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[quote=Kituo]Hoping to useful for once, Kituo slowly approached the tall guy and tried to coax the rat off of him.

“C’mon little guy,” he said. “Its okay.”

He stopped a few feet away in hopes of maintaining some security. He didn’t expect the rat to heed his generosity – it was an animal after all. Kituo’s only goal was to try and lose the title of weakest link.[/quote]

The rodent was a bit smaller than a squirrel, with ears each as big as its body and a fluffy tail that was striped tawny and brown beneath the matting of snake blood. Its whiskers wriggled, and it craned its neck back to stare with black beady eyes at Kituo. Its furry tail swished.

In a blink, it sprang off of Thomas and was suddenly clinging to Kituo's sleeve, its tail flinging in circles. With sharp little claws it scurried behind his neck and snuffled in his ear, its whiskers tickling his cheek.

And then, it emitted a piercing, echoing sound:

[i]RRRRRRR-EK-EK-EK-EK-EK-EK[/i]

Its claws were digging into Kituo's shoulder and its jaws were open wide as it screeched, revealing a mouthful of thin needle-like teeth. Those teeth would immediately sink into whatever attempted to touch it.

[quote=Thomas]Now vaguely aware of the rodent on his back, Thomas clutched his forehead with his injured hand in disbelief. Blood dripped off of it onto his brow and into his hair.

The strange warmth brought him back to his senses. He jerked his hand away from his face, quickly wiping off the blood with his sleeve. As the other boy tried to coax the thing that shook on his back, Thomas stared at his hand.

It hurt. And every movement made it hurt more.[/quote]

For awhile, the wound only throbbed and bled. And then, a tingling numbness began at the punctures and slowly, slowly spread into his palm, his fingers, his wrist. His heart began to pound, and his vision wavered in and out.

And then, a chemically induced fear gripped him. It was like a black ice that engulfed his stomach and dragged his heart into his gut, all while setting fire to his brain. The trees of the forest were stark and menacing, their branches and roots grasping for him, alive and teeming like snakes. The ground moved under his feet. The shriek of the rodent on Kituo's shoulder struck his ears like an icepick. Something in the woods was snarling, hissing, laughing, mocking him with jaws that would devour him like the minstrel. But all of this was obvious only to Thomas -- Kituo could neither see nor hear it.

To Thomas, the lantern's green light was beckoning, soothing. Out here, in the weeds at the edge of the light's reach, the pain and the screeching and the tremble of his heart were only growing stronger. The closer to the light he moved, the lesser his symptoms, the easier he could see and breathe and think.

The tree ticked and clanked on. The roots dragged back into the woods, leaving a trail of fragrant turned earth behind them. A breeze whispered through the trees above. The silver key glimmered in the grass.

In the distance, a wolf howled.