I drew some art for one of my fave Peter fics, ozymandias by stacicity on ao3 & @ajcrawly here! It’s a “Peter survives and experiences the apocalypse fic and it’s AMAZING. ANYWAY, theres a scene (ch9) where Peter gets chased by a hunt monster and I was just like “oh I like this” anyway I probably scuffed him up more than he is in the actual fic but I do love hurting my faves ❤️
Anyway I highly recommend it & I’ll send a link if requested since tumblr kills posts with links
You've been hearing disconcerting shuffles and sloshes of footsteps in the halfmelt snow around Zebede's hive for a few hours now. You came out to check on his bees and clear away any ice and snow while he's away - at the cost of a few bee stings - and weren't expecting to hear the sound of movement that isn't you or your lusus, whom you know is currently hidden in the bee's tunnel.
You slip your arms up into your coat and unhook the Streetsweeper from it clasp, hunkering down low and slowing your footsteps to minimize crunches and splashes in the snow and water, frosty and half slushed by the temporary relative heatwave in the dead of high-winter. You're not sure if you've been followed out here - you're usually pretty good at shaking off a tail - or if this is something else. A prowling creature? Someone trying to steal from your friend? A stray harmless critter somehow giving you the slip? The uncertainty gives you the jitters.
Since whatever it is seems to be evading your vigil, you decide to clamber up on top of the building to get a better vantage point. You run and scurry up the side of his shed onto its top, vault over to the curved upper portion of his rooftop with the skylight, and scrabble up the side towards the uppermost ledge. As you do, though... a tall, dark shadow flits from the top of Zebede’s windmill towards your destination, its weight creaking on the roof.
Reaching the building’s apex, you’re met with a ghastly, unholy sight - a gaunt, gaping face lurches directly into your line of sight, greeting you with a shrill, wheezing cry that cuts through the still night air and wafts the stench of death over you. Lanky limbs leading to distended graspers with jagged talons, tufts of sickly looking hair - fur? - and a sunken-in and shriveled visage that looks just troll-like enough to be uncanny, one dark socket marking a missing eye. A blizzard terror. Not the biggest one, but certainly big enough to tower over you.
You let out a tiny yelp of fear and hurry to level your gun towards the fearsome foe, but its clawed hand knocks you flying off the rooftop, bouncing off one of the beehouses’ awnings and landing in a crunchy snowdrift. Ow. You hurry back to your feet as it steps down off the hive to clamber towards you in a half-striding, half-crawling gait. Your gun! Where’d it go? Across the lawnring, half-buried in snow. You run for it, digging in your coat for a hand-cannon or something with sufficient bite to get through the beast’s dense fibrous muscle. Its shadow blots out the moons above you and you find yourself scooped into the air by a leg, dangling upside down several feet up. It’s hard to aim while dangling, but you steady yourself before it can start shaking you around, and unload a few handgun rounds towards the Terror. Your pistol barks out its sharp reports, dark blood welling up from glancing blows to its arm and shoulder. It shrieks again, piercing your ears with its horrific keening, and throws you back to the ground in rage, a dozen yards away. You land hard, the butt of one of your other guns digging into your back in a way you know is gonna bruise bad.
Man, this sucks.
Woozily, you wobble to your feet, aiming down the sight with a fire in your eyes. The Blizzard Terror barrels towards you on all fours, its filthy fangs bared and slavering, and you fire into it as it approaches. What else are you supposed to do? Run? It’s nearly thrice your height and super-quick, and your only options would be into Zebede’s hive or into the tunnel, leading yourself into a bottleneck. You pull the trigger over and over again until it clicks empty, lead jolting into its frame in a tight grouping; enough to hurt it, but hardly enough to kill through that dense hide.
It barrels into you headfirst, plowing you into a fruit-tree and knocking your head against the wood. Fuzzy pain blossoms through your thoughts, a lukewarm dampness starting to seep into your hair. Ow. Triumphant, the one-eyed Terror wheezes its sharp cry into your face once more and lurches back with one upraised arm, talons bared, rearing back to deal a lethal strike. Your coat is toughened, but it won’t do shit against this. This is it. This is the end. Struck down cold and alone and afraid in the wet, slushy snow, trying to hivesit for a friend. Culled by a monster before you could even meet the White Queen or fight this ‘Scratch’ or even have a proper quadmate for more than a week.
Time seems to slow in this moment, the approaching claws seeming to move in slow-motion as hazy lucidity fills your mind. You can see all the different things you’d like to do as if watching them from an outsider’s perspective - somehow step in and sweep its clawed limb to the side with your own stout appendage; scramble over to your shotgun and unload on it; whip out every damn gun from your coat and specibus and come to bear or even just tackle it with your bare fists; wanting to do anything and everything other than stand there half-fainted against the tree, awaiting demise.
And for a second?
You do.
As you begin to lose consciousness, you see its arm suddenly swing wide, deflected, a shrill grunt of confusion escaping the beast. In your stunned imagination, you see yourself in countless frantic acts, lashing out against your foe. Your coat billows as if caught by the wind, growing light as each gun inside slips its loop and somehow looses a single volley of fire into the beast. It reels back and shrieks in pain, sweeping its claws through the space where those figments stand, scattering them to the wind. Pain spikes through your whole body as if you took each one of those hits, a bruise you feel down to your very soul. With your face in a pile of snow and vision waning, you watch the wounded creature lurch and stagger in pain, hot dark blood splattering and hissing in the cold. It bears down on all fours and shrieks at you once more, before you watch it bound away into the darkness of the trees. Deeply wounded, but not felled. Not yet.
You manage to fish out your palmhusk - screen cracked - and tap out a message or two before completely passing out, the last thing you hear the frenetic squeaks of your lusus clambering out of the tunnel to come find you. She yaps and screams at the forest after the monster before frantically gathering you up in a forelimb and bolting towards hive through the tunnel.
