Here is the deal

Sorry for not updating much lately. My usual time that I spent working on critiquing and writing was taken up from GRE studies. Now that the class is over, I should be able to be back in the game.

Except... last night, my computer went on the fritz. Suffice it to say, the power supply is probably dead and my hard drive may be corrupt, taking with it a fairly sizable chunk of backstory writing. (Nothing else though. I keep multiple backups on several hard drives.)

In the meantime, that has sort of disrupted my process for the moment (I hate breaking habit), so I've been sort of slow on getting responses and stuff out. I should hopefully be starting writing on my next piece soon, so I'm going to try to finish up what is left quickly, so you might get a few sizable chunks.


Aryel left her home, heading for shelter at a nearby town, after finding her family gone.


Her stomach still gurgled in response to the meager food, and she continued looking for more bushes. After a few more minutes—it had to have only been a few more minutes—she found another bush, and ate all the berries off that that one as well. Time ticked by and she found a half dozen more.

As she feasted, a rustling of trees towards the far side of the forest caught her attention and she drew up her gun in response. Is the keyl back? Had the animal bothered to slip out in the bushes while stalking her, inadvertently revealing its presence? As she watched in the direction the noise had come from, the rustling started again. Aryel slightly relaxed as the sound continued. An animal that made such obvious sounds either was big or not hunting.

She took several steps towards the spot where the rustling had occurred from while cautiously remaining crouched and low to the ground to make herself seem as unimposing as possible. A low deep base rumbling shook through the trees in front of her. A moment later those rumbling coming evenly spaced every few seconds confirmed her suspicious as origination from the deep exhalations of an adult aegysback. This animal was probably the same one that had stepped through the area leaving the trail behind that she had spied earlier. She cautiously followed in after the animal, making sure she didn’t get too close. These animals were a peculiar sort and were either incredibly aggressive during their mating season or completely placid during the rest of the year. Unless you got one upset. Then you’d best climb the tallest tree you could find and hope the animal couldn’t break it down.

She peeled the foliage back and looked into a large meadow with a stream running through it. Large grasses grew out of the barren parts of the meadow while the stream dribbled and burbled on its slow winding course. The aegysback slowly plodded along into the field as she had expected it would.

The beast was a very large animal, most likely a female in the prime of her life. She was built slightly similar to the keyl or a maky, but with some obvious differences. The aegysback was huge for starters, standing probably four or five times as tall as Aryel was. While she was maybe only five and a half feet tall or so, this animal would have almost reached the roof of their cabin.

The aegysback’s massive half-circle head swept back and forth guided by a massive bulky neck that had to be three or so feet thick. The rounded and smooth head was scarred slightly, probably from predator attacks that she had faced when younger. Each of her massive four legs were shaped slightly like a keyl’s, but where a keyl was light and wiry, this animal’s limbs were massive tree-trunks probably two feet wide, ending to two large nail like toes. She had a short stubby tale that was only slightly flat, that looked comically like someone had taken the tail off of a young keyl and stuck it onto the back of this large animal.

As she came out to the clearing, the animal somehow sensing her presence, turned towards her with that large sightless head peering down at her, trying to decide what Aryel was there to do. For a moment Aryel stood wary but apprehensive at the sight. As long as she made no outwardly aggressive moves, she would be fine. Then she saw the reason for the females concern. A young calf scuttled between its mothers legs, stumbling at one point and face planting into the ground before managing to right itself. This infant was small and young, possibly only a month or so old. The light leathery skin on its back that had yet to harden to the great shells spoke of just how young the animal was. Keyls and makys preyed on young aegysbacks like that one, or on the old and decrepit. They wouldn’t have a reasonable chance to make a play on a healthy adult.

The massive rumbling echoed through as the aegysback, apparently satisfied she wasn’t after its baby, turned and continued its constant foraging through vegetation as it sucked the plants on the ground up into her narrow mouth, without stopping to munch. The infant scuttled after her, not even looking to Aryel.

Aryel watched the two animals recede into the field for a moment longer before turning back towards where she had come from. She grabbed a few more berries off of the plants, and even found an irregular lionweed, whose golden stems could be sucked dry of the nutritious sap that they contained within. It was a surprisingly sweet taste when Aryel took a drink off of it.

She reached the furrows created by the cart a moment later, and found she had gotten back onto the trail almost at the exact same point she had left. Momentary glance towards the ground found her attention being caught by several pugmarks she had not noticed before. A quick survey of the area found her at least two pugmarks from a keyl, and a rapid sense of growing unease filled her. The tracks from the animal were almost superimposed on hers, leading into the forest, and were quite fresh.

She brought the rifle up, and suddenly her fear seemed realized. She recognized those tracks, and knew that the same one was now following her. Why is it still following me? I never did anything to it! The animal was seemingly less like an animal every moment and more like some vengeance driven madman who was out to kill her. She gritted her teeth, but panic induced tears ran down her face and her hands gripped the rifle tightly.

She started backing down the road, keeping her eyes locked towards the woods that she had exited from. Maybe the aegysback’s unease at her presence hadn’t just been because of her being there. Had the massive grazer noticed the keyl as well? The possibility made a chill run up her spine, and she tried to calm herself down. Now is not the time to panic. But she knew she already was doing exactly that.

She moved down the trail, increasing her pace, and trying to get out of this area as fast as she could, before the animal had time to setup an ambush. Such things were supposedly common from what she had heard. An animal wouldn’t just wait until you were ready to attack, it would wait until the opportune moment to do so. It could be lying in wait in front of her or to her sides and she wouldn’t even know until it was too late and the animal was on her.

Cautiously, she started sweeping her eyes from side to side towards the grasses against the road and in the middle of the pathway. It would be too easy for a predator, even one that size to lie in wait for her. Then she realized something she hadn’t even considered for a moment since her encounter the night before. She had heard the animal’s presence and seen the aftermath of its attacks, but she had yet to see the actual beast. Had she not seen the tracks previously, she wouldn’t have even known there was anything around her.

She almost laughed at the thought she was being haunted by a bogeyman rather than an animal, and then in a moment of inattention, her foot caught on a rock and she stumbled to the ground. She spat out a string of curses that would have gotten her punished for sure by pa had he heard them, and she felt a breeze run through her hair as she picked herself back up.

But when she got up, she was immediately knocked to the ground again. The keyl spun on its legs, raising that big flat tail in a threatening manner and she caught the glint of blood off of those blades on the animal’s head as it prepared to give the killing stroke. Her rifle went off a moment later, creating a loud boom and instead of eviscerating her on the spot, the keyl bolted for the cover of the vegetation in the wink of an eye.

Only then did she realize what must have happened. The keyl must have been right there off to the side of where she had tripped and she had walked into the ambush zone. Stumbling to the ground had probably saved her life, and the animal had struck her with that big tail to knock her down and go for the kill again.

Her shot had easily gone wide, but the animal had fled all the same. Perhaps it’s just afraid of loud noises? She suspected that a predator that tangled with aegysbacks would not find itself very fearful of such noises, but the idea still played at her mind. The animal was still alive, and that meant she was still in danger.

Her hands shook from both fear and excitement as adrenaline coursed through her veins. She didn’t know what she was scared of now. The animal? Dying? Whatever it did to her, she knew it would probably be quick and painless. She had known pain before, and wouldn’t fall victim to simple bruises and welts. What I’m afraid of, is not winning, she realized with a sudden flash of insight. I’m afraid of the animal getting the upper hand.

She stood there for a moment, and then she knew what she had to do. Running to the village and hiding from the beast simply wasn’t feasible. It was only a matter of time before the animal set up another ambush, and she couldn’t lay all her hopes on tripping and avoiding the initial death blow again. She knew right then and there, she wouldn’t survive the trip to town.

No, I have to play his game, she knew. She would have to kill the animal before she could do anything else. And just how do I plan on doing that? Keyls were intelligent animals, supposedly more so than dogs. But they weren’t still weren’t people. She just needed to find some sort of method to hunting the animal. That required getting close enough to fire a killing shot without getting killed in return.

Aryel stepped off the trail and headed deep into the woods. The animal’s logical spot for another ambush point would be just along the trail again, but far enough up that she couldn’t see it getting into position. Until she came up to that area, or passed it, she held the advantage in this battle. Each step down on the ground was planted so as to prevent any sort of noise giving her position away. In the forest, she couldn’t hope to be as perfectly silent as the animal was; she just wasn’t built the same. But she wouldn’t hand the animal the victory.

She had once met a man in town some years back. Pyew Mater had been his name. He was old, at least eighty or ninety, so he was entering the grey years of his life. The man had lost both eyes in some sort of fight years back when he had been a teenager. But where he could not see, his other senses were more than compensating for his lack of sight. His senses of smell and hearing were far beyond anyone that Aryel had ever met. He could hear small animals chirping in trees hundreds of yards away that she couldn’t even sense, and was able to identify people by their specific odors. That part had seemed more than slightly offensive to her.

Slightly offensive not because he could, but that he had given a passing comment that she had smelled like dirt and cows. She wasn’t the most lady-like in her manner and attitude, but that certainly had not left her smiling at the man.

The keyl must share some similarities with Pyew, since she had never heard of one with eyes. She had always suspected that the animals that were native to this planet had superb hearing, but this was really the first time she was ever going to get to check that theory. She really had nothing to lose by testing it, as she was meat either way. No eyes meant they still needed to sense their environment by some other method.

Powerful hearing that basically let the animal pick up any noise at all, as well as any sorts of movements. While Pyew had a good sense of smell as well, Aryel thought these animals must have sort of sense of smell comparable to her own if not superior. Pyew’s sense of smell had only been good to several dozen feet, and beyond that, he couldn’t smell a thing.

As the breezes picked up, she noted with a sinking feeling she was now upwind from the animal; not the best place to be. I need to find a way around it. That was easier said than done as any bushwhacking could alert the keyl to her location. I sound like I’m fighting a murdering person, not an animal. But if I play it like it is a person, rather than an animal, I might just get of this alive.

Resigned to what she had to do, she checked the gun one more time to make sure that the rifle was still ready for action. It had a long metal barrel, finely cut and forged together. She had heard her father supposedly say that it had come from off-world. Maybe from Serenity, or maybe even Earth itself. The stock on the gun was finely cut copper bark that had been polished and sanded to perfection. It only had straight ironsights, not like the scope she had once heard Pa moaning about not owning.

She didn’t know what exactly the scope could do to improve the gun anywhere from what it was. The rifle was still an old weapon; one that definitely hadn’t seen much use in the years Pa had owned it. She couldn’t actually remember Pa ever having used the gun, only having wielded it menacingly to scare off maky patrols that bothered the cattle.

First, she needed to get ahead of the animal. As unnerving as it was to know the animal would be behind her and stalking her the whole time, staying ahead of the beast and letting it come to her was the preferable option. Ultimately however, she knew she wouldn’t have any sort of chance of knowing whether she had managed to get ahead of the animal until the plan was set into place.

Maybe an hour or so passed until she had gone a distance she had deemed appropriate. Then, she gripped her rifle close, and put her finger on the trigger as she approached the trail. This was where it would become incredibly tricky. If she hadn’t gone far enough, the animal would be downwind from her and would know where she was just by a quick sniff of the air. That was assuming it did have a decent sense of smell, and that wasn’t something she wanted to risk her life on.

And if she measured wrong, she could walk right up on the animal and scare it. Any there was nothing more dangerous that a startled keyl, she knew. Each end was just as dangerous as the other. Those razorblade horns could slash and rip while the tail could pummel and crush. Startling one would end up being the last thing she did if that happened.

A moment before she stepped out into the clearing where the path led, she looked at the trees around her for the appropriate sized one that would be necessary. There, a few yards further up the road, she found a large copper bark tree probably five or six feet thick, with a few branches hanging low enough for her to grip and climb to the top.

She checked around her to make sure nothing was sneaking up to snatch her from the branches as she climbed and when she was satisfied she was alone, she started up the side of the plant. She had climbed more than one tree in her fifteen years of life, and she scrambled up to twenty or thirty feet onto the tree. There she spied a nice thick branch that she could sit on without worrying about falling off.

Chapter Two

Alright continuing onward. Aryel was holed up in the confines of her family's house with the monster on the outside.

Things to look for.

Does the pacing seem alright?

How about the action versus showing and telling?

Anything about the character both Aryel and the beast?

Other observations?

Chapter 2

Years later, I returned to the place where it all started, and looked as hard as I could for any remains of what happened to my family. I didn’t do this out of any urge neither of sorrow nor for family sake, as cruel as that sounds. It was simply looking for evidence so that I could safely say that I knew what had happened and could finally seal that part of my life shut. After some investigation it turned out I didn’t need to worry about not finding out.

Aryel awoke to the blinding light of morning filtering in through the tight cracks of the walls of the cabin. I fell asleep? She had thought she would never get any rest. Between how tightly she had gripped that rifle as well as how hard she concentrated to hear any sounds from outside the cabin she had assumed she wouldn’t find a single bit of rest. Now, gun still rested in her hands, but it had fallen more limply to the ground as she had fallen asleep.

“I’m alive,” she whispered aloud. No sounds beyond her voice and her breathing whispered through the cabin.

She eyed the door suspiciously, wondering if the animal was still awaiting her escape on the other side. But that seemed unlikely. The animal must be silent and quick, but it wasn’t that quiet. I’d have heard it. At least she hoped she would have heard it.

Her gaze remained locked on the door as she willed her body to rise up and exit out of the cabin. What felt like hours passed before she finally summoned the strength to stand up from where she sat on the ground. She stumbled forward on weak legs for the door, but a moment before her hand grasped the knob a thought entered her mind. She looked back toward the dresser that she had futily tried to move the night previously.

Another of her parent’s greatest taboos was touching that dresser. Going through her parent’s personal effects was a violation of the highest order, something she would have been terrified to do had there been any chance of either Ma or Pa walking in on her. But now…

She didn’t hesitate another second and threw open the drawers. She discarded articles of clothing in her search, not even paying attention to what she pulled from the drawer. In the second drawer that she searched through, Aryel found the ammunition for the rifle. She knew that the bullets had to have been stored somewhere; Pa wouldn’t just have the few bullets loaded into the gun on hand.

She shoved the bullets into one of the pockets in her pants and then looked back towards the door, this time with a façade of grim determination painted over her features. She brushed a lock of her long auburn hair out of her eyes and she locked down at the gun before shifting back to the door. As she brought the hand back down from brushing the hair, she caught sight of the caked red substance covering her fingers. Her thoughts drifted back to the pool of blood out in the dining room and she suppressed a shudder.

Life on a farm certainly wasn’t easy and she was no familiar to seeing blood. But this wasn’t just some accident when someone got cut. Her family was gone and she didn’t know where they had disappeared to. I need to find somewhere safe. Could she find the others though?

She eyed the door again, the only barrier between her and the outside world. She would be safe as long as she stayed in this room behind the strong copper-bark walls But an indefinite stay was completely out of the picture. There was no water, no food, nothing beyond the four walls and the bed and dresser in the room. She let out a sigh of resignation and moved to the bed. With an adrenaline filled yank, she tugged the entire piece across the floor and out of the way. As it moved, the wood protested such treatment with a loud shriek as it scraped across the floor. Aryel had barely set it down before she threw the door open and brought the rifle up to bear.

The light of the morning peaked in through the open doorway casting odd shadows about the room from the assorted broken furniture and other pieces of furniture. Several chairs were broken into almost unrecognizable pieces, the product of something in what had to be an unimaginable fury. The antique table that was a family heirloom on her mother’s side, supposedly dating all the way back to the Martyr, lay broken in half in the middle of the area.

And then she saw the blood stairs that were splattered about the floor and walls. She choked back panic and tears at the gruesome sight that greeted her as well as a dank and rancid smell that emanated through the room. Her own boot prints marked in red showed her passage through the house the night before. Her breaths came in more ragged gasps as she gaped through the room. Everything she saw came as if she were looking through a foggy or smudged piece of glass. Each part of the room she looked had had an ethereal and unreal quality to it that made Aryel want to doubt her own eyes.

Another pathway traced through the room leaving marks at odd angles on the floor and the lower parts of the wall. These marks all matched the tracks of the keyl she had followed out in the woods—she was sure they were the same tracks—and these traveled through the kitchen and up against the door to the bedroom she had slept in. Scraps of the wood had been rent off the wall as the animal had used its sharp feet to try to pry the door open. Some markings were fresher while others were old and slightly faded. Did it come back in the night? Whether or not it had, the beast had not gotten inside, and that was what counted.

The only thing she was sure of was someone in her family had to be dead. Oddly, she didn’t feel much sorrow or fear at the thought as she would have expected would accompany the belief that a close family member was dead. Perhaps her distant relationship with the rest of her family at least had some dividends now. Nothing to grieve over, she thought with very little mirth.

With grief and sorrow gone, only resolve filled her now. Resolve to get out of here. She took several steps through the room, carefully skirting around the pooling stain of blood that lay on the floor, and she was outside and into the bright sunlight. Aryel shifted back to look at the outside of the cabin, specifically at the door that had been forced in the night. A large chunk had been broken off and there was a large impacted dent as well, indicating the spot where the animal had smashed into the wood.

She quickly took her gaze off the door and turned to scan her surroundings. Her gun was raised as she fingered the trigger, awaiting the revelation of any sort of threat. She didn’t spy the beast anywhere she looked, but she knew that may not be enough indication to show a lack of the beast’s presence. Images of the cows watching the forest the night before flooded into her mind and she immediately looked to the herd. The cows, apparently had made it through the night unscathed, and were busying themselves by devouring vegetation on the ground. They paused to give her the usual vacant expressions that cows gave before going back to their feeding. She didn’t know if their lack of interest made her more afraid, or more relieved. The keyl wasn’t anywhere close by, that was for sure. But that meant she had no idea where the animal had gone in the meantime.

She remained where she stood and shifted her view up the valley towards the direction of the town. Kyl’s Wells lay miles away from where she stood now, easily a long journey even on the best of days. If she got a good start right away, she should be able to get to her destination before nightfall. Having no real measure of time, she looked towards the sun as it peaked on the horizon above the Kemland Highlands to the north and east. She had no real gift for telling time from the position of the sun, only relying on her internal clock to tell her when it felt like and she estimated that it was probably mid-morning.

Then she noticed the storm clouds peaking over the horizon towards the east as well. The world is turning against me, she thought as she saw them approaching far off in the distance. The black angry storm clouds that rolled in off the ocean were always presented great and powerful storms that could sometimes last for days. I thought that the storm season ended weeks ago, she thought as she watched the black clouds threatened to envelop the sun like some great beast.

Leading away from the cabin and towards Kyl’s Wells were two slightly depressed furrows from where Pa had dragged his handcart numerous times whenever he went in to the town. The tracks led away from the valley she had been in the day previously, instead leading towards the west. As long as I follow those, I’ll be able to get there fine.

She cast another gaze up towards the shadowy storm clouds, and then looked back towards her house. The cabin seemed small and nondescript where it sat. Even from this distance though, she could see the long jagged scrapes that the keyl had left on the side of the building as it had tried to get in at her. Her gaze lingered on the house for a few moments. Where I was born. Where I grew up. The more she reminisced, the more she realized just how few happy memories she could remember there. A tear fell down her cheek, not for the misery she had experienced, but because there certainly was no going back now. I need to get out of here.



She dropped her gaze from the house, and turned away towards the road. Within fifteen minutes, she had completely lost sight of the cabin and the fields where she had grown up.

The thunder rumbled overhead, but the rain had not yet come. During the first few hours of Aryel’s journey, she hadn’t heard a sound beyond the soft press of each of her boots against the ground. In this tree-less area, the plants had grown long covering up the furrows left by the wagon wheels, leaving only tell-tale signs of previous passages.

Prysmaflies drifted through the breeze overhead, seemingly uncaring of the world around them as they continued their own agendas in the sky. As Aryel watched them, her stomach gurgled with hunger and she realized she hadn’t eaten in some time. Since breakfast the day before. The more she thought about it, the more her stomach cried out for food Thirty or so minutes passed before her desire for food overruled her own sense of wariness and she knew she would need to find something to eat.
During the years she had spent out in the wilderness she had started to gain a sort of knack for knowing what plants were edible and what weren’t. But she’d have to venture off the road to find anything worth eating. Even though the cows could eat the bluish-green grasses she trod on, she certainly couldn’t, and she knew this from personal experience.

As she walked into the forest, massive trees rose from all sides, threatening to blot out the suns. Lion’s manes draped their leaves down, sometimes almost to the ground and tremendous copper barks and scooter-leaves cast shadows all over the area. Even then, she could see the storm clouds peaking off in the distance through the trees.

The one plant she was looking for, the Hyllberry plant, she needed to look at the base of the lion’s mane trees in the areas. Those plants had the habit of gathering water that dripped off the leaves of the lion’s mane, but were still an irregular occurrence. If she could find one, she could find a decent source of food. She looked back over her shoulder, towards where the road lay. Something inside her told that she hadn’t seen the last of that keyl. She held the gun more closely to her and picked up her pace through the trees.

She finally spied a small bush growing against a tree. Reaching down to grab the berries she noted she was now standing in another large track way of a big animal. Rather than the deep marks of the keyl or makys, she was relieved to find that these tracks were from an old and large aegysback. The tracks were relatively fresh and indicated the animal has passed through here maybe an hour previously. Vegetation that the animal had pounded flat as well as the shredded remains of plants it had feasted on spoke of the testament of the large animal, as well as painted the path that it had used in clear tones.

Aryel only briefly looked at the tracks before she turned her attention back to the plants. While one hand cradled the rifle, she grabbed the berries with the other. She remained in a squatting position her with head up as she watched around her for any sort of danger. She did have to look down at the berries to make sure she only grabbed the ripe ones. Ones that were too young had the habit of making people so sick they would try to vomit their stomachs clean.

Continue the Story!

Alright, continuing on, coming back to her own house and the place is abandoned. Very mysterious and spooky

1. How is the setting still?
2. What about the suspense? Still good?
3. Any other observations?

Normally around this time, her mother lit a lamp in the dining room until the family turned in for the night. But the house was nothing more but a dark silhouette. That was very odd indeed. Mother was never slack in such things unless she simply wasn’t there to light the candles. As Aryel watched the house, she got the feeling that she was being watched by someone. As if the eyes of some unknown watcher bored into the back of her head from all around her at once.

A twig snapped off in the distance and she squeaked in surprise. A moment later she realized the sound had come from the pen where the cattle still milled about. Just cows. The sky was dark out, but not dark enough that she couldn’t see the animals several hundred yards of away. She looked towards the animals, and in the darkness she could see they seemed a little… agitated.

The cows generally milled about in one section of the pen or another. Where they stood now wasn’t odd, but they seemed to be looking off towards the hill behind the cabin. She slowly started forward again towards the house, but the feeling of eyes watching never left her as she came close to the house.

A few steps brought her up to the wood pile where she dropped the sticks with a clatter into the dwindling supply of tinder. These branches were from the copper-bark trees and would burn fairly well. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was in danger. The area around here was deathly still. She couldn’t hear her mother, her father, even her brother Martyn talking. And the cabin did not hold sound even slightly effectively.

They weren’t even there. The crowing sense of unease tripled in intensity. Have they abandoned me? Her journey out into the countryside would have provided the opportunity they needed. No, they wouldn’t! They couldn’t! The very thought that they had abandoned her here with the house and the cattle seemed laughable. They would have taken what they could with them. Maybe they went to town? That might seem more plausible. Her pa seemed malicious enough that he would leave her cold and alone for the night while he and the others went off to town.

The cattle starting lowing loudly again, and she shot a startled gaze back towards them. What is making them so fearful? Perhaps it would be better to get inside. She started edging towards the door, while she cautiously looked about the tree edge. Nothing moved at all beyond the cows in their paddock and they casting their vacant gazes off into the trees.

She realized with a start that they were watching something off in the woods. Was it the keyl? That had been heading in this area. That had to be the only explanation. By listening and watching the cows, she was able to watch where the animal must be moving in the trees. The animal had to be nearby, at least within two-hundred yards.
The cows seemed to be looking towards the far side of the fence, away from her, and she stumbled backwards, heading for the inside of the cabin. The door inside lay open, as if left that way in a rush from her family’s hasty retreat from the building. Perhaps they knew the keyl was here and had left? Her last encounter with one had been long ago, but she knew the animal was rather large judging from the pug-marks she had seen. The animal could probably be intimidating enough to make them flee the premises.

She bolted inside the house, and shut the door behind her. Blundering in the darkness, she managed to grab the big rocking chair her mother normally sat on and shoved it in front of the door. The feeling of fear and wrongness now pounded all around her, as if everything around her screamed that she was in danger.

She managed several steps into the cabin when a loud slam hit the side of the door and made the whole building shake in its foundation. Aryel yelped in surprise, and dashed away from the door, giving in to her fear and working just off of instinct. As she ran forward, her boot landed in something wet and slippery and she flew forward in an uncontrolled fall. Her less-than-graceful flight brought her straight into a broken chunk of a chair and then onto the ground. The blow knocked the breath out of her, bringing tears to her eyes from the pain and she fell to the ground with another loud thump.

Another slam rocked the house around her and the walls groaned with stress with the impact. She yelled out again, more in fear than for any other reason. Her hand reached out to grasp the ground to raise herself back up to a standing position. But instead of finding a dry but dusty wooden floor, her hand slipped across the wet substance that lay on the ground. Oblivious to the banging outside, she brought the hand that was covered in the liquid back to her face. Even in the failing light she knew that there was blood on the floor as well as covering her hand.

She gasped repeatedly as she scrambled backwards from the blood. What is happening?! Her panicked mind raced from conclusion to conclusion as she tried to gather what was going on. She realized that her eyes were acclimatizing to the failing darkness and she looked about the room partially in a stupor.

The chairs had been toppled over and more than one had been broken apart completely. Pots, pans, books, and any number of other objects lay scattered about the floor. The keyl. She knew that had to be it. Had it attacked her family? She looked around as if the answer would reveal itself, but no clarity came.

A scrapping sound echoed from the wall near the entrance as the animal pawed against the door. And in her mind, Aryel came up with a solution or at least some way of staying safe. Pa had a rifle, some old weapon that he had owned for as long as she could remember. She and her brother had once got it out to look at it some years back. That had certainly been a bad idea, she had never seen her pa so mad, and both she and Martyn had certainly felt his anger over that little stunt.

Still, she knew that he kept it underneath his bed. The rifle was always loaded and only required turning the safety on the gun off before it could be used. Maybe if I can just find it, I’ll be safe, she figured. She crawled along the floor, dodging the debris that was scattered about the room. Of her ma, Pa, or Martyn, there was no sign of anything. Thinking about the blood back on the floor made her sick. She knew that pool couldn’t be the extent of the viscera either. She feared what she might find if she looked more closely about that room.

A few strides brought her into her parent’s room. The room was almost vacant, looking as it normally did when neither of her parents was there. The bed lay up against the wall and the dresser was rested at the side of the wall. Both of the pieces of furniture were completely untouched. No windows peaked outside to the surrounding fields either, just the doorway back to the dining room. Pa had always said that was a luxury they couldn’t afford and didn’t need anyway.

The sounds of scratching still echoed through the walls, and she realized with increasing anxiety that the sound was now coming from the wall that the dresser stood against. On the other side of that wall, maybe three feet away from her, the keyl was trying to get in. She remained frozen in her place for several seconds until she finally managed to draw on some unknown strength of will to go over to the bed.

Reaching underneath the bed, her hand blindly flopped around in the empty space. Had he taken it? She almost let out a sigh of relief when her hand finally grasped the cold metal barrel of the gun. She dragged it out, and checked inside the gun to make sure it was loaded.

She had never actually fired a gun and had only held one—this one—once, but she had watched Pa enough to know what to do. The rifle was loaded and waiting and she flicked the safety on the gun to the off position. She realized how redundant such a feature on the gun was. A gun by itself never was safe even when the trigger was locked. She hoisted the gun up, holding it awkwardly. I don’t remember it being this heavy, she thought to herself.

She looked from wall to wall, waiting for the sounds to come back. The scratching had gone silent, but she knew the animal had to still be outside. It wouldn’t just leave like that. She paused. Was that a scratch? She turned towards the entrance of the cabin. Was it trying to get in through the door? That chair won’t be able to hold a person back, much less an animal that size.

She closed the bedroom door, and after a few moments, started dragging the bed up against the door as well. She groaned under the weight of it and the thing wouldn’t budge. The bed was made of copper-bark trees, which were rather heavy to begin with. This thing almost seemed to be immovable until she got it moving after a few hard exertions. She looked to the dresser as well, thinking of moving that to block the door as well.

A single pull told her that the dresser wasn’t going anywhere. And she doubted she would have time to have moved it anyway. A loud snap and the splintering of wood told her that the outer door to the cabin that she had braced with the chair had been broken open. She realized she had forgotten to throw the metal lock shut.
She whimpered with fear, but Aryel held the gun up and pointed it in the direction of the door. Maybe the bed could hold. Maybe. She didn’t realize she was shaking with fright for several moments until she realized the gun was likewise vibrating in her grasp. She could hear the sounds of objects being moved around as the keyl moved through the room, trying to get at her.

Soon the scraping started on the door, a little a first, but then it became louder and more pressed. She could see the door bend under the weight, but it was made copper-bark like the bed. It wouldn’t break that easily. A loud thump echoed through the room and she almost fired the gun in response. The door buulged sharply but held. The animal was trying to force it just as it had done with the other door.
As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t fire the shots into the door. I might miss; I might not even penetrate the door. As much as she hated to admit it, she would have to wait for a clear shot. And that was the last thing she wanted. For to get a clear shot meant nothing between her and the animal.

She crouched down on the ground, but held the gun steady as the clawing continued for a moment and then stopped. Then the entire cabin went dead silent, and all Aryel could hear was her own breaths and her heart beats. She felt exhaustion pawing at her like some starved animal but she knew that she wouldn’t sleep a wink tonight. Deep down, she knew she probably wouldn’t survive the night.

Specters of the Night

Summary - Aryel, a girl living a miserable life finds some interesting tracks. Blah blah blah

Questions
1 Does it still sound like a 19th century setting?
2 Does it feel slightly suspenseful?
3 How is the imagery?
4. How about show versus tell?

Still, cautiousness would not go amiss here. She increased the pace once she was satisfied that her footsteps were making barely any noise. On the other hand… If it was a keyl, then she should be moving loudly and make as much noise as she could rather than silently sneaking into the area. No! There isn’t anything here! She wanted to believe that but part of her doubted it.

She had heard the big predators did not take too kindly to being startled, and were just as prone to attack and defend themselves when startled as they would run away when startled. And that was one reason keyls were dangerous. Aside from being easily half again as large as a cow, they had massive crescent shaped heads, the sides of which were razor sharp, and used when the animal was hunting. A single swipe of that head could rip through the flesh of most creatures out there and put the animal down permanently. Then the beast would just insert its trunk like mouth into the massive slash, and start secreting acids into the wound and drink the liquefied remains.

At least that was what Wyllyam said. He claimed he had heard it from a CEC official all the way in Kyl’s Wells. She partially doubted that he had even met anyone from the mythical CEC, the so called human government all the way from Earth that were trying to reconstruct their human alliance that was long since shattered. Shattered since the time of the Martyr some four or five hundred years back. Her father remained quite tight lipped about it, but she could tell he thought CEC was laughable. Not that they didn’t exist of course, just that their mission and purpose was ridiculous.

Still, the explanation for the way a keyl fed seemed likely similar to what Wyllyam said as she had seen the kills of makys before, and much of their kills had been turned into some disgusting ooze that seeped out of the gashes left by the animals.
Relieved that she was alone, she took several steps forward into the trees, scanning the ground for any sort of footprints that might reveal the identity of the maky’s unknown stalker. It only took a few moments until she saw a place where the brush and leaves had been obviously disturbed.

She puzzled over the displaced brush until its purpose became obvious. It was a bed. Something had lay here for several moments but probably not too long. Maybe an hour or three and then it had gotten up and headed off elsewhere. Where exactly it had headed to eluded her. The ground here even with all the leaves didn’t seem to hold the tracks very well. Leaves had already started falling and had covered much of the existing trackway even given the few hours between her arrival here and the beast’s presence here.

Still she was curious. Now she knew it hadn’t been hunters, it must have been a keyl. At least, she figured it couldn’t be hunters. Why would anyone just randomly lie down on a bed of leaves? No, given the time frame, the keyl had probably hidden during the hotter sun of the day and moved on since then. That had probably been at noon or so. It wasn’t incredibly hot in the afternoon, but it was still warm enough that the animal would seek shelter for the moment.

She looked around the area, watching for any sort of telltale sign of the animal that hadn’t been obliterated by the falling vegetation. She remembered in the back of her mind that she still had chores to do, so she occasionally grabbed a large stick or two that they could use, but for the most part, she continued looking for the trackway the animal had made when it had left.

A male keyl this close to her house could be a problem. Wyllyam Korgan had said they sometimes preyed on cattle, and she didn’t want to risk thinking of that as being one of his many falsehoods. If there was one in the area, pa’s herd might not be safe. He would probably find some way of blaming the death of a cow by the hands of this keyl on her as well. Everything that went wrong seemed to have been caused by her.

But first she wanted to see where the keyl was head to. Had the maky and the keyl come across each other coming from different directions? Or had they both been heading in the same direction? Finding where the tracks became visible took probably an hour or two and the sun was starting to head down the horizon. Aryel hadn’t even noticed a glow of its fall as she continued through the area with her gaze locked on the ground.

She let out a squeal of excitement when she finally saw the large pugmarks of the animal further into the forest. The vegetation was less dense here which mean better conditions for finding pugmarks, and she had found several. These were similar to the maky pug-marks, but were even larger and broader. Each mark from the two feet on each leg was probably about the size of her hand fully spread open.

This was a big animal unless she missed her guess gauging by the size of the marks. And the marks indicated that the keyl was heading in the same direction the maky patrol had. Most likely the maky patrol had seen the keyl and skirted around the bigger animal before heading off as fast as they could. The keyl had probably left a bit after that, heading off in search of food somewhere else.

Aryel started following the trail for almost a mile or so. From the way that its pug-marks were spread out she determined it was moving at a slow pace, the movement of an animal that wasn’t in any sort of hurry. The marks gave her goose bumps all over, as she had never been so close to any sort of large predator. It was exciting and exhilarating.

A sudden thought came into her mind. The tracks were heading in the general direction of her families cabin. She paused. The sticks! She looked up towards the sky and realized that the sun was almost down. There wasn’t anything out in these woods at night that she needed to fear, but that didn’t mean the darkness still didn’t set her nerves on edge. And she had left all those sticks behind on the ground and had wandered off after animal tracks.

She would have needed to start hauling her finds back to the house hours ago if she had planned on finishing in a reasonable time. As it was, it would take probably well into the night to get them all. She cursed to herself and turned and ran towards the valley where she had left her pile behind.

It took maybe twenty minutes to reach her pile and she began scrambling to grab as many as she could before setting off towards the cabin as fast as she could. Aryel stumbled more than once in the failing light, but she stopped and managed to retrieve every fallen stick and branch that lay on the ground. She wasn’t going to mess up now.

As she ran, she wondered if the keyl would come close to their cabin. That would certainly give the cattle a fright. Maybe the animal would even go in after them for an easy meal. She partially wished the animal would maul some of the cattle just to cause her father grief. She didn’t care if he took it out on her. He would take it out on her. The maiming of the cattle would be her fault somehow and if he didn’t find some way to punish her for that, he’d find some other excuse. That was just the way he was. He was just a mean old man who had never shown her much of a shred of love in her life.

Sometimes she dreamed what life would be like if she just ran away and lived off the land. She had heard tales of people doing that but she had never actually met one. Another of Wyllyam’s tales. I could do it. And she really knew she could. But always her thoughts returned to home. She really couldn’t leave there. Even though her father seemed to not give a shred of care for her, he hadn’t thrown her out like he had often said he would. Maybe he did love her. He just had an odd way of showing it. Yeah… that must be it, she thought.

She knew she had to be close now, but it was becoming rather dark and she had to watch her steps. She knew the direction back to the cabin even in darkness, but the terrain could always hide deadfalls or rocks that one could trip over. Up until now she had not tripped and injured herself and she had no intention of that happening now

The trees of lion’s manes and copper barks covered the hillside behind their cabin that was located maybe ten or twenty yards from the tree line. The cabin was in a wide meadow with plenty of room for them to have set up a fence that contained their livestock, as well as space for their vegetable gardens. Some of the vegetables were native plants; others like the cattle as well as herself were descendants from the original settlers.

A few more steps and the view of the cabin came into sight. And just in time as well. The sun had almost completely passed over the horizon off in the direction that the ocean laid. She had never traveled that far but one day she wanted to. Her gaze lingered there for a moment and she continued on to the cabin. She would have to make several more trips to get all of the branches back and she was only wasting time by watching things off in the distance.

That was something she had always wanted to do. Go to the ocean. Go to Wyldnys, the major continent on Ryzel. To be able to wander the world and see the sights. Travel to the ancient ruins of Robyn and see the monument to the Martyr. See the large port cities of Korwood and Tel Ryo. But part of her knew she never would.

She had been resigned to her fate for a long time since. Her dreams still spurned her on as she looked for a better life than what she was, but it would never come. Her father had promised that as soon as she became eighteen, he would find some man gullible enough to marry her and get rid of her. “Gullible” had actually been the word he used. She supposed the only thing she could hope for was that her husband would be a decent and kind man. Someone not like her father.

As she took several steps forward towards the cabin, another primal sense of unease gripped over her and she felt the hairs stand on the back of her neck. But when she craned her neck around, she saw nothing out of the ordinary that might give rise to such a sense of caution.

But still, she knew something was wrong here, and she paused in her steps about a hundred or so yards from the house. Something is wrong… she thought. A moment later she realized what it was. The sun had faded beyond the horizon and shrouded the entire meadow where her house lay in twilight. Barely enough light lingered that she could see the house, but darkness was closing in quickly and in fifteen or so minutes, she wouldn’t be able to see beyond what the starlight showed.

The Specters of Night

There, I got a title. Rejoice.

Recap: We got some insight into a monster's mind in the last post as it slowly was hunting someone or something. The animal was wounded, which prevented it from hunting its normal game. Then it killed someone. OoooOOooo

Questions for discussion

1. How is Aryel as a character? What are her qualities from what you saw so far?
2. What about your perspective of her father? Abusive, strict, or what?
3. What are your views on the setting? Does it need to be described more?
4. How does it read? Are there any confusing parts in the story? Specify where they are if you would be so kind
5. Anything else you saw? Contradictions, telling versus showing, etc.
6. How are the descriptions of the animals?

Little bit longer post this time


Aryel Korbat glumly stared down from the mountain side towards the small area where her family’s cabin lay. It wasn’t my fault! It really hadn’t been. She had only been doing what she needed to earlier this morning and she certainly couldn’t be blamed for every little mishap. Her morning chores for the day had consisted of going out and gathering newly fallen sticks off the surrounding trees in the nearby valley that was maybe two or three miles from her family’s cabin.

On her way out, she had jumped over her father’s fence that kept the cows tethered up near the barn. Evidently in her haste to get over the fence she had somehow knocked the padlock open and several of the cows had managed to escape. Maybe if Pa secured the locks better, she glowered.

The animals were nothing special, but they were descendants from the cattle of the first settlers to Ryzel, much like Aryel herself was. She had hear Pa mention once how lucky they were that the cattle could eat the vegetation on this world, and that Serenity had to import all of its foodstuffs from offworld. She couldn’t imagine why that planet should be any different from this one.

Kyl alone knows why they would be different, she thought, uttering the name of the Martyr of Ryzel in wordless prayer. The Martyr had long been dead for many centuries, but her parents had taught her, just like the Lord would answer her prayers, Kyl Barlowe, the Martyr of Ryzel would as well. Certainly he at least would have seen the harmless mishap that had occurred with the cows.

But her father had seen it as nothing more than carelessness. He claimed that at fifteen years of age, she should be more aware and less flowerheaded about her chores. Then he had grabbed her younger brother and stormed off out into the fields to gather up the cattle that had gotten out. Martyn was her father’s light and joy, the son he had always wanted, and whom he kept close constantly, grooming his “heir” as it were. Pa held a much different attitude about his “unneeded” and “unwanted” daughter, two descriptions she had heard him callously throw out even when he knew she could hear him.

Pa had only needed an hour to venture out and gather the wayward cattle and during that time she had busied herself with feeding the chickens. Evidently the cows had given him more trouble than she had thought they might, for he was certainly in a terrible rage when he arrived back. Without breaking stride, he had grabbed her and paddled her bottom until she screamed and howled for the entire valley to hear.

Afterwards he had told her to go out and gather as many sticks as she could find for the fires and that if he wasn’t satisfied with the end result, he’d give her more of the same. The only relief was that he didn’t act that way to just her. “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” her father had said more than once. If her brother messed up, pa would be sure to exact the same punishments on him as well. But he always seemed to find more excuses to get mad at her as opposed to Martyn. It was almost as if punishing her was almost akin to not having her around.

Winter was coming fast, and the nights around here during fall weren’t the hottest to begin with. Gathering the plentiful vegetation that fell off of the copper-bark trees would at least manage to help them with fires. As much as she disliked her father and the attitude he had towards her, she didn’t much like being cold either, so she continued to gather the sticks in a large pile down in the middle of a valley.

Her appointed gathering spot for the fallen timber was right near the banks of a small stream which had no name she was aware of. The valley and the stream had been her place to come when she needed time alone from dealing with her family. From her mean father, her apathetic mother, and her snobbish brother, this was one of the few areas that when her chores were done, she could escape out into.

Many a spring and summer afternoon had been spent out in this valley, as she sat underneath the copper barks trees and basking foliage in the warm sun. The flocks of prysmaflies darted overhead as both predator and prey pursued their own interests in glittering aerial dogfights. The dazzling four winged creatures darted here and there with an unnatural agility and grace.

As Aryel looked up, a blue chromatic falcon zipped overhead, in hot pursuit of some smaller creature that raced along on its rapidly four beating wings. The dashed all over the meadow, but the smaller creature evidently made it through the trees, for the falcon banked on its wings and headed up to a higher altitude far up in the sky. She watched for several moments longer and then continued her search.

More than once her boots sank into the mud of the swampy part of this valley. Streams flowed down out of the mountains and hills, feeding into the one that winded through here. She was relieved for what wasn’t the first time that she didn’t have to wear the dresses that many of the other girls she had seen wear around. Her britches and shirt did well enough for her, and a dress would have gotten in the way out here anyway. She had once dreamt of wearing one, but when the chance had finally come, she had found the piece of clothing so unwieldy, she had refused to wear it again. Pa hadn’t been much pleased with that.

She absent mindedly hummed some song she had once heard played at the saloon back at the town. She didn’t know many pieces of music because chance rarely found her in the proximity of Kyl’s Wells, the town that lay closest to her family’s small homestead. The village was too far to walk in a single day, and whenever her father went to trade the crops he grew for other necessities, she was never brought along except on the rare chance that her father was in a charitable mood.

“And that’s not often,” she spoke aloud. There was no one here close enough to hear her speak, and the animals that did hear evidently gave no care. At least she thought they heard. She had never heard any animals native to this area make any sounds. Her father had brushed her comments off that maybe they did make sounds and they just couldn’t hear them as being fool-talk and rubbish.

Walking down one of the hills, she carried a bundle of sticks close to her to keep any of them from falling out. As she moved through the marshy mud an odd mark on the ground caught her eye. She knelt down and saw the obvious pug-mark that lay in the mud near the stream. She mentally stored the location of the mark in her memory and half-ran towards her pile of sticks to drop the bundle off before she could come back and investigate.

She rarely saw animal tracks beyond the smaller shield-backs that roamed occasionally through the valley. The light gangly marks of the prysmaflies could be found when they came down from their flights to stumble about awkwardly on the ground while they sought a drink. She tossed the sticks into the pile and turned to run back to the mark, not even checking to see if she got them all in the general location.

Carefully stumbling through the mud, she pulled her pants up to avoid getting them caught in the swampy parts of the marsh. A lot of drainage came in off the mountains and that made this place both an ideal location for spotting wildlife, as well as a wet swamp for much of the year. She cautiously looked down at the tracks and tried to puzzle them out.

She knew a fair bit of tracking, but most of her knowledge had been picked up from other encounters with pathways of animals rather than any formal training. The majority of that knowledge had been garnered here in this very valley and she was familiar with all the animals that passed through.

Each footmark was actually a double print. The predators that made their homes in the surrounding mountains had elongated toes that branched into two separate feet. Each foot then led into three toes, a central digit and one to the side. To call it a hoof wasn’t completely accurate, but it was the best description that Areyl could think of. The marks were maybe a few inches thick, but at least for or so deep. The feet gave the animal good footing, but made it sink like a stone in mud and snow.

But this animal had not been hunting, judging by the distance from print to print. The entire span of the creature was maybe a little less than she was tall. Had the stride distance been more, she could have seen it was running, and the way that the feet lined up with each other likewise gave clues to the animals movement. No, this animal had simply been strolling.

“If this is what I think…” she muttered to herself as she scanned the nearby muddy area for more prints.

She found the multitude of tracks almost immediately. About ten or so feet away from her current position she found another set of prints from the same sort of animal. These ones were more slimmer and longer while the first group had been bulkier and wider.

“A male and a female,” she said out loud. She wasn’t certainly an expert when it came to pug-marks, but she knew enough to tell the different between an animal’s genders by its tracks. Males were larger and thusly had bigger tracks while the females had slimmer feet. These were the tracks of a patrol of makys. Evidently the patrol that lived around here had come down into the valley, probably three or four hours previously.

She knew if she looked around she could find more of the tracks of the dozen or so individuals that made up the patrol. They would probably be looking for some of the larger animals in the area.

“Probably an aegysback,” she figured. The massive animals were occasionally seen in this area. Each was probably three or four times as tall as she was, and several times as bulky. The massive plant eaters were generally solitary creatures and very often favored prey of the maky patrols. They were a tough kill to be sure unless the maky patrol played smart.

An aegysback had massive tree trunk-like limbs, and a massive saucer shaped head. It didn’t have keen senses, but if it figured out something was there, a slam of its broad head could crush a person’s ribcage, and outright kill a maky. They hadn’t been domesticated for obvious reasons.

The maky was a smaller predator, probably about half the size of a cow. It had a completely featherless and furless skin that from a glance looked more like a hard leathery substance than anything else. The four legs all ended in those double feet and were jointed with a high knee and a long ankle. Their head was slim and arrow like, but two jagged barbs on the side of the head. They had no eyes as far as she could tell, and only two holes punctured right through the end of that head as well as the mouth were the only features the animal had.

Still, she was slightly interested to see that the patrol was down here, and without another glance, she started following the tracks. Once they exited the muddy areas a few hundred feet further, the tracks became harder to find, and several times she had to double back and recheck for the subtle marks that showed the passage of the animals through the dry terrain. Were it not for the presence of so many, she thought she might have been able to follow them at all.

As it was, a stone that had been knocked out of its resting place, a trail through the grass, leaves scattered and branches broken easily pointed in the direction that the patrol was heading. They were obviously making no effort to hide their presence which meant they weren’t on the hunt. She had heard her pa say once that some earth animals made permanent homes and then only left them when they went hunting. Here on Ryzel that wasn’t the case, and the animals were all semi-nomadic.

For what reason she had no clue. She certainly wasn’t smart enough to think why animals did or didn’t do things. She just knew they did. The maky patrol would only stop to settle down when they were laying offspring, and as soon as the offspring were old enough, they’d continue on what seemed like an endless journey through the highlands of Kemland, the Eastern continent of Ryzel.

They would constantly be on the move, looking for game along their migration paths to hunt down. This patrol must have fed long before they came through here, and were now just shifting their area of operation. That was something she was sure of. The animals kept on the move so that they would never overhunt any single area. Animals would become acclimated to their presence and finding food would be much harder on the maky patrol.

She brushed off the concern of actually meeting the maky patrol as nothing of importance or worth worrying about. For starters, she was probably an hour or two behind the animals and it would require her sprinting at full speed to come upon them in any decent amount of time.

Nor did she worry what would happen if she did come upon them. They were often more afraid of people than people were of them. If she came upon the pack, and didn’t do anything obviously aggressive, they would probably give her blank looks and continue on their way.

Even the big kyels were much the same way. Whereas a maky was a small pack hunting animal, the kyel was a much larger predator that needed no pack to hunt. Generally solitary and found farther up in the highlands, kyels were just as shy around people as makys were. She had only ever seen one once in the forests and it had observed her with that big eyeless crescent-shaped head until it got bored and moved on.

She checked up at the passage of the sun overhead, making sure that she still had time to follow the patrol around and then get back to her chores. The sun had barely hit the apex of its height over the sky, so she knew she had several hours yet until she was expected back at her cabin. The tracks from the maky patrol continued through the valley, until they came up against the treeline of the hillside.
She stumbled almost to a start as she saw that the maky patrol suddenly seemed to go all over the area at odd angles here. She had difficulty in keeping the many different tracks straight from one another.

It took several moments for her to finally discern the different tracks from each other. Some thought that one animal track was no different from another, and at first she would have agreed. But a little bit of investigation and one could find the pugmark of an animal was as unique as a face was to another person.

She turned towards the treeline and then back to the tracks. Her first instinct had said that the makys had seen something in the trees and they were stumbling around either trying to get a better look or intimidate whatever they were looking at.
Aryel looked for the tracks that marked the departure of the makys from this area and as she suspected, the tracks showed what had to be the animals moving at a very fast rate away from there. Had something in the trees startled them? The questions popped into her head, and she remained at the edge of the treeline, looking cautiously up towards the hillside.

There was no place in this valley that she hadn’t been to at least once and as she recalled there was nothing special up in that area to draw attention. Few trees sprung up from this hillside, just enough to create a canopy, and the slight twinge of fear that had pierced through her slowly faded away. Very few things could put fear into makys and make them bunch together for protection. Hunters and kyels were about the only things she could imagine. And maybe an enraged aegysback bull could do it as well.

She looked up towards the hill and shifted back and forth in her position until she was satisfied that whatever had made the maky patrol so startled and scared had long since gone. As far as she could see, the hillside was barren, save for a few prysmaflys that flitted about the canopy of the trees and occasionally landed to pick up the golden colored seeds that fell to the ground.

The trees that grew here were the copper-barks and lion’s manes. The former being large trees with a slightly metallic brass colar that was incredibly strong and resilient. Her cabin was made of that material. Lion manes were a darker color, and were topped by long narrow leaves that were supposedly reminiscent of some Earth animal.

The more she watched, the more convinced she became that the coast was clear and her fear was nothing more than her imagination. She started forward at what she thought was a slow pace. Each step that she took, she looked down to check and make sure she didn’t step on any sort of branch or twig. Of the two different things that could scare a patrol of makys, the hunters and poachers were probably the more dangerous to her at least

She had heard of such people, but had never actually seen them. Wild men and women that stalked all through the wilds of the planet, searching for game to hunt and sell to traders were not something she wanted to associate with. The area she was in now constituted one of the more wild areas of the wilderness, where the only law was what you made.

Finding hunters and poachers could end badly if the stories she had heard were to be believed. Wyllyam Korgan, the boy at the next farm over may not be the most trustworthy sort, but if his stories were remotely correct, then she would be right to fear poachers. Part of her told her that her wariness was unwarranted, and what whatever had been here and startled the patrol was long since gone.

Unnamed Novel

Alright, here is the new novel. I haven't decided on a name just yet, so I'll figure that out later. As previously stated, if you want access to the last one, just let me know.

You were already given a bit of an intro into the world in a previous post, so I'll assume you at least looked over it. It may make things clearer for you I hope.

Questions to be answered

1. Can you tell this section is done from the PoV from a predator? What are you feelings on that, as far as a non-"sophant" perspective?

2. How about the way it goes along? Does it seem to sound like coming from the PoV of a predatory animal? If not, what can be improved or changed?

3. How about the animal itself? Can you gather a decent picture in your mind of what it is or what it looks like? What can't you picture about it?

4. Any other observations? This is relatively short for a normal piece (around 1600 words).

Chapter 1

At that time, I wasn’t aware that the creature that had been dubbed the Byzarch Man-eater was anywhere in the proximity of my home. We were living in a very remote cabin at the time, easily ten or so miles away from the nearest large village, a small place called Kyl’s Wells. Pa rarely headed into town, and any news he picked up, he kept to himself. I sometimes wonder if he had known about the presence of the beast at all beforehand.

The animal crept through the dense undergrowth that covered all of this section of the mountainside. Each step that the animal took sent a lance of pain through its body but was strongest in its rear left leg. The animal knew something was wrong with that limb, as if a foreign presence had been introduced to the leg that even now bit and slashed at his limb with determined ferocity. But many inspections on previous occasions had turned up nothing there. The beast recalled a time previous when the pain had first appeared many darknesses ago.

Lying after taking a kill down, the beast had been resting in the shade that provided such a pleasant distraction from the otherwise intense heat of the day. There had been a loud crack off in the distance, like that of when one of the great trees fell to the ground. A lancing pain had shot through that same limb, and he had bolted away from the area in fright.

Now, the pain still lingered, and had become such a problem that the old male could no longer hunt the prey that he once had feasted on. To take down one of the larger beasts, the ones with the great shields on their heads and backs required speed, agility, and strength. He had all but the first, and that was enough to have spelt his doom.

The old male had been around for a long time, and many passages of the great freezes stuck in his mind of the ages that he had wandered this land. He had ran with the packs, and mated and produced many offspring. Now he was well past the prime of his life but for all his many weathered years, he still considered himself top dog and any of his brothers or sisters that encountered him knew that. He was far larger than the others of his kind and age had only given him a grizzled determination. He knew were it not for that pain in his rear left leg, he could still easily take down any beast of the forests that he came across.

He crept forward again through the dense brush of the forest. Each step was cautiously measured so as to not startle his prey, nor give them any warning that he was even in the area. Hundreds of kills over the many long seasons had imbued him with a perfect sense of how to stalk prey, and he rarely if ever missed a kill.

His limbs were lithe and muscular, and each of his legs branched off into a two pronged foot and each foot ended in a softly padded “hoof”. The digits gave him unparreled balance, especially when he was forced into the mountains, or the great sharp bush forests that lay farther up the mountain sides. He levered his long flat tail to the ground, keeping it low to the ground. The tail allowed him incredibly power when he came to the great waters, and it allowed him great balance as well when he moved through the mountains. The females of his kind likewise were attracted to those who had such great plumed tails and he was well aware of the magnificence of his.

His large crescent shaped head kept low to the ground, and he listened for the motions of his prey. Each sonar ping bounced back to the affirmation that his prey had not moved. Their obliviousness was the strange thing about these targets, but was one that he had quickly taken advantage of.

The great hard-shell herds, and their smaller cousins would have noticed the pings that he now boomed out to gain a clearer view of his prey and would have either scattered or formed their great circles around their young, and prevented him from acquiring a kill. But these ones seemed to be completely oblivious to his presence and his calls. Still he watched. Simply because the last few hadn’t noticed him was still not merit to remain unwary.

His prey was dangerous. Far more dangerous than the hard shells were even though the hard shells were much more massive. These two-legs were smaller than him, easily half his size, but they carried sticks around that made loud noises. But if they weren’t aware of his presence then they became the easiest prey he had ever stalked and feasted on. Even given his injured state, he could run them down without difficulty, and once he was close enough, a quick flick of his head would impale them squarely on the great spikes that marked the edges of his crescent shaped head. One sweep and they were down, never to give him trouble again.

But their small size meant they didn’t offer as much nutrition as he preferred in his prey. A single hard-shell would feed him for several darknesses, but each of these lasted maybe a single darkness at most before he needed to hunt again.

His prey still remained motionless out of its large shelter down below him. The shelter was of odd construction, like the trees around the male, but it wasn’t. He had tried his hardest to break into many in darknesses past, but found them semi-impossible to get inside. No, he would have to wait until they were outside like this one and their guard was down.

He had just moved across country during the early morning light, passing through the field that others of his species made their homes. Each kill would sometimes require the long movements across the land, because the others of his prey would inevitably leave their surroundings and flee for safety with others. He may have been strong, but he knew enough not to risk attacking many of them at once. There was too much of a chance of getting injured there. A break in one of the impaling horns on the side of his head would mean his death.

He stalked forward another pace, keeping low to the ground again. The prey looked up, and for a moment, the beast tensed where he lay, thinking his prey had spotted him and his cover was blown. If that was the case, he would have to just bet his luck and charge in after them, hoping to still be able to overbear the prey before they managed to get inside their shelter.

He relaxed his muscles, when the prey looked away, knowing that the prey may have heard something, but had just passed it off as one of the annoying little fliers that flew around the jungle. Many of them lay perched in the trees, crying out their own little pings of sound at his presence which was obvious to them. However his prey must not have heard their calls at all, or if it did hear them, had disregarded them.

He was lucky these beings existed in such amble supply. He had nearly starved to death those freezes previously, when he was unable to kill any of the hard shells and had been forced into scavenging the unliquefied remains of those kills left behind by his uninjured brothers and sisters. It had been quite by accident that one of the smaller beings he now preyed on had come up on him and startled him while he slept.

He rarely had approached them previous to that and this encounter certainly hadn’t happened as a result of his own choosing. Ever since he had come out of the hard shell, his mother had taught him to avoid them. They did not have much food on them, and they were just as liable to attack you as you were them. But when the one in the false skin that these creatures wore stumbled over him, he had leapt to defend himself and impaled it right through the chest. The being had given a loud scream that he felt more than heard, and in a panic he had ran away, leaving the corpse still impaled on the horn.

After he had calmed, he became aware of the limp corpse hanging off the horn, and let it slide off. He had almost left it there, for where there was one, there could be others, but the rumble in his stomach and the smell of the corpse enticed him further. After liquefying part of the corpse he had eaten. It had a bizarre taste, stranger than anything else he had preyed on, but he had at least found nourishment off this being.

That had been the first, and he had since started hunting them exclusively, except where he was able to bully kills off the much more nourishing hard shells that his brothers and sisters brought down. Against the odds, he had managed to survive, and now he was still able to hunt.

He crept forward on his haunches right to the edge of the forest where the tall plants still covered his body adequately enough. His muscles tensed and adrenaline flooded his bloodstream and he pounced forward at the prey, bursting out of the vegetation like a boulder rolling down a hillside. A moment later it was over. Another kill down, and food guaranteed for the rest of the day.