Private Tales The wrong place

[Maranae]

Hunt.

Her body was willing, straining at the leash that had saddled it - the will of the child within, the one that had been but was no more. That child wanted nothing to do with the thing that it had become, but was as capable of turning it aside as that same child would have been at stopping a raging river. Sentience took a back seat to instinct, and instinct had bee instilled in her from....sources.

"Hungry," she said in her childish voice, a tremor of emotion creeping into it. Savage desire seemed to war with denial, innocent denial that had no place.

She stepped forward tentatively, head high, eyes darting, nostrils flaring. Tasting the air for the scent of meat, for the trace of a trail that she could follow. She could smell the Norden, overpowering in his proximity, the scent of his emotions - disquiet, confusion, curiosity. They made a melange, a nearly overpowering blend that might have covered the dozens of other trails crisscrossing the woodlands nearest her.

Her injuries from the Bad Place required something of her, some essential something that made her appetite voracious to a very nearly frightening degree. Wailing child in her head, the beast regarded Valthar as a potential meal and dismissed it as not worth the effort.

Wailing child. Crying in her head, calling in negation of what was to come. Scarring, terrible savagery that could not be unseen. Maranae started forward, lithe form moving with predatory grace and undefinable stealth as she picked her way quickly through the woods, homing in on a single trail, separating the thread of scent from all the others.

Go then, hunt, he'd said. "Hungry. Hungry hungry hungry," she whispered. Was it a trick of the light, or were the incisors in her mouth longer, more pointed?

The scent grew stronger swiftly. A four-legged horn-head, she knew by its scent. It had laid up close to where the two-legs had been treading, hoping to remain concealed and out of sight, to remain in peace. It had smelled her, as had many of the local creatures. A meddening scent, a blend of things that should not be in a single place at a single time, let alone coming from a single source.

Maranae veered off the path that they had been following, bare feet careless of sticks and twigs, of sharp rocks and of raspberry vines that scratches and left spots of blood behind. She was hot on the trail, and before she had even managed to make it a dozen feet off the path, Valthar presumably behind her but forgotten, the buck broke cover, white tail flagging its alarm as it snorted. The deer should have been more than capable of outrunning a human.

But she was no human. Not anymore, not ever again. Tears escaped her eyes as she pounded after the dinner on hooves, the child within knowing what was coming next.

On her own two feet, she kept pace. But...Maranae seemed to hesitate a moment. The world seemed to twist in some fashion, and then the woman was a blur, the sickly sweet scent of spices wafting through the air as the shape within that blur shifted, became indistinct.

And then one form became many.

Bounding away from whatever that blurring had been were a pair of dogs and a wolf, as well as some kind of mountain cat. The canines easily kept pace and gained on the deer while the feline took to the trees, bounding with elegance that belied its feline nature. None of the animals behaved as normal, though, working as though guided by a single mind.

It didn't take long before the deer was being herded back towards Valthar, teeth snapping at its haunches as it tried to bound a way, one of the dogs hanging from the front shoulder. The horns on its head might have proven deadly weapons, but the animal was in full flight and never stood its ground, not for a second. It managed a couple bounds before the hound on its leg managed to crunch bone, and the animal let out a pained sound even as the other two canines closed on its hund quarters again.

And then the cat dropped from the trees, only a little smaller than the canines but far more savage. Teeth sank into the neck of the deer as claws tore bloody rents in the back of its neck and its throat, leaving it a bloody ruin.

The end came swiftly for that sad animal, and then the sound of flesh being torn from bone, and the sound of bone breaking, were all there was to hear.

 

[Baise]

Valthar didn't approach the group of animals that tore into the deer. He didn't dare interrupt as they attacked its corpse with fervour.

Whatever he might have imagined had been done to Mara this was not it. The magic of his own people could transform them into Svalen. Yet that was the true representation of their souls. How could she have been split into several forms?

The possibilities terrified him. Did she absorb other creatures? What had happened to all the creatures whose remains he had found down in that terrifying laboratory?

He kept his distance, watching from behind a thick mound of ferns. Maria's hunger had started to consume her and he didn't know whether the creatures she had become would even recognise him now.

 

[Maranae]

It was a twisted kind of magic.

It swirled unseen around the many forms, threads that connected each to the whole. In the manner of lycanthropy and vampirism it was a virus, but the the pathology was purely magical and singularly deadly. Its bite is poison, one of the researchers had screamed. Well, it was. The bite carried pathways of magic, subtle motes of power that would, given time, overwhelm the host. Obliterate the thing that made them an individual, erase the spark of sentience and replace it with her.

Of course, it did not work with people, or with strong willed animals either. The majority of those died from the magical rabies, as it were, wracked with pain and high fever until they succumbed.

Half of the deer, hide and all, had already been consumed by the time that Valthar arrived in his hiding spot. Canines continued to gorge themselves, but the feline-self stopped, head coming up and yellow eyes swiveling to focus on where the Norden hid. Watching intently, while the others fed. There was warning in those eyes. You are safe, it seemed to say. For now.

Whatever guiding hand dwelled behind those eyes, however much more malicious it might have been than the little girl in the womans body, it nevertheless was losing its utter control. Whatever drove that shift did not have absolute doninion.

The scent of spice, a feeling of wrenching. A blurring, and where there had been three there was now one. Mara knelt before the carcass of the animal she had slain, blood staining her clothes, slick on her chin.

And wept piteously.

 

[Baise]

Valthar stared back into that feline gaze. There was more than just an animal mind behind that look. He couldn't tell if it was Mara. As a norden he needed a large quantity of food, especially now he had shifted. As ravenous as he was he was not going to approach the three animals.

Having gorged the three creatures shifted back into Mara. It was, he decided, like catching movement out of the corner of your eye.

She was covered in blood and convulsing. Not convulsing, he realised, just bunching over the kill and weeping.

"Mara?" he asked as he picked a careful path through tree undergrowth. The hungry part of himself realised, with some didsapointment, that he did not have a knife to skin what was left of the prey.

 

[Maranae]

"Mara does not want," she said thickly, voice small and raw with emotion. She looked at her hands, sticky with clotting blood, and fell backwards, crying harder. In truth, crying the full throated sobs of a child that had skinned her knee, waiting for her mother to come and make it better.

A hollow, empty place in her heart. Maranae could almost see the image of a face, blurred and indistinct, yet full of compassion. Looking down, smiling.

It was gone in an instant. All that remained was terror at the time when everything went dim, where she could only recall snippets of memory and no more. No comforting words for the child to allay her fears, no embrace.

Just the sharp, coppery scent of fresh blood. On the ground, on her clothes. On her face, hands, arms. In her mouth,the ghostly taste of sweet vitae and flesh. Her stomach, deadly hollow before, filled and quiescent.

"Mara does not," she said, repeating herself. "Not want, not want to hurt four-legs," sobbing.

 

[Baise]

"Oh child," he said, knowing that she was not one. Valthar dropped to one knee behind her and placed and arm across her shoulder. He did so very tentatively, fearing the emergence of the hunger that had taken over so quickly. Could anger or another trigger set her upon him?

"Its done now. It was killed quickly. And...if we can find a steam to follow then I can fish for us both so you don't have to hunt again." Valthars's braid had fallen loose, long blonde strands brushed the side of her face.

She was covered in blood. He had not seen her human form touch the carcass. If human was even the right word.

"I don't know what berries can be eaten safely out here in the south."

 

[Maranae]

She clung to him as soon as he touched her, sobbing softly, trembling out of fear for what she did not understand. The monster within her seemed sated, quiescent, and had curled up and closed its eyes. Much like a cat after a heavy meal.

She eventually quieted, the trauma of the shift and everything that came after fading. She sniffed, and looked upon the half eaten carcass of the deer. At least there was some left for the Norden that had not been chewed on too much.

"Mara does not understand," she said. There was pleading in her voice, as if Valthar could give her answers to the questions born in the nightmares below ground. "Does not understand why the Bad Thing comes. It scares Mara," she said softly.

She had no ideas about fish, and less about berries. She subsisted almost entirely on meat, and had since her...awakening. The Bad One had only become a thing recently, just before her escape of the facility.

She got up, and went to look at her handywork with just a touch of sadness at what she had done. "Mara is sorry, four-legs," she said.

 

[Baise]

"It is how life works Mara. The deer knows that it is prey and must be able to hide or flee or it will be eaten. Left unchecked they breed and breed."

He looked down at the deer. Trying to butcher the carcass with a sword instead of a sharp knife was going to be slow work. It was quite a small creature. The moose they had up in Eretejva were not such timid creatures because they were twice the size.

"That looked like three bad things to me," he said to Mara as he knelt before the deer. A fire would be easy to see if someone was up above the woods but it didn't seem like such a risk if they put some distance between themselves and the trail.

 

[Maranae]

She didn't want to believe that her handiwork was a necessary part of the world, that death was something that could not be avoided. Child-like insecurity and innocence could not last long, though, under the pressure of reality. Mara did what any child would, and ran from the truth.

"Mara does not understand Bad Things," she said. And she didn't. She had no control over when they came and when they left, and even less over what they did when they were ascendant, when they were the ones in charge. It was this unique ability of hers that the researchers had been after, and had failed to bring out in her during her stay in their Bad Place, with all the pain and suffering that went with it. Up until that day that it did come out, and there was blood and horror enough for everyone.

Somewhere beneath layers of magic and alchemy, there was a little girl. The one that had been forgotten, the one that had been abused, and ultimately, erased.

"Will Bad Things hunt Mara?" she asked, curious. If some things know they must be hunted, then perhaps all things were in due time.

--

The trail was obvious enough to follow for the bounty hunter, and that made him suspicious. Even knowing what he knew of the target, there was the unknown factor of the Norden with her, the one that should not even be here. Long ago, heh ad learned to accept the world for what it was, not for how he wanted it to be. It was the only way to stay alive, and it was a method that surprisingly few people employed. Most people wanted the world to be the way they wanted it to be, and sometimes turned a blind eye to the bits they did not like.

And so, when he found the end to the path of the Svalen's rampage, he has looked around carefully. There was no sign of either the creature nor the Norden from this point forward, which meant they had backtracked on their own trail, and then likely struck off from it at a right angle. It was something he himself would have done if he knew he was being pursued. He would also have set up an ambush somewhere along the route, but he did not really think that was a possibiltiy in this case.

Talon straightened, and then mounted Wintermist again, looking back the way he had come. "Can't be far, old girl. Payday is a-coming," he said as he patted the beast on its neck.

 

[Baise]

Not for the first time and he suspected not for the last time, Valthar was confused by her question. Was he terrified that the things inside her were going to turn on her or that other predators would come?

"Everywhere is dangerous Mara," he told her. "That's why we should find a town. There is safety in numbers and I don't know these lands."

He drew his sword and started the awkward, bloody work of cutting free one of the untouched legs. It wasn't the tool for the job and soon it was going to be turned to cutting strips of wood for a fire. A little longer in that dark place and he might have found enough supplies to survive the wilds.

 

[Maranae]

"Mara has never been to a town," she replied as she watched the man work on the remnants of the deer. She didn't understand even the slightest bit of what it was that he was doing with the steel blade. The only thing she had ever seen such a thing used for was as a weapon, and against her on several different occasions. Fragments of memory from...elsewhere suggested it was much the same.

Suddenly, Mara sat upright, every inch of her screaming attentiveness. She looked up from what Valthar was doing, looking into the woods. But three was nothing out there at the moment, even if the land had gone quiet, as if it held its breath. Still, some instinct was at work, alerting her to some danger that she could not see.

She opened her mouth to offer to help Valthar with the leg, not that she had a clue as to what it was she would do, when a sharp snap echoed through the woods. Maranae lurched forward a foot or so, and blood rushed from her open mouth in a hot spray; blood bloomed from a wound in her chest, and the weapon that had done the damage struck the soil many yards forward of her with ribbons of flesh trailing behind it. A heavy crossbow bolt.

Maranae fell forward, motionless.

"Easy as pie," the bowman said as he dropped down from a tree a hundred yards distant. Somewhere distant, a horse whickered softly, but the bounty hunter did not have any care for that at the moment. He loosened one of the heavy knives at his belt, and began to advance through the woods. He could clearly see the Norden there, and clearly didn't care, either.

 

[Baise]

Valthar stood to his full height very slowly. Mara lay quite dead on the ground. It didn't matter how well she could heal; that heavy bolt had pierced straight through the centre of her chest. He felt a sudden well of sadness that her story would end here. It had never really started. Death was still a preferable release than being taken back for someone else to experiment on.

Valthar had no shield or axe. He had no armour either. Even if his life depended on it he could not be certain that he would be able to shift again so soon.

The kind of crossbow that could do some much damage at a distance took time to load and he didn't see the hunter carrying another. The man's purposeful, almost relaxed gait suggested that he was in no hurry to load another bolt. He was confident.

"Why?" Valthar called back. He did not flee, at least not yet. He held his ground as he tried to search for a way out. There was enough tree cover that a moving target would be a difficult kill. If Mara was his quarry then perhaps he wouldn't care to track Valthar too.

 

[Maranae]

The man moved through the undergrowth carelessly, now that he had achieved his overarching goal. He had expected this hunt to be much, much more difficult considering all the information that had been given to him by the customer on this particular contract. He certainly had not expected a living weapon to fall to a single shot from a crossbow at range, but there she was, lying in a a spreading pool of her own blood, red hair a halo around her.

The man stepped into a shallow gully, but kept coming on, careless of the other that was still there. No contract on that man, so there was little need to fight him.

"Because I was paid to do it," the man said simply, as if that should answer everything. He knew it wouldn't, though, so he answered the implied questions as well. "I don't know what you think you were helping, but it wasn't a human being. You are lucky it didn't kill you as well."

He would make sure it was dead, he decided. He wanted a trophy to prove his kill, anyway, and the pretty head might suffice as that proof. It wasn't as if it was a person, after all. No way to commit sacrilege against a dead beast, whatever its human aspect might looks like.

Talon stepped back into sight of Valthar again, and stopped. The body was gone. Somehow, it had escaped without either he or Valthar hearing it, its movements covered by Talon's own in the undergrowth. Blood trailed away into the brush, but from Talon's vantage he could not see the monster.

"Come away from there, Norden. No need to protect a blood-thirsty monster like that. Too dangerous. Come away," he called, loosening a blade in its scabbard, suddenly very much alert, eyes scanning his surroundings. Looking for the monster. He knew it was too easy. Should have trusted his instincts.

 

[Baise]

Valthars's fingers tightened around the hilt of his sword. So far he had seen no sign of Mara being blood thirsty. The things she had become had hunted, but that was perfectly normal. It didn't make a thing inherently bloodthirsty or evil.

No, in his mind the people who had tortured the poor girl and stolen her childhood were evil. If someone was paying for a cleanup then someone behind this all was still alive.

The bounty hunter was just a professional, but he was after blood money. There were evil men behind him. Valthar took a sideways step to bring him close to a tree that would provide cover. The hunter might have carried a smaller crossbow or throwing knives and Valthar had no shield.

"Why don't you come down here?" Valthar asked with renewed determination.

 

[Maranae]

The man shrugged, and continued to make his way carefully through the trees and undergrowth. He made no move to attack Valthar in any case; what the Norden had done back at the facility was of no concern to him. He was here for the monster and no one else.

"Do you even know what that thing is?" His tone was casual, unconcerned even if his eyes told the lie. He was watching his surroundings carefully, as if he expected attack ti come from any direction and at any time. "I will tell you. An abomination, a thing that should never have been. A blend between beast and human." He spit as he stepped into the little clearing. "Someone should dispose of the man who ordered that project. Might even be worth a freebie."

Talon had a moral compass after all. He might be a filthy whore of a sword-and, but there were things you did not do.

"Have to deal with their experiment first. Whoever she was before is dead. It's just another monster now, and it already killed a couple dozen people." And, by happy coincidence, the one in charge of the project. That saved him some time, at least.

 

[Baise]

"And who pays you now?" Valthar called out. "I assumed it was the man in charge." Valthar held his ground, watching the hunter carefully. He could see no sign of Mara or the path she had taken.

"There's still human in there. Frightened and confused. Who has she attacked other than the people experimenting on her and torturing her?"

 

[Maranae]

"That is not information you are privy to," the man replied evenly. No malice, simply a statement of fact. The employer had demanded anonymity as a condition of contracting, and so Talon would keep the contract as it had been signed. Not least of because breaching that particular clause was liable to see him dead.

"I am not privy to all the details anyway. It was an experiment to make a living weapon." He did not add that the experiment had failed spectacularly, nor that he had a feeling that whatever they had done once, they would try again. consequences be damned. "And how do you know it has any humanity left to it? Just because it looks like its human, and might be able to speak a few words here and there does not make it human. There are birds that can talk, after all, and this thing was created, not born. It is an abomination unto the natural order. Even if it did have some scrap of humanity left to it, wouldn't it be best to put it out of its misery?" The man stepped past the Norden, kneeling to look at the trail of blood coagulating on the ground. "Would you want to live if someone had twisted who and what you were, and erased what made you you?"

 

[Baise]

The way the man knelt beside him exuded confidence. With norden strength Valthar could have cleaved him clean in two. And yet he stayed his blade. Either he was so deadly that he didn't see Valthar as a threat or he had more men hidden in the trees with crossbows.

"That I am not privy to? Unto the natural order?" Valthar repeated, chewing the words around in his mouth.

"Fucking southerners," he spat in outright disdain. Conjuring words around the fact that he had just put a bolt through a woman's heart without a touch of remorse.

"She's human, because I've spent the last day talking to a very confused human. It's not complicated. And if I had been twisted, maybe I'd like the choice to live or die."

 

[Maranae]

"So she has the facsimile of humanity? Does her choice to live outweigh the choice of others?" The man stood, and faced Valthar, expression hard. "You think me some kind of monster? Well, maybe I am. But that creature is poison. The kind of sorcery they used on her, the kind of alchemy employed, all of it..."

There was supreme confidence in the man, but it was born of long survival, of a great wealth of experience. And now he was focusing on the man before him with suspicion. "Her bite is poison. Think of it like vampirism, only...not quite."

The way it had been explained to him was that it was akin to a pathogen, similar in scope to that which transmitted vampirism or lycanthopy. In fact, those two specimens had been employed in the creation of the beast itself. One bite was all it took, and the effects were...unpleasant. Horrible sickness, madness, death were all possible, but the most horrifying thing was the subsumation of individual will, having the self erased and replaced by its own will.

As far as Talon was concerned, the people in the research facility were lucky. Death was far better than becoming a part of the thing they had created.

"I don't intend on becoming another part of that beast, nor do I intend to let it turn any other innocent. It can die, and the world will be safe from incipient madness born of some pricks meddling with things they shouldn't have." And when this is done, I will go pay a visit to the man that employed me and put an end to any future projects of his, too.

 

[Baise]

"A what of humanity? Never mind." Valthar was just a simple fisherman really. Debates where he came from were handled quickly. People got to the point.

He squared his shoulders and looked the hunter in the eye. He slowly raised both his arms out to the sides, keeping the sword in his hand.

"I can agree with the last bit. Whoever did this should be stopped. But can you see any bites? Why am I still alive? Has it hurt anyone who didn't hurt it?"

 

[Maranae]

Talon's features remained smooth, determined. But the war within was anything but simple, the expression of his convictions anything but easy or calm.

He had signed a contract, and to him that meant more than his morals in most cases. But he was torn on this subject. All he had was what he had been told - by his employer, by this man here. The words of strangers in both cases, one giving him a large amount of money to deal with a monster, and another who had no skin in the game at all.

He could not understand why the Norden would defend someone - something - just met. What could a monster have done to have another stand up for it? At risk to the Norden's own life, even? Had it been himself, he would have abandoned the beast to its fate and been done with the entire problem swiftly.

"I do not know," he admitted at last. He looked into the undergrowth, the trail of blood leading off into the wilderness. "But I have to find out soon. There is a small town not far from here, in that direction. A few hundred people could be in grave danger," he added.

Why did there need to be a moral question in this job? But then, the nature of what had been done here left him ill inside. How could any kind of justice be served in the face of such...

Barbarity. He was no longer certain he was on the right side of this problem.

"I am going after it. Come along if you wish, or go your own way," he said gruffly. Suiting his words, he set off following the crimson trail.

--

Pain.

Overwhelming pain that had consumed everything for a moment in time that seemed to stretch into eternity. The shortness of breath, the stabbing pain in her chest...

She had pulled herself along by instinct alone, moving with the uncanny stealth she had used to hunt food. It was now used to escape predators. Pure instinct guided her now, conscious mind dimmed by the loss of blood. If the bolt had struck her a few inches down and to the left...

But it hadn't. And so she clawed her way forward, ignorant of what was going on behind her. As before, the pain was becoming unbearably intense, and it wasn't long before that rising tide of agony became overwhelming. Thankfully for her, she had made it far enough by then that the strangled moans of her suffering couldn't give her away. The pain rise to a crescendo, and with a mewl, the red head passed out.

 

[Baise]

Valthar decided that this was a good point to put his sword away. No matter what path was taken, they were past the chance of violence. Valthar realised, with mild disappointment that he had no scabbard. The awkward shuffle before resting the flat of the blade on his shoulder didn't have quite the same effect.

Valthar looked towards the town. It was where he had been trying to go with Mars. Could she hurt the people there? She didn't heal instantly and that wound had looked fatal. She would be frightened and confused again. He could not say that she would never hurt anyone there.

"Will you give her a chance?" Valthar called out as he trudged after the man. He was alone, it seemed. That made his confidence even more concerning.

 

[Maranae]

The man paused, and then clicked his teeth. A moment later, the sound of a heavy body moving through the undergrowth came to them, and moments later Wintermist broke through the cover, trotting along with the equine equivalent of a smile on her face. Talon waited until the horse reached them, stroking the nose that was forced into his hand absently.

"I do not know. I will not shoot it again until I can determine how dangerous it is. Might not matter." He moved forward, horse following close behind. The animal was loaded down with supplies, and eyed the Norden in an unfriendly way. It was clearly a trained warhorse.

"I am not the only one seeking it. Others are too, and the town is the first place they will go - not because they expect to find it there, but because they expect they won't."

The trail was easy to follow. Blood stood out in sharp contrast to the ground, although there was less and less of it as he moved forward. They had said its regenerative abilities were superb, and that it would he ravenously hungry after having to employ them. He could easily imagine it rampaging in the streets if the town, killing and devouring people to meet its needs.

Except...the Norden seemed to believe the thing was more than a beast.

He considered that the only reason conscience bothered him was because he found what had been done here reprehensible to the highest degree. The man that hired him was scum, and the ones that had actually done the deed...

How could anyone do that to a little girl? It rubbed him the wrong way. Lent some credence that what the monster had done behind them was justified. The town was a different matter.

"It stopped here," he said, holding up a hand. The monster was not here, but a great deal if blood was. The earth was also torn up, and though it had clawed the earth or writhed in agony on this spot, before moving on. "I think..."

Yes, the trail continued. It was harder to read, but clearly the monster was still headed straight for the little hamlet out here in the woods.

A little later, curiosity got the better of him. "What us a Norden doing so far from home? Surely you weren't here for their...project. Why, then?"

 

[Baise]

Most horses were supposedly spooked by the scent of a nordenfiir. They didn't smell like humans, they smelled like bears. Fortunately a trained warhorse only displayed very minor distrust of him.

In return Valthar was absolutely flabbergasted at the sight of a full warhorse up close. He had never seen any kind of horse. It was just an enormous lump of muscle. He couldn't quite imagine a line of them charging into battle. He didn't want to see that in person.

The hunter seemed to have a reasonable, of cold, logic to his way. It still did not breed trust between them. He had heard that many southerners used fancy words to cover despicable deeds. So far, nothing had changed his prejudice about these lands.

He was starting to wonder about the future. Valthar had to make his way home. If he got through this and stayed with Mara for the next leg of the journey how many more hunters would be on their heels.

"You did not hear about the demons swallowing villages and dragging creatures into their realm?" he asked.

 

[Maranae]

"Sure," he replied blithely. "The bastards were hard to kill. Especially the ones that started as people." If the memories associated with that event bothered the bounty hunter, it didn't show. He seemed as cool and collected as ever, leading his horse forward, eyes on the ground. His senses were alert, though, for he was no fool to be caught unawares by his quarry, "I helped where I could, but by the time I arrived in the mists, the event was mostly over. Didn't last much longer than a few days after I arrived."

The occasional spot of blood was the easiest tell that he was still on the trail of the monster, but there were others. dislodged soil, broken blades of grass, snapped twigs. The beast was damnably hard to track, almost as if it knew it was being tracked. That, or it had an innate sense of how to move stealthily. Whatever the case, it was taking a great deal of the man's trailcraft to keep up.

"I am guessing you were one of the lucky ones to get dragged into their realm and still manage to return home." It was not a question. "You do not seem like a warrior, so I doubt it was by design."

He looked to the sky, and then around carefully. There were perhaps an hour away from the town, such as it was. It was unlikely they would catch up with the beast before it got there, though. "Doesn't explain how you wind up on the edge of the Falwood, at least fifteen hundred wheels away."

--

Her heart pounded in her chest, and with each pulse, blood oozed from the wound in her chest. It had slowed a great deal, but the terrible healing had slowed as well. At least with its running down, the pain had subsided. If only it had not bee replaced by such demanding hunger.

Maranae stumbled through the woods, thought stumbling was perhaps a misnomer. She stalked, although she was unaware of it. Her only focus was on one foot in front of the other, one step further away from the Bad Man that had shot her. She did not understand why people kept hurting her; the people in the coats in the Bad Place had hurt her, too. The mean with the metal claws had hurt her, and now a complete stranger. The only one who had not hurt her was Valthar, but he was with the Bad Man now, and she dare not approach lest he hurt her again.

The fact that her hunger was an insistent demon in her guts, clawing at her insides in a vicious attempt to get free, did not help. She could still remember...the deer, even if it was through a fog. She did not like what she had done to the animal, and she did not like that the instinct had been to do likewise to Valthar, at least until she had sated the primal drive for food.

The beast in her terrified her. There were memories, buried so deeply she could not even recall them in their entirety, when all of this had not been so. When there had not been pain, when there had not been hunger. When there had not been fear. She wished she could call to mind those things, those days, for they seemed to be pleasant, blissfully ignorant of the world that was the now.

Her guts rolled, and growled in protest. She needed to eat, and the drive was nearly overwhelming, overriding her senses. It took a supreme effort of will - willpower she neither knew she had nor understood - to resist the monster she had become.

Ahead, as the sun settled lower on the horizon, casting the world in golden hues, the shape of houses broke the woodlands, the smell of woodsmoke. Tended, clear fields with stone walls marking their boundries...

...and people. The smell of their meat made her salivate, so that droll dripped from the tips of her fang-like incisors. Even as something wailed in her mind, telling her to stop. The monster frightened her, but it was waking up in her mind, seeing what she saw...

...and hungering.