The manthing sensed her weakness, sprinted past too quick for sight, its power monstrous. The manthing was like iron, snapping down the slope, as if it meant to drag her. Samaire redirected the chains rushing out, strafing to catch the steel around a tree. It lent her a strength beyond her frame, friction and oak snapping taut. The manthing was heavy, but it was not like the fallen trees or the endless hours of labor she’d known this past year.

It had slumped into mud and rain and ruined earth, trying to clear its face for precious air. Samaire held firm for a long moment, regaining her breath. Her heart beat like the thunder maiden’s drum echoing in the heavens. But they had to keep moving. They had to leave this lands and find somewhere new. Find something. 

Samaire wished she knew what that something was. 

She let the mud ease her journey down the slope. The manthing had stilled, cowed perhaps. Cowed was good. It would overwhelm her without cleverness and leverage, but it didn’t seem to realise that. [i]Yet[/i]. It would though. And maybe it would kill her before she could skewer it. But she couldn’t—it was what she’d been trying to find, wandering woods that teemed with wishes and nightmares. She needed a nightmare to find the masters of glass eyed men. 

A nightmare was the only thing that could slay them. She hoped. Spirits, she hoped.

They reached the road before the manthing toppled over. Perhaps it had been wounded—but when she looked back, it was not marked by broken limbs. It bled, but it had fallen down a slope of mud and rock and sticks. She expected that. For a moment, she wondered if she should find its pulse, but then it began to rumble.

It was a keen, perhaps of mourning, although she wasn’t sure that the manthing knew such a thing. Did manthings feel? Was there enough of thought in its head? Or was it too much a thing? Things wished into existence did not feel. They did not laugh or love. Sometimes they pretended, and sometimes they did a fair job of it. But this manthing bled. Wishes didn’t bleed. Only the strongest of dreams and hopes could make things with such muscle and power. 

Samaire tugged sharply, but it did not respond. Her temper flared in curses drowned by thunder. She needed to find cover, lest the thunder be followed by arcs of fire, drawn to steel. 

“[i]Uylpora[/i],” she repeated sharply, viciously. It had worked before. But perhaps the manthing was too tired to respond. Perhaps it knew that she was no nymph. Samaire was not forged from river or trees. The earth did not sing when she walked. The wind did not shield her from driving rain, did not lighten her footsteps. She was slim and pale and stained with mud. 
Samaire swore again, hitching the chain across an armored shoulder, winding tighter, and staggered forward. The mud was both a boon and a hindrance. It eased the thing through the ruined road, but it was difficult to keep her footing. 

She pushed on.

Time was monstrously slow. The manthing wore on her strength.

Samaire kept walked, deeper into the woods. Deeper, deeper, and the path slowly grew more stable. Shielded by heavy trees from the worst of the storms, it was easier to keep her head high as she dragged her prize. It did not feel like a prize. It was a burden. But she deserved such a thing. She had hid for too long, too frightened to reclaim her honor.

She might have spent her whole life in that fort, if she had not found the stag. The thought shamed her, fire hot in her belly. Gritting her teeth, she pulled more sharply, deeper.

When she could feel her thighs and shoulders shaking, Samaire turned sharply off the road, deeper into the mess of trees. It was harder to drag the thing here, in brambles and roots, but she was stubborn and spurred by a little grove. A grove that, for the briefest of breaths, reminded her of home. Their groves were warmer, their waters clear and the air hot with skyfire. She remembered oasis and woods that bled into dunes beyond the borders of their lands, could almost feel the heat on her skin now.

It gave her a bitter sort of strength, to wind the chain around a stout tree, to knot it with numb fingers and secure the post. Her arms trembled with exertion and cold, but she did not voice her complaints. She dropped beneath a large tree, in dry earth, shrugging her oiled cloak aside. She was almost dry, and with a fire she could perhaps stave off the toe-rot. 

The manthing was soaked through, and she edged away, judging distance more carefully. There was no steel cage between them now. For a long moment, Samaire watched it, before slowly rising away, to dig through her pack. A length of rope met her gloved hands, and she strung her oiled pack, suspending it on a lower branch.

She knew how to survive. It had taken her a season to find her way to the Zarnofskys, across deserts and woods, and she’d learned the changing lands. Death was a strong motivator. 

Crackling flames soon lit the clearing, flickering against shadows, fanned by a heavy glove until it could withstand the raindrops that survived the tree cover. Gold and red and beautiful heat answered her hands. It was a golden shield, and Samaire was careful to keep it between her and the manthing. She watched it, lit by flame, and tried to recall the tongues she’d once known. As a girl, she had spoken more to nymphs than people, but she had not been a girl in years.

“<Dry yourself>,” the words were clumsy, but she spoke clearly, watching the manthing carefully, her hand never far from her blade.