Hush

Hush: Mutant shygurn

Sorry for the late uploads, I have been travelling over the past few days! 

Alive, but mangled and with my magic threads barely holding me together I had fought the hounds Fenn had set upon Jack fervently and without mercy, the creatures were born of darkness and in my light I was able to fight against them seemingly at east at first, but the more I fought the more they kept coming. Their darkness and their shadows over powering me until the bear I felt myself grow into began to shrink as my seams began to weaken at the beasts relentless tearing at me. Consuming them to use their own strength against them proved useless as each time the evil within them burst free and dissolved their bodies during our fights, the new ones that rose from the ground in their place, were like new entities, unscathed and fresh for battle. But at least with the majority of them focused on me, only a small pack ran after Jack, who to my relief ran into the denser part of the forest, his nimble frame would have its advantage over the burly creatures that hunted him down.

As I fought them, their black tar like blood tainted everything, and all that it touched withered and died, tree leaves shrivelled in on themselves, and their bark turned a dull grey and cracked off. Plants melted into sludge, and even Fenn watched on from a safe distance as his obedient creatures swarmed me until eventually I was overwhelmed, feeling the light within me draining at such demand, I blacked out.

I now lay behind bars, in a budgie cage. One of my glass eyes had been removed while I was unconscious. It lay somewhere in the grass, I still could see from it, though it was no longer part of me. I was watching two places, one I assumed was out by Shaya's home, and here, I was in a small room, sat opposite me in a leather chair and watching me with a smug expression and rolling a blade over his knuckles, sat Fenn. My one eye scanned the room. Aside from the two of us we were alone, the room was bare, just me in a cage on a desk opposite a winged man who apparently had a kink for torturing teddies. Wonderful.

'What are you?' He asked finally, knowing I was awake. His voice was full of wonder.

I didn't respond, instead I twitched my legs and arms, all accounted for, my eye looked to my claws, bits of blackened tar stained their tips. I felt the threads connecting each piece of me loose like a shoe lace about to come undone. I noticed then that although my limbs were accounted for, they were very much barely attached by the finest of magic threads.

I watched as Fenn let his eyes roam over me, as though assessing the damage himself once more.

'You are no ordinary toy, that's for sure.' He continued to roll the blade over his fingers casually, 'at first I thought maybe if we hurt you, we would hurt the boy.' He paused, as though thinking. 'But it seems that's not the case. The boy is still alive after all, and after seeing the damage you took I find that impossible if you were connected in such a way.'

I stared back at him quietly, silently glad that Jack had escaped from the hounds and was still alive. Seeing something within me lighten Fenn smiled bitterly back 'Though it seems his time is about to end, according to our brat that befriended him, Jack is about to enter the Bellows.'

My lost eye was suddenly taken, I focused on it as everything had become dark and I was distinctly aware of a dampness around my eye area. I watched as it was seemingly spat out somewhere else, unrecognisable to me now. I was staring at huts, village huts. Possibly the ones the Shygurn lived in and were creating. I watched as a door opened and an unknown Shygurn stepped out, draped in rags, with drooped wings, and a hunched back. They shuffled with a large branch for a staff, each step leaning heavy to one side in an aged limp.

'Are you not listening?' Fenn's loud voice snapped, and my attention came back to my current place, he had slammed his blade into the desk my cage was on, he stood breathing heavy at me like an angry bull. 'If your friend goes down to the Bellows, you will never see him again.'