was off the ground it had proven to be plenty dangerous in the past.

Another rumble. This one came from behind him, it was a lure! The scale was there to draw him closer and then it would attack from behind when he would be too busy focusing on the hole that was an obvious distraction. Auviere spun and unsheathed a weapon whose size was ridiculous but necessary; the tool must match the task in mind. He raised it above his head so when the Monster would burst out from the ground he would already be ready to strike it between the eyes. Fake hole, what a trick, but Hunters must be a step ahead of their hunts. ‘Fake’ indeed, Auviere had been wise not to lean over the edge like an amateur for it had waited to snatch him if the silhouette of a helmet and set of pauldrons had broken the blue disk of sky. Instead, the Najarala opted for its second plan.

The scale was not only there as decoration to lead its pursuer into close proximity, but was also angled in such a way that it could take advantage of an ability Auviere had not seen. From its mouth burst a ball of water which ricocheted off the angled scale and struck him in the back with a force that made him believe a giant hammer had been wielded by a giant. The misdirection had stunned him and for a few seconds he was merely trying to recover as the rumbling of movement begun immediately after a cry had left his lips. Auviere found his senses with his face now pressed into the soft earth of the innocent meadow. That blast must have knocked him clean into the air and made him sprawl helplessly as a result. Where was his weapon? He looked over his shoulder to find it where he had been, between where he was now and the blue scale.

Auviere threw himself into a reverse roll and returned to his feet with practised agility. One foot down at ninety degrees began to turn him around to face it again. He would have made the second step, where he would have been running towards the scale, had the Najarala not managed to slide out of the hole it had created with terrifying speed in the time since he had taken his eyes off the weapon. He noticed far too late that he had run directly into the underside of its neck and that all his momentum had stopped in an instant. Not true serpents, the Najarala reached out with a forelimb and brushed him off. He fell back with a second round of dazing surprise that follows when one runs facefirst into a wall.

But instead of landing on soft earth, the Monster had begun what nature had designed it to do. It hauled the grinding weight of its long body from under the earth and encircled him in a cage of its own coils. Auviere landed on a ridge of serpentine flesh as tall as his hips and once again sprawled out backwards, this time facing upwards, and had he been quick enough then he would have been able to flip over and been free. But a millisecond of delay found another loop slide in behind him and prop him up to stare at the rocky surface of his hunt; a Tidal Najarala. It hung over him in the same way a outcrop of a mountain watches over the valley, with a careful pair of eyes that could not have been mistaken for any unintelligent prey. Maybe he could punch it? A blow aimed at its chin would disorient it enough to slither off his weapon and then a real fight could begin.

In the instant that Auviere rocked forward with his abdominal muscles to stand up, the Najarala reached out with one of its front legs and slammed down its hand over his body. He wheezed as it drove him back down onto its body and left the hand there to pin him with as much effort as Auviere would have put into stabilising a hunk of meat to cut for cooking out while he was camping. It probably weighed a hundred pounds or two just by a fact of its width, more than his shoulders, and depth, shoulder to elbow, even ignoring the force going through its arm and the weight that it added by leaning on him while doing so. The Najarala’s digits were each as thick as his leg and trapped his left arm between them while isolating his head from the rest of his body. Such a predator was adept at choking its victims to mortal asphyxiation regardless of whether it was its crushing coils or the grip of a single hand.

Auviere reached with his free right hand around the digit that lay over his throat and attempted to lift the whole thing off by tearing it away. All the Najarala had to do was flex in the same way as anyone would press a button and the attempt was quashed. Its scales were not rough enough for any grip to be gained by its own prey, but in just a few minutes it would not wish to be freed. For now, Auviere could think of nothing else. This was humiliating to be disarmed and bound this swiftly and he was thankful of the remote location that no audience would be witness this, it would be a more biased tale that promoted himself once he could escape. But the Najarala was leaning down closer to him than before with hunger in its eyes of piercing blue. If only these fingers were not over his throat and chest!

The sclera and onyx-black slit of its pupil came close enough that Auviere saw his reflection in the glint. His expression showed the person beneath the bravado; he looked afraid in that mirror. Fighting to remove the finger was a task made and performed in futility, and with it being this close he could swing his arm and catch the scaled cheek with the side of his fist. It might give the Monster a little jolt, and any advantage he could win at this point was a victory. Only one, as it would rear back to prevent any further resistance if he missed.

“Release me you scaly terror!” wheezed Auviere with some of the air that remained in his lungs. The weakness of his wheeze was a startling reminder at how much he had almost lost already. He must have been operating on pure adrenaline at this point for each word had a strained syllable that took too long to enunciate.

Auviere must have been seeing things from the oxygen deprivation. He rationalised the fact that the azure shade of the Monster’s eye had begun to shift to that although he could not explain why the equally-blue sky behind it and the purple shade of its face were not doing the same thing. It must be a ‘from the centre to the edge’ kind of blacking out. The longer he looked, and with its proximity there were not many other places he could, the stranger the colours became; starting from its usual blue and descending in brightness until it was the shade of the ocean far from land, a rich cerulean that carried the glint of reflected sunlight with it. 

“How did its eyes do that?” wondered Auviere with a transfixed gaze. This was not something he had read or heard about them before, did they all have this ability?

The sun descended on the midday hue of its eyes and the ruby shine of the late afternoon light blended to create a vibrant purple. It dripped in from the lowest point of the eye and filled up in swirls just like a glass being filled by an unsteady barmaid. What a transition! It would have been stunning to merely know about it from the description of a book, but to actually see the sclera shift colours at such a pace with such vibrance. Auviere’s grip loosened on the finger that held him down. With each change he felt the shift inside him away from hunting behaviours and he found that it seeped away with little resistance and smaller regret. Why fight for it when the next colour was coming?

Auviere was not disappointed when it arrived, as the bright gold that made the lustre of metal and coin look dull shone through his eyes and beyond into his mind. It was an eclipse he could stare at. Although his mind seemed to have fallen already with a miniscule portion of the Najarala’s ability, his body knew the danger it was in and acted appropriately. Auviere thrashed beneath the palm in effort to throw it of his chest and legs. His left arm wriggled between the digits that caught it in weak resistance in a way that only burnt through the lungs’ pitiful store of remaining air. And that only flung him deeper into a state of hallucination.

From its eyes came a stream like dust caught in a beam of sunlight. Particles floated from it across to its prey and became a fine mist where each individual droplet reflected the colours in a kaleidoscope on their way through him. The eyes returned to the blue of the sky and a looping pattern formed with no colour gaining monopoly of the dynamic sclera for more than a blink, though Auviere did not so he would not miss a thing. This time the flickering atoms of water made him tilt his head back as if his neck became too weak to hold it up. It poured over him and his mind, with each change of shade came a relief like an addict getting their fix. It was a rush that tingled warm down his spine and weakened the muscles that resisted with each shift. Auviere smiled between the digits.

What was his weapon? The idea sparked in his mind for a moment before being washed away. That hulking hammer had served him well in the past, but what was a weapon if it could be disarmed, nothing more than a stick and a rock when it came down to it. This was a real weapon, a wonderful device capable of reducing enemies to gaping statues with no violence and no fallout. The Najarala could not be disarmed like he was, and all it took was a long gaze at something honestly beautiful. Then the thought was gone; whisked away over the edge of a canyon like a leaf upon the breeze.

The hand lifted from his chest in a gracious gesture of trust or, more accurately, understanding. Auviere wheezed and then gasped in air with large, gulping breaths. He had not realised how on fire his body was until it was quenched by the quick inhale and exhale of air. Not once did any oxygen touch his mind and free it from the blanket trance that lay over it, that was left transfixed with total assurance that more would come if it was wanted.

Auviere craved. There was something left like an empty space in his mind, as though someone had reorganised furniture with everything a few paces from the wall. There was one more thing to do and he just could not focus on it. Was it what he was supposed to be doing? For sometime he lay on the coil attempting to think but not even managing to keep a solid track of thought. The colours had stripped away the capacity to string two ideas together and call it a sentence. It was only when the Najarala brushed the tip of its mouth against his cheek and then opened wide to show off the pink and fuchsia tones of internal flesh. Its tongue reached down and dragged along his neck until it reached the chin.

The jaws closed around his head while the serpent’s body started to encircle him. Auviere was lifted from prone and into an upright position where his hoof and paw dangled off the earth. Two loops of the great Monster’s body clenched into position and held the Hunter in place with gentle applications of its sheer strength. He wheezed as the creaking plates of rock on the outside of the rings sounded off. With a winding squeeze, the Najarala began to feast.

His head was first to be witness to its depths, pushed past the beak and the mouth directly into the throat that parted around his features. Saliva stuck to the fur of his face and if it was not fixed in place then the compression of the muscles pulling him deeper would keep it there. That strength pulled his face this way and that beneath their power, and formed it into grimaces and grins which changed every few feet and continued all the way down. His shoulders did not deter the serpent, even though they sit as the girthiest point on the body, and it gulped them down faster than its own coils could offer him up. The chest went in widthways and was guided by the tongue that lapped across the fur into the centre of the maw. It did not need to chew him, the muscles of its throat would knead him into soft dough and then past that to be absorbed and then reused for additional strength to fight the next Hunter.

Auviere closed his eyes and let the imprint of the colours swim inside his head. The streaks and swirls looked burnt into his eyes as if he had stared into the sun and the blaze stayed with him. That comforted him, that the wonder was following him all the way down. If it was here then nothing could be bad, yes that sounded right. It sounded a lot better than the background noise of his mind that told him the opposite, he would listen to the colours; they made more sense, he liked what they said more.

Waist, hips, legs, feet, snap, and gone. The Najarala swallowed with a gulp that pushed Auviere into flesh that almost defied him entry, but he was the weakest part of the three components, and thus bore the weight of the flesh that squeezed him. It settled back onto the meadow that was free of humanity once again. Nature had claimed the past settlement in ancient time, and it ensured sanctity would continue. Tidal Najarala’s are not typically found far from the ocean, and after a few weeks of pursuit was now far from its home. It considered the feast of Hunter as a blessing; enough energy to make it here and back with some excess, but it could not get that from its meal by trekking already. It was tired, some time beneath the warmth of the sun to aid digestion would work a treat.

Rightfully assured it would face no more attacks, the Najarala curled up over itself and began to rest. Its meal would never cry or whimper or beg to be let out, it would just marvel at the luminance all the way down. Muscles and rings of strength would knead it time and time and time and time and time...

Story by  solidness on FA