Fire Summoner

Chapter Nineteen: Dark Things Hunt at Night Pt. 2

Alice welcomed the relative safety that the thick brush offered as she and Connor burst past the treeline.

"Keep going," Connor urged as Alice slowed to look over her shoulder. God, she was so tired. Her feet struggled to get all the way off of the ground, the tips of her shoes managing to barely clear the low-lying ground cover as she and Connor hurtled through the woods, rather recklessly on Alice's part. Connor bounded along easily matching her pace without so much as breaking a sweat. Alice knew that Connor could easily leave her in the dust to face the beast behind them alone.

The buzzing had made a reappearance in the back of her mind. It hummed in her ears like a mild case of tinnitus, the low pitch muffling the sounds of their hurried footfalls in the otherwise eerily silent night.

A thorny branch caught on Alice's shirt, tearing little gashes in her sleeve as she ripped past it. The hairs on the back of her neck rose as the trees behind them shuddered with the impact of the Koral as it slammed careened left and right, almost blindly.

It had to be blind. In the moments just before the Koral took out the streetlight, Alice had caught a glimpse at its face. A gaping maw filled with rows of razor-sharp teeth and a nose that protruded from its face like a short snubbed snout. The nose was surrounded with writhing, pointed tendrils that snaked through the air and curled back in towards the nostrils; as if they were collecting scents and dragging them in to hunt any prey nearby.

Through her panicked breaths and the ringing in her ears, Alice could just make out the rasping inhales that came from the Koral. It sounded like the Koral was trying to suck the oxygen out of the air around them. After each deep inhale the beast would pant heavily, its tongue lolling out the side of its mouth with dark liquid coming out in runny streams as it was sliced open on the razor edges of the beast's teeth.

It must be using their scents to track them.

"We have to find water!" Alice called after Connor, who was ahead of her ducking under low-lying tree branches.

Instead of replying, Connor grabbed her arm and hauled her off again deeper into the woods.

Soon, all remaining streetlight from the neighborhood they had left behind had vanished. The trees around them blocked out any light that remained from the setting sun.

Alice felt a change in her bones as the sun set and the last of the daylight vanished. She was instantly drained of all energy, her limbs felt like they were weighed down in blocks of concrete.

She stumbled once, twice, then came crashing down to the ground with a hard thud.

Alice whimpered weakly as roots dug into her ribcage. Tears cleared through paths of sweat and grime across the bridge of her nose and dropped down to mix in with the soil.

Again Connor was there, hauling her up off of the ground and dragging her along. "Just a little bit further," he panted.

Alice could go no further. Her knees gave out underneath her and she went crashing to the ground again, her arm falling from around Connor's shoulders. She lay in a heap on the hard, cool ground. Any warmth on her skin was leached away as mud and leaves stuck themselves to her hands and face.

It almost felt nice.

Connor was suddenly on top of her, smearing mud across her face and into her hair. Alice protested weakly. The mud was getting into her mouth, her eyes. She spat as the gritty soil rubbed between her teeth.

Connor pushed her hands away as she tried to block him from rubbing another handful of mud onto her face. He shushed her as she began to protest.

"I need you to lay here and be as quiet and still as you can be, I'll be right back."

He haphazardly threw more dirt and leaves over Alice's back before turning and sprinting away yelling, breaking the relative silence of the woods around them. The Koral seemed to turn and follow him, roaring as it flattened the undergrowth beneath its massive paws.

There was a bush with long, spindly branches that kept brushing against Alice's face. It tickled a little. She was tired. Couldn't even muster up the energy to push the branch away from her face. All Alice could do was lay there and pant into the dirt.

Alice could no longer hear the Koral behind her in the woods. She didn't know if that was a good or bad thing. Maybe it had gone off after Connor, thinking that the two of them were still together. Maybe it was lying in wait lulling her into a false sense of security only to strike and gut her like a fish.

Alice was reminded of those videos she had seen in biology class back in high school. How bears would congregate next to rivers in the fall when wild salmon would migrate to spawning grounds. How the bears would catch the salmon out of thin air, carry them to shore, and rip the fish to shreds.

Alice hoped her death, if it came at the hands of this creature, would be less gruesome.

A thud sounded off to her left. Then a roar. A faint yell of pain came after.

Connor.

Alice's heart quickened in her chest. She was going to have a heart attack at this rate.

What if the Koral hurt, or worse, killed her friend?

She listened intently to the night around her. She couldn't hear Connor or the beast. Was she alone in the woods? No, Connor wouldn't have left her to die. He said that he would be right back.

There was a shuffling sound, something was rooting through leaves in the darkness just beyond. Alice couldn't see what it was, nonetheless, her instincts told her that it was danger.

That buzzing in the back of her mind grew louder as whatever was shifting through leaves came closer. The buzzing in her head intensified, coming to a crescendo, before it disappeared all at once; leaving Alice with a faint ringing in her ears. The ringing could not drown out the chuffing growls coming from the shadows to her left, where she saw the large outline of the Koral as it stood on its hind legs.

A low howl cut through the darkness, which was quickly snuffed out by the beast's roar.

Alice realized that the low sound came from her, a pitiful cry of terror as the Koral thudded onto all fours and tore through the undergrowth towards her. She struggled to get off of the ground, her own body weighing her down as her hands scrambled around trying to find something to throw at the Koral's face.

It came up on her too quickly, catching her around the waist with its hooked talons.

Alice's body flew through the air, her hip burning as she felt blood begin to soak her shirt. Her flight came to a quick end as she felt the trunk of a tree catch her between her shoulder blades, knocking the air out of her lungs. She lay there at the base of the tree, helpless as she watched her death barrel down on her. The last thing she would see was the horrible inside of the creature's mouth as it tore her to shreds.

She looked up at the sky one last time, hoping to catch a glimpse of the stars, thinking of her parents and that night that she came to them in a field fire.

There were no stars in the sky. The trees blocked them out. There was, however, a ring of fire floating just above her, lighting up the surrounding area. Just as the Koral came up on her, raising its paw to deliver the final blow, a figure came sailing through the ring, the glint of a sword flashing in the firelight before disappearing straight into the heart of the Koral.

The Koral squealed as it burst and melted into a toxic puddle of black, wilting the ground beneath it.

The last thing Alice saw before collapsing into darkness was Connor's bruised and bloody face as he picked her up and carried her off deeper into the woods.