The Hunt Begins

I aim to write these so that you can enjoy them as stand alone stories, or one after the other. If you'd like to do the latter (they're all very short):

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

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Chill night air bites my skin with damp teeth. It should be fresh up here, but there's an acrid tang, stinging my nose and throat on every breath. My ears are alive to the sound of enormous leathery wings, or talons on rock and loose scree.

My wrists chafe under the rope. A slack length of it has me tethered to a post, like a goat. I yank on it. The post shifts, but not much. I could waste strength that I don't have, trying to heave it out.

I prop a rock shard between my feet, and work the rope against the sharp edge. It's slow going. Every moment spent working through it, strand by strand, is time that should be spent fleeing back down the mountain. Rocks sliding under my feet, scrabbling in my panic-

If I make it, if I get back to the castle, I'll have wealth and power like I've never dreamed of. But better than that, I'll get to see my mother again. We'll sit and talk in the garden, and she'll tell me whatever it was that stilled on her tongue before...

But best of all, I'll get to live. It's this thought that snaps me from my reverie and I resume working the rope against the stone.

I hear it! The sound of loose rocks under its huge feet, just like I imagined, and the clack of enormous iron-like claws on those stones. I smell it, too. That acrid stink stronger and building, burning my nose.

I glance back and I wish I hadn't. It's even more massive than I pictured, black, but when it takes another stalking step there's a glint of gold under and between those knobbly scales.

Another step, another. Talons (also bigger than my mind conjured) send up sparks.

I'm sobbing in panic and yanking in desperation, and that's how the sharp edge slices the meaty bit of my palm.

I can hear its hissing intake of breath. I imagine the smell of my blood over it's tongue.

It's huge orange eyes become slits, and it hisses in my mind.

You! What are you doing here?

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Word count (excluding notes): 366

Submitted on 24th March at 23.58 - eek!

*Quick Author's Note*

First, and most importantly: thank you for reading!

Leave me a link to your own latest story, if I haven't already seen it!

If you enjoyed this story, the best compliment you can give me is to share it, or read another.

A Year of Stories: I'm writing a story every day this year. This one makes an 84 day streak. I'm also putting them in my Index post.

Thank you

Thank you again! I do my best to reciprocate all reads.