hunting is hard here
I don’t really like how this turned out but it’s good enough I suppose, scene from a oneshot I’ve been working on about cdteam meeting, snippet under cut
Sapnap let out a slow sigh through his nose, staring down at the third empty trap. His plated, segmented tail lashed slowly behind him. It was a nice day, by Overworld standards: warm, breezy, the air rife with various smells that he had a hard time identifying. He was used to relying on his nose in the Nether, but all these scents were strange and unfamiliar, only the vaguest whiffs of home. Normally, Sapnap tracked prey through a combination of smell and the vibrations sensed by the small spines running down his back and arms, then went for a swift attack, paralyzing his prey with the stinger at the tip of his scorpionlike tail. The venom wasn’t lethal, but it was paralyzing, and very effective in immobilizing his prey. And immobilization was definitely something you wanted when dealing with an enraged parent hoglin three times your size.
Speed, unfortunately, was necessary to use his venom, and it wasn’t much of a viable option here in this place. Even after almost a year of living up here, he still had trouble with all the green everywhere. The mess of verdant hues wasn’t so bad when he stood still or walked at an average pace, but when Sapnap tried to run things started to smear into a messy blur. He’d thought his vision was pretty good when he’d lived in the Nether, for a blaze hybrid, but here, everything was green and bright and blobbish. He could have just relied on his sense of smell, but there were so many other smells that also smelled a lot like rabbit… not ideal. Cows and sheep were much easier, being far slower prey, but he and George hadn’t seen any wild ones for months on end. The only things that came close were a few mountain goats, and Sapnap didn’t particularly feel like climbing up to a precariously narrow ledge to face their iron hooves and sharp horns. They’d probably be too tough and gamey to enjoy anyway.
Sapnap crouched on the ground, inspecting the trap. He at the wire loops with a stick in imitation of a foolish rabbit lured in by the bait of a nice, withered carrot. The loops tightened slightly, but didn’t close the way he’d hoped they would, and he withdrew the stick with another sigh. The wires were fiddly and his claws made it hard to get a decent hold on them. He could’ve sworn he’d copied the trap exactly from one of the guidebooks George had, but something seemed to be missing. At least he could gather up all the supplies and try again.
