The Wolf and The Fox stared for another moment, both acknowledging that this is no longer a simple battle of predator and prey. With their new bodies either could become the predator and slaughter the other.

Despite his weariness The Wolf was still full of confidence and arrogance against this fox that had continuously escaped him for days on end now. A cowardly prey could never bridge the gap between predator and prey even with an enhanced body.

As The Wolf was mentally degrading The Fox, The Fox spent his time thinking of what to do instead of having useless thoughts. It matters not who is the predator and who is the prey, all of that is outweighed by the simple fact of who lives and who dies.

The cloud of dust was settling around them rapidly during this time, The Fox was quickly losing his cover. While the dust cloud might not be of significant help during this battle, it’s presence still leaves an option of escape if he can disable The Wolf temporarily. 

‘Quick! Just do something!’

‘Shut up!’

The Fox’s response was quick and direct at The Black Lily’s interruption. He has no want to devote time or brain power towards her at this time. 

The Fox continued to observe his opponent so try to guess The Wolf’s next move and how to defeat The Wolf. The Wolf did not continue to degrade The Fox for long and got back into his hunting mode, the muscles of his hind legs tensing getting ready.

Despite The Wolf’s best efforts to hide his intention by not changing his posture, The Fox notices The Wolf’s back legs tensing getting ready to pounce and gets ready himself for the battle by tensing his legs on the left side, preparing to make a side step when The Wolf pounces. 

Silence descends upon them again, dragging on for what felt like an eternity. Finally The Wolf couldn’t stand the wait and made his move. The Fox seeing The Wolf starting to move immediately starts his own jump to the right. Unfortunately for The Fox, The Wolf had prepared his hind legs not to pounce, but to make a sudden acceleration into a dash forward.

The Fox had already started jumping to the right like he had planned, but seeing The Wolf’s move caused his eyes to contract. If he continued his jump he would be in the air vulnerable to The Wolf’s attacks when The Wolf reaches him. Luckily for The Fox his moment of shock had ruined his posture causing his jump to fail. 

Except, it would have been better for it to have worked, The Fox with his continued momentum to the right stumbled to the right instead of jumped. He might have avoided the danger of being airborne, but instead he encountered the danger of being off balance, disoriented, and unprepared. 

The Wolf crossed the 10 some feet between them in a blink of an eye reaching The Fox at the same time that The Fox started his stumble. Giving no The Fox no chance to regain his posture, The Wolf bent his head slightly to the left and aimed for The Fox’s throat. 

Just before The Wolf got to The Fox with his deadly bite, a vine extended from The Fox’s back and slashed The Wolf in his right eye. Neither The Fox nor The Wolf had expected this, but The Fox was relieved and The Wolf was the one caught off guard this time.

The vine promptly reached The Wolf’s eye and left a long gash reaching from his snout all the way to his ear where it promptly cut the tip of the ear off. The Wolf recoiled in pain ending his own attack early and also killing his own momentum as he took a step back.

‘thanks…’

Silently thanking The Black Lily, The Fox readjusts himself no longer daring to prepare moves like that in such an unpredictable battle. Bringing his focus back to The Wolf, he makes his own first move. 

The Wolf was having trouble dealing with the extreme pain and the loss of vision in his right eye took a second to notice The Fox already at his throat with his own bite. Sensing the danger even before he actually saw The Fox, The Wolf made a slight dip to the right at the last second.

The Fox’s bite landed on the left shoulder of The Wolf. He continued to sink his teeth in further as he started to bring his body closer using his bite as a leverage point. In no time The Fox’s left claw left a scratch down The Wolf’s neck.

Before The Fox could go any further with his series of attacks, The Wolf reacted with his own move. Dropping his front left shoulder The Wolf brought The Fox to the floor and slammed into him using his own body weight. 

As The Fox slammed into the ground a cracking sound echoed and multiple ribs fractured on his right side. He couldn’t stop himself from opening his mouth and spitting a glob of blood as one of his ribs punctured one of his lungs.

The Wolf released from his unwieldy parasite promptly took his own bite into the abdomen of The Fox. Sinking his teeth into the soft underbelly The Wolf drank some of the blood he loves so that helps him replenish his energy.

Unfortunately he had to release his bite early as he felt a sense of danger again and backed off. Another vine had appeared where his left eye had been only moments before giving The Wolf a renewed feeling of danger when dealing with this fox. 

The Fox had both of his lungs punctured now as they filled with his own blood restricting his own breathing. Feeling that he was doomed to die now, The Fox’s eyes gained a glint of determination to at least die bringing down this damn wolf with him.

Ignoring all the pain and lack of oxygen The Fox sprung up preparing to leap at The Wolf abandoning all intentions to defend himself.

‘RUN!’

A voice resounded in The Fox’s head right after he had sprung to his feet. The Fox’s consciousness had already turned faint the moment he stood as it caused more damage to himself and again reduced to oxygen he had left with the abrupt motion.

Having no doubts or thoughts in general, The Fox just started running. The Fox ran and ran, there was no direction for it other than forwards. As The Fox continued to run, The Wolf looked on with frustration. 

After taking a step back to dodge the strike to his other eye, his right eye had started to throb. This caused him to be dazed momentarily and then when that had finished and he came back to moments later, he had a feeling of exhaustion overcome him. 

Despite his pleas and frustration, his body no longer responded to him and collapsed on the spot. He was still conscious and saw The Fox running but could do nothing about it.

The Fox’s run was a desperate one, one filled with no purpose but to just run. He had no clue as to why he was running just that he was. As he ran his body was pulled to the left and right occasionally but how and why didn’t register in The Fox’s brain. 

Somehow The Fox managed to stay in this semi-conscious state despite his already failed lungs and was left with only the purpose to run in his brain. Time blended together as he ran, his body accumulating new cuts and stains as he ran. 

Blood had stopped leaking from his body at some point, but still he ran. He ran and he ran. Eventually he tripped on something unknown and collapsed right there and then. He lacked the power to move any longer and just laid there. 

The danger of laying in the open covered in blood was left unregistered in The Fox’s brain like everything else he had experienced since he had started to run.

‘This damn fox’

The Black Lily had told him to run when she saw him going back in to attack again. Why he thought that attacking again when he had a chance to run was beyond her, he had never come off as one to be rash in his decision making. 

But there was another thing that annoyed The Black Lily so much more than his attempt to attack again. He was running yes, but he was literally JUST running. He gave no bother to looking where he was running or even listened to her directions when she tried to yell at him.

Admittedly she did notice that his lungs seemed to have stopped working at some point and realized he might really be all here anymore. She was honestly quite late on this realization but promptly started to inject oxygen into him using her own ability to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen. 

This seemed to have kept him alive, but he was still just stuck on only running. Knowing that yelling at him or hoping that he would dodge the trees himself was but a pipe dream, she started to use her vines inside of his body to change his direction to avoid trees and other obstacles.

This was a new ability she learned she had from her panic'd moment when The Wolf started his surprise attack. She also learned from that moment that too much power at once will do nothing more than just throw The Fox’s body in the direction she intends. 

As this was not a great situation for literally throwing The Fox’s body, she prompted for slight pushes to adjust his direction little by little. It seemed pretty effective which was good. 

Nevertheless they continued to run, and run, and run…. She got bored of the running very quickly but she didn’t really see a logical reason to stop him at this moment. So she just continued her adjustments and observed the surroundings and the time.

By the time that he finally collapsed the time had reached morning, as in the rise of the first sun morning. The Fox had somehow even managed to run through the freezing temperatures that few things can live through that occurs during the 3 moons period. 

She realized that they were truly far from their original spot as the trees around them had changed in their very essence from the ones before. The original trees had been simple oak trees that can be found in many places, but the trees here have the size of giant redwood trees but the appearance of willow trees.

The leaves of the willow trees often overlapped leaving no room between them to see the sky, it was almost a permanent night here. If it wasn’t for her innate ability to tell the time she could have never seen the state of the sky. These trees also seem to provide insulation from the elements which can be considered good and bad. 

Sadly for her it seems that sunlight and moonlight are but a pipe dream during this time. Nevertheless The Fox had finally managed to trip on a tree root, and collapsed in this forest. She will likely be working overtime here to protect them until he gains consciousness again.

CplProtoss

Got this done a little later than planned but here it is. Also as a side note I decided to get some artwork done for a cover and will be posting the full image in a glossary element and replacing the current novel image with a focused version when I get it. Anyway here we are, we start a new arc now where we wont be living in constant fear, hopefully, and make some progress in understanding each other. Anyway thank you all for reading and I hope you enjoyed this arc. I might go with making that side chapter I mentioned earlier for the next chapter. If ya think I should just start the arc first throw a comment bellow.