Lost Change

Chapter 104

I don't even know what continent I'm going to die on.

I flew through the dense trees as fast as I could. The sudden terror I had felt was starting to fade, and in its place I was being left with nothing but a cold, focused resignation.

I knew I was about to die. This creature was going to catch me eventually, and when it did... it would kill me. It was as simple as that. I had no chance in a fight against it, and I couldn't risk what it would do if I fled.

The only thing I could do now was to try my hardest to make sure it didn't mean Minna died too.

I banked around another tree. The creature jumped ahead of me and landed on a tree in my path, and lashed out at me with the deadly stingers on its tails.

I tucked my wings in and dove downwards. The tails slashed past me and slammed into the tree I had just ducked around.

For a brief second I had a half-hearted hope that the stingers would get stuck in the thick bark... but that bit of optimism was quickly dashed. The monster simply tugged on its tails, and the stingers flew back in a shower of splinters.

I changed directions and flew onwards.

The easiest thing would have been to simply fly up. The monster couldn't fly, even though it could leap incredible distances. If I flew above the trees then eventually I would be too high for it to catch.

But it was smart. If that happened, it would give up and go back for Minna. And it would realize I was only toying with it if I tried to get its attention back after that. It had to believe it could catch me if it was going to keep chasing me. And that meant it had to be able to catch me.

I wove through other trees and tried to angle through denser growth. The creature was big. The closer trees would at least slow it down.

Another gurgling sound came from above me and I jerked backwards just in time for the heavy stingers to crash past me. Somehow the monster had gotten ahead of me without me knowing, and had stabbed downwards as I had flown by. Terror flooded back through me again and replaced my resigned focus with instinctive action. I tucked my wings in and spun again, slashing out in all directions with my claws, then flung my wings back out into frenzied flapping.

Had I hit something? My claws felt wet now. Sticky.

A gurgling scream of pain came from behind me and I felt a brief triumph. I had. And whatever I had must have been somewhere vulnerable. Probably one of those eyes.

I tried very, very hard to not think about what was now covering my claws.

Another crashing sound came from behind me as the creature jumped after me, but the pain from my strike had delayed it. I was a bit ahead of it for now.

I took a deeper breath and tried to think. Maybe there was something nearby I could use to help. The same scents came back to me - trees, water, dirt. I smelled several enticing fruits and flowers nearby, but they were useless. The creature itself. An odd sour scent that I assumed was whatever served the creature as blood.

None of those seemed particularly helpful. But what I was doing wasn't exactly a winning strategy.

I turned again and flew towards the scent of water. Maybe that could help. If there was a pond or something it might slow the creature down while it went around it. It wasn't like it would make things worse, could it?

I had been flying as fast as I could for at least twenty minutes when I finally reached the water. I hadn't gone in a straight line - that would have been too easy for the creature to predict and catch me on. Instead I had flown in diagonals and looped back along my path several times, doing everything I could to slow the creature down. The dense trees did slow it down, but it wasn't enough to overcome the distance it could cover with each of those powerful leaps.