Hunters Become the Hunted (Zip)

[Qit'ria]

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Vhalar 100th, 717
"Speech"

Qit'ria stalked through the massive forest, her padded and secured weapons silent in their various strapped locations. Her footfalls couldn't be heard, and each step took her from one invisible vantage point to another. The forest around her felt like that back home in Desnind, and yet, it was impossibly huge and vast. The trees were so tall, she could look up a trunk and only see clouds, for the canopies extended beyond them. This gave the whole forest a layer of duskiness, where those that lived among the shadows could reign supreme. And really, it was a necessity. For it wasn't just the trees that were massive.

Hidden behind the exposed root of one of the massive sentinels, Qit looked at the area before her, face leaned downward a bit, so as to not cast reflection to any predators. She saw one of the most terrifying creatures for one her size. It was an ant. A massive ant. Rusty brown in color, it was the size of a large dog. Alone they were manageable, but where there was one, there were a hundred more elsewhere. Those numbers, and their seemingly shared mind made them a true force to be reckoned with.

Qit turned away, slipping into the shadows, to find a different route through this forest. She had no destination. Like every other predatory creature, she sought the hunt. But had no target in particular. So through the forest the silent huntress moved. Everything except herself was so big here. As she moved along, she discovered a bush with heavy purple berries the size of oranges. She plucked two of them, putting one into a sack, and keeping a hold of the other.

She chomped into it, a bit louder of a squelshing noise than she'd have preferred, but the fruit was so sweet. Juice was everywhere, pouring down her chin, dripping down onto her tattooed chest. The tattoo seemed so realistic, even as if it were moving in breeze as juice dropped down over it. As she plodded along, she saw a large clearing in the sky blocking trees. Moving over to it, throwing away the fruit pit, and slipped in behind a bush to look into the clearing.

There was the beginning of a massive lake, and it seemed she was just looking at a small finger of it. And yet this finger was sprawling. There were reeds the size of regular trees, lilypads large enough to build a house upon, dragonflies the size of horses, water skitters skating over the surface like massive spidery nightmares.

Qit'ria just smiled. A water source like this meant prey would come here. And soon, she'd have a hunt. So laying low, cloak around her, she kept watch from her brush, javelin in hand.

Created by Yolande

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[Zip]

Looking at the giant dragonflies from a very safe distance, Zipper would argue that nature made its own argument for urban development by simply churning out these malefic monstrosities.

The area she had found herself in had everything she hated about nature: the eerie quiet of a forest too big to be as empty as it seemed, trees that smelled like the purpose they were meant to serve - the fermenting growth of shit that fueled the promised growth of spring, and a lake that saw still calm and tranquility.

Only on the surface.

Giant dragonflies meant giant dragonfly nymphs. Even she knew that much. She was not stepping within five feet of that deceptively easy surface of water. Being a complete imbecile at surviving in nature, she was clueless on what she had to do. She kept out in the open, in sight of the shoreline, away from the trees and the dragonflies and the ants and the water striders and anything that so much as moved and breathed and wasn’t human.

How had she ended up here? What fresh hell was being inflicted on her?

She wandered aimlessly for a bit, with the tense spring of someone who expected to be snatched up by a giant bird at any time and taken to some nest to be fed to house-sized hatchlings. Her place was in the city, in the tiresome but familiar bureaucracy of the Black Guard, in back alleys and crowded streets - but nature? Nature had a song and rhythm she would never, ever get. It was a mindless expanse of predators hidden beneath forest shrubbery.

Just like the one watching her right now.

She stared at the lake, thirsty. With some hesitation, she brought herself down to a knee and tried to scoop water in her hands. Keyword: tried. Unbeknownst to her, the huntress’ eyes stared down at this interloper that had ruined the serenity of this glorious lake. The woman slipped down away from the berry ridden bush she’d been hiding behind and stalked around in the obscurity of the shaded foliage.

No shine was revealed as a javelin was pulled from the huntress’ back, no sound as each bare foot avoid leaf and twig below. The predator crept up on the woman from behind, javelin poised and readied.

[Qit'ria]

‘I am the spirit of the forest’ Qit’ria thought. ‘I must protect her from these city builders. These builders of stone, fire, metal, glass, filth, sin, decadence. These people who built their walls yet refused to stay contained within them.’ If she struck quick enough, she could kill this woman before her heart tensed up, for the tender hearts were the most delicious.

Javelin was pulled back just a hair more past her ear, when Qit’ria saw something… off. She felt she knew this forest through and through. She was its spirit after all, self-proclaimed. But there was a sickness here. A darkness. An invader. Not a stranger that came upon her accidentally like this foolish woman dribbling water between her fingers like a child.

No. This was something else. Something that came to destroy all of this, simply because it existed. It wasn’t death. It was nothingness. Pure and utter destruction. And it moved like a shadow toward the drinking woman, from beneath the water’s surface. Was she so inept to not sense danger? Qit’ria had to make a choice, fast, and so she did.

The javelin was thrown from her calloused hand, wobbling as they always do, flying toward the woman’s back. And kept on going, sinking into the water, a hair early, sticking into the mud before the shadow had come upon her. It lurched, and the air became heavy around them. It was deafening silence. Explosion after explosion of silence rolled through the area. A lack of sound that could be felt with all of the other senses.

The water bulged as the shadow rose up to reveal it was no shadow at all.

It was a tadpole. A massive one. And it lurched forward, snapping the ill timed javelin like the mere twig it was, a tiny mouth opening as it came at the woman known as Zipper. And the spirit of the forest was already running toward her, screaming, hair wild, but no sound could be heard over the creature’s silenced roars.

The creature closed its tiny circle of a mouth around Zipper’s head. Its mouth worked itself into a sort of twisted sucking movement, as if savouring its catch before biting down-

And spat her right out, sending her skidding across the stone of the lakeshore and crashing right in front of Qit’ra

It seemed even abominations from the depths couldn’t take that much fancy shampoo and scented soap from beyond the wall.

The creature opened its mouth again, and its roar turned into a shriek that could have been eagle if it were made of metal. A pair of black warts pulsed on its massive, flat head as it pressed one huge foot onto the lakeshore - and it was only then that Qit’ra realized that those were its eyes.

The huntress grinned, those were eyes, and eyes were always a weak spot.

[Zip]

This day was getting worse and worse, and it all happened within a single instant.

She was attacked from behind, dragged underwater, her head covered in a kind of slobber that stung like a tight slap. All the time. Then, a great force hurled her out from under and now she was staring up at a marvel of primitive regression - and that was not the weirdest thing yet. The roar came after, and her confused gaze turned to the… by the Dark Gods of Rhakros, were there toads in the lake? If their spawn were this big, she shuddered to imagine what the grown specimens looked like.

Another reason nature should have been limited to cattle and sheep on a farm - and even then that was only a semi-acceptable compromise.

“Hey,” Zipper said in Common. She had a feeling this… thing would not speak the mother language. “What’s the fuck is happening? Could I get a hand here?” Her voice was as calm as she wasn’t feeling. She regretted her words the moment she said it - but not for the reasons she expected.

She didn’t think the thing washed very much.

Qit’ria was already moving toward Zipper, another javelin drawn, in one hand, her other plucking a knife from her belt. Moving toward the panicked woman, Qit’rai hesitated as a wave of odor washed over her. The smell of rotting meat, fermenting flesh, of soggy bones emanated from the creature.

The huntress picked back up her run toward the woman and beast, and she skipped into a throw with her javelin. It soared toward it, aimed at the wart-like eyes. But it missed, again. It struck the skin and slid up over onto its back, where it stuck, not by puncture but by the grasp of a stick, slime that coated the infantile creature. It was mere moments before the javelin dissolved and was absorbed by the creature.

Qit’ria drew another javelin, and tossed down the knife she held in front of Zipper, sticking it into the ground. “Help yourself. Help me.”

Arrogance replaced her panic. “I don’t need this,” she said, ignoring the primitive’s offer. With no helping hand in sight, she pushed herself up to her feet, rubbed her shirt collar vigoriously on her face to try to smudge away some of the horrific-smelling slobber, and raised a hand at the monster.

She charged an Ether Missile. She forced power through her arm and into her palm and-

And it was taking awhile. It was taking a bit more of awhile.

… Any trill now.

And then it became very apparent that the most reliable tool in her arsenal wasn’t coming. This was clearly not a matter of Overstepping or ether cleansing. She could feel the power there, the swirl of ether waiting to be tasked for destruction.

She just couldn’t touch it.

How did this keep happening to her? How did she keep finding herself in situations where magic failed her?

Panic reasserted itself. She picked up the knife, struggling to dislodge the first two tugs. With a frustrated sigh, she followed the primitive into battle.

[Qit'ria]

Qit’ria hadn’t seen the woman’s raised hand that didn’t do anything but make her look foolish, as she was already closing the gap on the creature. She knew its skin could dissolve wood and bone, she knew that its skin was tough to pierce. It had to be the eyes. She didn’t have anything more piercing than her javelins.

She ran off to the left of the creature, and watched as its bulbous head followed her. It screeched once more, and Qit struggled to keep her eyes open as she endured the shriek. As it turned, its right eye was exposed to Zipper. Qit’ria knew not to let it back into the water, so she circled around it’s left. In the shallows, it seemed that it was painful to move for it, or at least difficult.

Qit’ria studied it while moving back and forth, trying to keep the young toadling’s attention while keeping its right eye exposed. She could see that mossy rocks and such that it had been upon, were untouched by the dissolving slime.Her gut told her that it was the water. A feline smile crept upon her face, and Qit dipped her spear into the water and splashed her body.

She charged at it and hurled the spear with all her might, not at the eye that was such a small target, but into its side, just far up enough to reach. It it seemed her hunch was true, as the spear stuck into the skin. Qit was already running toward it, feet kicking up water as she jumped toward her spear, and grabbed onto it.

She ignored Zipper’s distant, feeble “What do I do with this?”

The creature lurched and bucked in pain, its cries strangely similar to that of a particularly fat infant child’s. Qit held on tight, pulling herself up and onto the spear, straddling it. From here, she drew another javelin, and chucked it upward, watching it squelch through the bottom of the eye and out the other side. Seeing the other woman standing there like some idiotic city girl still holding onto mama’s apron strings, she shouted, “Throw it!”

She threw it.

The handle plonked off the beast’s hide.

It might have been a matter of imagination, but she swore the creature took a brief trill out of its throes of agony to turn a pitying look Zipper’s way. She resisted the urge to do the same.

[Zip]

It was like watching a Foster’s forest cat do battle against a lakeside gator - only the cat’s claws were javelins and daggers, and her ferocity worked in tandem with a cunning that was more than any animal could match. Zipper watched in disguised awe as the primitive took the fight to the Tadpole and, in a series of movements too fast and too messy for her to fully comprehend, managed to find and kill the eye.

She made a mental note that, if they -she- survived this, to never, ever step foot in these woods ever again. No, to not even step within the town that bordered these woods - though given the size of them, she expected great giants to live there.

But the creature was down but not out. It bucked, it struggled, its shrieks turned to the stuff of nightmares. It bit wildly at the air and then it did what a grievously wounded animal always tried to do: it sought to return to its nest to die. It webbed feet found the soil beneath the water, and it tried to drag itself back to a depth where it could swim free.

Qit’ra had other ideas.

The huntress put her wet feet against the creature’s skin, not sticking to them, and she shoved off in a backwards tumble, yanking her javelin free in the process. She landed on her feet but wobbled backwards onto her ass in the water. Scrambling as the creature started to flop toward the water, she ran at it, drawing a second javelin.

“Help me pin it!”

Qit’ria tossed out the javelin, letting it fall ahead of the woman so she could pick it up on approach. The huntress ran forward, and jumped up in the air over it’s tail, her back arched, arms bent back with the spear in both her hands. Like a scorpion striking, the javelin came down, and sunk deep into the fleshy tail, and into the mud below. Qit’ria was atop the tail, holding on tight to her spear as it wriggled all about, lurching away.

“Hurry!”

The tadpole gained a bit of ground, slowed by one javelin pinning it, but not stopped.

Zipper leaned down to pick up the javelin. Her grip was awkward, her stance was all wrong, and she moved as if it were too heavy for her.

She hadn’t held anything resembling a weapon in years, but she could do that much.

She hoped

She waded awkwardly into the water, raised the javelin, hesitated for a moment amidst the thrashing, and drove the thing straight into one of the creature’s vestigial hind legs.

She was aiming for the tail.

The creature’s shrieks reached a crescendo, rising from loud to absolutely thunderous. It screamed its pain and its rage and its agony for all the woods to hear… and then its voice lost a bit of its power, and the shrieks grew low, then gave way to the agonized croaks of something that just needed to give voice to its death.

The thrashing faded to weak bobbing and pawing.

The hunt was over. Fates, the hunt was finally over before it had even started.

[Qit'ria]

Qit’ria laughed as she slumped downward upon the tail, resting. She was so worried about those strange, dark vibes she’d felt earlier, when it was nothing to worry about. A tadpole? Probably the least menacing creature in this entire forest, with the exception of the wild haired companion Qit’ria had saved. Looking over at her, by the useless baby leg she’d skewered, “You did good. For city girl.”

Qit’ria stood up, yanking her javelin free and stowing it back away as she approached Zipper, looking her over, finally getting a proper read on the woman. She stood a fair few inches taller than the huntress, but seemed younger. The woman took an involuntary step back as she approached. Moving past her, she retrieved her other javelin, flicking off the goopy flesh into the water, and stowing it away.

Staring up at Zip, “Why you in my forest?”

“Your forest,” the woman said, standing a little straight now. Her tone had a strength she did not have when they were battling the creature. “Who gave you the forest?”

“I took it. Is mine. I protect it.” She scowled at the woman. These city folk never understood. To them, forests were just wood, meat, fur, herbs. They didn’t care. They didn’t understand the connections, how everything within it was a part of the bigger picture. She understood it. That’s why she was the spirit of the forest.

“You not belong here. Go back behind walls. You just food here. Not good food. Give stomach ache,” she smirked at what she felt was a well crafted and cutting insult.

The woman clearly didn’t think so. “I want no part of this shitepile. I’ll be on my way,” she said, looking around. “If I knew how to get out. Could you point me the way?”

Qit’ria’s reaction told her everything about how stupid the last six words that came out of her mouth were. Her eyes were squinted, her mouth slightly agape, her head tilted a bit to the side.

“You hit head? We at least a tenday from nearest Wall. You dead before night fall.” Qit’ria sighed. One part of her given duty as ‘spirit of the forest’ was to ensure the beasts here did not get a taste for people. People should never be a part of the food chain. They were too dangerous when riled.

“I take you to wall. But listen to me. Or you die.”

Zipper nodded. She opened her mouth to say something, but closed it. Probably wanted to offer her nel or something but thought better of it.

She pointed across the lake, “Wall that way. Your kind burn and tear down forest that way. I give you to them. You good with weapon? Knife and javelin are no use in you hand.”

“I-” she hesitated. She seemed to be trying to remember something, and she raised her hand unconsciously. “No, I’m a clerk beyond the wall.”

Qit’ria tilted her head, clearly not understanding what was said.

“Book person,” Zipper tried to explain. “Write things.”

The huntress sneered, people who work with words and money and all that were among the worst. They don’t protect, they don’t gather or make food, they don’t heal. They are useless. Beyond useless, they take up resources without providing any.

“Can be sneaky? Quiet? Anything that not write words and gather dust?”

The force in her tone faded a bit when she said, “No, I’m good at my job, not this outdoors, hunter-gatherer thing you have going.”

Qit’ria threw up her arms, and huffed off, walking along the edge of the lake, “Well come on, ‘clerk’. No eat stuff without asking. Lots of poison. If beast come, run, hide. If I need you, I call. Stay out way, I keep you alive. Get you back to your.. Books,” she sneered.

The woman clearly wasn’t happy with the treatment, but she nodded. “Lead the way, miss…?”

“Qit’ria. Qit’ria Savage.”

“Miss Savage, I’m Zipper.” She lifted her hand up for a shake. Her face said she really, really didn’t want to.

[Zip]

Of all the things she expected to happen once their common enemy was slain, getting adopted by a literal savage woman was not one of them.

Qit’ria led the way through the woods as she followed behind - but not too far behind. Qit shouted at Zipper if she trailed too far back, shouted at Zipper when she passed her by. The Savage slapped her hand when she touched any bush that had more color than the average shrubbery, and gave her a condescending glare when she wondered whether they could have more than berries for a meal. Everything she did was a mistake of some kind, every bit of forest beyond the surface apparently held some unseen danger she needed to be shield from.

So this was what it was like to feel like Finn.

They walked, rested, and walked again for what could have been trials with no end in sight.

And all the while, Zipper whined.

“Are we there yet?” she said for what could have been the 100th time. In the same trial. “Are we going in circles?”

The huntress sighed, loudly, “Why I take long way? I no like hearing your whining. I want you gone. No worry, we make good time. Keep it up, I not tell you what safe, and you eat berry that make you puke from butt. Soon. Two, three trial more.”

Zipper pouted but said nothing. She was not the super huntress here.

Except… the super huntress clearly couldn’t see everything. There was something lurking in the fringe of the shadows, something so quiet that it could only manifest as silence - but she felt it. She couldn’t explain how or where or why miss Savage kept brushing off her concerns with something to the tune of, “Don’t fear. Nothing there.” but it was there. The presence faded in and out, drawing close and then retreating, like a tide lapping at the beach-

No, that was not the correct metaphor; it reminded her of someone knocking at the door - but not out of courtesy. They wanted her to get used to the knocking, turn it into just another annoyance in their lives.

Right before it huffed and puffed and blew the house down.

And right now it was ready to kill the three little pigs.

“Miss Savage?” she said. “I feel it again.”

The huntress was quiet, and for the first time during the trip, hadn’t responded to Zipper’s ministrations. The air was heavy. Quiet. There were no insect noises, no chirping birds, no croaking frogs, no refreshing wind. There was just silence. And in that silence, Zipper was caressed by the malice the creature exuded.

In a bare whisper, while handing Zipper a knife, if only to give the woman the illusion of self protection, “No talk. Hide. Slow move. Quiet.”

[Qit'ria]

The huntress crouched down, and slipped into the shadow of a tree. She could feel the malice, but couldn’t place it. Her eyes looked into the shadows of her forest, but where she would normally be able to spot even the stealthiest of rats stealing nuts from a squirrel, she only saw darkness. Worried, she gripped her spear tighter, noticing how it felt foreign. It was an extension of her previously, but now, it was just a weapon.

She didn’t need to bother looking; the creature made itself known to them. Like the way a cuckoo slipped her eggs into the nest of a blue robin, they both suddenly, intensely aware of something behind them.

They both turned to see the Tadpole.

Completely unharmed saved for one gouged out eye. Any thoughts that this was a different tadpole were banished when it limped forward; the wound on its hind leg still then.

Two wounds then: one from Qit’ria, one from Zipper.

And from the look in its remaining eye, it remembered.

It took a step forward, then another, and the forest around them shook with each footfall. The darkness closed around them, the light dying a little more with each echo of the creature’s webbed feet. There was a horror to it: a boneless fluidity that somehow combined the Tadpole’s sluggish lurch with the lazy stalk of a Panther’s.

When the eyes, one black wart and one dripping red hole, disappeared fully into the creature’s head and the tail ripped out into a jagged thing that was more whip than anything-

That was when the Nightmare creeped a hand into the door of their Dreamscape, and both women became woke.

Qit’ria’s eyes fluttered for a moment, and her body was already moving. She didn’t know where she was, but the beast that was forming before her was bad news. The tiny mouth that had once used Zipper’s head as a pacifier ripped open, and was filled with sword length, needle thin teeth. A tongue covered in barbs shot out of the half grown Terror Tadpole. Qit leapt to the side, awkwardly, slowly, and a barb sliced through her forearm before colliding with a moss covered swamp tree.

The huntress splashed down into stinky, still water that had not been there a moment before. She scrambled to find purchase on ground that wasn’t there. She stood, realizing she was in knee deep mud, and breast deep in water. The swamp tree was ripped from the soggy soil, and pulled into the creature’s mouth. It’s teeth chomped through it like a piece of candy. Qit’ria flailed as she slogged through the swamp that she somehow found herself in. She looked over her shoulder, seeing Zipper there on a small island with a pair of decayed trees. The monster had eyes for Qit’ria, and the woman was fine with that, so long as she could get out of this muck.

The huntress kicked out her legs in an attempt to swim to a nearby island, the creature busy chewing on the tree, content upon what appeared to be a large mushroom; an unofficial throne for what was clearly the prince-to-become-king of this swamp.

And then it spasmed, as if struck by something, and a swath of energy sheared into its side. It opened its mouth - but not in pain. It was almost as if it was trying to imitate the sensation but didn’t know how and simply settled for acknowledging it.

[Zip]

This was not Zipper’s first Nightmare, but she would never get used to waking up into one.

The way dreams worked differed between people. While Qit’ria swiftly flew into fight or flight mode, Zipper took a few moments to stare out blankly into the wretched swamp before her, as if she couldn’t believe she had found herself in yet another one of these things. That stare quickly turned to irritation as the memories came rushing back to her, of forests and dragonflies and a tadpole and-

She sniffed. She lifted up a sleeve to her nose and sniffed again.

Her irritation turned to sheer rage. Now free of the persona the dream had shackled her with, she felt the gasp of power inside her bloom into the fount of ether that was her spark. She raised her hand, considered blasting the struggling huntress and the Nightmare Beast at the same damn time - but no, dream or not, the girl had done her a kindness. A surly, annoyed kindness, but a kindness nonetheless. It would be ungracious not to extend her the barest of courtesies, dirty as she may be.

She watched and she waited, and she almost fired when the tongue grazed the length of the huntress’ forearm, but she waited. She saw her chance when the huntress backed a hasty retreat through the murk, she fired-

The biggest Ether Missile she had ever loosed yet.

Two things she remembered about her first Nightmare:

Firstly, every spell drew from the Nightmare itself, weakening it.

Secondly-

The toad-thing raised itself up again, seemingly undaunted, and looked at her. Directly at her. It had no eyes, but she felt its dread gaze all the same.

-Using magic within the swamp directed the Nightmare towards you.

“Well,” Zipper said, as the toad-thing bounded towards her, moving as if it were a gazelle on dry land. Its overly toothy maw opened in a silent scream. “Come get some, you cunt-faced crapstain.”

Unlike the huntress, she was no natural warrior; she couldn’t duck and weave and plot around an animal as she had. She had no real experience slaying the true monsters of the world, nor had she ever killed an animal that wasn’t already wounded, injured or in her power. She brawled, but that did not translate quite as well to war as she had found out. Her time in the Etzori army was as a support mage, and her Black Guard tenure was spent more on politics and bureaucracy and management than actual guarding.

But she was, now and ever, a Transmutator.

She met it head-on.

Placing her hands together, she drew ether from herself, from the toad, from the Nightmare itself as fuel. The toad stumbled, the drain on itself seemingly more of an effect than anything either woman had thrown at it, but it continued to charge her with incredible speed, crashing through foliage and murk, its monster of a mouth just inches away from Zipper’s head-

Only to be completely engulfed by an Ether Missile that was more humongous laser than anything else.