The Huntress – fanfiction by NiWo21k

An old road in the rural countryside. The lonely figure that is traveling along it wouldn’t have been a strange sight just a while ago, but since the day the world was overrun by an unknown demonic force, all has changed.

They appeared out of nowhere, attacked swiftly and with brutal might. No one was safe or spared and it didn’t take long until big cities became deserted. Only blood splatters adorning the buildings and the mysterious creatures who roam the streets are reminding us of the beginning of the apocalypse.

But our strange traveler doesn’t care about what happened. She always kept to herself and her life was a fight for survival even before. The only thing that changed is the enemy. But this doesn’t bother her. For her, the apocalypse was a blessing in disguise. It gave her a second chance. While in her past life she killed people for money, now she kills demonic beasts to help people survive.

She is not alone in her fight. There is still the voice in her ear and the third eye around her. She never thought one of her old acquaintances, the one who always had her back, will also be the one helping her make up for her past.

“Are you sure this is the area?”

“The Seismograph showed a big spike two days ago. Last time that happened we stumbled upon that destroyed campsite.”

“Don’t remind me about that.” She replies with a grimace. “That smell and all the guts lying around were one of the worst things I’ve ever experienced. You’re lucky that your little drone has no smell sensor.”

“Look at the little soldier, I thought that was your regular perfume.” He teases her.

“Shut up. You know that I know a lot of different ways to not only kill you but to torture you slowly.” She replies angrily. “But you know how these things smell after they’re killed, that’s even worse than the decaying bodies.”

“Yeah, that sample you brought back was able to contaminate my workspace for quite some time – thanks again for that, you devil.”

Smiling, she replies “You are welcome. And if you don’t want to have something similar happening this time you better shut up.”

Half an hour later the stranger arrives at the edge of a small wood.

“You are now very near the center of the spike. There should be something between these trees. Looks like this time we’ll be…”

“Shh!” She stops him mid-sentence. Whispering, she continues “It’s too quiet. And that means we’ve got company.”

With a swift motion, she grabs the little drone floating around her, turning it off and storing it away in her vest.

While she concentrates on her surroundings with eyes closed, she slowly draws a katana from her back. Gripping the hilt tight, the eyes of a small fox emblem on the handle start glowing and strange symbols appear on the blade.

She stands there like a statue for 2 minutes, when the sudden sound of a twig breaking gets her attention and a twitch of her ears. Her eyes light up with fire and with a strong push, she starts running through the trees like a ghost, only focused on one point.

In front of her, a small clearing appears. On it, a beast, standing on its hind legs and reaching nearly double her size. Its big and sharp looking claws glisten in the light just like the still fresh blood of its last victims on its skull and vicious teeth. Its six eyes look around, restlessly scanning the area.

She doesn’t stop. Even gets quicker and with that, she runs past the beast, slicing it with her blade and disappearing into the trees on the other side of the clearing.

The demonic beast roars, a big gash on its leg. Getting on all fours it starts running, as much as it can with its injury, chasing after her. A gunshot falls and a small explosion on its thick skull brings it out of balance. The beast stumbles, crashing into the tree line in front of it, bringing down trees with its body.

Diving away from the falling trees, our wanderer concentrates the fire on the head and the eyes of the beast in front of her. With a mighty roar, the demon breaks free from its wooden prison while a hail of bullets is raining down its forehead.

The bullets aren’t able to crack the thick skull of the beast but shrapnels log into the eye sockets of the monster, making it impossible for the beast to see its surroundings. Trying to pinpoint its prey, the creature jumps into the direction the gunfire is coming from. Not able to see, it starts slashing around in the hope to hurt or kill whatever is attacking it. But to no avail, as the target already rolled under it, slicing a big chunk of meat out of its wounded leg.

The beast roars again, this time sounding more like its screaming for help, before collapsing on its front paws.
Lying there, not able to get back up on its feet, a shadowy figure appears in front of it. Trying with all its force to catch it, it slashes into the direction of the offender.

Seeing the clawed hand coming towards her, she jumps on it and, with a second jump, gets onto the monster’s back. The beast cries again, shaking and grabbing its own back to get her off it. But she clutches on to it like a rodeo rider. She holds on trying to power it out, not letting go, even as it finally hurts her leg. She just ignores the pain for now.

After a few seconds of trashing, the beast slowly starts to calm down. If it’s the blood loss or just exhaustion it’s impossible to tell. But this is the moment she’s been waiting for. She grabs the hilt of her katana again and, with one strong thrust, embeds the blade into the creature’s head, twisting it until the monster under her collapses.

She stands there for a few minutes in full silence until she is sure that the demon under her feet is dead. Taking out her weapon, she makes one last slash and cuts off the head.

Just to be sure.

She sits down at a tree near her, slowly feeling the effects of the fight in her body. While treating her wound, the drone powers up again and the communication is resumed.

“… and this was the story of how I got to this god damn place.”

“Were you talking the whole time?”

“Oh, hello there. You’re still alive? Of course, as always, when you just break up our connection.” He replies angrily. “And look what happened, I am not in your ear, and suddenly when you come back, you are hurt.”

“Yeah, yeah. But your nagging would be a constant distraction. Or maybe I could use you as bait next time?”

“You never would. Who else would be able to give you the intel to find your way through this world? You would never find someone else as capable as me. Especially someone able to cope with your mood. So forget even thinking about it.”

“Then maybe I just use your little drone here.”

“Hey, I dare you to use our little Firefly as a demon chow. It took a lot of work, effort, and magical mishaps to get this thing to work.”

“You’re right.” She looks up in the air and follows the little drone as it is inspecting the demon corpse in front of her. “So, what do you think about this one? It was a new one.”

“It’s bigger than some you fought before but I don’t think this was the cause of the spike. It probably just appeared alongside the others.”

“But if this one wasn’t the cause what could have made these readings? We haven’t seen anything else around this place.”

“I don’t know. But while you were fighting and ignoring me, there was another one. I checked the maps of this region, and there is a smaller clearing just a little bit further into this wood. Maybe we will find some answers over there?”

“Ok, let me take a break and get back some of my energy before we continue further.”

“You used that sword again, didn’t you? At some point, it will kill you.”

“No, it will not, or at least not the sword itself. You heard what they said. It’s just boosting some of my abilities and enables me to kill these things – it just needs a lot of my energy. And if we can complete the magical enhancement even this won’t happen anymore. We just have to search and hope.”

“As stubborn as always.” He replies.

Sitting there, she starts cleaning the blade. The glowing symbols are gone again and it looks like a normal weapon. She always thinks back to what happened and how she came into its possession. It gave her a second chance. A chance to amend for some of the things she did in her past life.

An hour later, with a cleaned blade and a wrapped leg, she was ready to venture deeper into the wood. But before she gets back on her way, she goes back to the corpse that has already started to smell in a very bad way. Luckily, she was standing with the wind, so the whiff wasn’t that strong.

She took out a small pair of pliers and broke off a part of one of the teeth of the beast.

“You can’t live without getting your prize.” The voice on the intercom sighs.

“It’s a reminder for me, that I survived another battle in this end-world.”

Walking through the undergrove she was getting closer to the clearing and, with every step, the sounds coming from that direction are getting louder. But these aren’t from animals or beasts. It sounds like there is a camp.

Getting into cover, she takes out her rifle and checks the perimeter.

Through her scope, she sees an actual small camp. People working and going through their everyday life. She is baffled how they can maintain a campsite like this in this place without getting noticed by any of the demonic beings.

Slowly circling the site, something suddenly catches her attention. At one corner of the camp, there’s a small group of people gathered around someone who is drawing with a stick on the ground. She feels like something is telling her to stop at this point and she obediently continues to look at this gathering when suddenly the ground starts to glow.

“Bingo!” she muttered to herself.

“What did you find?”

“A little red fox.” She smiles “Or better, someone who can help us figure out a little bit more.”

Her scope now targets the small redhead in the group who looks considerably unhappy.

[To be continued…]

Author: NiWo21k
See this story on Deviantart.