The Host Hunter
The light rustle of leaves was the only sound she could hear. All in the woodland was still as she observed each shadow, dusk was the perfect time for a elfen centaur to hunt. The shadows were long, easier to focus on, her ears listening for the sound of a small predator. She hated being a rookie, longing for the day she could just overtake her parents, then she would get the respect she deserved as the High Priestess Druid’s daughter.
For now, her rank meant that she could only hunt larger predators when on a group hunt, she was going to have to settle for something much smaller - a tiny predatory cat or perhaps a small weasel. Cloven hooves sunk into the soft earth beneath them, saturated from the evening’s rain; she paused for a moment, there was a faint sound, she tried to focus once more, drawing her bow down from her back, nervous all of a sudden. She reminded herself of her heritage before pressing further in.
As an elf hybrid, and more importantly, as the daughter of a High Priestess, she had a duty to animals that were injured. That sound was growing louder, more desperate, and it sounded like a boar. She didn’t want to sully her family reputation so had disregarded her hunting endeavour to investigate. She was weary as she passed into the deeper areas of the wood, shadows were dominant over light here, her eyes were not surveying the surroundings, instead focusing on the sound of the cries.
As she parted the bushes near the source of the cry, the moment she parted the bushes, she knew something was amiss. The light was shining off a moist skin, not that of a boar but of something unusual, something unique and something alien to her. The skin was smooth and slick, the creature limp and without distinct bone structure or body definition. It was still breathing but barely conscious, its entire body raising and lowering in desperate bursts. Light was able to permeate its skin in places and she could see bloodied wounds, oozing what she could only assume and hope was blood into the muddied leaf litter beneath it. She found herself fumbling for the amethyst amulet around her neck and tried to break it from her neck and put the poor thing out of its misery.
She had read once in a book of a creature called an octopus, it had only a single bone in its entire body and was able to contort its body into fantastical shapes. This creature, glistening in slime made her think of such a beast. As she held her amulet out she saw a sudden movement and a chill shot through her body as a single tentacle shot for her mouth. It was only as consciousness slipped from her, she realised she may have made a mistake.
Her body felt like stone, the leaves beneath her felt like sharp needles, digging uncomfortably into her body. She tried to search for the creature from her position in the leaves, it had clearly slinked off after the attack. She reached for her mouth, there was blood where the tentacle had latched onto her but otherwise she felt ok. She struggled up onto her feet, her head swimming with what she could only describe as a flood of sickness. She patted herself down, and checked her rear, there appeared to be no other injuries and as she moved off from the spot, eager to get onto a more familiar hunting ground and forget both the beast and the swirling emotions in her head.
During her hunt, she hunted with far better accuracy than she ever had before. She could hear the weasels she sought even as they darted outside her field of vision, every single hit was a direct kill, killing the animal with minimal pain. She had to remind herself to pray for each of her kills, and by the time she exited the woods in the cover of darkness, far more kills than she had expected to take in, she had forgotten about the whole event with the slimy octopus monster.
What she had hoped would be a restful night, especially after her galloping through the tangled vines and leaves on the floor and across the fields so she could return to her bed in time for rest for the events with her family; was rather the opposite. She had woken with a start, the comfortable linen she slept on had been saturated, her body was burning hot and the sickness had returned. She was panting heavily, her sleep was not restful, she could not remember the incident of the forest, she only remembered leaving the forest - she did not remember getting home, all she remembered was the sudden shock and heavy heartbeat which had woken her.
When she couldn’t cope with the high temperature and the same burning sensation, she had barely managed to make her way across the small square that separated her from the druid’s tent before she had crumpled down onto the earth at its entrance. As the druid’s worked to reduce her fever, desperately trying to control her irrational and erratic breathing, she could barely register the hushed whispers of ‘curse’ under their breath.
When a few days passed, and the fever and sickness subsided, the clan’s concern for her, and the druid’s whisper of the word ‘curse’ seemed to have been for nothing. She had never felt better, and as she assisted her mother with the greetings, her mother remarked on her stamina. Amira had always been the sickly child, not strong, not hardy and not agile yet she was galloping at full speed even faster than her siblings, and when there had been an accident, she had been more than able to hoist a heavy wooden beam off another member of her clan.
It was at this point that her clan became distrustful of her, such abnormal behaviour was not observed without concern, the druids were back to whispering, the concoctions they would give her would force her to purge her stomach. Her skin burned with the ferocity of intense lava, with that, came aggression and mood swings that were unbecoming of her, let alone of her kind. She became cold and disconnected to the world around her, as her head became occupied with other things, such as a language she wasn’t familiar with, and a voice, deep and low that whispered to her as druids continued to pump her full of fungal concoctions.
By the time the first mutation appeared, she had become headstrong and aggressive, disconnected and distant to the world around her. She would spend hours when she thought she was alone, no longer hunting with her tribe members, talking to plants. That low deep voice was able to understand the sounds of the plants, interpreting their needs and whispering the translations, like a breath of wind against her ear. The druids would no longer help her, calling her a cursed beast and demon, begging her mother to extradite her from the tribe by the time her mane had become flecked with blue, over the course of a week, the blue became the dominant collar.
Within a few months of her interaction with that beast in the forest, other changes were evident. She would rarely eat now, each evening as dusk fell, she would wait for the hunting parties to charge out of the woods and then patiently, like a ghost make her way to the centre of the woodland. She would sit there in quiet contemplation, listening to the voices of the trees and the deep voice which was becoming more dominant. When it grew too loud, she would be aggressive with it, yelling echoing through the trees as she reminded it who was in charge.
On one such day, she heard a rustle in the leaves from behind her, she had pivoted on herself, knife drawn and was surprised to see a familiar site. The appendage was familiar, with the blue tentacle like structure, lined with suckers and ending in a four pronged prehensil claw. She leapt up with a sudden explosion of energy she didn’t realise she contained twisting round to see where the beast had gone. She was fevestated when she felt the scrape of the claw along her back, and when the voice in her head yelled at her to relax she could not fight it back this time.
Under the cover of the moonlight, she fled her clan that night. She had bought shame to her clan and as the voice, which she now recognised as the parasitic monster she witnessed that night, she accepted her fate. That thing had made her its host, she was going to be a monster, she didn’t want to hurt her family and friends, even if she could not personally relate to them any longer. She found home miles away, in a cave that seemed weatherproof and was obviously the site of settlement before, having already had a carved fire pit. As her body would further mutate, she would avoid contact with all animals, let alone her kinsman, as if the parasite had waited for this moment - it had seized control and completed her mutation within a week.
Many more tails had sprouted, two of which had heads, that would be more than happy to verbally communicate the feelings and demands of the parasite. As she decreased her resistance to it, it offered her appreciation for using her as its host. In reward for allowing it to take control of her body, it would not cross-infect another without her consent, it granted her immunity from poison and disease.
It had taken two years for the complete transformation, the tongued tails cared her wounds whilst the pair with heads would soothe her when she went into the sun and her skin would blister. She studied the behaviour of the plants and animals in the forests around her new home, and along with her powerful new body, she easily took down the prey needed to survive the higher metabolism her host had blessed her with. The dragon and snake heads had opposing personalities, and would keep her amused, the underbelly the parasite had granted her was more than adequate to engorge on when she and the beast demanded more food.
It no longer mattered to her that she was a monster. She and the symbiotic parasite were satisfied with this arrangement, especially as it granted her one piece of freedom, at her promise she would return to it when the morning crept over the horizon...
There was only a single night of the year when the parasite wasn’t in control. When she could be safe in the knowledge she would bring no harm to her clansmen, and her body would revert back to what it once was in the moonlight. She would use this time to emerge from her cave, cross the forest and plains to what was once her home and place the finest kill she had at her mother’s door, she cared more for her safety than anything else in the world. She couldn’t bring herself to speak to her mother, she didn’t want to know the shame she had bought on the clan, but it was on the night of Mitrakion in late May that was the only day she felt she was worthy enough to be in their presence.