Demon Hare

The butcher held a black, furry carcass by its ears and flopped it onto a maple block with a thud. He judged that the specimen was on the older side, about seven or eight years, according to the meager amount of fat in its flesh.

From foot to head, not counting the gigantic flopping ears, the hare measured in a little under a meter. Its eyes were still moist and clear but had lost their usual live brightness. A red tongue hung from its closed mouth, which also contained two razor-sharp sets of incisors. An incredibly dense skull was supported by a thick, stout neck. Its legs were long and powerful, and its feet were enormous, almost cartoonishly large.

The uniformity of its black fur was strikingly interrupted by a deep crimson stain just behind the trunk of the hare's right foreleg, and another dripping down from the incision made across its neck. The former stain emanated from a tri-tipped hole left from an elvish broadhead, the latter was to relieve the hare of the last of its blood.

The butcher reached for a large machete-like cleaver that lay on his block. It was the length of his forearm and was wider than his palm. The blade was thin and springy, but it was still unwieldy to a normal person, and if it was a millimeter thicker it'd have been unwieldy for the experienced butcher. The blade was an unnamed alloy, boasting as much as ten different elements, including iron, carbon, silver, and trace amounts of mithril. The blade was order-made for the butcher and was outfitted to chop any kind of beastly bone, of this world or not. The handle was carved out of cherry and had to be replaced often.

Thick, calloused fingers wrapped around the perfect cleaver. The butcher held the torso of the creature, limbs taught. Light from an oil lantern flashed off the mirror finish of the metal as the butcher raised his tool and brought it down upon the ankles of the animal. The chop carried just enough force to break skin, bone, and more skin, but not enough to so much as scratch the maple block. Both feet were clean off, and the butcher set them aside. He repeated the same motions for the hare's other set of feet. He set the four feet aside, untouched.

He unequipped his cleaver and reached for another knife, this time a boning knife of the same alloy. It was still on the large side as far as knives go, but it was much more subdued compared to his cleaver. It bore a thin, semi-flexible blade, and a sharp pointed tip. The butcher slipped the blade in between the skin and muscle of one of the hare's hind legs, and cut outwards, opening up a thin slit in its leg. He did the same to the opposite leg, then rolled the skin back towards the torso, as a parent would their child if their trousers were too long. When the skin was rolled all the way up and the hare scandalously showed its bare legs, he gripped it with both hands, thumbs under the skin and the other eight digits on the back just above the tail. He pulled the skin back, and with a little effort, the thick fur gave way. With a glorious pop, the tough membrane around the trunks of its hind legs tore off, and the butcher finally had enough leeway to grip the hind legs with one hand, the loose skin with the other, and pull all the skin off at once, the membrane hissing as he went. The skin only came off up to the hare's thick neck, so the butcher equipped his cleaver once again and rendered the head disembodied with an agile swing. With a large scimitar knife, he removed the head from the fur. He set the fur aside.

It had been less than a minute since the butcher started processing the demon hare. Unbeknownst to him, his skill with a knife was unparalleled on the continent. He had butchered thousands of hares, demon or otherwise, in his thirty-odd years of processing game, and it was child's play at this point. A typical demon hare bore four kilograms of lean meat, not counting edible organs such as the liver, heart, or brain. One could only imagine what kind of beast the butcher considered large, and how much meat it could bear. Some townsfolk even claim that they witnessed him clean and butcher a drake in the early hours of one morning.

In reality, he had never butchered a drake before. The only reason being is that drake meat is rancid and he refuses to buy it. What the townsfolk saw was a small wyvern, missing its wings. When the wyverns are hunted, the wings are often cut clean off in the field, simply because of the sheer size of them inhibit the transport of the carcass. A small wyvern can have the wingspan of a good-sized mead hall.

The butcher now held his scimitar knife and started to make a cut near the hare's tail. From the outside, he made two cuts, one from the left of the tail, one from the right. Both cuts sliced inwards, and a removed and large section of flesh that included the hare's tail and anus. He tossed that piece of meat into a waste bin, never to be seen again. From there he made a long incision from between the legs to the neck. With his large hands, he pulled the hare open, abdominopelvic and thoracic cavities exposed for the world to see. With one nimble motion, the butcher scraped the guts out of the hare, and they dropped on the table with a grotesque plop. He tossed most of the organs away but kept the kidneys and liver. The heart, while edible, was decimated by the well-aimed arrow.

Using his scimitar to slice the dense muscle, and cleaver to chop the even denser bone, the butcher made quick work of the rabbit's meat. He first sliced off the two large hind legs. Then he worked his way up, cutting the loin away from the saddle. He then worked his knives between the saddle and ribs, up into the shoulder. He set the saddle aside, then cut away the ribs from the forelegs. He split the shoulder and the forelegs apart and trimmed the sinewy neck away from the shoulder. Now, exclusively using the scimitar, he trimmed away the unsavory bits from the meat.

What he trimmed away he set aside into two different groups. One group was going to be sold as stew meat for cheap, the other group ground up, processed, and sold to street food vendors as sausages or patties. He also reserved the spine to be made into stew. So now the butcher was left with six cuts of meat, four feet, a head, a fur, a liver, and two kidneys. He grabbed a roll of butcher paper off a shelf and started wrapping one of the cuts. After he wrapped it, he tied it with a length of twine. He did the same with the five other cuts and stored them in a high-end, magically cooled cabinet. They'd eventually be sold in the front of his store, to one of his loyal customers. He then heavily salted the feet, poked a small meat hook through all four of them, and climbed down a small flight of stairs to his cellar, where he set the feet up to dry. After they dry, he would send his wife to the market to sell them to an alchemist or a mystic. He quickly exited the cellar, annoyed by the cold, and walked back to his block. As for the head, he had a few options. He decided on what to do, and he reached for a slightly curved iron hook. The hook itself was very thin, and the handle fits perfectly into the butcher's large hand. He slid the hook into the foramen magnum and twisted it around. After a good few twists, he pulled the brain out through the hole. Now that the skull was de-brained, the butcher also carefully peeled the skin off and removed the eyes. He tossed both, and then set the skull aside to be washed and preserved. It'd be sold as a trinket to some morbid lord or spoiled youth.

Finally, the butcher wrapped the liver and kidneys and stored them in his cooler. He'd fry them with his dinner that night since organs don't sell or keep well. The butcher then quickly wiped down his block, cleaned his knives, and replaced them in their kit. He then walked to a thick steel door and opened it.

As he stepped through the threshold he was hit by a wave of cold air. All around him were beast carcasses of all shapes and sizes hanging from hooks on the walls and ceiling. He lowered one to the ground, threw it over his shoulder, and exited the room. He walked back to his block, dropped the beast onto his workstation, and started to process his second carcass of the day, for it was still early in the morning, and his shop had yet to even open.