When Val ran out of the tent, the sound of wailing and commotion surrounded me. My heart was pounding in my ears and I held the blade in my trembling hands. I heard the rush of soldiers moving around outside. After some time passed and most all the footsteps had moved away from me I started to be overcome with the feeling that I couldn't stay inside of the tent- that something horrible was coming in my direction.
I ran out into the night air, becoming engulfed in the darkness. The human-like wailing had silenced and everything seemed to have gone deathly still. My heartbeat was pounding so forcefully I felt it at the base of my throat. Whispers filled the air and I felt myself running on pure instinct.
Mindlessly I trampled down away from the whispers and the darkness towards a field with high grasses just on the edge of the woods. I couldn't hear the soldiers footsteps and finding myself to be suddenly so alone and vulnerable had filled me with an unbearable and primal fear.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
My heart battered.
It was the first time in my life I had ever been overcome with fear to the point of abandoning reason.
I didn't think about the danger of the woods or the sudden silence around me or the way Val had told me to stay inside of her tent and not move. I didn't think at all- I simply ran to the tall grasses of the field and lowered myself into them. The wind whipped the grass around me.
I tried to quiet my breathing.
I became deathly still with every muscle in my entire body alive and terrified and waiting.
The woods were never supposed to be this quiet and I knew it. Back home the woods were always alive in some way- the chirp of crickets or rustling pine needles in the wind or hooting owls. My reason was fighting to come back to me but my panic wouldn't allow it.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
I couldn't stop my slamming heart. Couldn't quiet the primal urge to hide.
I knew the silence here was unnatural and there was something disgusting about it. Something dripping in malintent. I tried not to heave loudly even as my panic made me want to suck the night air into my lungs in desperate gasps.
I started to try and move back towards the tents when the hair started to rise on the back of my neck. I tried to tell myself I was being irrational but something was standing right behind me. I couldn't move. I wanted to run- to escape the feeling of power radiating from whatever was at my back but I couldn't.
Every cell in my body was suddenly focusing on the thing behind me.
I didn't want to look. Thump. Thump.
My heart was so loud and the thing was so close and I almost felt like crying.
Finally, some small reason returned to me and I held tightly to the knife in my hand.
I didn't want to hurt anything. I didn't want to die. I felt myself biting back a scream as I whipped around fast to meet the eyes of something incomprehensible.
The creature had skin black as oil and a single large gaping eye at its center. It didn't have a face or limbs but it hungered and wanted only to devour. Its form was liquid-like and shifting and swimming. I felt some sound of pure dread leave my lips.
This was a disgusting and evil creature and I knew it would destroy me somehow even without being able to understand what I was looking at. My hands were trembling around the knife. I clung to the blade handle so tightly it hurt.
The abomination inched towards me, its mass whispering in a thousand different voices. Some of the voices were familiar, begging me to join them. It crawled closer.
Right as it moved to devour my body in its swirling and whispering body, I stabbed it as hard and as fast as I could right in its single gaping eye.
Primal fear racked me in waves. My hands started to move on their own.
The creature shrieked and I started to stab it faster and faster. I barely noticed I was screaming until the sound of someone else coming pierced my fear and confusion. The creature suddenly shrieked and started to melt away, like candles would if you took a blowtorch to them. I was sobbing and horrified and the blade was wet and sticky and I couldn't seem to understand what had happened.
My knees had given out and I felt like I might throw up. The grass underneath my fingers was damp as I had dropped down on all fours in the field. A person had come closer to me from the woods. I noticed two malnourished ankles with nasty looking bruises and slowly looked up at the stranger.
The hair was pure white like a snow-capped mountain. The figure had stepped right above me, thin pale ankles only a foot away from where I stood. I didn't recognise her but I knew who she was.
Her empty eyes looked past my body. But she could sense where I was. She recognised my horror and my trembling body from head to toe. There was a strange emotion on her face. An understanding and a pity- perhaps the kind you'd feel for an ant that had been stepped on in your presence.
Her voice was like a memory- a thing that hardly existed or took up space.
"Sleep."
I whispered her name in the darkness and a recognition crossed her face. Before I could finally vomit out the buildup of nervousness and confusion my eyelids started to get heavy. I heard her say the words and they took over my body despite my fight to ignore them and question the strange woman. She stepped closer to me and reached her ice cold fingers out to touch my forehead.
I knew somehow that my body's decision to sleep had not come from inside of me. Everest was howling wildly, unable to force us to stay awake even as she tried to shift into her wolf form to overcome the command of the phantom-like figure.
"Rosuara?"
My mind went dark.