A Hunting we will Go [Ian]

Ian had seen enough horrible things in his lifetime of this work to understand the severity of what they were getting into here, especially upon seen the grisly aftermath of this creature they were up against. It was unlike anything they had ever hunted before, apparently a creature native only to these lands but it seemed to bare similar traits to other things they had hunted before...not that that made him feel especially better about this.

After spending time researching all they could find, and gathering up all the supplies they would hopefully need, they had set out to actually hunt the beast and stop it from continuing to torment these people here. He found the chill that ran through him did not come entirely from the weather, although he was not overly fond of that either, even if it did not hit him as badly as it did his partner, a man far used to warmer climates.

"This should hopefully not take terribly long." He spoke quietly, not wanting to draw undo attention to them as they moved carefully. He hoped it would be quick and easy...well, as quick and easy as these things ever were. "We should be there soon...if our research has been any indication."

Harley made a point to walk close to Ian's side, for warmth, his own comfort, and Ian's. He was not against admitting his own fear as they crept through, the sun beginning its slow descent that would bring the dark, and the much colder temperatures. This creature from all of their research was a dangerous thing, far more menacing than some of the other demons and bests they'd fought, this one was a man eater, hard to spot until it was too late, they'd poured themselves into the information available, and all their knowledge was leading them along a trail that he hoped would end with success rather than failure. Failure was not an option.

He pulled his arms around himself further, trying to stop his chattering teeth as he whispered beside the man, "I'm...Quite afraid..." He admitted, glancing to the side at him with a nervous but humored smile, "I daresay this is one of the most terrifying things I've heard of." He wasn't as comforted by Ian's reassurance that they would be there soon as he wanted to be, nodding simple and looking ahead, "how will we know we're there?" He thought he could recall a smell, or a residue, but his memory was being half blotted by the cold and the fear.

Ian paused his steps to turn and fully look at the other man. "Do not be afraid." he continued to speak quietly, but hopefully reassuringly. He smiled slightly, trying to push aside his own fears that he carried with him despite his words. "Do not be afraid, do not let them know if you are." He put a gloved hand on the sleeve of the other's coat.

"It is a deeply disturbing thing...but we have faced down many deeply disturbing things, and have always come out the other side. We will again." He assured him.

He took in a slow breath of the air that burned into his lungs. "I am sure we will see signs of where it has dragged it's kills." That was what he remembered, some ones got hauled away, not all left as the ones they had seen. "Just remember, we must stay together. OTherwise it might try to fool us, to lure us away and split us apart." It was cunning, and a masterful hunter. They would only defeat it together.

Harley felt himself relaxing a tad upon Ian's words, the man had always been good at easing his fears. He could recall the first few times they'd gone out together like this, when they first began doing this job, he'd been shaking in his boots and nearly too afraid to ever go out again. Ian had picked him up, reassured him, and Harley'd found his own courage through that, through him, "right. You're right." He flashed him a soft smile, reaching a moment to squeeze his hand before letting go as he followed alongside him, "we'll fight this monster as we have every other monster." He smiled at him, feeling much more confident, "Together."

He nodded along with the man's words, keeping his eye peeled to the ground and the forest around him for any of the signs they were looking for, blood or even an errant body part, "I wouldn't leave your side for anything, dear." He smiled at him, nudging his side gently, trying his best to lighten things up despite the heavy frightening atmosphere.

Ian smiled back at him, the man had always been incredibly smart, but the field work had taken some getting used to. Ian had been glad when he'd started to feel more comfortable...well as comfortable as anyone could get with this as time had passed. It had been good to have someone he trusted watching his back during such dangerous experiences.

A sudden noise, a sound like a scuffling drew him up short, he paused, hand held up for quiet as he listened, pinpointing where he'd heard the sound from before pointing in the direction he was sure he'd heard it from.

"We're getting close." He spoke barely above a whisper, lowering himself slightly so he wasn't as tall, he could move quietly as he crept forward through the snow. A few minutes later they broke forward into a big of a clearing, the snow all around disturbed, as though by large tracks, some sort of large thing had come through here. He pointed them out to Harley, not crossing directly to them. but walking in the direction they went, hugging the treeline as he did.

Harley's whole body went tense and he became hyper focused at the noise, his attention draw from Ian's comforting smile to their surroundings as he glanced around, looking in the direction that Ian had pointed with a silent nod. They were getting closer, and he was not entirely confident in the steps needed to kill this thing for good, it wasn't as simple as a silver bullet to the head, there was dismemberment and salting involved, blessings that needed to be made, it felt like a mental checklist more than anything as he went over the steps they'd researched in his head.

He matched Ian's motions as he lowered himself and crept along behind him now, thankful for the snow that muffled their steps better than crunching leaves and twigs might have. The state of the clearing brought an anxious bile into his throat, and he swallowed it down with a nervous expression. One wrong move at this point could spell the end for one or both of them, and the thought of losing Ian hung like a heavy weight in his mind.

The wind was picking up, snow blowing around and falling down from the trees. He couldn't even tell if all of it was falling from the trees or if new snow was starting to fall. The first hints of a foul odor, the eerie scent of death and decay drifted on the wind towards them. The thing wasn't far now.

Ian pressed forward, one arm up slightly to shield his face from the wind as he followed along the flow of the tracks, the heavy revolver with it's silver bullets now in hand, Harley behind him would have the knife and other objects needed to bring an end to the creature's reign of terror. Only together could they end this.

He glanced behind him, sure Harley was still there, then continued forward.

Meanwhile, behind them, as the snow grew more to whiteout conditions, voices came behind Harley, indistinct at first, but it grew closer and sounded more familiar. It sounded like Ian, calling out to his partner with increasing urgency.

They would smell the thing before the found it, and the smell was getting decidedly stronger as they crept along, the show was also beginning to fall thick, from the trees and the snowfalls from the clouds. Harley had never been well adapted to this kind of weather, he didn't know how to power his way through it or even navigate, and after a few minutes of navigating blindly, he realized with a sinking dread that he could no longer see Ian in front of him.

"I-Ian?" His voice was lost in the wind that was howling now, but the sound from behind him cut through even that, it was faint, but the longer he stood stuck to the spot, the louder and more frantic it became. It was Ian. It was definitely Ian. He felt a sick panic rise up in his gut, the man sounded terribly distressed, and he turned on his heels to dash in the direction of the voice.

After about five minutes of running, the sound cut off and he found himself in an eerily calm clearing, "Ian?" He looked around with frightened eyes, clutching a rosary tight in his hands as if he thought that could protect him from whatever might be lurking. He didn't get to utter another sound as an ear splitting shriek came from behind, a white hot pain across his back as he was shoved hard to the ground, blood splattering and tainting the white snow red. The thing laid another deep set of claw marks across his side before stalking around him, treating him like a dying mouse being toyed with by the cat as he put pressure over his side to try and stop the bleeding, a blossom of red creeping over the snow around him. He only prayed the sound had alerted Ian of his distress and his location as he struggled to stay concious.

The shriek drifted to Ian about the same moment he realized that Harley no longer followed behind him. He spun on his heel and sprinted nearly blindly towards the sounds, trying to move as quickly as he could without braining himself on a tree or tripping over something half buried in the snow, no good to the other if he injured himself in the process.

He staggered into the clearing, suddenly disoriented with how it was quiet, the snow dying down in this spot. His breath came in ragged gasps, his breath fogging in front of him and half obscuring the vision through his glasses, but not enough to miss the shape on the ground, or the tall being that stood over him, oversized clawed hands raking at the downed figure, bones jutting through it's emaciated, sore-covered flesh, skin pulled back across a skeletal grin, it slavered in anticipation of it's upcoming kill, eyes burning deep, evil red.

In his day to day live Ian was an anxious man, unable to sit still easily, unable to not worry and fret at things endlessly. But for as much as he worried over his hunts...it was in these moments that everything calmed. Everything slowed. In those moments he knew what he needed to do, his purpose, his higher calling. He executed whatever he needed to do with a calm precision he was never able to replicate in any other part of his life. He raised the gun and sighted it where the thing's heart should be and began to fire rounds of silver bullets directly into it's chest.

His breath had become hard and ragged now, fighting through agony and cold biting at his lungs as he shivered helplessly in the snow, hands planted hard over his side as he rolled himself onto his back in a feeble attempt to put pressure there. All he could manage between his pained, heaving breaths were weak whimpers, he couldn't remember ever hurting this badly.

He was startled at the gunshot, following the sound to see Ian unloading several shots into the thing, which in turn released a horrific death rattle as it collapsed to a shuddering heap. There was another attempt to get up before the man slipped back down into the blood stained snow, his heavy breathing getting the slightest bit weaker, "Ian..." He gave him a pained smile, then his face became grave.

"y-you need my...Help..." His words were breathy and trembling, "I-Ian I'm..." His words trailed off, he couldn't bring himself to say it, but they both knew it. Ian still had to take the extra steps to make sure the thing stayed dead, and Harley didn't know if he could hold on that long, he was still losing blood alarmingly, "I'm sorry Ian...I'm sorry..." He let his head drop to the snow, feeling his own body dragging him down and hating himself for it.

The thing fell, still twitching and convulsing on the ground, letting out horrible, guttural sounds as it struggled for it's life.

In a sickening twist, not far away Harley did the same, an equally horrifying sight but for entirely different reasons. Ian quickly holstered the gun and rushed to Harley's side, he tried not to look at or think about how much blood was spilled out across the snow around him, but he hardly needed his medical training to know it was too much. He pulled off his own heavy coat, instantly shivering against the cold, and wrapped it around the other man. "It's alright." he spoke quietly, urgently. "I have this. I have this...you'll be fine, just...hold on. Just a little more. Just a little bit, you'll be fine, I promise." One hand gripped one of Harley's tightly for a moment, his other hand rested against his cheek, already feeling cool.

In that moment Ian swore against his work, what he needed to do here. He wanted to stay with Harley, but if he stopped now, if he didn't finish the creature off, he would only stand again, and he had no more bullets to put him down a second time. It would finish them both off, then return for the villagers, and all of this would be for nothing. A few more murmured reassurances and promises, and he tore himself away with the rest of the supplies, the work painstaking and feeling like it was taking forever as he separated the heart out into a silver box that would later be buried on holy ground that would contain it, separating the limbs and head from the body, adding some wood to burn the whole mess to ash from which it could not return. The thing fought and howled at first, then grew quiet by the time he was done, as the flames caught the stench of burning hair and diseased flesh made him retch, he pulled his scarf up over his mouth and nose, he still watched to make sure nothing interfered with the process but most of his attention was now on Harley, offering quiet, desperate prayers that he was not too late.

He felt comforted by Ian's coat around him, and despite the cold beginning to take him over, he felt warmed. He was dying, he knew he was dying, and he knew Ian knew it, but he was still comforted by his words, putting a hand over the one that rested against his cheek and pressing his face into it, desperate for any warmth he could find. His breaths were still heavy as he tried to force himself to stay awake, fighting against his own failing body not to leave Ian like this, he couldn't, he couldn't do this to Ian.

The process of making the thing's death final was gruesome and unpleasant, and Harley had to tuck his nose under the coat to stop his own retching as the man began to burn the body. By the time he'd come back to his side, Harley's struggled breaths were weaker wheezes, and he couldn't stop the shuddering in his body, "Ian..." He managed, glancing up at the man with frightened eyes, "I'm scared..." Despite himself, he couldn't fight the tears that fell, he didn't have the strength to, "you'll never get us both back to town...Y-y-you'll freeze to death." He reached and took his hand in a weak grip, "y-you have to go. You have to." He closed his eyes tightly, then looked yp at him with a weak smile, "I love you, a-and..." He let out a pained laugh, "Being your partner...It has been the best years of my life...I'm just...Sorry I am leaving you this way..." He glanced to the side, he didn't want it to end this way, but he could see no way out.

Ian shook his head even as Harley protested that he should be left here. "Don't be ridiculous. As though I would just leave you here." He was still in the tail-end of the calm that came with these fights, but he could feel it slipping away, and he struggled against his own rising feelings of pain and grief. He had always known it was possible, from a logical sense...but he had never thought it would actually end like this, never thought of and honestly considered this possibility...and that had been folly on his part. So many things left unsaid, left undone...even when things had been said, in moments like this it never felt like it had been close to enough. "You will be fine, you'll see. You will live to see many more of these hideous adventures...and to scold me for not putting away my books...and...and...you will be just fine...you do not get to be rid of me so easily." he tried to tease, but it fell flat as the words stuck in his throat, that maybe...maybe none of those things would ever happen again.

And he knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt in that moment that he would gladly risk his own death out here as long as they were together, then to even think of leaving him here to gasp out his last alone, with only the burning corpse of the thing that had killed him for company.

"It's not that far back. We can make it, I'll help you." He did what he could with the painfully small selection of things they had brought with him to wrap up the wound, before doing his best to move them both forward, but Harley was mostly dead weight at this point, lapsed into unconsciousness and unable to do much of anything to aide in going forward, leaving Ian to drag them both forward through sheer force of will and determination.