Wet Fur Pt. 1

         With a mournful whisper, shrub and grass alike gave way to the cloaked figure.
         The human looked over his shoulder, daring not to pause in his retreat. Minutes ago, the man abandoned the road. He made flight from an otherwise defenseless caravan of merchants and artisans. He felt within his breast a tinge of regret; how could he leave them for dead? How could he defy his orders so readily?
         What did it matter now? They were all dead, taken by that... Monster.
         He looked away from his rear after spotting a great displacement of the high grasses. He gritted his teeth together. There was a coppery taste in his mouth; he must've caught the side of his cheek with his bite. It didn't matter so much to him right now; what mattered was the monster behind him, the great furred beast that hewed limb after limb from men twice as capable as he.
         "This isn't possible,"  he whispered between labored pants. "that thing, that... Demon, it's supposed to be naught but legend, legend! A monster that stalks the night...!"
         So caught up in his internal orations was the man, that he lost perceptions of the ground below for but a moment; that was all it took for him to come upon a log hidden in the grasses. The toe of his boot hooked under it. A cry pierced the mid-autumn night, and the man tumbled over the felled tree. His face met the crusted snow, and soon after, it was upon him.
         "No, no, aaaugh!"
         The man rolled to the side as a furred, clawed hand slashed downward at him. Part of his cloak was caught in the attack. He kept rolling, his hands furiously working at undoing the clasp of his cloak, then he worked to get to his feet. The chilled air hit the chain mesh of his armoring, and a shiver ran up his spine.
         His heart pumped vigorously within his chest. He backed away from the flurry of wrathful claws and gnashing ivory. Through instinct alone, his hand found the leather-wrapped grip of his blade and  brandished it fearfully before the monster. He felt his adrenal reserves deplete and knew he hadn't long to vanquish this foe.
         "You shall taste steel, wretch! Die!", the man in mail cried, charging with the long blade he gripped so angrily in his hands. The hulking beast stopped slashing at the shed cloak, turning its attention to the swordsman. Their eyes locked, and the man leapt into the air. He brought down his blade with the might of a titan, and ferocity to match. If he didn't strike true, this would be the end; through his mind ran a thousand different chants of a thousand different prayers, all begging the gods for a clean, accurate cut.
         Moonlight glinted across the flat of his sword. The monster breathed in ragged pants, much like its quarry. The light scent of coming rainfall wafted into his nostrils. Sour sweat mixed with the metallic taste of his own blood. Time seemed to stand still as he made his descent. Finally, his arms felt a strong resistance, the familiar impact of a  blade on flesh; his eyes and mouth opened wide, accepting this feral furor with open arms. He ended the heavy cut when the monster leapt back. The silvery disc that once reflected off of his longsword now radiated in a light crimson. Like a man possessed, he looked up at the monster, for the first time seeing it in all its sinister grandeur for but a moment; the way the monster flailed around, clutching the stump where its ear once stood, small quantities of blood sprayed the field in a discordant drizzle of deep red droplets, one such droplet of the beast's lifeblood found its way to the warrior's eye. He closed it tight against the sudden pain and ground his teeth together once more.
         The two cried at the same time, in much the same way. His eye maintained a dull ache, but he didn't care; he would tend to it if he managed to survive the monster before him. Again, he charged, but this time, the monster parried a quick one-handed upward cross-slash with a swat of one of its great hands. Something changed when his blade met the monster's claws, as though something snapped within him, some great resovoir of strength burst free of its burgeoning confines. Suddenly, the tune of the battle changed for him.
         "Come on, you gods-damned abomination! I'll send you straight to Hell!"
         The furry monster was taken aback by his sudden, unabashed wrath. The warrior took this opportunity to draw his weapon back, and make for another slash. He came in with another cross-slash, pulled back as a feint. The monster was unaware, just like he wanted; this time, he lashed out with a two-handed horizontal attack. The beast attempted to block it by thrusting his hands forward, but the weapon's edge cut through the soft flesh with relative ease.
         Again, the monster cried, and again, it staggered back. The swordsman couldn't let up, though; something inexplicable drove him to draw blood from the hunched-over figure, something so similar to the bittersweet tinge of his own blood slickening the insides of his cheeks. His movements, more fluid than he could ever remember, were leaving light, yet crippling blows. Even when the monstrosity attempted to lay hands on him, he parried the blows with unnatural ease. Something strange was at work; something he cared not to question if it gave him, a simple mercenary, the upper hand over an unholy creation of yore.
         Strike after strike landed, and the monster's fur, much easier to penetrate than he thought, was growing more and more saturated in blood by the minute. He followed a hasty tempo of movements that grew faster by the second, making contact with the edge of his sword thrice and stepping out of the monster's reach. Regardless of how many times he lashed out at it, though, it would not fall, only cry louder in pain; in fact, in a few cases, it looked as though the older cuts were healing!
         The battle went on for what felt like countless aeons, but really only stretched out to the coming of dawn. The rays of light from the golden sphere just over the horizon heralded the final blow.
         Through auburn tendrils drenched in both his own sweat and his enemy's blood, the mercenary surveyed his foe. The two had been fighting for too long; fatigue was beginning to set in, and his leaden muscles struggled against the weight of both his chain and his blade.  He needed an end.
         And he found one.
         The monster turned its back to the man after a fierce exchange of blows in which neither were injured due to mutual fatigue. It panted and heaved its shoulders. The beast's head drooped. With the opening so clear, the man went for it. He took one, two, three steps back, rolled his shoulders, and gripped his sword in both hands once again. He growled in a way that was eerily similar to that of the monster's frequent guttural utterances he heard throughout the night, and charged in. The monster turned its head, then yelped in surprise; the human leapt, then kicked off of the base of the monster's tail. He rose over it by a foot, bathed in the warming light of the sun's first rays. An overwhelming sense of satisfaction washed over him when he felt the edge of his sword crush into the skull of the being beneath him.
         Something was slightly amiss, though.
         He looked down. No longer was there a monster beneath him; rather, his sword was lodged in the head of a child, no older than thirteen years old.
         But he didn't feel wrong.  He knew what he saw. It was a monster. Not a child, a monster.
         Both the child's body and his own weathered form dropped into the grasses, he a few paces away from the felled youth. It would be a matter of time before someone came looking, and they'd never believe him...
         It didn't matter. He was just so... Tired.
         Nothing else mattered, but sweet rest.