The rider almost turns around in time, but you're too fast: you hit him fangs-first, rip him off the horse, and drag him down. You outweigh the big man by four or five hundred pounds, but he's quick, and squirms out from under you the moment you both hit the snow. Abandoning the rifle, he rolls to his hands and knees and draws a KA-BAR fighting knife from a quick-draw holster. He does some cool-looking escrima stuff with it for a second, and then you bring your claw down and rip his face off.
He hits the snow face-first, blood steaming, already dead. Almost too easy. You force yourself under control as flies swirl around you, dazzling you with their iridescence.
"Well done, little wolf," the dead rider's horse says through bloody lips. You catch a glimpse of a swollen jaw and huge incisors, then the horse turns and kicks you in the chest hard enough to send you through a tree trunk. When you get up again, it's coming for you.
So far, everything had gone according to plan, just as you had practiced a hundred times. But now you're forced to think on the fly as you confront the real threat, this mangled horse-thing. You taste blood in your mouth, hear your frightened breath…now it's for real. No mistakes.
I'm quick enough to dodge, weave, and fall back until this Bane makes a mistake.
I rely on stealth and cunning, disappearing into the undergrowth and then striking from the shadows.
Before this monster dies, it will know fear. I howl, terrifying it with my dreadful presence, then kill it as it trembles.
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