home is behind the world ahead
there are many paths to tread
Her eyes cautiously looked as the smoke and fog crept through the leaves of the maze in front of her. The laughter in the distance creating a shiver down her spine and her legs creating the thin layer of white and colorless hair to rise from her skin. She begins to step back as the dark stranger appears in front of her but she tosses her horns forward as an instinctual maneuver to defend herself from this sorcerer. He doesn’t advance towards her so she retrains herself from moving towards him as she spaces her legs out and stands her ground. She snorts in retort to his statements as she tries to make herself look larger than she is but all this posturing changed as soon as he disappeared. Wait! I want that relic!
Without thinking about what she is about to do she charges into the maze and tries to chase where the voice is going. She watches the corners to try and not cut herself but when a grumble sounds from behind her, she turns and rubs both her right shoulder and her hindquarters against the thorns. Thin lines of capillary blood dripped down the stripes already plastered onto her body. She sees eyes floating behind her, yellow and snake like but she can’t see what the body looks like. The celestial black animal has no definite shape and seems to be made of smoke. It reeks as well, it smells of rotting flesh in a swamp on a warm day, so putrid and rank that weir can hardly control her revulsion but she cannot look away. It has 4 smoky legs but they are bent the wrong way and it has no tail, just long spindly ears. She looks for a moment longer as it stares at her before taking a step back. I hope it doesn’t have a taste for blood. She thinks as she charges at it and stops with a slide in the dirt but it holds it ground and screeches at her in the loudest high pitched scream she had ever heard. It was almost metallic and otherworldly.
Suddenly it jumps towards her, a clawed hand outstretched. She tucks her caribou horns and charges the spirit animal but she feels nothing as she passes through its smoky body except for the fresh cut that is slices into her side How did she not hit it but it can cut me? With this revelation she turns away from the creature that is already climbing the hedge to turn back towards her, releasing another ear splitting cry of terror. How can that thing climb the thorns and not be hurt? Weir turns and starts to run through the maze, taking turns in the maze at random until she started to hear the laughter of the sorcerer. She hoped she was getting closer so she would take turns towards the sound of the laughter, occasionally hitting dead ends. She turned thinking the beast was still following her but it wasn’t there thankfully. Where did it go? She turned away from the dead end and continued trying to follow the sounds of the sorcerer and hoping she would not see that beast again but something inside her tugged at her consciousness and said that this will not be the last beast that she sees the monsters of this maze.
