The thing had frightened me till the very end.
“I seriously thought I was going to die.”
I feigned composure. I couldn’t let the terror of being snapped up into those jaws take over again.
✦ ✦ ✦
The girl panted as she ran through the moonless darkness. She had been sleeping peacefully at the camp until a few minutes ago, when the light and heat of the sudden flames forced her awake. Then countless howls came from the surrounding forest. The fire rendered the traps ineffective, and the wolves passed through them to enter the camp. The children scattered and fled. They all took part in the same training programs, so while none of them were paralyzed by fear, those who were brave enough to stand up to the creatures were few and far between.
The girl’s long ears picked up the footsteps of a flanking wolf. Although she could’ve easily been mistaken for an elf because of her appearance, she was a wind fae. Her powers allowed her to hear anything disturbing the air within a certain distance. The pursuing wolves had yet to catch her because she could sense their presence before they sensed hers.
She cried out as her foot caught on a tree root. Her skill wasn’t quite developed enough to map out terrain. Though she kept her yelp relatively quiet, the wolves’ sensitive hearing caught it. Instead of running around individually and in different directions, they now started to circle her as a group, drawing nearer and nearer.
The girl clapped her hands over her mouth to quiet herself, but it was already too late. A growling, drooling wolf stepped out from the undergrowth. Another growl, another rumble, and then there were two more.
Forcing her hands to stop shaking, the fae unsheathed her knife and raised it slowly. She let her breathing turn haggard, as if to rouse herself. She began to pivot constantly, not giving the wolves a single opening as she kept them back with the threat of her blade. The beasts stalked a circle around her, gradually closing in on her. They kept low to the ground as they moved, their eyes never leaving her. In and in they pressed, until one found itself directly behind her and leaped with a howl.
She gasped, managing to block the creature’s fangs with her knife just by a hair’s breadth. She tried to counterattack, but her strength suddenly left her, and she collapsed to the ground. Had she left the camp to fight wolves before, she might have recognized it as a shock delivered by the lightning wolf. She had managed to inflict a tiny wound on the beast’s face. It growled in displeasure as it opened its jaws and flashed its teeth, aiming for her and her tiny head, ready to crush her skull.
She whimpered as the sharp fangs came in from either side, resigning herself to this end.
No... No! I don’t want to die! I haven’t learned a thing! I haven’t seen a thing! I haven’t found a shred of happiness in this world yet! Maybe it’s filled with nothing but suffering. But I’ve barely even suffered yet... I want to live.
“Someone...help...”
The wolf’s jaws froze, and it gave a confused growl. The three beasts looked around restlessly. With her more sensitive hearing, the fae could sense a low-frequency vibration. The wolf before her seemed to decide it had just been imagining things and bared its fangs at her once more.
“Die.”
There came a viscous splat as something crushed one of the other wolves’ heads. A dragon tail thudded down on the ground, covered in bright red paint-like spray. A pair of golden, gleaming eyes appeared in the darkness, set under the high curve of their eyelids. Those slitted pupils glared at the wolves as if they were nothing more than obstacles to be dealt with. Understanding its companion had been slain, the lightning wolf removed its mouth from the wind fae’s head and howled. The next second, everything above its jaws was sliced away by the downward strike of a blade. The final wolf was knocked into a tree at supernatural speed, and it died instantly.
After sparing the fae a glance, the dragon girl kicked off the ground and started running, staying in view for a mere three steps. The wolf’s severed neck squirted blood, and the wind fae could only stare blankly after her savior while the red drops rained down on her.
She exhaled. That fierce, vivid, captivatingly gorgeous shade of silver. Those blazing golden eyes, shining brightly even against the pitch black.
“That was God...”
There was no other way to explain such light.