Blood. Sickly sweet and cloying. The oily blackness of it filled Rhiannon’s nose, forcing her to breathe through her mouth as she ran. It was drying on her arm as she flung herself forward, binding her soaked hand to the black-coated knife still clasped within it, a foul-smelling adhesive. It clung to her face in blotchy droplets and soaked into the fabric of her carefully woven tunic. More still mingled with the deep, healthy red pumping from her damaged side as her free hand pressed against the four ragged claw marks in a desperate attempt to stay alive. Alive! She hadn’t even lived yet.

Trees whipped by, black monoliths, each one hiding a thousand more tainted wolves, or so it seemed. Within Rhiannon’s mind, she still felt the slimy presence of them as she had reached out with her thoughts, her essence to touch these creatures, the first she had met after several long days and nights in this cursed forest. Their eager howls had first sounded joyful to her lonely ears, but if they had been, it had only been the joy of bloodlust, of taint and destruction.

A sudden sharp pain, tiny next to the ragged openings in her side, jerked Rhiannon forcibly back to the present. It was a high root against her ankle and she was falling down into a pool of swamp muck, her already strained leggings acquiring a new coat. Grimly, she pushed herself up again, coaxed on by flashing images of a heavy body falling towards her, spiked jaws open, eager.

Eventually, the demonkin woman began to slow, her clumsy footfalls coming at longer and longer intervals, her heartbeats softer against the drums of her ears. Adrenaline was seeping out of her pores like sap out of an old maple, taking strength and fear with it. She began to bargain with herself, to cajole:

“A few more steps… That's it, past that tree to sleep… Just until there’s some dry ground…”

When the trees began to thin, Rhiannon didn’t quite believe it at first. What place did fresh air have in nightmares? She shook her head; it remained. She blinked. It was still there. With a last animal effort, she surged forward, breaking out from the dark trees at last near a lone house set alongside a dirt road. 

“Its dry,” she said, stupid with fatigue and blood loss, and collapsed in a heap.