Mythic (NaNoWriMo14)

Chapter 28 - Break Free the Broken

Rena's fingers latched around the woman's throat.

The woman screamed, hair tangling through Rena's hands as she thrashed and clawed her nails on the kitsune's skin. A choked gasp was all Rena squeezed out before someone heavy crashed into her side and sent her sprawling across the ground. 

Nazine's key hit the floorboard with a delicate clink. 

Rena's eyes snapped to the flame coloured crystal. Her hind legs launched the rest of her into a precise pounce, caging her hands over Nazine's key. Gently, gently, she looped the chain over her head and nestled the crystal inside her tunic, safe at her breast. 

"Get the irons!" screamed the woman, helped to her feet by a fellow insignia bearing figure. "Get that damned kitsune in irons now!" 

The room hadn't sprung into action, but neither was it still. Hunters were closing in, chains in hand, their eyes still and steady. The Order-bearing group knew battle, she could see it in their stance. They weren't the robed scholars she knew from their havens. Imposters or not, they'd earned their power. 

Rena snarled at them, backing herself against the wall. She would not be put in irons. 

Her tails were strong. Her claws were sharp. 

She would fight. 

She didn't wait for them to come to her. Instinct threw her at the hunters to her left--the one with the slight limp lagging behind his partner. She landed hind feet to his chest, biting at his cheek as he fell to the ground. Rena dug her claws into his garments, securing herself to her living platform as his back hit the ground. Anchored, she twined her tails and swept them under the legs of the second hunter. They hit their head on the way down and moved no more. 

Rena retracted her claws. She launched herself off the chest of the hunter and onto the long chair they'd previously been seated on, turning to face the remaining threats. Her back was vulnerable. Her front was dangerous. She growled, planting hesitation into their advancing steps. 

Her escape was behind them. She had to get through. 

Heat was already rising in her body as Rena bared her teeth and sent the wave of fire through their ranks. They cried out and hit the ground as flames licked at robes, the furniture, the roof. It was greedy. It knew no fear. It wanted one thing only. To live, regardless of what burned to achieve it. 

Rena gathered her strength and, keeping low, darted her way between the panicked bodies and out into the long hallway--to freedom. Her heart was pounding in her chest, the adrenaline keeping injury and weariness at bay. 

It was then she heard the panicked cry of the harpy. 

The unmistakable screech stopped Rena dead in her tracks as she turned to look towards the orange glow rounding the corner. Fire. That room was on fire, and it was hers. There'd been a treant Mythic in there. A harpy and a giant and an elemental that had been brought in there as forcefully as she. 

Though instinct screamed at her and deafened her thoughts, Rena turned around and went back. 

Her hands left the ground as she rounded the corner and straightened. The harpy had taken flight, half perched on a shelf but trapped by the rising flames. The treant clawed at the walls, a mix of blood and sap unmistakably smeared across the stones. 

Rena reached out for the fire, found its energy and suffocated it. With a woomph of air, the flames were sucked into a dark oblivion, the room plunging into an eerie silence as the shouting died. 

She could have left right there, taken advantage of the confusion, but the glint of the Mythic's keys in the hands of the humans bound her in place. She wouldn't leave them. Not like this. She'd thought becoming a chaotic was the only thing worse than becoming feral, but somehow, there was something worse than both combined. A mindslave to... to humans.