Cogito Ergo Sum.

Three words, one meaning. I think, therefore I am. But those I hunt, the prey I take to sustain my life, do they think as well? The animals we take for granted, the cows and pigs and chickens, do they have thoughts? Or are they mindless drones, destined to die and knowing only the end? Or are they like us, just the victims of a fate that they cannot change?

Kodi looked up from her notebook, yawning as the sun's beams caught her paper, her writing, and illuminated it in a marvelous glare, reflecting the very essence of a dying light. A dying star, even, though it would be many years yet that it would perish. And with it, the world would follow, not with a bang but with a whimper. A cruel, yet deserving fate for the species of man.

Pushing a tangle of auburn hair from her eyes, the huntress shook her head in anger, more directed at herself than another. She'd yet again let her mind wander, and now had come down on the rampant thought process like a bear trap, snapping it shut and off as she looked over the mountain. These were the Rockies, and it was fucking freezing here. Not because it was winter; hell, it was the middle of summer, and the air was dry and crisp. No, it was because she was about five-thousand feet up.

There was a shimmer in the air for a moment, then the sky exploded in an array of lights. The aurora borealis, the northern lights, twisting and dancing around as if they were truly the spirits of deceased children coming to play. And for a moment, in the night, Kodi was calm. Pencil in hand, notebook in her lap, and a stump under her, she was calm as she could've gotten given the circumstances.

Of course, that peace was shattered in an instant, as a flock of birds took to the air a mile away or so. There wasn't a lot of trees, but whatever there was stirring up some sort of disturbance, enough to send a flock of crows - in her opinion, the most annoying birds ever - scattering. And that meant there was either somebody there, or there was a fire. And she didn't see any smoke, though it was dark and there wasn't going to be any difference in light because of that.

Green eyes narrowing with a harsh look harbored within them, Kodi picked up her bow. Storing her notebook in her backpack, the pencil in her pocket, sheathing the knife in the sheathe across her chest and her arrows in the quiver in the leading edge of the bow, she set off.

The arrowhead gleamed silver in the half-moon's light. It wasn't hard to see for her, having long since adjusted to long hunts in the middle of the night. Of course, this wasn't a hunt per say; there was something out here, something powerful, and she wanted to find out what. There was an energy in the air, making the hair on her arms stand up and giving off a dark crackling. It made her nervous.

Something huge, the size of a bear at least, came out of nowhere. She hadn't even had time to shoot it, it had almost teleported in a dark blur of black and red fur and bones and slammed her onto her back, pinning her down. This wasn't any creature she'd hunted before, but the anatomy was the same, and as it opened up its' vile mouth and roared in her face, she withdrew the knife from her chest sheathe and stabbed upwards.

Kodi did not expect it to explode into a cloud of rest dust, scattered and blown away by the hot breeze that had opened up from the south. Where she'd been going, no less. That only solidified her resolve; retrieving her bow which was luckily unscathed, the huntress tightened her jacket around herself and pressed forward. Though there were plenty of those bear-demon-things that had been set loose in the forest, none challenged her. Perhaps they weren't just running and raising hell, she thought. What if they're running away?

That thought had almost sealed her fate. If she'd not thunk it at all, she would've kept going and stepped onto the latticework of cracks forming in the ground. And it was only then that she noticed that the hum in the air wasn't humming- it was chanting.

That combined set of factors brought an arrow forth, the lethal broadhead catching the moonlight and reflecting it in a diamond's glimmer, throwing light haphazardly about as the now-nocked arrow came back into Kodi's shoulder. Her green eyes caught even the minor movements in the ground as the ancient language hammered against her eardrums, threatening to force her focus away.

"Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." Now, she was the least religious person she could think of, but the fissures forming in the ground radiated a sense of pure evil, and Kodi was terrified. So she didn't question when she began quoting scripture, and instead closed her eyes, took a breath, and waited as the chanting stopped.

It was then all hell broke loose, as a massive winged creature almost the size of a house. Vaguely humanoid in nature, it forced it's way out of the ground, almost crushing the unseen huntress underfoot as she abandoned any idea of shooting the damn thing and rolled out of the way. She could see the red hide twisting, growing, morphing into a jumbled mess of eyes and mouths and horns and skin.

That was too much for Kodi, and as such, she promptly passed out as it began to cleave a path of destruction through her forest.

Snow was falling. That was what woke her up, the mountain weight of something cold on her back. There was nothing to wake up to like being under a foot of snow. There were dogs baying in the distance, and hollering which was odd because she'd passed out many miles out. Whatever had happened, it wasn't the beast that had emerged from the crevasse that was her immediate danger. Hypothermia was her issue, especially in Canada since she didn't qualify for any free health care.

Embedded so thickly in the snow, the darkness was almost tangible as she stirred her limbs from their frozen sleep, the pins and needles from the sheer pressure of the ice pressing down upon her back. She must've been on her back because light shone through the snow above, which clued her in to about two feet above. A miracle she'd not died of asphyxiation, since it'd been just past midnight and by the angle it had to be maybe noon. Two feet of snow meant nine hours at just around two and a third inches an hour, maybe three for good luck and melting. She'd been out for twelve hours.

Just as she drew back her arms, digging away at the snow, a booming bark filled her little cavity in the snow. And suddenly, there was a dog. A Saint Bernard. It licked her a bunch of times, and some of it globbed and fell off her face in a nasty mass of nasty. She loved dogs, but this was too much. Still, it helped as she was able to grab the neck of the beast and pull herself up. That made it easier to rise.