Archive of Our Own

Hunter stretched her arms as she stepped out of her tent. Today she had a simple quest- she just had to harvest 10 unique mushrooms and she'd be home before dark. 

After weeks of exhausting hunting, she decided she needed something a little more low-key, something to center herself.

So here she was, walking confidently towards the mountains. 

The comforting weight of her dual blades rested against her shoulder blades. This time of day, large monsters were still sleeping, but she knew from experience that, if smaller monsters got the jump on her, they could be just as deadly as their larger counterparts. It was better to be prepared than to be breakfast.

Finding unique mushrooms was harder than Hunter had anticipated, but by midday, she had almost all that she needed. The only resistance she had encountered in that time was a pack of jagras that swarmed her in the woods, but she was ready for them. They fell under her swords in moments and she had to return to her campsite to drop off their pelts and claws, but she didn’t mind. If anything, the rhythm of combat was comforting, and the long walk back gave her time to stretch back out and drink water.

It was unusual to not encounter more creatures, but she tried to not get too concerned about it. Most likely she was being stalked by something, which was concerning, but she was able to hold her own even when caught off guard. Her leather armor was well-fortified and her blades were sharp.

Even so, getting lazy could still get her killed, and as much as she tried to prevent it, she felt herself getting more comfortable with each passing hour.

Hunter continued hiking into the woods, the ground going from leafy vegetation to rocks and needled trees. She knew from experience that a river ran nearby. That would be an excellent place to have her lunch.

Spurred on by thoughts of rations and a short rest, Hunter didn't notice when she passed a boulder that should not have been there.

All it took was one wrong step and suddenly the ground lurched beneath her.

Hunter stumbled then went flying as the boulder burst from the ground. She landed with a disconcerting thud, but nothing was broken or immediately alarming, and she was back on her feet in an instant, swords out before she had even regained her balance.

Before her was a basarios. Not yet full grown, but still massive, larger than the wagon she rode to camp last night.

Hunter faced her adversary with a grin, forgetting her weariness as adrenaline began coursing through her. A fight sounded good right now. The day had been too slow and she was tired of pretending she enjoyed it.

The basarios roared and lunged for her, but she slipped out of the way and slashed at its side, breaking a few key points in its natural armor.

The beast swung around, jaws snapping open. Hunter ducked out of the way, but its tail slammed into her side before she could move out of the way, sending her flying.

She sprawled on the rocky ground with a grunt, struggling to catch her breath. She didn’t have time to wait for her vision to stop swimming. She pulled herself back to her feet and lunged back at the monster, running on instinct.

She stumbled in a few key spots and rolled her ankle once, but her blades struck true and its wings were reduced to shreds by the time her vision stabilized. She rushed its relatively vulnerable underside and continued hacking at it, then dodged as it surged forward.

The beast roared before Hunter could dart back in. Hunter had to clap her hands over her ears. It cost her precious moments and the beast rammed its clawed wing into her, knocking her back onto the ground. Her blades went flying off somewhere else, but she couldn't process much else. Her head hit a rock painfully and her vision went white for a second.

That one second was all it took for the battle to take a turn.

A massive mouth closed around her left ankle.

Hunter forced herself into a sitting position just in time to see the basarios bite clean through her flesh, tearing her foot off with a wrench of its head and a horrible popping sound.

Blood sprayed over the wyvern’s face and Hunter screamed. Pain shot from her leg straight to her chest, her head, almost completely consuming her. She scrambled away the best she could, leaving a trail of blood from her spurting ankle as she went.

The basarios, with obvious satisfaction, chewed and swallowed her foot, steel-toed boot and all. 

Quickly, Hunter glanced around for her blades. Where had she dropped them? Losing a foot meant she couldn’t move very well, and the pain was consuming her faster than she could process, but it was much better to have something than nothing, and if she could just find her blades-

A glint of metal, maybe ten feet away. She could get this back under control.

Hunter pushed herself to her knees, doing her best to ignore the pain and failing, collapsing back to the ground with a groan.

She couldn’t afford this moment of agony. 

Laboriously, she dragged herself forwards, hand over hand, but she was quickly thrown into her back. 

The thing had hit her with its tail. Pain radiated from her side, intense and sharp. She definitely heard something break, and now she was having a hard time catching her breath.

Hunter didn't give up. She never gave up.

She pushed herself back up, mind racing. If she could drink a potion, she might have a chance to escape, she didn’t know if she could kill the thing at this rate, but if she could get up-

The monster shot forward again, faster than she thought possible. The blunt teeth once again closed around her leg, this time to her knee. 

Hunter cried out, desperately pushing herself away, but it yanked her cruelly back towards it. Her head hit the rocky ground as she slid towards it and her own blood rained down on her when it closed great jaws. With a crunch , another part of Hunter was gone.

She wailed, tears falling freely as the agony renewed, sharper than before.

She had to escape, she didn’t know if she could make it back to the village like this, but she had to get away, she couldn’t die here. She couldn't watch herself get eaten, bite by bite.

Even so, Hunter couldn’t move. The pain was too big.

All she could do was cry and watch numbly as the basarios chewed and swallowed what used to be her shin. Its yellow eyes turned back to her, hunger evident in its expression.

Something primal in Hunter woke up when their eyes locked.

The basarios's jaw opened back up. Hunter could see chunks of her flesh caught between its square teeth. She grasped at the carving knife at her back and flung it with as much accuracy as she could at the monsters face. Ideally, she would hit an eye, partially blind it and use that opening, but the knife bounced harmlessly off of the wyverns flat face. 

This almost seemed to amuse the basarios. Drunk with bloodlust, it gulped up more of her leg, now well past the knee, almost to her hip. 

Before it could close its jaws, Hunter fumbled for anything she could use to defend herself and found a stone.

Sizeable.

Heavy.

Normally it would be too heavy, and her injured ribs would make lifting it impossible, but adrenaline and desperation gave her strength.

She yanked it from the ground and, with all the strength she could muster, brought it down on the monsters head. Its horns snapped, but she wasn’t done. 

The basarios’s  teeth were already in her leg. Hunter was faster than its jaw. 

She brought the rock back down and cracked the stony surface of its head, then again and the creature's skull caved in with a satisfying crack. Again, and its brain was exposed, then splattered over her face, her arms, catching in her hair. 

She almost didn’t notice as its jaw was, for the last time, forced down on her leg and chopped through the bone from the sheer strength of her blows.

Finally, when the monsters head was nothing more than a gristly mess, she threw the rock aside.

While the rest of its head might have been ground to a pulp, its jaw and teeth were very much in tact and very much still embedded in her leg.

Stupidly hoping her leg could be saved, she forced the dead monster’s mouth open.

There was, of course, nothing to save. White bone stood out from the red gore of what used to be her leg, now laying inanimate and mangled. Just meat.

Hunter couldn’t stop shaking, and she realized she was screaming. Her throat was raw and dry, but she couldn’t stop. The pain overwhelmed her and she couldn't stop looking at the mess of her leg. She couldn't stop bleeding out. How much blood has she lost already?

She couldn't count this as a victory. She may have survived this encounter, but she had still lost. She couldn’t hunt anymore like this. She might not even be able to get herself back to camp like this.

Something far away reminded her of the first-aid meds in her bag. If they weren’t crushed, she could actually have a chance to survive, blood loss and shock be damned.

She wouldn’t get her leg back, but she would live. Whatever happened after that, she would figure it out, but she couldn’t die here.

She pried open her bag with unsteady fingers and dug out a miraculously unbroken bottle. She poured the first-aid med over her leg. 

Immediately the pain began to fade, now replaced with a pleasant tingling sensation. The bleeding slowed.

Then she promptly turned and emptied her stomach.

Maybe she’d die in an hour, but she killed the creature that was so intent on killing her.

She shakily took out a potion and drank it, then retrieved her bandages. The first-aid med and potion would help to prevent infection and encourage healing, but she still needed to wrap the wound.

Pressing the cloth to her wound brought the pain back into focus and she howled in agony. Her hands determinedly kept moving. She knew that if she stopped, even for a moment, she might not start again.

Shaking uncontrollably, she wrapped and tied the bandage tight.

This was supposed to be easy.

This was supposed to be a boring job that she could knock out in a day with nothing lost but time.

Hunter collapsed onto her right side, curled around the basarios’s huge mangled head. She was so tired.

She knew she needed to move before scavengers found her and the massive corpse in front of her, but surely she had time for just a moment of rest. Just a moment, and then she’d figure out her next steps.

Just a moment, and she’d be good.

Hunter didn’t realize she had passed out until pain jolted her awake as tiny hands dragged her onto a stretcher. Instinctively, she tried to push them away, but her arms wouldn’t cooperate and lifted just a few inches before falling back to her sides.

“What are-” She managed.

“Hunter, we’re taking mew back,” A feyline voice purred reassuringly.

“Taking… me back?” Hunter groggily repeated.

“ Mew’re injured” the feyline explained.

“Badly,” another chimed in.

“We’re taking nya back to the village.” The first feyline finished.

Hunter didn’t catch the rest of what was said, if anything was said at all. Relief was all she felt as her eyelids fell back down.

Hunter drifted in and out of consciousness, one moment she was consumed with pain and surrounded by voices, the next she was being fed something bitter, then, more voices, and finally, silence. It was impossible to make sense of anything, and she stopped trying. She just gave in to the soothing darkness.

When she finally woke up, she was somewhere soft and warm. The sound of a fire came from her right and when she pried her eyed open, she recognized the ceiling of her house.

She croaked something incoherent through torn vocal chords as more sensations made themselves known- the scent of lavender and sage, a heavy blanket draped over her body, the sound of rustling fabric and clicking shoes as someone rushed to her side.

“Oh, oh thank god, Hunter,” A feminine voice said. “You’re awake.”

Hunter turned her heavy head to see a medic at her side. Faintly, she searched her mind for a name… Berwig, yes. Her friend.

“How did I…?” Hunter tried again. “What time…” these questions felt irrelevant. She trailed off before she could finish asking.

“Well, I’m not sure what happened,” Berwig said. “You were brought in almost a week ago, completely catatonic. I wasn’t sure you’d pull through, but I'm so glad you did.” She smiled and took one of Hunters hands in her own. “You did an excellent job with the bandage and the first aid. If you hadn’t done what you did, you wouldn’t be sitting here now.”

“A week…” Hunter thought for a moment, then, dreading what she’d see, looked down.

She couldn’t see any specifics through the blankets, but her left leg was nothing more than a stump. It wasn't even the length of her forearm. 

Just seeing that was enough to make bile rise in her throat, which she swallowed with some difficulty as she looked away, breathing heavily through her nose. Berwig was already holding a bucket for her, but Hunter waved it away.

“It’s gone,” She managed when she regained control of her breathing. “it- it’s just gone .”
Berwig sat on the chair next to Hunter’s bed, offering a handkerchief. “You’re okay,” She soothed. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay,” Hunter gasped out. She accepted the handkerchief and scrubbed at her eyes. “It’s not okay- my fucking leg is gone. It’s gone .”

“Deep breaths,” The medic encouraged.

“I can’t hunt anymore,” Hunter snapped. “I can’t- I can’t hunt, I can’t walk, what am I going to do?”

“They’re making you a prosthetic,” Berwig said. “It’ll take some time, but you'll be able to walk again. You may even be able to hunt again. All it's going to take is time.”

Hunter shook her head, pressing her hands to her face and breathing as deeply as she could.

“I’m fucked,” she whispered. “I'm completely fucked.”

Just saying this made despair well up and in moments she was crying harder than she had in years. Berwig moved to sit next to her on her bed and Hunter melted into her embrace. She buried her head in the crook of her shoulder and sobbed until she couldn't produce any more tears. Her side protested with its reminder that it, too, had gotten battered. She didn't bother blocking it out. What was the point?

When Hunter had shed her last tears and caught her breath, Berwig took a cup from the side table and filled it with water from the carafe.

“Drink some water,” The medic said, pressing it into Hunters shaking hands, She didn’t know how thirsty she was until the first drop touched her chapped lips. She emptied the cup in seconds, and her companion dutifully refilled the cup until she had had enough.

“I’ll get you something to eat,” she said. “Are you going to be alright on your own for a moment?”
Hunter nodded and she retreated. Hunter was alone.

Immediately, the absence was like a vacuum and her thoughts came swarming back in. She was fucked. Her life, her body, everything. Her name was a cruel mockery left for her by her parents; once it was her ambition, her vocation. Now it was a hollow reminder of her fragility. 

Everything felt meaningless. Why had she fought so hard to live? What remained for her?

The door creaked open again and Berwig reentered the one-room house carrying a tray laden with roasted meat and vegetables. The aroma made her mouth water almost painfully.

Hunter decided that she would proceed one thing at a time. First, a meal. Whatever came next could wait until she was done eating.