Screams and wails spread unbound. Foolish, ill-judged, deadly, yet Rhiannon couldn't help it, all self-control lost and forgotten.
After the car crash, she had been drifting through years waiting for death's final visit. She wielded an edge over most people, for she had a schedule for death, the schedule comprised by the best doctors in the state. Rhi put on the calendar every operation, treatment, possibility. She went through therapy, made peace with the past, and even learned meditation to keep her mind sane.
Her first death might be uncalled for and quite unexpected, yet it was death Rhia was prepared to meet and lose the final struggle with. A painless death from blood loss she couldn't even feel. Merciful. Quietly she drifted to final sleep.
The second death had been nothing alike.
So she wailed from anguish, she screamed from the phantoms of pain, trashed inside the coffin, dodging shadow spear strikes. Her sanity, her reason was all stripped away, leaving a pathetic, frightened animal in a less-than-a-human form of a manikin.
Bam!
This new, cruel world bared fangs at her shortly. Metal struck wood of the coffin lid. Rhiannon stifled. It struck again, the woman cast a persecuted glance around. Bam! Wooden chips and dust poured on her, and a larger crack on the lid let through the dim light. The sword blade showed a sharp tip.
"No! Please no! No-no-no!"
Pleading for mercy was in vain. A series of strikes befell the coffin, shacking the woman in burial clothes inside.
I need to get out, get out..! Yet the coffin only had one exit and Rhiannon was practically paralyzed from fear, unable to decide. The skeleton didn't wait, it cut the lid into two half with a lucky hit. Rhia screamed and finally pushed the upper half away with a beastly strength, broke away.
The tree above her spun and fell aside. No, it was the woman who fell aside awkwardly even though it hadn't been her intention. Stone Buddha watched her upside-down. She tried to stand, crawl away but failed. Soundlessly, Rhiannon opened and closed her mouth. She couldn't breathe, couldn't scream from fear. Her arms and legs didn't listen. Her arms and legs didn't even exist no more. But she could hear the skeleton walking.
Click-click. Click-click. Away. It was walking away.
Why? She couldn't understand. She was lying here, defenseless, and it was leaving?
She couldn't breathe still. No matter how strong she tried, the air refused to enter her body.
Why?
With the darkness coming, she remembered.
The swish, the fleeting stroke of pain, the sudden spin.
She had been beheaded.
When Rhiannon opened her eyes again, she found herself in a coffin.
