#vtb-no.30

He gritted his teeth, the pain a distant thought as he tried to hurry, but something sharp snapped into his calf, dragging him quickly down.

He slammed into the roots of a tree and was dazed for a long moment where the snarling, barking animals tore into him with teeth like knives.

He turned and backhanded one, kicking the other off and getting to his damaged feet as the animals whimpered and backed off, one of them limping badly.

He kicked another that had come from out of the brush, saliva foaming across its lips, before turning and limping away as quickly as he could. He gasped on the pain at every step, looking up at the full moon above. It was too bright. Too easy to see him. He had to find somewhere to hide.

He did not find a hiding place all through that evening, though his slow pace did not get him caught as he had managed to disable the animals enough to make some extra time as the humans stopped to tend to their new pets.

As his foot finally healed, Esial thought about his own. The crocodiles out in the river who attended him and even helped distract the hippos sometimes in the hopes of getting some extra food from Esial’s catches. He missed them terribly, and it was killing him inside that he might never see them again. He would have to find a different river to live beside and befriend a new family of crocodiles. But they wouldn’t be the same. He had known those crocodiles’ great great grandparents, and now he would never be able to return for fear of being hunted down again for something another monster did.

It wasn’t fair, and it drove him to tears, reaching for the amulet his father had made him to protect him from the sun after being turned by a monster for comfort.

His hands closed on empty air, his nails scraping his unprotected chest. He looked down in shock to find that the amulet was completely gone.

He stumbled to a stop, his breath coming in quick, fearful waves. Even if he had disabled the humans’ pets, even if he did get a head start, he would never make it without the amulet. It was the only reason he hadn’t been caught when the other monsters had been. He turned around, hoping it had fallen off recently, but he knew when he had lost it now. When those animals had brought him down, their teeth in his flesh, it had to have come undone, and he was too stupid to notice.

He keened, high and afraid before turning and bolting. He had to get far, far away from here. He needed to find somewhere to hide, somewhere the humans would never find him. He just needed to make it far enough to where they wouldn’t find him during the day. He could get away if he just had one more night. He had to. He couldn’t be caught, not after everything he’d been through.

Esial cursed himself for losing the last reminder of his father, of his destroyed village, as he ran through the night under the full moon.

…………………………………………………….

Esial curled up in the shallow bank he had dug into just as the sun was beginning to rise. He had found a dry riverbed and dug until he fingers were nearly scraped down to the bone in terror, feeling the coming rays slowly and surely start making their way closer and closer toward his exposed back.

But he’d made it. He’d climbed into his hole and pulled the dirt back in to hide him further, just in case. It was close, and hard to breathe, but better than being in the sun. He had been burned once, only once, but it was enough to put a terror deeper than the Nile was long into him. He closed his eyes, pressing his cheek into the dirt, exhausted from all of running on an empty stomach, as well as all of the healing.

He drowsed for most of the day, the cool dirt cushioning him, until he heard something that made his eyes shoot open in terror.

The barking.

There was no where to go. He could only hope he had hidden well enough they couldn’t find him. He didn’t even know how they managed to keep finding him, so he had no idea if he had done a good enough job. He tired to hold his breath, slowing his already lazy heart beat and hoping they wouldn’t hear anything.

He heard claws on the hard packed dirt and stones, heard the sound of panting, and closed his eyes again. He couldn’t take the anticipation as the creatures came closer and closer.

He heard someone shout out from farther away. “Find anything, boys? What have you got there?”

Esial heard snuffling and he shoved himself back as the animals began to dig at the door to his hole.

“No,” he whispered urgently. “Go away. I’ll kill you! Go!”

The animals did not listen, breaking through and shoving their noses eagerly into the hole, which Esial batted at, causing them to leap back with a startled yelp.

“Looks like the dogs found it! The monster dug itself a little hiding hole,” someone called out.

Esial hissed as he saw a man crouch to get a look at him. “I did not kill anyone. Leave me be!” Esial shrieked for the hundredth time.

The man smirked. “And I just have to trust your word on it?”

Esial’s fierce facade crumbled and he clasped his hands together, shaky and desperate. “Please, believe me! I’m just one of the hippo hunters. I will leave and never come back. Please!”

The man shook his head with a laugh. “No, I don’t think so.”

Esial pressed himself back in his hole as he heard something above him on the bank.

“Dig it out. Once the sun has it, it’ll be easy to deal with.”

“NOOO!” Esial wailed. “PLEASE!”

He coughed as a clod of dirt fell from the ceiling onto him and he turned in his hole, trying to find some way out of this. There had to be some way out.

“Papa!” he cried unthinkingly, but that only made him feel worse. His papa was dead and had been for years. There would not be anyone to save him. All it got him was mocking laughter from the hunters

The dirt gave way and fell on top of him and he fell flat, trembling under the weight of it, still only barely hidden from the sun.

He screamed and writhed as something sharp dove through the dirt and into his side, hooking into his flesh and pulling him up through the soil. He clawed at the dirt around him, but there was nothing to hold onto as the hook spear dragged him out of the ground, and very suddenly he was burning.

He screamed, his mouth melting around his teeth in the face of the sun as the hunters laughed, hauling him up.

The sun was cooking him alive, and there was nothing he could do but writhe and melt as the hunters heaved him up and away. He wasn’t even able to hear them over his screaming and the flesh melting into his ear canals.

He had no control over his body as he was put up against something that burned very differently from the sun, cold rather than hot, and more of it wrapped around him, holding him firmly in place.

He was bundle of nerves, only meant for pain, and there was nowhere his mind could go to hide from the fate. He was everlasting, and ever burning, and even just that realization nearly pushed him over the edge of sanity.

He didn’t know how long the pain lasted, only that he was certain all of his flesh had melted from his bones until finally the pain lessened, speckled in places, and then he was cool, only burning where the cold touched him.

His body slowly began to recoup itself, pulling his flesh back together, unsealing his eyes and mouth, and he gasped for air, opening droopy eyelids.

Night had fallen, and the stars indicated that it was quite late in the night. There were a couple of humans nearby, eating and laughing, feeding their ‘dogs’ and generally enjoying themselves.

Esial looked down to see bright chains wrapped tightly around his torso, arms, and legs, binding him to what felt like a pole. The pain of the metal was insignificant compared to the pain of the sun, though it disturbed him to see how his flesh still sagged over where it had melted onto the chains, bubbles still clear in his skin as his clothing partially hung off of his pelvic bones.

He looked up again, eyes blurred with pain and exhaustion as he spotted the light beginning to come up over the horizon again. He lowered his head and sobbed. “Please,” he whispered, tears refusing to come after spending so long being boiled alive. “Mercy.”

None of the hunters heard him over their revelry.

VTB Part 31

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