I was back in that place. Enormous trees all around me. I pushed aside branches while scrambling over roots with my bare feet. Thorns scratched my skin and tore at the scraps of clothing I had left after all this time. The green of the leaves were everywhere no matter how much I ran the trees never stopped, neither did the Chasers. They’ve been after me since I first woke up so long ago. There was no time to sleep anymore. They were always right behind me. Glimpsing the deep purple sky through the canopy of the trees, if I could find a clearing I could fly away and escape. The sky always made me uneasy, the purple seemed wrong somehow. A lost memory of a different sky of a different place.
A roar tore me from my thoughts. The chasers had caught up. I could hear the bitty ones excited yaps telling me they’d gotten my trail. Off to my right I saw the blue flash that meant they had found me. Scaly blue blurs rushed on all sides now. Without slowing down I pulled two of the many pointys I kept with me. Some were rocks, some were the biggest thorns off the plants. I launched my self twenty feet in the air over a fallen tree as the bittys started to close in.
I hit the ground running just as one of the bittys lunched at me. The bittys had a muscled reptilian body covered in its hard blue scales that my thorns couldn’t cut. Its slender arms and legs ended in 3 long talons. They ran on all fours but stood on two when attempting to disembowel me. A long neck connected its body to its dinosaur looking head. I looked back fro a second to see the bitty screech to signal my position. As it did that I saw the thousands of needle shaped teeth crammed into its mouth. Bright orange feathers on its back flared as it lunged at me. I twisted around and stabbed it in its big yellow eye. Screeching the bitty fell to the ground convulsing. I turned around and kept running. Judging by the screeches there were about seven still chasing me. I threw two more sharp rocks behind me aiming for their eyes or soft underbellies. Another screech sounded out cutting my pursuers to 6.
I felt a tingle in the back of my neck and quickly ducked and rolled under a root that was up to my chest. I heard a thunk as orange feathers sunk into the wood above my head. Something i learned when the first started getting chased that bittys could whip their tails and fire the feathers. The feathers instantly grew back but when they detached they became as tough as metal and as sharp as a razor. I had the scars to prove it.
I spun under the root and kept running. I jumped over another fallen tree this one bigger than the last. Right before I touched ground a saw my reflection in hundreds of needles. Time slowed around me as I twisted away from the bitty lunging at my throat. Reaching past the teeth I grabbed its slender neck and crushed the vertebrae in its neck. Doing this had slowed me down too much though. I was still spinning in slow motion when more feathers sliced into the dead bitty in my hands. Using my momentum I threw it back at the others knocking two back and judging by the snaps breaking some bones in the process.
Landing forward I took off again. It didn’t take long for them to catch back up. I pulled out another thorn and prepared to take out another when I heard another roar. Definatly not a bitty. I started to run even faster. Normally I could run 20 to thirty miles per hour at a steady pace. When I really wanted to I could run even faster I had no idea exactly how fast. Times like now I really needed to get out of here. I started sprinting I heard the squeals of the bittys behind me and another roar. Something was coming, something big.
Deciding the ground wasn’t fast enough I took a running leap at the nearest tree trunk. I landed sideways and instantly jumped to the to the next tree. After a few more jumps I reached the braches and started going through the canopy. It was more cramped and harder to maneuver up here. That meant harder for something to chase me since I was assuming the rest of the bittys were dead. Another roar and I knew this was going to be bad.
