Hunter and Hunted
By that which you kill are you bound.
So thought Sora as she leapt agilely from rock to rock, scaling a mountain, searching for the remote town that was protected by these wonderful barriers of nature. The cold barred just about any ordinary human from effectively entering the town, unless they were used to mountain life and the harsh, bitter climate. Snow-capped mountains were all she could see for miles; but from the information her acute senses had received, the town of Mayu couldn’t be too far away. She could smell the faintest scent of a human – or at least, scents that told her humans had trekked by here before.
So the Awakened Being continued her search, which seemed to be increasingly futile. But she was not about to give up; the thought of many, many juicy humans enticed her; her already grumbling stomach grumbled further, reminding Sora just how long she hadn’t consumed a decent human, and just how long her stomach had been made to go on nothing but its own hydrochloric acid.
Days!
The word echoed in her mind as her sharp eyes spotted the silhouette of the town, swathed in a raging, wild blizzard, from a great distance. Laughing to herself, the Awakened Being began to scale the mountains in her way, moving so quickly she seemed to be part of the wind one moment, and the next, she was part of the flying snow, and the next, she had materialized in front of the town entrance, whereby she didn’t bother to take a human form. She was too hungry for that, and instead barged straight into the town, her four extra arms extending and grabbing every human standing within an 11-metre radius of her, and the other two of her arms picking out her favorite part of the human – guts – for a feast, ignoring the screams of humans.
Sora left no stone unturned; so voracious was her appetite that she didn’t leave any human alive, be it adult or child. Amidst the roar of the violent snowstorm, which whipped snow all around her, she rubbed her now-full tummy, and exited the town, leaving behind her a mass grave of dead, or dying, humans. Blood was splattered on the walls of houses, even the gates marking the entrance and exit had been stained, and would be preserved by the iron grip of winter for centuries to come. As she walked out of the town, she scented the smell of a young human, but by then she was satiated, and so didn’t turn back.
Down the mountain, to the foot of it where it was warmer, where the meadow met the mountain – and she saw a group of Claymores in the distance even before she sensed them. Four of them.
An Awakened Being hunt, she chuckled to herself. Hopefully I’m not the lucky one?
But as she neared the group, it became apparent that she was the target, for they withdrew their claymores upon sensing – or sighting – her – whichever method of detection that came first.
For Sora it was sight; though when she was near enough to interact with them, she found that they were a considerably weak group. ‘Two small Yoki, one strong Yoki, and one average Yoki; my, my,’ said the Awakened Being, sarcasm dripping from her tone, ‘how very low is the organization’s estimation of my capability.’
No Claymore moved; all seemed daunted by her.
‘Well? I’m being kind to you here: any decent Awakened Being would be seizing this chance to kill you off first,’ Sora remarked dryly, sparking a reaction from the strong Yoki, whom she presumed was a single digit.
Definitely in the lower half, she decided as she sidestepped the vertical slash, for this Claymore had potential, but potential that was untapped and would never be tapped after this match, she smiled grimly at the thought.
Taking the cue, the other three Claymores sprang into action. A diagonal slash to her right shoulder, Sora ducked it; a vertical slash from the bottom, she stepped backwards; a sideways cut to her chest, she did a backward somersault, only to be stabbed in the abdomen by the single-digit Claymore, who had been waiting for her to perform that move. But wait – the Claymore hadn’t done a normal stab. She couldn’t have possibly reached the coordinates needed to stab the Awakened Being squarely in the abdomen from her previous position in seconds. She had moved, lightning quick; the Claymore's golden eyes told Sora this much.
In fact, her own third eye had told Sora everything.
A sardonic smile slowly spread across the Awakened Being’s face. ‘One to zero,’ she said shrewdly, as one of her four arms snaked smoothly down, gaining a firm hold on the Claymore’s weapon. ‘But – ’
She tore the weapon from the Claymore’s grasp, tossing it a few feet away. Unarmed, the single-digit Claymore only stared in utter fear and terror, petrified, as another arm – of which she could only see a faint green glow and its outline against the backdrop of their surroundings – plunged itself into her, grating through flesh and bone, tearing through tendons and muscles, finally emerging on the other side, stained in blood. A cooling feeling rushed through the whole arm, for the fresh air was cooler than the Claymore’s body; Sora allowed herself to enjoy the feeling a little, before pulling her arm out of the unnamed single-digit’s corpulent mass, which collapsed inanimate on the ground.
The other Claymores watched hesitantly, and then began to back away, as their targeted monster turned to face them, one of her four arms now visible by the staining of crimson red.
By that which you kill are you bound.
The thought sang in her head, repeating itself over and over as she danced through the three girls easily, unhindered. With the extension of five fingers she shot them like darts, one by one, each finger stabbing key areas in one of the Claymores: through the forehead, the abdomen, and the location of her heart. The rest she merely aimed at wherever she felt would not cause her fingers to entangle themselves with one another; one to the left leg, and the other to the shoulder. Following which the five darts retracted, drawing with them a spray of crimson red; the cloud of red forming a final cry of death before raining onto what little life was left.
At the same time as a red rain fell incessantly onto the two Claymores, Sora had two arms through each of them, ripping out their hearts as if their bodies were made of water. Which was, scientifically, true, for 70% of the human body consisted of water. Although she didn’t know if that fact still applied to someone half-human, half-Yoma. She walked away from the bloodied scene, the once-green grass tainted red, in an artistic abstraction of the thought that had not ceased to repeat itself in her mind.
As Sora wandered aimlessly away from the scene of bloodshed, back towards the mountains, she found herself smiling a twisted smile; a smile between sorrow and sadistic joy.
Sorrow. Sora.
‘Indeed…’ she spoke softly to no one in particular, scaling the mountain and standing at its peak, observing the scenery far and wide, ‘By that which you kill are you bound, indeed…’
And then the wind whipped up a snowstorm on cue, hiding even something that stood out like a sore thumb, so well that from conspicuity it became complete camouflage, that one could not differentiate between snow and wind, and when the storm finally died, the one life caught in its vortex had, once again, disappeared.