As he surmised, those twig-like pillars couldn’t sustain his weight (or her own;) when she fell the branded titan aspires to follow. Exposed fangs drip with foam, his claws strain, harboring a cruel desire to fill their emptiness with her heaving, gasping carcass. Those herbivore teeth take a lunge at his shoulder; but fall short and seal over his ankle instead. As that crushing pressure closes in, rigid bolts of agony fly up through his wounded leg. The hunter snarls, fresh torment etching a firm path. Yet, he doesn’t instantly pull away. Pain sharpens his awareness and feeds the insanity.

Storming hooves flash against the ground nearby, he aims to move over the female, pressing down. His focus jerks to the stag, whiskers lift, becoming hard pressed. The hair on his body bristles as another vicious gnarl rises from below. “Come on,” he grates, taunting and still trying to apply as much of his bulk upon the doe as possible in an effort hinder any hope the mare might conjure in squirming beneath his scrambling claws.

There was one aspect he got wrong.

The hunter had misjudged the bothersome, feathered meat sack. After a moment of deliberation, of him weighing risk vs reward – his fearful dancing partner took off. Tearing through the undergrowth. Fleeing their messy battlefield. The forest seems to sigh as the dust and litter begin to settle. Those snarling corners lift, a bellowing laugh disrupts the heated air. Nothing but cowards, the whole lot of them. A hateful, vindictive sneer creeps along the hunter’s face, “how unlucky,” though he speaks softly, through the wisp of a pant, there is no warmth…there is only the chilling thrum of a killer. “Just you,” his words drop a note, almost becoming soft – but deadly intentions lay beneath said silk, “and me now.” The pain in his leg and shoulder pounds, threatening his resolve, he hisses a warning – daring her to fight.

His hot chest extends as the cruel lash of his tail dashes up, aiming to carcass her haunch. “Your master,” poisonous envy returns and he doesn’t bother to conceal it. Why hide who he was from someone with two feet in the grave? “He has a message for you.” Teeth gape apart, his tongue slithers out as the hunters aims to drag his mouth along her lean neck with both the flat of his teeth and tongue seeking to stroke the fevered, trembling flesh below.

The fragile pulse beneath her coat hums to him, beckoning…he directs his intentions lower, aspiring to shift the bulk of his body up in an effort to maintain dominance and achieve the perfect angle for that killing stroke. Just as he…cranium jerks his snarling face up, following the ruckus. The gleam of dappled flesh appears, looming over him…the hunter gasps and that is the last sound he can make before a horrible pressure builds inside his head. He feels his claws let loose and for a moment…darkness envelopes. The ground rises to meet him.

He lays in the litter, rattled and unconscious…