I'm ready to fight.
With deafening silence, the scream stops. My feet drag and stumble to a halt. That was the cry of the dying. That was the last sound that person is ever going to make.
Numbly, I blink ahead through the trees, toward death. Whoever it was, Mira or Elison, they're gone now. I couldn't get there in time.No one ever can. The noctis always win. And even if I had arrived soon enough to stop the agony, to intervene before the noctis made their killing blow, it wouldn't have mattered. Once bitten, you're doomed. Death is a mercy compared to living out one's days as a ghoul.
I just wish—whoever it had been—didn't have to die alone.
Like dense smoke, slowly my awareness rises. My body is left where it’s standing in the dark, creepy woods, and now that I’m not focused on running, the distant cries of all of the others ring in my skull. But the numbness has already begun to take over. I can no longer afford to feel for them. For anyone. I am the jagged cliff of rocks on Hulbeck's shore, pummeled by wave after wave every day, and still left unmoved. Unchanged. Cold and impassive. Their cries for help, for their loved ones, they simply become noise. Evidence. Fact. Removed so far from something living, something with a lifetime of memories and hopes and dreams that I ignore them with ease.
The fear they would've instilled in me dissipates like smoke on the wind. They're all lost now and there's nothing I can do. Except to keep moving forward. Keep to the plan.
Then a new sound yanks on my attention. Feet stampeding. Limbs tearing through branches.
Scrambling to catch my bearings, I fling myself behind the tree, putting it between me and whoever is running closer. The rumble grows louder, the footsteps drawing nearer. At least two sets of them, maybe more.
With my head cocked at an angle, I watch the runners pass by. In the lead is a young woman with long, black hair that whips at her back like a horse's mane.
Recognition soothes the hot blade of grief that had been wrenched into my stomach.
Mira is alive.
Which means…Elison isn’t. The mother of Rowland's would've-been child, and the babe along with her—gone. My heart aches for the pain he will feel when I have to tell him the news.
IfI get to tell him the news.
The way Mira runs, black dirt and crunchy leaves kicking up with each leaping, uncoordinated bound, she reminds me of one of the tills Rowland has at their farm. She's all protruding, jagged limbs in a cyclone of desperation. There's a reason for her incoherent movements. I realize what just before she disappears through the trees.
Her arm is soaked red. She cradles it with the other as she barges through the forest.
Was she bitten? Am I already too late to save her?
A noctis barrels after her, cutting me from my wonderings, a crazed look in his charcoal eyes. He scents the air, making me swallow my heartbeat like a bag of rocks. I've never known for certain if they can smell us, whether by sweat or blood, but I've always suspected.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are," the male noctis croons. “I have a bet to win.”
My back presses harder against the trunk of the tree. I don't want him to follow Mira, but I also am in no position to face him myself.
The tenor of his voice changes, a playful smirk poisoning the inflection. "Better yet, keep on running. The best part of the Hunt isalwaysthe chase."
He bounds in the direction Mira fled and the breath whooshes from my lungs.
That was too close for my liking. But I have a feeling that things are only going to get worse. Especially for Mira if I don’t help her. Because he didn’t stop to get a better sense of where she’d gone. Even someone who knew nothing about tracking could’ve followed the blatant trail of broken branches and disturbed underbrush that she left in her wake. And it wasn’t like he had stopped to catch his breath either. Someone as young as him? In the prime of his life?
He’s toying with her, I realize. Making the chase last as long as possible.
And he's getting off on it.
His kind are the ones that I fear most. The ones who delight in our torment more than the ones who simply feed to survive.
I suppose that's likely all of the noctis participating in the Hunt though. They've come for entertainment. To exert their power. To brutalize their prey.
I have to stop him before he finds her. I don't know how she was injured and if her days are already numbered, but I can't let her die alone like Elison did, like so many others have, and especially not at the hands of a crazed lunatic of a creature like him.
Despite knowing that I’m much safer if I stay where I am, I charge after them, deeper into the Shadowthorn.
When did I become such a bleeding heart who would risk her life for a stranger? It goes against every rule I've ever had about surviving in this world. But maybe it's time for the rules of survival to change. Maybe we're ready for the pendulum to swing in our favor. Or maybe I'm just sick and tired of all of us being so helpless to a fate that has almost always felt impossible to change. My parents deserved better than what they got. Elison deserved better than what she got. Me, Mira, Rowland, everyone—we all deserve better.
Whatever the reason, my gut is telling me to protect Mira and I don't make it a habit to question my gut. I won't leave her alone to die the way so many others have.
