Like a cat on its feet, her head snapped toward Tzich when he called her name, inhumanely so. Her eyes, large and swollen by the deep black of her pupils, fixated on her mentor. Then, as he continued to speak, her shoulders loosened. Her pupils shrank, and by the time he was reinforcing the word “control,” they’d restored themselves to original condition. Her nails receded and her pathetic fleshy ones were returned. 

Her heart was racing at an alarming rate. She felt like she were about to have a heart attack. As her mind blindly swam, she turned her gaze back to the dog, who was recovering and coming back with a vengeance.

Before the dog clipped her with its oozing maw, she dodged to the side, but clumsily. Her back hit the sharp edge of a brick wall and she winced, then hissed. The dog, however, was not deterred.

Carly whimpered. She was back on her feet soon enough, and she began to look left and right. Out of the corner her eye, she found a dull knife, rediscovered and overturned by the hellish beast’s scavenger hunt. It wasn’t ideal, but it didn’t seem that there was much choice.

She dashed for the knife. Of course, it lit a fire under the beast’s ass, and it tailed after her. Carly panted in high whines as she tried to beat the dog to her goal. When she got there, she slid on her leg, like a baseball player skidding to home run, and she grabbed the blunt weapon.

Before the dog could do much else, she cried out and plunged it in between its ribs. It yelped into the night, and using as muscle as she could, she drove the weapon into it again and again until ceased to do else, except fall over on its side.