229 - yowl heat

hite light flooded the darkness with no warning. Herbert's eyes did not take a long time to adjust to the rapid change of illumination. He was better suited to this environment than the monsters that stalked him. Therein lied his advantage, but he had hoped there would be no need to rely upon it.

Herbert's legs locked in place, but his eyes were darting around rapidly, trying to ascertain the cause of the illumination. Training had taught him that, once in a while, the monsters threw on the lights for little or no reason. This was not something Herbert could expect, though, as a vast majority of sudden appearances of light signaled an imminent appearance of one of the beasts.

And then, in the distance, one loomed.

Herbert could at first only half-believe that this was really one of them. Throughout his training, he had been forced to study and memorize every detail about the enemy to the point where this encounter did not quite register as real. He was just facing another training scenario. One quite vivid, admittedly.

His consciousness finally compensated for his unbelieving perception of reality, but too much. The immensity of the stunning realization that this beast before him was real paralyzed him. It lumbered toward him, so giant, so strange, that Herbert found it impossible to even visualize surviving this encounter.

He was frozen. In fear. In excitement. The monster, however, was not, and continued its approach. It was not afraid, as Herbert was. "Why should it be?" he thought. There were accounts of these monsters being felled by Herbert's kind, but facing one down, he was now certain they were nothing but tall tales.

It was close, now. Herbert's brain finally began to catch up with the overload of input and he felt control returning to his body. The first thing he did was breathe. Surprisingly, it helped, just as the training said it would.

His training. All Herbert needed to do was focus and remember his training. In a situation such as this, they were taught not to make any sudden movements, or to move in general. Luckily, his instinctual fear had taken care of that for him. The monsters' eyesight was drawn to movement. Staying still might mean that he could remain entirely unnoticed.

If the monster detected him and gave chase, the next course of action would be to run, of course. The odds were not great, being of such small size, but there was always the possibility of ducking into some crack or crevice that the monsters were too big to get inside.

Herbert's final resort would be to attack. Appraising his meager weapons, he was full of doubt. The elders swore that it could be done, but by all accounts these odds were the longest of all, and Herbert felt no desire to challenge them.

As the monster drew ever nearer, Herbert's eyes were locked upon the opposing set ambling towards him, scanning for the moment when his presence became noticed. He knew, somewhere in his mind, that others survived encounters with them. Not just once or twice, but some thousands of times! There was a possibility of being assigned to an outpost where multiple monster encounters would be a daily occurrence.

This was not an impossible situation, he forced himself to believe.

Everything he had worked for was building to this moment. This would be the first of many. Everyone had their first time, and this was his. If Herbert could just make it through alive, things would be easier from this point forward.

He breathed in again, slowly. The monster still might not notice him at all.