Shin simply stared at the morbid scene for a long second, taking in the horror as the red-eyed creature devoured its prey alive.
Noticing Shin's approaching form, the person (a boy ? A girl ? He couldn't tell, not when half of their lower jaw had been chewed on.) tried to extend a desperate arm toward him while the monster (?), no bigger than a small dog, gnawed at their neck hungrily, gushes of blood pouring out of the gaping wound at an alarming speed.
Shin had the distant thought that he'd seen enough pools of red for a lifetime at this point.
At its victim's movement, the monster sharply raised its head, its gaze settling directly on the young boy, who had an instinctive backward movement.
There was a snarl, another step backward, the claws of the unidentified animal mercilessly sank into the opened neck of its prey as it stepped forward, the person's body had a small, pitiful jolt, accompanied by another small sound as they choked on their own blood.
Shin didn't wait a second more to turn around and run, not bothered to look back when he heard a screech that made his ears rang behind him.
Fuck no.
He saw the torch he'd dropped on the ground a few minutes ago and didn't hesitate to lunge at it when felt something grasp at his legs, small but sharp nails digging and breaking into his skin. He fell on the harsh stones with a humpfh-!, the impact tearing a cry of pain out of him as he landed on his already battered shoulder.He swallowed it down, grabbed the source of light and twisted his body around to knock its flaming end directly onto the creature's head.
"What the hell--!" It's a rat, and it's fucking gigantic.
The huge rodent yelped at the hit, the force of it ripping him off Shin's leg to send him flying against the nearest wall. The smell of burnt flesh reached the boy's nose as the rat squealed and twisted it's body around.
Shin scrambled away from the creature the best he could, wincing each time he had to move with his left arm.
The rat got up on its short legs again, glaring at Shin with an enraged look in his eyes, ready to pounce on him again.
The boy held out the torch in front of him, brandishing the fire under the nose of the creature so that it would stay away, but it had learned its lesson. The rodent jumped on his hand, firmly locking its jaw around his wrist. Shin screamed and dropped the torch, that rolled to the side, away from his reach, and just jerked his arm violently, trying to get the rodent to let go. He trashed his legs and gave it a strong kick.
The rat jumped away with a disagreeable noise, baring a row of bloodied teeth at Shin.
The boy looked at the creature that hissed at him with growing hostility, it knew he had nothing left to defend him. If the rodent lunged at his throat, it was over.
He watched the rat slowly get closer, red eyes rived on his neck as he himself tried to scurry away,
for the first time since he had woken up in this cursed place, fear gripped at Shin's heart.
His heart hammered away like a drum in his chest.
fuckfuckfuckfuckFuckFuckFUCK- NO, STAY AWAY - STOP RIGHT THERE.
.
The rat, who had clearly looked as if it was about to jump at him barely a second ago, stilled unnaturally.
Shin,still breathing heavily, just looked at it, confused.
It stared back.
In the dim tunnel, poorly lit by the torch the boy had dropped earlier, he saw, for the split of a second, a red thread glint in the shadow, circling the rodent's neck and limbs like a crimson snake before dissipating, gone as quickly as it came.
snap.
For a second, he watched as a glossy haze overtook the creature's eyes. But the next second, a rock the size of Shin's head was thrown at the rodent, smashing his head on the ground with a disgusting sound.
Shin blinked when bits and pieces of the rat's brain splattered on the stone floor, taken aback by the abruptness of this development.
"Holy shit, I actually got it !" A cheerful voice exclaimed from somewhere behind him in the corridor, accompanied by hurried footsteps.
Before Shin actually had to process whatever had just happened, two boys were at his sides, one of them, carrying a torch, hesitantly poked the rat's smashed body with a toe.
"Well done. There's not much left to cook now." He remarked with a displeased expression, rubbing away the blood on his feet with the ground.
The boy who had thrown the rock gave him a flat look, but didn't answer, crouching in front of Shin with what he probably wanted to be a reassuring smile but ended up looking like an awkward grimace. He looked a bit older, had short and dirty blond hair, messy, and an obviously self-inflicted haircut, Shin could even see some fine scars at the beginning of his scalp.
"Erm... You good ?" He asked, giving an odd and slightly pitying look to Shin, who realized he must've looked awful, covered in blood and cuts from head to toes.
"I'm... Fine," He clearly wasn't, he was bleeding, his head was killing him, he was pretty sure he had a broken shoulder, but he was alive, a win was a win, "Thank you.. " he stalled, waiting for the other boy to introduce himself.
"Yuu. I'm Yuu."
The blond smiled at him, grabbing him by his (not limping) arm to help him up, his grip was surprisingly solid for his tall but scrawny build.
The boy who had been poking the rat gave a wary glance to Shin, an attitude that didn't seem to come from any specific suspicion but rather from a natural tendency to distrust. He said nothing, instead turning to Yuu, pointing to the rodent's body with his chin.
"We're getting nothing out of this one. I'm leaving the task of explaining why we'll be back to the camp with one more mouth to feed, a critically wounded, and no meat, to you."
A critically wounded ?
"Minha will understand."
Who ?
"I'm not critically wounded." Blurted out Shin, looking at the dark haired boy with a slight confusion.
He gave him a levelled glance. "I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about that girl that was getting munched on by this thing back there." He pointed to the direction from which Shin had fled from when the red-eyed rat had attacked him.
"There's no way she's still alive." Shin frowned, remembering the state of the victim's jaw and neck, completely ripped and chewed, muscles destroyed by the rodent's gleaming teeth-
The two boys exchanged a look, Yuu pursed his lips slightly.
"...You have those cuts on your back right ?" He started with a sigh, like contemplating the best way to put something.
"Yeah."
"Well all of us have." The dark haired boy whose name Shin still ignored butted in,
he pushed the rock that had squashed the rat, grabbing what was left of it to put it under Shin's nose, ignoring his instant scowl of disgust in front of the big scrap of flesh.
"Even these things."
On the lacerated meat, indeed, cuts could be seen in the fur, deep and bloody. The same cuts he had seen on all those lifeless bodies, the same cuts he probably had, similar, but different.
Yuu shooed away the brown haired boy's arm holding the dead rat with a reproachful expression, the other rolled his eyes but threw the lump of flesh away.
"Anyways," The blond turned back to him, "we don't know how, or why, but it makes us... Stronger ? More resilient. Basically...We don't starve, we don't dehydrate, we don't die. So yeah, Iwa is still alive, let's hurry and get her back to camp, we'll get you introduced as well."
He ended his sentence with a slight grin, and Shin simply nodded dumbly at him, mulling over this piece of information.
That explained some things, he guessed.
He looked back at the dead rat, at the gashes.
As his gaze fell on the empty space where the thing's head should've been, he remembered its glassy red eyes, devoid of any life.
The had looked dead even before its collision with the stone.
Shin frowned, the threads-
"Hey, hurry. You don't want to be here when its brothers and sisters will come around." The boy holding the torch looked at him with a tilted head, hand rubbing his nose in boredom. Yuu was already well ahead, walking with a confidence that seemed out of place in this sinister environment.
Shin gazed at the corpse for a few more seconds before turning away.
"...Coming." He muttered, falling in pace besides the boy, whose name he still didn't know.
"What's your name ?" He finally asked.
A beat of silence.
"Sunny."
Another second of silence.
That tore out an unexpected chuckle out of Shin's lips, by the look of the glare Sunny sent his way, this wasn't the first time he had gotten this reaction.
"Sunny ?"
"Wipe that smile."
"That doesn't really fit-"
"I know."
"Why-"
"Shut up."
He scowled with a glare, turning around to walk away.
Shin swallowed his sneers as he jogged to catch up with him, the flickery light of Sunny's torch shining like a dim halo around them as they faded in the darkness.
