The Beast Within': Into Darkness

Ch. 1 An Unorthodox Life

First off I am working on a better animation for this chapter. If you wish to help in some way or just get sneak peeks at my work job my discord server.

https://discord.gg/BEPM8dxXPZ

I run as fast as I possibly can, I hear yells and howls behind me, My pursuers are not far behind. I must find a way to escape them but I can't find any. But then I notice that there is a twist on the surface of the mountain up ahead. "I can use that to my advantage", I think to myself. I quickly turn around the bend and start to climb up the mountain; once I am high enough I should be able to leap to a tree, they might not see me if I do it quick enough. So I keep climbing until I can reach the branches, and just in time too; I climb up and out of sight as they come around the corner. I begin weaving in and out of the trees until I am too far to be seen. I can hear them shouting and swearing in anger. I sigh,
Me) Thank you, Xena! I am glad you are on my side!

I watch as the villagers of Lyrell turn and head back towards their home village. Ha! They chased me for three miles just to be disappointed, and I am still full of energy. I head west from where I am, I know that is where home is. I'm a, let's say, unique being, I may look like a human for the most part but then I also have cat-like attributes; this means the ears, tails, athletic ability, but I can be seen as a human for the most part. Just like anything different, normal people are terrified of us and just try to kill us so we don't "infest their society". Call us what you want: filth, scum, freaks, but most of us prefer names that actually have a definition of what we are. First off, Neko, which is literally the Japanese word for a cat; there are also some dog and bird people, Inu's and Tori's, but they are more obvious to spot than us. Then there is: Cat-People is stupid and obviously not thought out, but it gets the point across. And lastly, the term my brother and I prefer is Kemonomimi which means beast ears and can be used to explain all of our kind, the half-man half-beast sub-species of humans.

One of the first Kemonomimis that was caught and killed simply for just being themselves was a woman named Xena who lived a few hundred years ago. No matter how much we look like animals; some of us are indistinguishable from humans, others obviously just look like animals in the shape of humans. But no matter how much we resemble our animal or human counterparts, we all look up to Xena up in heaven to watch over our kind.

After about four miles of leaping from tree to tree, I climb to the top of the branches to try and see how close I am to home. From the top of a really tall oak tree, I can see my hometown of Dexu from here, but there is still about half a mile until I reach the outer walls. I descend down the branches and continue to bounce from limb to limb and from tree to tree. I am close enough to Dexu to see the lanterns from where I am. The people have known me since I was little, so they don't suspect that I am a Kemonomimi. I am one leap away from landing on the rooftops and being protected inside the town and its walls, when suddenly, I slip on a lithe limb, I try to level myself to land on my feet but there isn't sufficient time to turn all the way around and I plummet onto the side of my back. Aches and pains surge through my body, it was quite a big fall. I try to set myself up, but that just makes the pain worse; I lay back down and I fall unconscious and feel the pain fade away.

I wake up, I feel pain once again but to a much lesser extent than it was before. I look down at my stomach and stare at the bandages wrapping my torso. I didn't even know they were there at first; There is only one person who can put bandages on this well, and I know exactly who, my brother Xzyvieur. I sit there and wait there expecting him to burst through the door and make a dramatic entrance as I would but he doesn't. About three minutes later he finally comes through the door as any normal person would carrying in clean clothes and such. He looks at me straight in the eyes, glaring, then looks away and places down my clothes.