Interface

Mila

The creatures are jolting forward quickly, their jerky movements making them appear as though they are puppets attached to extra-long strings being moved by a child's clumsy fingers. Their long claws only add to the awkwardness of the movements, and it looks very painful.
We can barely flinch before they attack, and the brutality of the onslaught makes me feel even dizzier than before.
My vision is filled with blurred movement and flashing claws, and sharp pain flares up in my side even before I can register that I'm injured. One of the things must have collided with me to cause this new pain.
I can hear cracking noises that sound painful and then I smell burning flesh that makes my stomach churn with dread.
I manage to open my eyes, and I see that the sun has hit the creatures dead on, and prompted them to flake away in the morning light, like dust in the wind, they have simply drifted away into the next place they will inhabit.
The next thing I register is Mara grabbing my wrist and hauling me back into the trees, though the trees she drags me into look more normal- less like they will eat me alive, and more like they just stand there and do nothing except look pretty. Is that even possible? Can trees look pretty and not harbor what seems like a never-ending stream of monsters?
I wonder if we're close to escaping this hellish land.
The trees start to thin, until we are standing in a wide open field that is nearly barren of plant life, or any life for that matter.
Bones that look as though they belonged to giant beasts litter the clearing, all scattered around holes at least as wide as I am. They look dark, deep, and very scary, and I don't want to know what lives in the holes.
Something walks across the fields with steady, purposeful steps, but I can only hear the thumping of my heart in addition to the footfalls.
I look at Mara to see if she has heard the footsteps, but she seems pleasantly oblivious to the danger we might be in. She keeps wandering around, at one point almost falling into one of the holes, but she still doesn't seem to know that we are in the middle of a death trap. She doesn't seem to notice the approach of something big, something living, unlike the other things we've encountered in this forest.
And then I see it watching us from under the cover of a small tree.
It looks like it just crawled out of some musty ditch, and perhaps it is a step down towards a lesser race. The muzzle is extended, and ringed by dirty fur, while the ears stand straight up from its head.
It creeps towards Mara at an unsettling pace, and the thick fur covering its face seem to shift out of the way to make room for knife-like teeth.
The claws on its forelegs splay out to expose slightly webbed skin.
I try to guide Mara out of the field, but my legs aren't working, and even if I could open my mouth, I'm not sure I could make any noise that would pass as a sound.
I settle for slamming my body into Mara's, but I overestimated how much force she could withstand, so we both tumble to the ground in a jumbled mess.
Mara glares at me, and she yells something, but the sound is rumpled by the creature tackling her even further into the ground. She has to fend the monster off with her hands, and her face displays a mix of slight fear and major annoyance. Doesn't she know how much danger she's in? What if the creature rips her throat out?
I scream in terror, which summons more of the creatures from their hideaways in the earth.
They look as though they have been stitched together from other creatures, because no two of them look identical.
One has a snout that looks as though it has been mashed into a wall, and another has lopsided ears that are colored differently from each other.
Even the bodies shapes are different, and the length and appearance of the fur differs as well.
They surround me, and I cling to Mara, wanting to be under her protection even if we die from these creatures attacking us.
She wraps her arms around me and keeps one arm free to wield her pipe against the creatures if they decide to attack us.