Mere seconds later, the space around me is silent again.
Whimpering, I unfurl myself carefully, pain jabbing me with every move. Long needles have pierced the ground all around me—far longer than I was anticipating. It looks like much of each thorn’s length was buried within the thick vines.
I breathe out the pain, trying to plan my next move.
I have to remove the thorns peppering my back, but I also need to move as fast as I can.
In this one spot, I’ve encountered what I think was a soul, as well as this thorny monster. I also saw some sort of clawed flying creature in the trees. I have no doubt that the explosion here will draw other monsters, too.
I need my wolf. Her speed and her heightened sense of smell and sight will help me survive. But I can’t shift until I remove the thorns.
I call on my protective suit again, covering my hands so I can handle the protrusions. The tips seems to have easily penetrated my suit, but the sides are not as sharp.
With a deep breath, I reach behind me, grabbing the thorns and pulling them free. I grit my teeth with each one, grateful that they’re flesh wounds—except for one in my right shoulder, which is buried deep behind my shoulder blade. It’s thick and extends two inches above the surface of my skin, but when I try to take it out, it grips my flesh, and the harder I pull, the more it feels like it’s burrowing deeper into me.
With a gasp of pain, I let it go. I need to get somewhere safe where I can remove it more carefully.
Already, the canopy above me rustles again and I can’t delay any longer.
After using the rune to remove my clothing, grateful that the magic eases the protective suit away from the thorny dagger in my back, I instantly shift into my wolf form.
She leaps forward onto the blackened earth, her strong energy dulling the pain I feel from my many cuts. Everything is black and white in her vision, and it only serves to heighten the darkness of my surroundings, the charcoal ash beneath her paws, and the obsidian of the tree trunks and their leaves.
When she darts forward, her powerful legs racing through the ash, I trust her instincts, settling into her energy and finally allowing myself to feel the shock of being dropped into this environment.
I always planned our missions, tried to think ahead, scoped out the environments we would have to fight within. I know the streets of Vegas and that knowledge has kept me alive. Not only do Inothave a map for Mortem, but I have no navigational system for surviving it.
I could be running in entirely the wrong direction right now.
My wolf races through the dead jungle, kicking up the ash around us, darting between trees and beneath vines, leaping over fallen branches. Her heightened senses allow me to detect every creature scurrying in the underbrush, but it’s the larger lifeforms that concern me.
As we run, forms move around us, each of them the same humanoid souls like the one I fought. Some of them are constructed of dirt and leaves like he was. Others are formed from ash, their bodies wafting forward as we dash past. Their energy is strong—stronger than I would have expected from a soul without a body—but then I realize I shouldn’t be surprised. After all… what could be stronger than a soul?
My wolf evades them all, but the farther we run, the more the environment around us oppresses me. It’s never ending. Even after an hour, we’re still running through ash and dust, still dodging around burned trees, although it’s been a few minutes since we saw a soul now.
When we exit into a wide clearing with good visibility around us, I finally feel like it’s safe enough for me to find a place to shift back into my human form. That way I’ll be able to climb the tallest tree and figure out which way we should be running.
Just as we slow down and prepare to stop in the middle of the ashen clearing, a shadow passes low overhead.
I’m startled—because, other than the shadow, I didn’t sense a new presence above us.
My wolf darts to the side while the shadow soars low over us and this time, sharp claws rake across my wolf’s back. She reacts with surprising violence, and I recognize the impact that this demon world is having on her—that my demon power is having on her—making her more volatile.
Before the flying creature has completed its flight across us, my wolf twists and leaps, her jaws closing around the new beast’s lowest claw before the creature can adjust its path.
Her powerful teeth rip its claw clean off, but not before I get a good look at this new attacker.
It’s a hideous bat-like creature with a furred body, jagged teeth, and a tail like a rat’s. The creature whips toward us, lashing across my wolf’s head before the beast shrieks and climbs higher, its leg bleeding where my wolf bit it.
Unlike the massive energy that the souls exude, this creature doesn’t radiate any energy in my senses. There could be hundreds more in the trees above us and we wouldn’t know.
As far as its physical appearance goes, while the soul and the thorny monster were unexpected, this kind of beast is exactly the sort of creature I’d expect to see in Pyra-Mortem.
The bat shrieks at us, flapping its wings and soaring back toward us. My wolf turns, races across the ashy ground, and prepares to leap upward to meet it in the air.
Just as my wolf leaves the ground, the bat opens its mouth and sprays a bright substance at us. In my wolf’s vision, the substance appears snow-white, glistening with energy.
My wolf veers off course, but several of the droplets hit her left shoulder and a burning pain sears us. As my wolf arches through the air, twisting to the side, my demon energy flares, the rarest occurrence when my wolf is completely dominant.
