The Tale of Venator

As he recovered his eyes found the cleaved corpses that had been impaled by his axe, he found their limbs strewn wildly about their bodies, their blood in thick puddles that had not yet been absorbed by the sand. His mouth widened with horror and he backed away on all fours, his eyes found his hands and he recoiled again with fear, for they were caked with their insides, and with his chest knotting and wrapping round itself he shoved his hands into the desert, he felt the shell of hardened blood pick itself away as his eyes cried tears. Minutes later, he withdrew his hands, and they were clean.

He looked back to the top of the dune, to where the forehead of the sun was peeking, and he dashed toward it, his weary muscles burning. When he reached the top he hurled himself over the edge, the sand washing about his skin and his bloodied tunic, the grains gritting through his ears and his hair. He slid to the bottom, his body resting against the new corpse of the last soldier he had killed. With his face in an intense grimace Venator stood, leaned forward and grasped the handle of the axe, and with all of his remaining might withdrew it, the metal edge doused in the man's insides. With the weapon in his hand, with the new blood running atop his hands, Venator gazed at the metal of the axe glinting off of the bright sun, watched it roll back and forth like a thick cream, until he was immediately reminded of a distant memory of his childhood.

His father's pendant. Glimmering in the sun. Venator reached for the shiny object around his neck, felt it between his fingers, then pulled it above his head. He dropped his axe into the sand and pulled it to his eyes, where they roamed over its surface. It was little more than a cross, its metal, however, was made of an unknown material (he remembered his father telling him this) that brightened especially in the sun. With curiosity replacing terror Venator lifted the pendant to the sky and bathed it in the sunlight, where it brightened and brightened, its light growing to beyond that of the sun itself. He turned his head away, covered his eyes with his free arm and charged up the dune, where he waved the device back and forth, its light casting deep shadows over the cresting waves of the desert. He would lure the thing here. He would kill it here. He would do so now.

There it was. Savagely loping toward him from the distance, in the afternoon gleam of the sun, and in the afternoon gleam of Venator's pendant, the creature came, its body moving on all four of its muscular appendages, its eyes staring curiously at the waving light that had attracted it here. It jumped the canyons between the dunes; it passed through the air above the bloodied graveyard below and landed mere feet from Venator, who tucked the pendant back into its position around his neck. Their eyes met and remained focused upon each other. Venator bared his gritted teeth. The creature clenched its muscles. Venator brought his axe through the air and swung it at the thing.

The creature dodged the metal of the axe and kicked it out of the boy's hands. Its clawed fists shredded the air, its body bolted forth and its mouth widened in anticipation of Venator's neck. Venator ducked and hurled his fist into the thing's stomach, catapulting it high into the air, where its limbs waved with surprise.