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Ripped Indulgence

Hunting is a raucous profession, that borders on playful, in the same way that a child might skip happily along a cliff edge. But for every drink quaffed and trophy boasted, there is sword that has to be wiped of blood, and a tooth-hole in armour to be repaired.

And while stories are regaled around the braziers, it is easy to forget that the bite you parried was meant for your torso, that your last-moment duck was the difference between a slick movement and your ribcage being shattered. The hefty bounty you just turned in once lusted for your blood, and you owe more to luck than you want to admit.

Because when the palicos run in with their cart, sometimes all they retrieve is a pack with bitten-through straps, or a glaive split like a twig. Or an arm, dropped into a patch of yellowgrass, the armour too thick and fiddly to be worth chewing open.

These are monsters, and it's easy to forget that - right up until your sword is shattered and a claw as large as your leg has pried your armour away, and the teeth that found no purchase on your shield sate their hunger in your body. What was fun and folly becomes the apex of a million years of cruel and merciless evolution, to which your body is kindling and appetizer.

And pray that the tortured anger of a thousand hard-won turf wars is kind to you, does not easily tear your body asunder. Because it nigh-surely will, but perhaps prayer, or hope, or whimpered bargaining will offer a trickling breeze of relief as his highness rips his indulgence into you, and teaches you the finite, final lesson, that eventually all will come to the monsters they hunt.