[i]Well,[/i] she thought to herself as the ravening monstrosity stormed through the smoke and flames as though they weren't there; [i]It worked.[/i]  

The beast trampled the burning wood, steaming with its own sick inferno. Everything was red, now, shot through with black lines of pain.  Something hot trickled from her nose.  She tasted mouthfuls of blood she knew weren't there and nearly choked.  She had been braced to call up the flame, show it the mandala, blind it or force it back, but she was still weak, and the power of the warped creature hurtling toward her was too much.  

Her concentration shattered with her courage. She panicked.  

She fled back into the nightmarish darkness, not caring that she might never find her way out, but the crack and splinter of treetrunks being shattered behind her was closing too quickly to bear.  She tripped and fell, her hand closing on a heavy stone, rolled over and threw it at the gigantic silhouette, harmlessly.  She groped in her pockets and threw half a bread roll, the little makeup tin.  She threw something thin and glittering that bounced off one mad, bulging eye, and at that the beast drew up short, shaking its massive head and bellowing in a deafening, tortured squeal that was almost human.  She flung herself away as one thick-hewed limb tore blindly through a young birch less than a foot from her head.  The beast was reeling.  It was the one and only chance they had waited for.  She filled her burning lungs and let out one last, tripartite shriek, holding the final note at a piercing, unbearable fever-pitch.