She thrust the torch into the piled timber, keeping as low as she could.  The precious orange light diminished into tiny slivers as it disappeared into the kindling, long shadows beginning to dance across the churned grasses and looming trees.  Smoke curled unhurried from between the kindling, and something heavy shifted semicircle in the darkness, cracking slowly over fallen boughs and wet bracken, the wood quivering with a low, guttural growl.  

Loka cursed herself for not keeping the carriage-driver's liquor when she had the chance. Urgent and impatient, she found the fire's heart, coaxing it up with an old gesture, the wood hissing and popping as it caught alight.  The burning glow spread quickly, the flames leaping and illuminating the treetops as the heaped timber grew rapidly into a crackling bonfire, and in the shadows of the mist-filled wood, two round, mad pinpricks of flame reflected back at them.  The growl sounded again, and they grew larger, nearer, gathering speed as the forest echoed with the din of tearing undergrowth, fleeing animals and shattering wood.