Scribbles and Drabbles

Notebook Drabble 2

Date Written: 2013,  Updated: 2016

The cave was a dark and dim, the smell of dark magic almost overwhelming the hunter as he crept in. Inside the cave was damn and it was only the hunter's demon heritage which allowed him to see within. He moved swiftly over the rocks to his final goal. To kill the demon who was lived within the cave who had been terrorising the nearby towns and villages. Not usually his job but after the demon had started killing humans instead of the livestock, the people of the towns had gathered together to be able to pay for someone from the hunter guild to deal with it. The money wasn't great but Wilburn had been in the area and was never one to say no to people in trouble.

He winced at the smell as he walked past where the beast was dumping the remains of his meals. Bones and fleshes rotting away. Wilburn wasn't sure what kind of demon he was about to face but it seemed that it had lost any trace of humanity it had once had.

He entered the main chamber, where he found the demon sleeping peacefully in its nest. The large creature distantly fully growth and beyond ever being able to be turned back into the human it had once been. Wilburn silently said a prayer of thanks to the gods, that was always a more favourable case than when they were still half mutilated and scared. Some demons even when they were fully turned still retained their humanity, but given this on had begun to prey on humans as well, this one had not.

Its death was quick and merciful. The demon screeching as it was stabbed but turning to dust quickly, passing on to the god of death's kind embrace. Pocketing the heart stone of the demon, Wilburn was about to leave the chamber when he smelt another smell which wasn't rotting corpses or dark magic.

Wilburn shifted, looking back at the demon's nest. In the centre, where it would have been shielded by the demon was a small wolf-like pup. The only real sign that it was a wolf-like pup and an actual wolf pup was the fact its fur was dark green. The colour of a death dog. The pup yawned and looked upwards, its red eyes blinking tiredly up at the hunter before nipping gently at the stranger, seemingly unfazed by the lack of guardian it now had.

"Oh, mercy be," Wilburn murmured, sitting in the nest, "That's why the demon changed," he muttered out loud, running his hand through his hair. Certain demons grew more unstable when they had young about them, even if the young were not their own, which this pup was not. The demon he had killed had been more dragonic than canine. Not to mention the fact the pup was clearly mixed between wolf and dog demons given the large size of his pups, change of his snout and the colour of his fur.

"What am I going to do with you, Pup?" he asked the young creature who was trying to jump up to him now. Teeth snarling playfully, his tail swaying behind him. Wilburn reached down to stroke its fur.

He couldn't leave the baby in the nest, nor could he kill it. The hunter's code was clear in that they could only kill demons who had consumed human flesh. After all, most of the hunters were only a stone's throw away from being triggered themselves into a demon. If he left the pup in the nest, however, it would probably die.

Wilburn sighed resignedly, knowing what he had to do and it was not something he particularly wanted too. He had to contact one of the demon wolf clans to take the pup, but with the pup being a mixed demon there was only one clan who would. The Strongthorn clan, a clan who lived in the west where technology was more widespread than the poorer Darklands where he was at the moment. A clan which he knew well, too well.