Chapter One: Flight
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Deep in the moonlit forest, the birds and beasts had fallen silent; No sound could be heard but for the gentle whooshing of the breeze, the rustling of the slightly dried out leaves, and the skidding footsteps of a teenage girl sprinting through the brush.
Dammit! The girl thought as she dashed through the trees. Only the fact that she had faced perilous situations many times before kept her from blind panic, and she was still terrified. What the hell are these things!? Is this some kind of sick twisted joke or something!?Who the heck would want to-?
She was cut off mid-thought as a few hunched figures emerged from the shadows ten feet in front of her. She skidded to a stop, panting. The figures limped closer, revealing themselves in detail.
Three men with skin that looked like it belonged on a festering corpse, empty eye sockets, and gaping mouths from which a horrible moaning sound emenated...
The girl stood there for a few more moments, her forest-green eyes narrowed, her stance tense, like a feral animal deciding whether to fight or flee. The strange corpse-creatures drew closer, and she came to a snap decision and bolted suddenly to her right. She could hear their enraged groans from behind as she raced along between the trees.
She ran on, and after a minute or so, all she could hear was the wind rushing past her and the soft roar of a nearby river. She still didn't stop. The girl continued her frenzied flight for several more minutes until she burst into a small clearing in the dark woods. She slowed to a stop and bent over double, her breathing ragged, her long brown hair hanging, disheveled and damp, over her face. She'd been running for a half-hour now, and although she'd had to run for much longer before, she was still winded.
The forest was deadly silent as the girl stood there catching her breath- Not a birdcall sounded, no small rustlings were heard from the leaves under which small animals tended to scurry. A hush had fallen on this place, as if even the wildlife was afraid to be noticed...
A twig snapped in the forest.
The girl's head snapped up, quick as a serpent's, and she stared rigidly into the woods in the direction the lone sound had come from. Slowly, another of the creatures staggered into view, moaning, its decomposing hands snatching blindly at the air in front of it. It appeared to be alone.
The girl slowly straightened into a fighting stance, clutching her small bronze dagger so hard that her knuckles turned bone-white. I can't run forever. These things, whatever they are, certainly aren't innocent bystanders... This is kill or be killed. She clenched her teeth, her expression fierce. I'll bet that if I could get them one at a time, I could take out just enough of them so that I can make my escape... She waited in tense silence as the monster inched closer, reaching grotesquely towards her. C-closer... Closer... Almost there...
The girl's senses were heightened because of the rush of adrenaline that now flowed in her veins, but she still never heard any sound to betray the presence of the shadowy figure that suddenly towered over the monster from behind, where just a moment ago there had been nothing but air. The monster started to turn, but it was far too slow to save itself; A piercing bellow ripped from its throat and shattered the silence as a white-gloved hand abruptly shot through its chest from behind. It let out another cry before disintegrating into sand and blowing away, nothing more than dust on the breeze.
The girl was left alone, if anything more rigid than before, staring at an extremely strange-looking man who now stood at the opposite end of the clearing. He wore a crimson jacket and wide-brimmed hat, a jet-black button-down undershirt and pants, iridescent orange glasses that hid his eyes completely from view, and the strangest smile she had ever seen. It sent a shiver down her spine, and she was immediately more wary of the one who had saved her than the creature he had saved her from. For his smile was one that she had seen before, on the faces of the men from Warbridge when they discovered the girl and her sister in the house of the couple that the men had just killed.
It was the smile of a cat who has been locked in a cellar full of mice.
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