Moose.

[Glaw]

Jalin had heard a horse scream before -- it had been a haunting sound, wrenched from the throat of a beast whose mangled leg jammed the gears of a tiller. Like a ghost, that noise had returned to her days afterward, and she remembered having likened it to the screech of a demon in the furnace.

This, then, must be the cry of hell itself.

Jalin went rigid. She flung her eyes back toward the darkness where the road must be, toward the death screams that echoed in the black. She thought of Golter, and she was so sorry she'd ever met him, that she'd have to see that gentle horse's face in association with those horrid screams. She thought of what invisible horror it was that could possibly have done this to him; her blood ran cold, and she shivered, and gripped Harmony Fell's cloak; she stumbled ahead over invisible stone and bramble, sure that something would soon grab her from behind and snatch her into the chill shadows.

So it was that when two bright lights blinked into existence above their heads, Jalin at once yanked her dagger from the sheath at her back and shoved Harmony Fell in front of her as a shield. Which was all right, she would think to herself later, as Miss Fell had been taking the front line anyway. She crouched near the ground, coiled like a cat and breathing hard, waiting for the thing or its inevitable horde of demons to attack the physic, so she could take the opportunity to run by the light of her attacker's eyes. The thing was speaking -- but only when she felt Harmony Fell's muscles relax under her hand did she realize what it might mean.

"Is this a friend of yours?" Jalin spoke accusingly, her grip still tight on the dagger -- and once it was clear that these lights meant no harm, she marched out from behind Miss Fell's cloak and waved the blade angrily at them. Perhaps if she'd been listening instead of planning her cool-hearted escape, she might have realized that Golter had not in fact been a horse, and that he yet lived before them. But Jalin wasn't quite the type to infer such ridiculous things from mere turns of speech. Not when there was some invisible horde of demons devouring horses in their wake.

She peered at the lights, to see whether there was a body behind those glowing eyes. She swung the knife again. "So lead the way, then, and get us out of here!"

For a moment she looked back again, wondering that the cat's skull, her notes and rations were all left behind, perhaps spilled on the road in their flight. But none of it was worth her life to retrieve -- she would only have to lay her trust in Harmony Fell when it came to the true cure. The thought left a bad taste in her mouth.

[Closetmonster]

The lights blinked again and pulled back, narrowing slightly as Jalin waved her knife at them. They were, indeed, attached to a form which was tall and shadowy and very much a part of the darkness. "You could fall on that," the lights dimmed and the throaty words rumbled and cracked.

"Please," Fell's hold on Jalin had faltered and she felt for the girl until she found her once more. "Please, I don't want to be caught by those things." Her shudder transferred into the girl's arm that she had grabbed hold of.

The tall figure eyed them rather obviously, the lights danced and whirled like miniature pinwheels. Pinpoints which may have been pupils, much like one would see in a praying mantis, slid across them both and to the side. "Hrrmmm," the shadows and lights grunted in thought then the lights went out.

"Jalin!" Fell hissed, grabbing the girl back. Of a sudden, the lights were at their waist level, strangely larger and canted at the edges. Fell held tightly to Jalin, keeping the other woman close, the solidity of another like herself giving her a sense of reality which had been missing from the moment the elderly crier had come upon them in the midst of the road. "It is my friend, the one I spoke to you of, who could help us." If there had been no caravan, she wondered if he'd ever have helped. No doubt, he would ask for something in addition to a usual fee for this small kindness as well.

"Well? Climb on." The figure shifted and Fell could feel warmth and long fur against her hand, then a solid side bumped into she and Jalin. The older woman had begun to search for the girl's hand, having found the one with the dagger, and had taken the hand, not for the dagger, but for the ability to have a hand to hold. She hadn't any cause to believe that there was danger at all from the eyes, nor for Jalin because she knew the Golter to be surprisingly fast in the shape he'd just taken as well as quite capable of seeing in the dark with those eyes, but the nearness of where Golter's screams had shattered the night had her skin crawling.

She reached with her free hand and felt the slender back. They would have to hold tightly with their knees, for the lithe, long backed creature that Golter had become, was long haired but slick as velvet and almost as slender as a pole fence.

"Come, Jalin," she gave the girl's hand a light tug. "We need to go with him. We need to get out of the woods."

"Indeed," the figure seemed to laugh and looked about them slowly. The eyes which had seemed so bright, were out of sight at a turn of the head, yet in the darkness, the eye-shine from them gave ghostly form to the forest around them. "I think they are done with their meal, it would be advantageous for you to come with me, else I'll leave you here. It is no concern of mine if you feed the caravan or not."

Fell, tugging insistently on Jalin's sleeve, climbed atop what felt more like a weasel, long haired and as tightly wound as a yarn ball, muscle under fur and over bone, which had little to no give, and felt as the spine under her seat bones gave slightly at her weight. The Golter chuffed softly and shifted.

"Come, Jalin," Fell said softly, fairly certain the already twitchy girl she had met on the road had to be to be near to a breaking point. "Let us go." She gave another light tug, forcing herself to trust in the common sense of the Illion people.

[Glaw]

Come along, was the advice -- but to where, and on what demon's back? This thing, that she only now supposed must have once been a horse (what was it, these past days, with horses becoming monsters?) was revealed as fae, that had taken three shapes so far in the short time she'd been acquainted with it, that Fell spoke to with reverence and modesty. Under other circumstances she would avoid them with the scathing declaration that she should hurt them very well should she lay eyes on them again -- but under the current circumstances --

Something hissed in the darkness behind her; leaf-leaden branches stirred and cracked; something upset the stillness of the bushes. Jalin realized that sometime during this idle talking, the screeches of the horse had silenced, giving the forest a quiet that closed in on the ears -- and now, it seemed, Golter's destroyers, having tasted blood, were hungry for more. Though Jalin herself saw nothing even in the pale lamplight of Golter's strange eyes, the dead rushed toward them with wide razor mouths, on all fours like animals -- a dozen of them, leaping off trunks and rocks, flickering between the trees as they spread out in meaning to surround and overtake the travelers.

Jalin's fist clenched in Fell's grasp; she set the other hand on Golter's smooth back, and leaped to mount -- nearly falling over the other side, for the slick and thinness of him, but she steadied herself with her knees and wrapped an arm round the physic's middle. Much better, she heard her instinct, to live now and worry about trust when they were safely away from this forest. Her death would certainly bring about that of her daughter. While Lisbeth lay suffering, Jalin could not afford to hesitate.

Thus emboldened, Jalin set her jaw and extended her dagger toward the nearest sound of rushing leaves. "No more talking!" she roared. She fancied she could feel a cold, rotten breath at the back of her neck. "Go, go, go!"

[Closetmonster]

The words were unnecessary for, without a single directive, the figure under them had already gathered up its hind quarters and begun to run.

It moved in a goose step pattern, the back remaining fairly stable though it juddered as the figure padded quickly through the wood.

"Lay down," Fell hissed behind and grabbing the girl's shoulder, pulled her down. Fell, for her part, had laid herself flat on the thing's back, allowing Jalin to use her back or her thigh as something to lay on. "And hold on," Fell added. Shew wasn't entirely certain that the Golter would come back for either of them if they happened to fall off.

It was a good thing that Fell had pulled the girl down, for a rush of branches burst over them and swept down their backs as their ride ducked into a hedge and burst out from the other side. The moonless night was black as pitch yet before them, the creature's eyes lit the silver licks of grass that it rushed through. Fell hissed softly and behind them, she could hear the rush of bodies.

"They're going to catch us!" she shouted at the Golter who, despite it being a more natural shape for him, was far slower than a horse might have been. Though it could have been that the things following them were not fully solid either.

"They might at that," the Golter huffed, out of breath. "I am not as fast with two on my back. Throw one of you off, why don't you?"

"No!" Fell cursed. "No, you'll just have to run faster!"

"I'd fly if not for the weight," the Golter grunted and leapt in the air. Fell clenched tightly into the Golter's fur, at the same time that she reached back and grabbed fast to Jalin's jacket for fear the girl would fall off, even as the Golter began to wind around what was, no doubt, a very large tree.

"Of all things," their mount panted, "the caravan!"

Below them, the tree shook and the sound of something climbing in the dark came out clearly. Climbing, it seemed, and falling. Fell could hear the strange, silent but just as audible screams and whines of desire as what was below them tried again. This time, it obviously managed for the tree continued to shake. Fell looked back and the shadows were too deep to see what followed.

Their ride went about the tree like a squirrel does, at a winding circle that went higher and higher. He came to a thick branch and where the wind began to tousle hair, he stepped out onto it. "Hold on!" he roared.

Fell held on, her legs wrapped tightly around the creature, her hand in his ruff, and the other, gripping Jalin's coat as tightly as she was able, even as he shimmied down the branch and then sprang impossibly out from the tree.

[Glaw]

Jalin's mind screamed out in reverberating terror (her fingers death-gripped the slick fur and she prayed to every god whose name had ever passed her ears) but such a cry would only ball up like a thistle in her throat and rendered her painfully silent. The cool wind brushed her hair back from her face -- and for a moment, hanging among the moonless stars above the patience of the forest, everything was still.

Breath filled her lungs once, twice, before leaves and branches scraped at her clothes again as they whooshed past. She chanced another look back and immediately wished she hadn't -- for she knew that something was there in the nothingness, and that was worse still than seeing tyrannosaur teeth glinting at her heels.

Facing forward, the wind deafened her and the undulation of skin and bone under her knees threatened to topple her. She slowly released the fingers of one hand, drew it away from the fur and immediately grasped on again, fearful of losing her balance as another branchful of leaves nearly tossed her. Again she tried, this time reaching back to a pouch on her belt -- and again she whipped her hand back to the fur, clinging for dear young life. The third time, her fingers tucked into the buttoned pouch, snatched out a little red ball, and came back to grip the fur.

She popped the ball into her mouth, clamped her teeth down on it until it clicked; she dropped it into her hand again, and began to vigorously shake it before she was forced to hold on again -- but after a moment, continued the motion. She bent it another way with her fingers, and with a lightnihg-crack SNAP a bright white light emitted from the ball like a miniature sun. Jalin held her arm out straight behind her with the little star clenched in her fingers, dazzling their wake with blinding light. If she could see the way the caravaners hissed and convulsed, she might have been pleased with herself.

Ahead, stark against the starlit sky, was a single tower. At the bottom of the tower was a bonfire, and standing beside the bonfire was a man, peering into the woods with all the look of someone who'd heard the shriek of a siren so far inland from the sea.

[Closetmonster]

But for a slight stumble at the sudden brightness, the Golter kept up his pace through the tree canopy. Fell, clinging to both he and Jalin, looked over her shoulder at the flash of light and sobbed in relief as the creatures dropped from the tree branches like windfall apples. There was a distant crackle of brush breaking under their not-weight.

The canopy, now that they had light by which to see, even if much of it shone behind, was a veritable highway of latticed branch and bough. The great trees below would have sheltered them from the stars, but now, they brought them safety. Unsure if it were her imagination or not, Fell could have sworn to heavens she did hear the hissing of the caravan tracking them under the trees. "Point it to the ground!" she called out in the wind that roared in her ears. The Golter said nothing, his strange, lizard like run flattening out as the forest came to a crest and they could see to a rise of bare ground and the tower upon it. A blaze of light below the bottom made the Golter grumble, the sound rumbling through his sinuous body.

The road of branches was not bound to remain and as they swiftly made their way forward, the branches began to thin. A great deal more care was required and the Golter slowed some as he navigated the increasingly more flexible world they had found themselves in. He seemed loathe to leap to the ground, instead, choosing to keep to the canopy and always making his way in the direction they'd seen the tower.

Inevitably, however, the trees had to give out and without a sound, the Golter twined around the base of a tree, leaping to the ground and immediately rushing forward. Fell, believing Jalin now had her seat of a sort, drew the blade at her side. Under her, the Golter chuffed and swerved, a toothy maw missing them by a breeze's finger. The creature had half of its head stove in, as if by some great trauma and the silent rage on its face told her that this was one of those which had fallen from Jalin's light. Fell shouted in anger and fear and brandished the sword in her hand, even as she felt certain it would do them no good. No doubt the caravan had, after finding its prey in the trees, chosen to catch up by way of ground.

"In front, childling!" the Golter called. "The Light, clear our way!"

Before them, the trees did not quite hide the golden glow of a bonfire beyond the forest's edge, nor the glitter of the sky. But to Fell's eye, an entire host stood between them, rushing forward with hunger in pinched faces and crackled skin. Mouths agape, they leapt over branch and through tree, as the Golter gathered himself for the last press.

[Glaw]

Even as Fell's sword passed harmlessly (so it seemed) through their arms and chests, the caravaners' sharp mouths opened impossibly wide, as in screaming; their white eyes stared through her with a rage, even as they fell back only to pick up the trail again.

Down, up, ahead, back, ahead, down again! Knives and sandpaper clawed at her throat with each frozen breath, and Jalin stared into the empty trees and lengthening grassland glowing bluish in the artificial light, forced to put her trust in the directions of her comrades. Her arm ached but she held it rigidly aloft, now straight ahead at the demon-horse's command, to clear the way of shadows, as far as she could see. With the wind in her ears, the only significance she found in their surroundings was the terror in Fell's voice and the ferocity with which the Golter skidded the grasses.

And then, the light flickered, sputtered, and rapidly dimmed to a yellowish brown. Jalin shook it vigorously, and it flashed bright for a moment before snuffing itself out altogether. Thus plunged into darkness, she dropped the spent device into the grass and gripped the Golter's fur with both hands. Why, oh why hadn't those evil things given up yet?

They swarmed. It was best that Jalin couldn't see their numbers blocking the way ahead, else she might have frozen still. Instead, she fumbled in her pouch again for another light-ball. She found one and shoved it in her mouth, only to find that it was instead a stale piece of bread wrapped in oilcloth. She spat it out and prayed that light hadn't been the last. Her hand reached around again, grasped what was certainly the last light-ball -- and she grunted in surprised pain when something sharp bit into her elbow; the light-ball shook and fell from her grasp, and disappeared into the dark. There was nothing there, at her side. There was nothing there and yet something was fastened like a leech on her arm. For awhile Jalin forgot how to breathe.

Light flashed up ahead -- a red and gold light, the light of a tree on fire. Two more trees caught in the flame and illuminated the forest and the tower beyond them. Shadows flickered and danced; the roar of the flames, like a freight train, trembled in the trees. Smoke seeped into the breathable air, trickled into the lungs and eyes. The caravan fled, all scurrying limbs and vacant eyes, its fear of the fire more acute even than its hunger.

The man at the tower stood between the bonfire and the burning woods, his sharp eyes searching through the incinerating branches.

[Closetmonster]

The stars were watching over them, Fell noted to herself as the first pine went up like a match with a dull roaring thump of displaced air. That, or one darkened star, if one were to take much note of the man shaped shadow ahead of them. With the first tree alight, the caravan faltered. With the second, they broke off and the small party was alone in the beginning of a great fire. It spread slowly, there was little wind here, on the other side of the forest, but it had made a hot wall of light and spark for them to cross through. Fell, clinging to the Golter with one hand and her sword with the other, was forced to press her nose into her shoulder as she squinted when a bit of ash fell into her eye. Underneath them, the Golter continued on as quickly as when they were being pursued. Though, with the lack of anything hounding them, his path was far more straight. He angled toward a break in shrubbery where the fire could but lick at them as the passed.

As they burst into the clearing just beyond the forest, the Golter spun in a tight half circle and stopped suddenly, sides heaving and body trembling all throughout with the effort. At his shoulders, the physic slid to the grass and held onto his ruff. In the light of forest flame and bonfire, the Golter gleamed like a stove in horse, visible as a thickly muscled weasel like creature, with large, dark eyes reflecting the light all around, as well as the man's shadowy form.

Marjorie reached out to help Jalin to the ground and was not overly surprised when her hand was ignored. She watched while the girl pulled herself away from them, then Fell let go of the fur in her grasp as the Golter shook himself and let his haunches come to the ground with a thick sounding bump. He did not have a tail, instead, he had a egg shaped head which turned to stare at the approaching man. Fell, her sword still unsheathed, listed heavily to one side, pressing her hand into her gut where a stitch was trying to take place. She worked to lift the heavy weapon and failed, so instead, she made her way toward the man, unable to yet make out his features with the far brighter forest fire behind him. “Our thanks,” she breathed, uncertain of the man, yet glad for his aid. “I am Marjorie Fell, a physic. This is Jalin, our companion, and this is the Golter, who has chosen to accompany us. What name is our rescuer?”

[Glaw]

The woman's voice was barely audible above the freight-train roar of the fire -- but as the flames diminished (dwindled from orange to red, softer and then smaller, as if the air itself were suffocating them far too quickly) the light of the bonfire gradually took precedence in the illumination of those that gathered round it.

The one who stood peering at Fell was not a tall man; his straight hair was black, his eyes were thin, his skin was olive-brown. His huntsman's green clothes were unwashed and traveled. There was no weapon at his side. "My name is Shu Rozu," he replied automatically, as if reciting syllables well-practiced. He pressed his lips together, and for the first time looked over at Golter; it took an entirety of discipline to tear his eyes away from the strangeness of shimmering sleek of fur, the sinewy structure, the mirrored gaze. "I'd heard the caravaners approaching," he told Fell, "so warded them. I didn't realize they were in pursuit." He spoke slowly and articulately, cautious of every word. He strained to watch Golter out of the corner of his eye while he focused on Fell's expressions.

Jalin, who had made a point to remain independent of further help by either the professor-physic or her pet demon-weasel, had walked as far as the bonfire before she collapsed to her knees in the gravel, fingers digging into her elbow where that invisible thing had bitten her. It felt like ice had taken root in the crook of her arm, freezing her flesh and muscle and bone; already her arm was locked in a bent position, and she huddled into herself and rubbed violently at the spot. Her breath quickened, panicked at how rapidly she was losing feeling in her arm. She'd heard that people who lose feeling in their limbs ultimately must have them amputated. Already, while she inched closer to the fire and scraped her palm over the deadened skin, she envisioned that awful saw descending.

"Do you not have a light?" Rozu went on, just as the last of the inferno gave way to the smoky musk of blackened wood; the night seemed suddenly empty and vulnerable without the terror of fire to fill it. The crackle of the bonfire was infantile in comparison. Rozu himself wasn't keen on having company (nor had he counted on being called a hero), but he couldn't turn them out to be devoured.

[Closetmonster]

Fell smirked. “Then our luck held and you have our gratitude, nonetheless,” she stated somewhat formally as behind her the Golter shook himself. The sinuous creature twisted to look at his back, blinking his large eyes slowly as if he had a great deal of time and nothing much of concern other than the mussed up fur along his spine and sides. While he looked very cat-like, he did not set about setting himself to rights with his tongue. Instead, he spread one of his paws and, as a human might finger-comb recalcitrant hair, began to run his paw over his side. In the flickering dark, it was hard to tell if there was any headway made on the mess which he obviously had become concerned with.

When the light danced, then died, Fell brushed her own hands over her suit to straighten herself. “We had a light,” she said with a grimace. “Or rather, the Golter and I were sharing Jalin's light for the evening, when the caravan came along. Jalin... had... “ she looked to where the girl was rubbing her arm. The girl did not look like she'd much appreciate conversation nor anything else. No doubt if they were midday, she'd have parted company with them long before. Then again, the caravan would not have been about in the daytime, Fell felt. “She had a light which kept the caravan at bay for a short time,” she paused once and contemplated the girl.

“If I had to make a guess,” the Golter murred calmly, “I'd say she's either broke her arm on a branch, or been caught up in one of the many plants we passed.” He sneezed. “Or been bit.”

Rather than discussing the issue with the Golter who, in her experience, was as much aid in his current form to her practice as a horse had been, Fell made her way to the girl's side. “You're injured? Come to Shu Rozu's fire,” she reached down to touch the girl's arm.