She saw Alexi emerge from the ground where he’d fallen out of the corner of her eyes and felt a great wash of relief cut momentarily through the thin pall of fog that caught her up. She’d been trying to look away from the approaching lights but hadn’t been able to. The speed with which the lights were moving was considerable and she felt the pull of the pattern again. It was only her fear, her natural suspicion that was keeping her from being fully under the spell. She took one hand off her sword to reach for her employer, to help him the rest of the way when the creature-thing-fiend surged up from behind him. She gasped, startled even though her eyes had been on it. It had moved so fast, all pretense with the lights gone in a viciously swift surge. 

She stumbled back her sword flashing out at the thing even as she caught her feet. Her battle cry of “Fuuuuck!” rang through the trees and surely inspired confidence in the man she was supposed to protect. She did her best to use the momentum of her stumble to spin off and then slip herself between Alexi and the thing. 

The thing lunged at her again, it was a lazy lunge, overconfident she thought as she slashed out with her sword, catching one of the many stalks with the glowing lights at the end. It was used to it’s prey being caught by the patter and though she nearly was, nearly wasn’t close enough. She felt the impact and watched as her well cared for blade parted light from stalk and the thing let out a burbling hiss. The stalk flailed and glowing blood sprayed and spattered from the stump where the light had been. It hit the leaf litter and sizzled and a drop or two hit Katherine’s cheek, the same one with stitches, where it burned like acid. She was going to be such a pretty thing when all was said and done.

She let out another battle cry and swung again.

“Get back!” she screamed to her employer as if he hadn’t the sense to do that on his own.