A Test of Blood

A Test of Blood

(Part One)

The young Dark Elf girl ran for her mortal life.

Her dogged pursuers not far behind, their bestial brays, screeches and roars were growing ever louder. Drawing ever closer.

No longer needing to strain her preternatural hearing to do so, she could now easily hear their pounding hooves and clawed feet relentlessly gaining on her. Hear their guttural breathing bellowing through fanged maws and tusked snouts. Hear the bloodlust in their collective brays, screeches and roars build as their own animalistic senses told them they would soon run her to ground. Soon be tearing into and gorging themselves on her flesh and blood.

Elven flesh and blood.

Corruptions of Chaos, Beastmen were once wild animals now given a bestial mockery of human form. Monstrous in size and strength, whether covered in fur or hair, fanged or tusked, they were also all man eaters. Yet as much as they craved the flesh of man, any flesh, elven meat was by far the sweeter. And when it was found foolishly wandering alone in the Blights, a chaos wasteland were untainted food of any kind was a scarcity, when discovered, it was rare fair that  no predator could ignore.  Would smell miles away and pursue days for.  Especially Beastmen.

A fact that the fleeing elven girl knew all too well. Yet instead of the fear and terror of being torn apart and eaten alive driving her own legs and lungs, a grim determination propelled them instead. A determination which, despite the prospect of such a gruesome death, was laced with the same juvenile elation a child felt during a game of tag.

Just as she was about to finally catch her intended prey.

The terrain she raced across was also fraught with its own share of dangers. Just as corrupted by the warping powers of Chaos so many millennia ago, the landscape was no less perverted and virulent as the warped creatures that now inhabited it. The ground treacherously broken up by ruptures and fractures, one misstep could turn or snap the unwary ankle. And like pus from festering wounds, the greyish-black substance that seeped up through the cracks and fissures was also septic. Pooling in places with malignant intent, it could quickly infect the unprotected skin or hide, inflicting them with putrefying boils and sores. The vegetation no less twisted and malevolent, what blades of grass remained were now little more than grasping tentacles, their envenomed edges serrated or spiked. Their once beauty and purpose now just as deformed and spiteful, the bloated buds of some flowers bore carnivorous teeth and spat acid, while the swollen petals of others sprayed toxins that choked and paralyzed. But the worse of the transformed depravities were the trees. Once a continental forest of majestic elms, oaks, birch and willows, the remnants that had survived the chaotic cataclysm which destroyed and ravaged much of the known world, still had not escape its corrupting fallout. Now more monstrous than majestic, their horribly contorted trunks and limbs were further disfigured by the fleshy carbuncles that covered them all from twisted branch to gnarled root. Protruding through the tortured wood and bark of each tree like open sores, each blister bled a reddish pus-like discharge that stank of the corruption consuming the trees from within. Their stately leaves that once crowned them in resplendent glory long stripped away, the twisted branches that remained now sprouted wickedly long barbs instead. Each one envenomed and guided by venomous intent, every clawed limb was ready to impale and rake the life out of any that ventured too close. And, finally, itself not immune to the Blightlands unnatural state of corruption and decay, even the very air, an opaque pall grey that shrouded the sun and sallowed its light, also reeked from its own noxious putrefaction.

Conscious of the perils that surrounded her, the leather strips tightly tied about her delicate nose and mouth, wrapped firmly about her slender hands and feet, where specially treated to protect her from most of it. Yet despite these protections, and the rigorous training she had underwent in preparation for this day, the child's exposed arms and legs bore the many burns and scrapes she had still been too slow or too careless to avoid. Undeterred nevertheless, the Dark Elf girl ran on, grinning mischievously as the bestial sounds of the peril that still pursued her now finally grew loud and close enough.