Death Unhinged

“Among the earliest forms of human self-awareness was the awareness of being meat.”

― David Quammen, Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind

The creature stalked forward through the sparse brush on the snowy terrain, on padded feet. Its breath, rank with the scent of flesh, came in slight puffs of hot, moist air, which didn't stick to the thing's thick, plush coat of fur. It blended well on the icy veld it found itself on with the pale yellow-white pelage it had. The beast looked behind itself. Others of its kind, behind her, she saw their gleaming eyes burning like fiery coals in the Arctic cold and darkness. Her kind could see well in the night, and as things who were powerful enough to fear little as adults, they did not have young with them and thus had little reason to be wary. They were the lords of this realm, and without the complications of higher thinking beyond their predatory-clever brains, they had nothing but the now. And in the now, the group hungered. They needed to kill. They kept walking on, treading through stunted brushed coated in frost, and the wind biting through their coats. It did not matter, they were in their element. The first creature, leader of the group, suddenly raised her head. Her tail lashed lightly, a signal to the others, and slaver lightly dripped from the corners of her mouth to be whipped away in the frozen winds. She had scented prey. A younger male, sensing favor with the leader of the band, quickly dropped into a stalking walk, fur brushing the snowy crust, and descending nearer to a dwarf tundra willow thicket, and made a stilled crouch. The female felt the stirring of a primitive liking, but quickly used motions of her head, ears and tail, muscle twitches under the coat and even her scent to direct the others into position. Now, they'd wait. She idly panted, surprisingly warm from her walking through Arctic night, such was the insulation Nature had provided her for the long winters of her home.

The prey was slow in coming, and one they had know before. It was, to their eyes, food. Hooves clacked on the ground. A mask, which the non-sentient minds of the beasts could not comprehend as separate from the prey's body, covered the oval, muzzled face, and a horn came from the forehead. The prey wheeled quickly, and vanished from sight, but not the scent, of the band. They smelled more. The female leader felt a rush of excitement. This would mean a herd of prey. 'Make them run, bite them, eat.' the thoughts came, and her acute ears caught the undercurrent of readiness from her cohorts. There was now five of them, the prey, all in bizarre forms but the scent was unmistakable. Attack. she made the gestures necessary, then sprang, paws beating over the snow crust in a blur, a fast blur that in this land was as if the ground itself was moving towards oneself. She voiced no song of hunting, like a baying hound or a griffin's roaring shriek that can shatter even a mighty dragon's eardrums, but merely grabbed one of them, thick claws burying into both hide and strange body coverings. The prey reared, crying out, a harsh voice in the pounding ears of the beast. She pulled it off-balance, using powerful haunch and shoulder muscles. She felt suddenly the young male, right beside her, and watched as he gaped his mouth. Large paws and claws outstretched pinned the crying prey by the neck, and might fangs bore down on the exposed neck of the thrashing food. Blood-scent filled the air, and from sounds away from the two creatures on their chosen meal, the rest of the band was having good hunting, as well. The meat still twitched feebly with nerve power, and the female leader and young male feasted, quartering the game in the rough manner of animals, leaving steaming blood on the frost.

After a while, the whines of white foxes, the cries of ravens and even the distant howling of wolves were being heard. Her belly now pendulous with fullness, the female directed with a slow, meat-drunken trot that the band should leave. One older female, with dull worn fangs and a scarred visage, refused to leave her food. The young male, sensing again the need for order in the pack, cuffed the elder female with a foreleg. She snarled, and sprang at the male, and both voiced deep-chested moaning growls as they battled. Finally, the elder female had sliced a nick from the male's nose with a claw, and he made the submissive maneuvers of their kind; a crouch with the hindquarters with the front legs supporting the heavy chest, with a voiceless snarl upon his face. The elder female, now roused, simply stalked after the others, already seemingly melding with the landscape of icy chill. The lead female distantly recalled that the elder female was her own mother's litter-mate, and had watched over her in the mouth of their log birth den in the prey-laden taiga to the South when she was young. It elicited her to walk alongside the elder, and lick her wounds, rubbing her in the process, a sign of affection, as they lazily cantered with their loping gait on. Celestia's Sun shone as the murder of ravens, boldest of the arrivals for the leftovers, squabbled over the remains of the ponies. And so, more victims were added to the tally, and the mystery for creatures who felt higher callings for things less primordial were stirred into action.