The creature was magnificent.

But this was an absurdity of a thought.

He was facing an abject being.

The embodiment of death itself.

She was the Blizzard of Hi, a violent promise, an icy breath, freezing bodies and snuffing out souls.

Still, he could not stop himself from contemplating her magnificence.

The creature was three times his size. She seemed only made of bones and muscles. She had four limbs, similar to legs and arms. But at the extremities of those almost humanoid appendages, what she used as toes and fingers was far from it. On each hand, on each foot, eight long claws created some sort of arachnid-like tendrils. Her scaly skin was covered in frozen blood belonging to the unfortunate ones that had crossed her path. The solidified liquid formed a reddish veil around her.

Her face, if you could call it that, was such a sight it could only have crawled out of the nightmares of the traumatized.

In spite of all this, the real pinnacle of horror wasn’t her blood-covered body, wasn’t her claws or dagger-like fangs. No, what would render you mad, what would haunt you beyond death, were her eyes.

Her eyes were ocean blue, unfathomable and breath-taking.

Sole token of beauty, pure and innocent, in the middle of a face that gave glimpses of hell.

It was like seeing a euphoric child cooing inside a battlefield littered with dead bodies and rotting bowels.

It was like seeing a happy, smiling mother swinging her dead baby by the foot.

“Run!”

It had been the last request given to him by his kind.

The echoes of the screams that had followed did not last long, replaced by the ghostly whine of the wind rushing through the mountain pass.

However, even after having fled, even after having stopped and hidden inside one of the numerous caves of the Canyon of Sables, he could still hear them scream.

Why choose this cave and not another? He did not know. He did not even understand why he had ceased his running, why he had disobeyed.

He never disobeyed.

The only thing he knew now was this: She who never should have walked this earth was looking for him, the last survivor.

He was certain of it.

After what seemed like an eternity, he saw her. For the first time, he was able to admire the machine of death that, in her macabre glory, came to end her hunt. It was not a shadow around the campfire anymore. There, at the entrance of his sanctuary, she stood, unveiled by the glimmer of stars. Obsidian scales glazed in red were reflecting the silvery glow of the night.

This was where he understood that this creature was not something that should exist.

This was when he found her magnificent.

“I will fiiind youuuuu.” The monster’s voice was not strident or cavernous. It was normal. You could have confused it with one of a woman or a child.

He could not have imagined more terrifying.

He made no noise, cowering himself further back on the rocky wall of the cave.

His sanctuary had become a prison, where he was waiting for his inevitable execution.

The creature stepped once. Towards him.

Something absurd happened. The creature’s claws pierced the rocks like they were soft snow, sinking deep and fast, destabilizing the beast. She hit her head violently against a stalactite of ice, which broke instantly upon impact and shattered on the ground. After the deadly silence that had reigned until then, the noise was deafening.

An abomination of a sound followed the noise of shattering ice, like chalk on a blackboard. It was the creature roaring in anger. Each time she tried to remove one of her grotesque limbs from the stone ground, another sank in.

Ultimately, she broke free. She looked around, gazed upon the dark cave…then went away.

Did she decide that the cave was not worth it anymore?

He did not care; he could finally breathe again.

The scene had gone from horrifying to ridiculous in an instant.