Unto the Ages

AN: Sorry for the delay guys, hectic week at work, everyone rushing with last minute things before the holidays come around. I will finally have some peace and quite in the office to pump out chapters.

‘Is this my end?’ Dhun asked himself as he saw a gaping jaw full of teeth descending towards his prone form and thought back to what just happened.

 

After hearing the loud roars in the distance, the next thing all the hunters noticed was that in the west where the angry roar came from, birds were taking off in droves as trees from that direction shook, and the phenomenon of birds escaping the trees were getting closer to where they were.

 

It did not take a genius to figure out that something huge and pissed off was coming towards them and bumping every tree along the way.

 

Dhun quickly rallied the men and got them ready to ambush whatever came. Soon, loud footsteps and the snapping of tree branches could be heard, along with short barking roars that Dhun noticed sounded similar to what some animals did to call for their kin or young.

 

What Dhun was not ready for was how truly massive the beasts were. If the three beasts they just killed dwarfed the hunters, the two beasts that came into view were three times the size of the beasts they just killed.

 

They were truly titanic beasts that looked just like the three beasts they just killed if not for more pronounced ridges in the top of their skulls. If the juveniles they just killed looked like they could bite a man in half, what Dhun and the hunters presumed were its parents could easily gobble a big man whole in one bite.

 

The two titanic beasts looked around and sniffed the air as they got closer to the hunter’s location, and then their eyes landed on the three dead bodies of the juvenile beasts. They broke out into the clearing and looked at the sight of their bloodied and still offspring.

 

They let out high-pitched whines as they gently nudged the dead bodies with their snouts, and when they finally realized and accepted they their offspring were dead, deep trembling bass started rumbling within the two titanic beasts until they roared to the sky in rage and started taking their anger out on the surrounding trees.

 

One of said trees was hiding a hunter behind it, as the tree was bashed to the side, the impact clipped the hunter, flinging him out of cover while letting out a yelp of pain.

 

Hearing the yelp that was distinctively different from the snapping of wood, the two angry beasts turned to the prone hunter and stalked toward him.

 

Now that the hunter’s cover was blown, Dhun had no choice but to launch the ambush to rescue the downed hunter. 

 

With a loud whistle, all the hunters threw their spears in an attempt to repeat their success in blinding these beasts.

 

But unlike the juveniles, these two adult beasts showed their experience in combat by closing their eyes and lowering their heads. This time, the throwing spears were a lot less effective, Dhun noticed that of the throwing spears that struck the body, only about a quarter of them stuck to the body, and of those that stuck, none of them drew blood, merely stuck into the tough skin.

 

As for the throwing spears that struck the head area in an attempt to blind the beasts, none of the throwing spears were stuck in at all, as for the spears hitting the beasts’ eyes, apparently, their eyelids were tough enough to ward off the thrown spears with just scratches and minor cuts, leaving angry undamaged eyes staring at the hunters that surrounded them.

 

“Keep throwing! Someone get that man up and moving!” Dhun shouted as he pointed to the downed hunter.

 

By the time they ran out of throwing spears, the downed hunter was being helped by another hunter to retreat deeper into the woods, but with the cessation of spears pelting them, the two beasts opened their eyes again to see the two hunters retreating.

 

Without missing a beat, one of the beasts launched itself forward to the two retreating hunters while the other broke off to the nearest hunters it could see.

 

Within seconds, the death cries of the two retreating hunters were heard as they were quickly finished off in two quick chomps. The beast did not even bother to chew or swallow, just a quick bite and slamming what was left outside its mouth on the ground or tree before moving on to the next target.

 

“They are too tough.” Dhun muttered to himself before coming to a quick solution, “Break off in pairs and harass it from all sides, stab its feet until it cannot walk, let it chase you between the trees!” Dhun shouted to all the hunters around, to which the hunters reacted immediately and carried out like a well-oiled machine.

 

‘If we cannot blind it, cannot hurt it with ranged weapons, and it is too big for us to reach anything important with melee, we are just going to have to do this slowly by crippling it’ Dhun thought as he prayed to the Spirits for the safety of his men, he just lost two more and did not want to lose anymore, he had already lost too many over the months to get here.

 

A few minutes into the fight, Dhun was taking whatever attack of opportunity he could get on one of the beasts while monitoring the two separate fights, and besides two more hunters not keeping proper distance or cover being seriously injured from tail swipes while the beasts were trashing around, Dhun’s strategy was going rather well, he could already see some stab wound in the beast's legs.

 

In fact, Dhun saw an opening right now, the beast he was facing had its back facing him while it was trying to take a bite out of some other hunters.

 

Dhun rushed in while keeping his body low and ducked under a swinging tail before he reached what he could only describe as an ankle on the beast’s digitigrade leg, but unlike other stone spears that could only do somewhat limited damage due to the tough hide of the beast, Dhun was holding Grud’s spear which held a spearhead made out of some weird, sharp, and strong stone Dhun never seen before.

 

With that spear, Dhun stabbed at the beast’s ‘ankle’ and managed to stab quite deeply into the ankle joint. This successful attack made the beast roar out in pain as Dhun quickly retreated and ducked under another tail swipe as he ran away.

 

When it spun around to attack Dhun, other hunters who saw where Dhun attacked went in to try their luck. This left the beast limping in circles while trying to keep the hunters away, but as the seconds passed, Dhun noticed something started to change in the beast’s behavior.

 

The beast started to breathe deeper and more rapidly, the whites of its eyes were becoming bloodshot, and it was starting to foam at the mouth. After a few more seconds of displaying this change in behavior, it let out a roar that was more savage than usual and charged at a pair of hunters taking cover behind a tree while ignoring the damage from a hunter that had stabbed it in the leg.

 

This time instead of going around the tree to try and catch the hunters, it ran straight into the tree and literally knocked it over, crushing the two hunters behind it. The beast even took the time to stomp the remains of the two hunters before turning to look for new targets.

 

No sooner had the beast Dhun been engaging turned to find a new target, that Dhun heard a similar savage roar from the other beast less than a hundred meters away, and shortly after a cry of pain from a hunter in that group.

 

Another booming impact of a tree being run over and the shouts of hunters jumping out of the way brought Dhun’s attention back to his own fight. “Has this bloody beast lost its mind!?” Dhun said aloud as he saw the beast trash around and ramming into trees without a care for the damage it was doing to itself, Dhun saw that one of its tiny forearms was already bent at an unnatural angle from its rampage.

 

Seeing the situation, Dhun saw three approaches to this problem. The first was to flee, but after seeing the speed of these beasts, Dhun could only see things ending badly as they were picked off one by one until they were all dead.

 

The second approach was to play it as safe as they could by using the trees to slow down the beasts, but seeing as the beasts were going berserk and ignoring the damage they were taking to kill more of his men, that left him with only one choice to hopefully minimize casualties.

 

That was to strike hard and fast, there would be casualties, but Dhun saw his men losing in a fight of attrition against these tough beasts. He had to cripple them fast.

 

Dhun rallied the more experienced hunters to himself and began shouting orders to the rest of the hunters to carry out his plan, when he was done with his instructions, he sent a runner to the group fighting the other beast and got himself ready for combat, because all that shouting to give out orders had drawn the attention of the beast that was coming towards him.

 

Dhun and five other older hunters charged toward the beast, as the beast kept its eyes on Dhun, the other five older hunters fanned out to surround the beast. While this was happening, the other hunters came out of hiding and started shouting and posture threateningly at the beast in an effort to distract it.

 

The beast and Dhun met, and the beast turned its head sideways low to the ground and opened its maw to snap at Dhun. Seeing no other way to escape by sliding under the attack and not having enough time to sidestep the wide maw coming to bite him in half, Dhun did the only thing he could think of at the moment.

 

Using the butt of the spear, Dhun jabbed it into the ground in front of him and pole-vaulted over the jaws that snapped shut just below him and took half the spear along with it.

 

But what Dhun did not take into account when he pole-vaulted over the jaws and was currently mid-air, was the rest of the beast’s body still in motion charging towards him.

 

The bulk of the beast’s body clipped Dhun and sent him spinning through the air and crashing to the ground, he rolled a few times and ended up sprawled on the ground feeling disorientated.

 

When he flipped himself front side up, he saw saw maw of the beast descending on him and thought, ‘Is this my end?’.

 

But just as Dhun lifted the sharp end of his broken spear to take one last stab at the beast that was about to end his life, the maw paused and started moving to the side when something man-shaped slammed its top jaw, redirecting its whole head to the side.

 

When Dhun got a better look at what crashed into the beast, he saw an unwashed man with dirty matted hair covered in shoddily crafted leather covering. That man had somehow managed to stab what looked like two bone daggers into the upper jaw and snout of the beast and was hanging on for dear life as the beast tried to shake the man off.

 

After shaking off the grogginess and getting a better look at the man, Dhun said “Did I hit my head that badly, or is that Grud?”