Chicken of The Everfree
April 15th, 2013
8:18 PM
When I pulled up to my destination, Celestia was just about finished lowering the sun while Luna was almost done raising the moon. An orange glow casted over the trees behind me while the dark, starry sky began to form in front of me. I took in the sight for a while before I turned off the engine and exited the vehicle. I then went to the backdoor and opened it up to grab my backpack, equipment, weapons, etc.
After brushing off my camouflage outfit, I entered the dense forest that was close to being pitch black, but the beams of light from the moon shined through the leaves attached on the branches of the trees. Tonight was a relatively quiet night, really silent in the forest. This is good because I was able to hear whether something was around me or not, but I didn't really hear anything else besides occasional snaps of twigs when I stepped on them. I used the X-ray Pulse to check the perimeter and make sure I wasn't being followed, but the only figures that came up were a few deer grazing in the forest.
Once I pushed through the thick foliage, I finally entered the circular clearing that was riddled with stonified animals. The thought of that made me slightly nervous because the Cockatrice could be in there at the moment, so I used the X-ray Pulse again. Even though the petrified animals were the only skeletal figures that showed up, I still decided to just stick to the rim of the circular clearing and work my way around it until I reach my sniping tree. Yeah, I'm really cautious in these kind of situations, but the walkaround isn't that long. Not only that, but the whole vibe in the area was slightly depressing for me. Y'know, all these animals were just living their lives and then they unknowingly entered this section of the forest, only to meet the Cockatrice. I hope the fourteen animals I found will unstonify soon because they sure weren't yesterday.
But anyways, when I got over to where I needed to be, I turned the mannequin towards the direction I was going to be positioned. The reason why I made this change was because if the Cockatrice tries to look at the mannequin in the eyes, it'll also might be looking at me in its peripheral vision, then the Cockatrice will have a more likely chance to spot my position and I don't want that happening at all.
I then went twenty feet back into the forest behind the mannequin and climbed up into my vantage point tree. I situated my legs on the two thick branches that slightly spread out to make a small v-shape while I sat on a part of the tree that acted like a chair. To be honest, this was the most comfortable tree I have ever sat on. With the flick of a switch, the Igneous turned on and began to fill with the magical yellow energy, vibrating in my hands at the same time. I raised the long range scope up to my right eye and adjusted the zoom a little bit so that I could get a clear and accurate shot at the thoracic area since a hit from that section of the body usually seems to stonify any creature the quickest. With my X-Ray Pulse at my side, I was now ready for the night. All I have to do now is wait for the Cockatrice to arrive back to its territory and take the bait.
12:54 PM
Something's was moving around, and it was not far. I was hearing all of these weird sounds in the distance. They sounded like some sort of faint, bone-chilling screech, but I couldn't be sure if it was the Cockatrice or not. Could've been any animal. Each screech gave me chills and every single hair on my body stood up on end. But shortly after, the screeching came to a stop and everything went quiet again.
I then took this as a good time to check if anything was approaching. I pressed the pulse button and scanned the area front, left, right, and back. When I looked back, there was a very small orange figure about 90 meters from my position, and slowly approaching towards my position.
"Okay, okay." I whispered, turning off the Igneous because the weapon gives off a low hum, and the figure might hear the audible hum if it gets too close.
The figure slowly walked the ninety meters for about a minute before it was no more than twenty feet away from my tree. This allowed me to get a better look at the skeletal figure with the X-ray Pulse. What I saw was the skull and legs of a chicken, and the skeleton of a serpent with wings, which were folded at its sides. The Cockatrice remained silent as it proceeded forward, carrying another stonified victim in its mouth. I bit my lip and held my breath as the Cockatrice walked underneath the tree and stopped right when it passed by, dropping the stonified animal onto the ground with a thud. From the direction it was staring, it was looking right at the mannequin standing out in the clearing. The Cockatrice began to quietly cluck, which honestly sounded somewhat comical, but still very terrifying by its surrealy dark tone. All of a sudden, with one flap of both its wings, it flew right towards the mannequin and just forcefully tackled it right onto the ground.
"BA-KERRR!" the Cockatrice loudly cawed at the mannequin as its glowing red eyes peered into the mannequins eyes.
Quickly, I switched the Igneous back on and wasted no time to line up the scope with my right eye and pulled the trigger. The beam of magic energy hit the Cockatrice in the thoracic area, sending it flying back and tumbling on the ground for a few meters before it went stiff as a board.
"Bullseye."
I then slowly descended down my tree and picked up the freshly stonified animal that the Cockatrice was carrying, which turned out to be a raccoon. It was still full bodied, so I could probably take this raccoon over to Fluttershy's place tomorrow. After I put the raccoon into my backpack and holstering the Igneous, I walked over towards the Cockatrice to retrieve and take it back to the Land Rover because I forgot my smashing sledgehammer in the back.
When I walked up to it, I turned on my attachable flashlight and noticed how thin the stone layer on the Cockatrice was. I picked it up and inspected it, it's beak filled with jagged, sharp teeth and a fork-like tongue. There was no pupils or iris' at all, just a plain color red.
"God, this thing is creepy."
As I rotated it, a small chip of stone broke off the left side and landed on the ground, revealing it's bluish-green scales. The Cockatrice then began to breathe again, and this caused more pieces of stone to shed off. I felt the creature begin the shake inside the stone layer, which only freed itself even more.
"Aw crap, it's breaking free!" I exclaimed to myself as I dropped the Cockatrice from fear, onto the ground.
The Cockatrice then broke free from its stone imprisonment and let out a threatening caw towards me and looked right into my eyes. I immediately covered my eyes with my left hand while my right hand quivered as I tried to grab the Igneous. Before I could aim my sights, I heard a loud flap of its wings and the Cockatrice had disappeared into the sky.
"Oh, no, no, no, no!" I repeated as I turned on the Igneous and began to aim all over the place with haste.
Like I said, the forest was so quiet that you could hear the smallest sounds; and all I heard was the sound of heart beating at a fast pace and the sound of wings flapping in the sky, but I couldn't see it because it was so dark. One second it would be to my right, and then it would be at my left, back, and front. It just wouldn't stop moving. This repetitive pattern eventually tricked me; when I thought it was going to move in front of me, it went for my back instead.
The Cockatrice then rammed me in the back like a bullet and sent me fumbling forward, nearly losing balance. It's talons gripped my shoulders and began to wrap its tail around my neck. I tensed my neck up as I let out grunty breaths for air from being strangled by the strong tail and I began to yank at the tail. However, with quick thinking and strength, I reached behind my head and managed to get a gripped on the Cockatrices neck aswell and snatched the Cockatrice off my shoulders, holding it out in front of me with my eyes closed. I then grabbed the Igneous with my right hand, brought it upwards, and began to repeatedly hit the Cockatrice with blunt force, like an aluminum bat. At the third strike, the Cockatrice let out a screechy caw and sunk its teeth into my wrist, sending the sensation of sharp pinches through my wrist.
"GAH!" I yelled out from the instantaneous stinging pain, dropping the Cockatrice onto the ground.
The Cockatrice attempted to fly away, but couldn't because it seemed I had broken its right wing, but it ran away instead. Before I could shoot it again, it had already retreated into the forest to recover. I had the same idea aswell and ran off back towards the Land Rover to get my first-aid kit. As I gripped my wrist from the pain, I could feel a slightly warm liquid on my skin that was leaking out of me.
Once I ran through the forest, I jumped into the Defender, turned it on, and just floored it out of there. As I sped away, I turned on the interior roof light to inspect my injury; a steady, slow flow of dark red blood coated my wrist and ran down my right hand.
"Fucking stupid bullshit! How could I of known it could unstonify itself?!" I growled to myself, striking the Land Rover logo on the steering wheel with my fist.
Once I got about a mile away from the area I was just at, I pulled over to the side of the path and reached for the first aid kit. First, I grabbed the bottle of alcohol and a medium sized gauze pad. I poured a small amount of alcohol onto the pad and wrapped it around the wound. It stung like a son of a bee sting, but it helps. Some may think that alcohol is bad for a wound like this, but since this land is well known for being magical, this alcohol is magical as well. Within a few hours, my wounds would be healed from the encouraged cell regeneration. I let that sit on for a while before I removed it and tightly wrapped some ace bandage around my right wrist to halt the bleeding and protect the open wounds from debris during the accelerated healing process.
As I finished, I put the Defender into first gear again and proceed to drive again.
"Uhh, what am I going to do now? I gotta think of how I'm going to catch this thing for good." I thought to myself.
As that thought dwelled in my head, I decided to just call it a night and head back to Twilight's for some sleep and deal with this situation tomorrow.