The Dark Ends

It was a heavy fog that rolled after the North Wind. He passed through the dark forest and in-between the man. He stumbled his way blindly, blood slowly dripping from his stained hands and injured legs.

His breathing was shallow, his eyes losing the light that made his path clear. With each step, his pace began to disintegrate. His body felt heavy, gravity urging him to fall onto the cold arms of the bare earth below his misshapen shoes.

His dead eyes looked behind him, seeing the cause of his pain in the form of glowing eyes at his heels ten meters aways. He gasped sharply, turning and pulling his legs forward in a panicked frenzy for an effort to escape. The man looked around in the dark forest for a way out.

The forest was huge, gloomy, and ancient. Its canopy was dominated by spruce, rhododendron, and alder, their crowns allowed cascading lights to shimmer through for scattered sprouts to make use of the flat, fertile grounds below.

Curling creepers suspended from the occasional tree, and a variety of pale flowers, which were seen occasionally, protruded from the otherwise unvarying view. The small buds, despite their innocent colors, seemed fragile in the dark trees.

A faint variety of sounds, belonging mostly to birds and vermin, added little life to the forest, and were backed by the occasional sounds of breaking twigs beneath the feet of larger animals.

The haunting cries of the owls and wolves seemed even dark as he began to hear the wails of lost souls floating amongst the trees. His blood shot eyes, bleeding hands and legs and now the ghostly cries were only fuel to flames of panic swirling in his hazy mind.

The agonizing, stabbing pain of his wound was all that seemed to keep him conscious with the forest’s deathly aura entrapping him. His head was light, everything around him slowly began to spin and the crawling feeling of nauseousness crept up slowly.

Every fiber of his being ached for an answer to this feeling of misery and any cure that would bring him back to life was one worth considering. He paused for a fleeting moment and took a deep, shallow breath. Perhaps…perhaps if he could shift his focus away from the burning pain it’d be easier to manage.

Fighting through the pain was becoming increasingly difficult, but above all else it became increasingly annoying to have to deal with. But he desperately kept himself busy with mindless whisper and the urge to run from the source that had bestows upon him this agony.

The man looked behind him once more, the eyes had vanished. Trembling overcame him as horror snatched his heart. He turned around and froze, blood dripping slower out of his wounds now.

He lifted his hands to his face, smearing the blood over him as the stench of death and blood covered him. His heart pounded at the sight before him.

A woman, her long hair seemingly disarrayed and massed in front of her torn peasant’s dress. Her once olive skin had claws marks and wolf bites all over and a scar hung on her right eye. Her eyes that once shone green with the light of spring, now glowed with moonlight as pale yellow orbs.

Anger and vengeance shot from her eyes onto the man, fear striking him. A cry of horror built in his chest and his eyes widened as the woman slowly moved. He tried to speak, but breathing was adding to his agony.

Her form shifted, the sleeves become fur, teeth growing slowly longer and a snarl ensued from her throat as she pounced on the man. He fell under her sheer strength, shaking with terror as she watched with a sicking glee at his fear.

“Time for your path to end…..dear.” She growled as she bit. Deep. His vision began to fade. Blood….he could see it. The pain escalated before slowly fading along with his heart beat.

Why? How did it come to this?

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