The wet loam felt soft between the claw-tipped toes of the Huntress as she stalked through the shadows of the Paliquish Deepwood. Silent were her steps on long inhuman legs, jointed like an elk's. Her movement supple, as she prowled on the tips of her toes. The distance between the knuckles and ankle as long as a man's arm.
She was nude, clothed only in what the Night Mother had given her. A thin coat of rust red fur cloaked her limbs, tail, back, and neck thinning to nothing but onix black skin on her stomach, chest, and face. Her head was crowned in a sixteen-point rack of antlers. The year's growth still rust red under the velvet that had yet to slough off the razor sharp spikes.
Slit-lined golden eyes, like that of a mountain tiger, scanned the ground for the tracks of her prey. They were double lidded, one set transparent. She only closed the second pair when she slept, creating an unnerving illusion that the Huntress never blinked.
Even still, her visage as well as the taught musculature on her stomach and sex were remarkably human in appearance. The few woodsmen who had witnessessed her had been frozen in fear, as well as arousal. The Huntress, Umbral queen of the Paliquish Deepwood.
Her nose flared as she took in the scent of her prey. Thick musk and the moldy wetness of caverns intermingled with the salty iron of blood. The cave bear had made a kill, and the bear was taking it back to its lair.
She followed the scent. The trail drew her down into a shallow gorge where a spring melt creek trickled through the woods. Its muddy banks had been churned up, thrashed and gouged from a struggle. A wide track ran uphill, opposite to the side she had come from. Long black feathers were scattered about, accenting the trail. The cave bear had taken a cassowary as it watered at the creek.
The Huntress's lips drew back in a feral smile. Few animals were bold enough to risk death in the hunt of the man-sized birds. They were vicious, with dagger length claws and a kick that could break bone. Either this bear was starving and desperate, or so utterly confident in its hunting prowess the slayer birds posed no threat to it. The Huntress knew it was the latter.
She was led to a clearing at the foot of a cliff face, a jagged crack in the stone opened up into black depths. The heavy scent of urine was in the air, astringent, marking the cavern. The Huntress stretched her long inhuman limbs, limbering for the impending clash. Her thick cords of muscle rippled as they flexed and relaxed. She rose to her full twelve feet of height, air ballooning her lungs, then roared.
Birds in the surrounding trees let out shrill warning cries then went silent. The Paliquish Deepwood fell completely still, save for the rustle of leaves in the wind. A furious rumble echoed from the cave in response. Her challenge met. The clash of two apex predators imminent.
The cave bear out lunged from the cavern, fangs bared, intent on finishing the Huntress with one decisive surprise strike. She met the charge, crouching low then lashing upward with her lanky arms, throwing the massive bear into the cliff face.
There was a snapping crunch as the cave bear's back hit stone. It roared in pain, thick gray furred fore paws lashing and thrashing at the Huntress. Impotent fury and desperation, back broken, the bear could no longer move its hind.
The Huntress stepped forward, faster than a blink, turning in a vicious kick that struck the soft flesh under the jaw. Claw-tipped toes crunched bone and pierced brain, killing instantly.
Breathing deeply, the Huntress let the bloodlust within mellow away. She looked at the slumped over corpse. Thick fur gray, scars stretched across its body, it had been an ancient king. A survivor, victor in hundreds upon hundreds of life and death battles. It had lived for decades. This time though, the cave bear had died.
The Huntress frowned. The kill had been easy, far too easy. She had even announced her arrival rather than ambush the bear to increase the risk. Yet still, the beast had never even posed the slightest threat to her. Two blows, and it was over. The emptiness returned.
No need for the meat as the Huntress was herbivore. Killing was only for the bloodlust curse that raged within her. She left the corpse to the scavengers, skulking back into the shadows of the trees.
The Paliquish Deepwoods had once been a vast expanse of possibility. A true challenge when she had first come two hundred thirty seven moon cycles ago. Now it felt small, stagnant. Perhaps it was time to seek a new hunting ground.
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It was just before dawn when the Huntress reached the edge of the Paliquish Woods. The trees gave way to an expansive swath of unnatural clearing. Hundreds upon hundreds of stumps peppered the hillock. It was a graveyard that had once been a copse of pine.
The stump tops were strikingly smooth, revealing faces with hundreds of concentric rings. There was minimal splintering or tearing, save for at the edges on the bark. The Huntress had never seen anything like it before. She felt her pulse quicken.
The Huntress wandered through the slain wood, stopping occasionally to trace her long claw-tipped fingers across the grain. There was some sort of intent in their felling, but she could not yet grasp why.
What sort of animal would have a need to clear bare a hillock like this? Did they fell them to construct their dens like beavers? Did they perhaps eat entire trees in ravenous hunger? The scale of destruction caused was simply massive.
Perhaps the creature would provide a worthwhile hunt.
The Huntress didn't smell the presence of any nearby beasts, nor did she hear them. She didn't sense much of anything in the clearing. No deer, no foxes, even those as small as mice and birds seemed to shun the clearing. It was as if the activities of her mysterious quarry had frightened off all other life in the region. It was a promising sign.
The sun had begun to rise, casting a ruddy glow over the empty clearing. Without the shadows of the Paliquish Deepwood, it burned the Huntress's eyes. She draped a long arm over her brow to block out some of the light. Even still, she squinted as she scanned the distance.
Downhill she spotted trunks of hundreds upon hundreds of trees. They were stripped of branches and stacked high in neat piles on the flat ground of the nearby valley. Length against length, rising high, the logs were organized with a care that suggested the quarry had some use for them.
The Huntress bolted back into the standing treeline, and sunk deep into the shadows.
A blaring cry ripped through in the air, like the mating call of a bull elk, but much deeper with a resonance that shook the Huntress's core. She had never heard such a creature before. The power in its voice sent a thrill of excitement coursing through her blood.
Her presence had been noticed. Spotted before the Huntress herself had sighted her prey. Sloppy, she had grown complacent in the recent moon cycles. Nothing of the Paliquish Deepwood had posed any real threat to her in far too long. She knew nothing of the dangers of this animal.
Faint smudges approached the clearing from the distance. With the sun's rise brightening the day, the Huntress's vision was obscured to what they were.
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The Huntress rinsed the blood off her arms in a shallow pool of water. It was ice melt runoff that had collected in a marshland south of the Paliquish woods. A noisy place where countless frogs sang in a dissonant chorus, calling out for mates.
Even in the calm, her heart was still thrumming. She'd been far too risky in her hunts, the thrill taking her more strongly than it had in a vast ammount of time.
