Rinocco took a final huff of air as she perched herself on thin branches. Her head peeked above the canopy to, at long last, see the stars. A scattershot of points of twinkling light across the broad pale dye that dashed across the night.
She looked hard at the stars she knew very well, searching for new ones to join the tapestry. She needed to see them.
Her clan had fallen, and with it her people, her kin, her mother, her father, her brothers, and sisters all gone now. Slaughtered by the Emberthorn clan. Now they hunted her.
She noticed it: faint lights in the sky clustered close.
That's where they are; her family had made it to the afterlife. She silently prayed for them to watch over her, guide her, and protect her until the end.
She held her necklace close, thumbing the fanged tooth.
She noticed a new star now, brighter this time. A blazing flame of blues and reds cutting through the sky, falling.
Unease shot through her spine, not for the star, but for the feeling of eyes watching her. She perked up her ears and heard a straining branch.
Below her?
No—behind.
A figure moved in a sudden blur behind her, and she deftly leapt to another treetop.
She looked back and saw the shrouded figure with eyes glowing a malicious red. A roar rippled through the air, and it leapt after her as she fled in strides, leaps, and swings from her hunter.
But he was fast.
Growing closer to her.
His growls of menace grew louder.
His breath just behind her.
The sigh of metal.
She dropped down, narrowly dodging a flash of silver. The blade bit bark where her head had been.
She began gaining distance from him, and with it, a growing realization. Beneath it, a hungry fire.
This was one who killed her kin. She swore it the smell of their blood on him. She slowed down.
Let them think I'm tired. Let them think I'm afraid. Let them think they've won. I will cut them down all the same.
She looked around her and changed her path to an area with fewer trees.
They gained on her fast, and she sped up with a burst of speed, tearing apart bark as she fled. There was a tree ahead that met her stride, and she leapt at the tree and sprung back—toward where she came from, and where her hunter would be.
She crashed into him.
They fell, barreling down the long drop to the forest floor.
A mess of violent limbs broken separated slamming into a thick branch
A blade flung away to join their bodies thud against the ground.
Rinocco was the first to rise, numb to everything but her pounding heart. The man before her tended to the deep slash across his face, searching for his lost blade; she had given it to him in the fall, blinding him, she hoped.
She stalked toward him and kicked his jaw as he sprawled on the floor. Rinocco kneeled atop him, holding him in place. Her bloodied fingers wrapped around the hilt, ripping out the fang-shaped blade, slashing in a tight arc.
The hunter moved his head to the side a split second before the tip of the blade buried in the dirt below. How he sensed it didn't matter to her. She slashed across, splitting his throat in a spray of blood.
He became a gurgling, flailing mess of limbs under her knee. She raised her blade and swung at his skull; hearing bone give, she yanked it out of the corpse.
He writhed and twitched, but she wasn't done. She hacked at his face again and again until she couldn't smell their blood on him until it was drowned by his own.
Tears filled her vision.
Again, and again. Until—
The air whistled, and she raised her forearm to her head. Instinctively. She hissed; a numb pain wracked her. Inspecting it, she found a hook knife stuck in her forearm.
Looking up, she saw another hunter above her in the trees. Then another and another. She rose quickly, yanking the knife out, stumbling into a sprint on the forest floor, hearing the trees creak and groan around her. Shadows danced above.
The air whistled in a choir of hook knives trying to find their mark. But either they were bad marksmen, or she was a hard target, as none found their mark. She needed to get out of the forest and fast.
Thankfully, she knew these parts well and knew there was a grass field not too far ahead.
Trees grew fewer, starlight lit more of the paths, the air was uncontested, and grass became an ocean of deep shimmering purple. The grass came in tides, and the breeze flowed around her.
She didn't stop her hurried stride. Her lungs ached, her legs were beginning to fail her, and her heart burned.
The hunters were unrelenting, leaping down from the branches. She looked around in a tired, hurried glance at a small hill.
She took off for it and climbed to look down at her slow-approaching hunters. They knew she was tired. There was no hiding it as she panted and gulped for air.
"Your people should've joined the clan; it's such a shame," the hunter with brown hair said at the foot of the hill. "It's such a shame because I think we could've had strong, beautiful pups." They cackled.
Rinocco raised her blade; it shone a brilliant silver, but she let it fall into the leaves. "One thing is certain tonight," she growled, her eyes glowing hot gold. "None of you are making it out alive," she declared.
"I call upon my blood; let my blood be primal."
Her body began to change rapidly. Heat and steam erupted from her as she grew out from her clothes, replaced by a tuft of silver fur; her limbs grew longer, her muscles tightened, enriched with savage strength. Her body shook uncontrollably. Her head shaped into that of a beast and stilled.
Adorned with twin points of blazing gold, it regarded them with feral intensity.
"Impossible!" one roared as they all shifted their body parts into beast shapes. The first transformed their arms, the second their legs, the third their head.
"Stick together! We can still put her down!" the first said.
Rinocco roared into the sky, filling the air like rolling thunder.
This form was a pale imitation of the ancestors beast form even with her curse.
She knew that if she lasted true form that she would lose her mind for a day, that her chances to turn into this sacred form would draw her closer to it being permanent.
But her life was on the line and she'd kill her hunters no matter what.
The three gasped and stared with intense gazes intensified not at Rinocco herself, but beyond her.
Overhead, a deafening roar burst through the air. A ball of fire and steel descended above her. An intense wave of heat singed her fur as she narrowed her eyes at it; it slammed into the ground a few dozen paces behind her hunter. The mass of metal burned the grass in its aura of heat.
There was a stillness in the air; a miasmic silence filled it. There was no conflict in the presence of the unknown as all eyes trailed on it.
When the familiar cold air wrapped around them, the thing hissed unnaturally with a gust of air. It opened up, and stumbling out was a strange being.
She felt her mind already slipping as her concious mind was fading. Her vengeful hatred turning to cautious, curious instinct and look on at the rare sight. Confident none can be on her level.
Until.
A hiss of steam burst from the metal then movement. From within the burning shell stumbled a figure like nothing she'd ever seen. Clad in blackened, angular armor that was dull under cold light, the being dragged itself forward on two feet, tall and broad-shouldered, its face that of a smooth similarly angular head with no visible eyes.
Though she could sense it's eyes on them.
His smell was nothing she recognised. It was oddly pleasant.
Runes of pale blue lit across its limbs, pulsing like veins to a heartbeat. It moved like a wounded at first beast, heavy with purpose, but that wasn't the case.
It stood straight with silent vigilance and certainty. Rinocco's ears pinned back. Whatever it was, it wasn't of this world and her consuming instinct told her that this beast was powerful.