Heaven's Roar [Monster Hunter]

1 - Annihilation Awaits

When the Sky is Black,
When the Seas are Red,
When the Earth is Scarred,
The Calamity is Returned.
At the End of Eternity,
Annihilation Awaits

Luin remembered childhood days of hide and seek with her brother.

What fun they'd have; darting through the village, leaping over carts and through crowds to find a suitable spot to hide before the other had finished counting. She fondly recalled how he'd hide just behind her sometimes, or somehow blend seamlessly into the surrounding area, and fall so silent, so still, it was as though he had disappeared without leaving behind a trace. On occasion he'd reveal himself to admonish her for counting too fast, or for trying to peek through her fingers, or even for giggling as she whispered out each number, knowing full well she'd soon reach the count of ten but he hadn't gone anywhere. Luin could never blend in like he could, so when it was her turn to hide she'd always end up at the same spot, in the bush just outside the village bar. There she'd spend an hour away each time, watching and trying to stifle her laughs as he pretended not to know where she was, and pretended to be scared when she inevitably ruined her cover to jump out and roar at him.

How she missed that bush.

Her breath was slow, terrified as it drew from between her lips and into the silence of the night. Her fingers wrapped tight around the dull, gray grass on which she lay, peering warily over the ridge's edge. She blinked. Nothing stood there, there on the rocky earth some thirty or so feet away where she had last spotted the mighty thing before ducking into cover after a brief chase. There was no sand upon which its footprints may have imprinted upon so that she could track its movements, those sparse few amounts were far from a great enough quantity to.

Was it...gone..?

No, it couldn't be. Luin hadn't a clue what had aggravated the Anjanath so deeply, but she knew that even an average one wouldn't simply give up as easily as it had. She also knew that Anjanath, the towering black and pink brutes, had an unnatural capacity for stealth. She had never been convinced by those stories of how trained and well-experienced Rangers could simply lose track of a Brute Wyvern of its size, only for it to ambush them however long later with no warning, but now she fully believed each and every one of them and regretted not doing so sooner. If she had, would she still be in this situation?

It was only meant to be a quick trip down to the lake. How it all went so wrong, Luin didn't faintly know. The night had been a quiet one, the sort where the crickets and frogs join into a melody. There was none of that when she came down to the water, no sound from another creature for miles around. That should've been her first warning.

Luin was raised, as was every other child in the village, to pay dire attention to nature. "The machinations of the wild," The once-ranger who taught them would always say, "Are the machinations of life itself." A snapped stick meant you weren't alone.

Silence meant you were alone with something else. That "something" revealed itself only after the girl had closed her book, deciding her midnight reading had come to an end when the foreboding feeling that something awful was about to happen had overwhelmed her senses until it had rooted itself firmly in her mind. She'd turned and stood when, beyond the nearest wave of hills, a black-furred tail whipped before falling back out of sight. By the time she had already began to attempt a hasty but quiet exit, the pink maw of the monster appeared to her left. Luin considered herself supremely lucky that she had already been close enough to the hills that the sprint into them seemed sufficient to remove herself from the gaze of the Anjanath, though it had still attempted to give chase.

That was three minutes ago.

The past one-hundred and eighty or so seconds had been spent with fear's song singing in her heart and across her body. Her finger twitched rapidly against the ground, upsetting the dry soil from which sprouted the monotone grass within which she hid. Emerald eyes peered wide from amidst her dark skin, each breath drawn long and shaky. She dared not think of what might occur should she reveal herself too soon, should she even attempt to return to her village before she was certain that the beast was well and truly gone.