Context: A common bedtime story among the Courier Caste of sharads, slightly modified to be told in the Protectorate. The Administrator Caste first recorded this story’s existence around the year 800 BP.
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Just 500 meters from the safety of the mountains, Vanier caught her foot in a divot and fell flat on her face.
“Hgn!” Her cheeks puffed with a guttural scream, but she covered her mouth and forced the cry back into her lungs. Her ankle was broken, twisted at an unnatural angle.
Despite the darkness native to her world, and her throbbing ankle, her senses were as sharp as ever. Clenching her teeth to suppress the pain, she rolled to her back and scrambled to a nearby tree, laying against it with the mountains behind her. Her body went limp, and the innate skill of her people, the sharad, activated. She became one with the world around her, her back seemingly fused with the bark, her legs disappeared against overgrown grass. Vanier’s pale skin, white hair, and shining red eyes normally reflected light like a beacon, but with the skill of her people, it was as if she was enveloped in darkness. Her body and clothes seemed to fade into the transparent air. She wasn’t actually invisible, but she existed on the edge of perception.
There was 500 meters of open grass between the mountains and the forest. With her ankle as damaged as it was, she’d be caught and killed long before she reached the paved, single-file stairwell with blue torches flanking the gate.
Vanier stretched her senses deep into the darkness and felt movement.
A subtle obstruction in the wind, an unnatural rustling of a bush, a faint shift in temperature. It approached slowly, carefully. The moment it located its prey -Vanier- it would shoot forward with a speed and strength capable of destroying boulders, let alone a fleshy body like hers.
The creature had no name.
Like all beasts that stalked the shadowlands of Sharashado, it was an utterly unique being spawned with the sole purpose of slaughtering all those who ventured down from the mountains. There was a good chance that the beast didn’t even have a mouth and would soon die of starvation. It killed not for food, but because of an innate bloodlust.
Vanier’s sharp eyes studied the pure darkness in front of her, cataloguing every oddity. She held her breath, not to hide, but to remove any excess disturbances.
The beast, like Vanier, wasn’t invisible, the brain just refused to acknowledge its presence. Vanier sensed the shifting of dirt, the flattening of grass, the beast couldn’t be detected, but its impact on the world could. It most likely had four long legs, each ending in a hoof no wider than her fist. As it stalked the forest, the indents it left in the dirt were several inches deep. Vanier’s brain calculated the surface area and depth, realizing the beast should be in the vicinity of 700lbs.
A leaf fell from the canopy above, fluttered down softly, then landed on a wall of air about 12 feet off the ground.
Vanier gulped silently. ‘The beast,’ she thought, ‘walks on four stick-like legs, with the bulk of its main body suspended about-’
The beast stepped on Vanier’s leg, instantly breaking her shin.
Vanier’s red eyes rounded as excruciating pain flooded her brain. Her mouth hung open, and she felt a blood curdling scream bubbling up from the bottom of her lungs. If she cried, she would be discovered. If she moved her hands to cover her mouth, she would be discovered. If she lost focus and stopped hiding her presence, she would be discovered. If she jerked her leg, then not only would she probably rip her calf in half, but the beast would immediately sense the tugging of flesh.
Vanier closed her eyes and tensed every muscle in her body, not breaking stealth for even a second. Carefully, she closed her mouth, and clenched her lips tight.
The beast reduced pressure on her shattered shin and crushed calf, then raised its spindly leg, revealing a deep purple bruise amidst the flattened flesh.
As blood oozed out of the ripped veins, she couldn’t keep the scream from finally escaping her lips, “mhm-!” No more perceptible than a mouse’s squeak.
The beast’s leg abruptly stomped down into the dirt, inches away from her other leg.
Vanier stopped breathing. Her eyes turned glossy as she ceased all thoughts. Vanier’s heart slowed to just two beats a minute.
Hot, moist air brushed against her pale face. The revelation that the beast had a mouth, and would most likely eat her down to the bones, did not register in her slowed mind.
Vanier’s fluffy white hair was pulled forward via suction, then forced back due to a gust of hot air. Suction, then gust, suction, gust.
The two thoughts her brain was still capable of processing were a haphazard combination of “go away” and “don’t eat me.”
Her one saving grace was that the beasts of Sharashado were built for stealth, and would not expose themselves unless there was proof of a life they could snuff out. From what it could tell, there was a body lying against the tree, but it might not have been alive. No heat, no breath, no sound, nothing to smell.
The beast raised a thin leg and pressed it into the dirt. Then raised again, moved it, and pressed once more. It pressed again, then again, then finally caught her leg and crushed the bone under her kneecap. It couldn’t feel her skin, or detect the crunch, and Vanier’s brain was so slowed that she couldn’t register pain.
The beast pressed into dirt twice more, then silence.
A minute passed.
Two minutes.
Five.
Ten.
Vanier wasn’t at risk of bleeding out thanks to her slowed heart rate, but the moment her senses returned, the sudden flood of pain signals jabbing her brain would make it impossible to avoid screaming her lungs out.
Twenty minutes later, the beast ran out of patience and retreated back into the forest. Either its prey was dead, it thought, and there was no reason to stay, or the prey had run off, in which case it was gone and wouldn’t be found again.
Two hours after that, Vanier’s heartbeat returned to normal, and then immediately spiked.
She sharply inhaled, “aaa-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH-!!”
Tears streaming down her face, Vanier screamed until her vocal cords died. When she was composed enough to think straight, she bit down hard on a stick, then dragged herself to the safety of the mountains.