Mau's breath burned in her lungs as she ran for dear life. Panting heatedly, breath rasping raw and tasting bloody in the back of her throat, she ran as hard and as fast as she could through the trees. The forest was no place to be at night, and she knew she made a mistake deciding to press on and travel through the dark as the low growl of something in the gloom chased after her, hounding her every step.

"Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck." Mau muttered in a litany of terror, her heart pounding in her chest like jackhammer, blood pumping loud in her ears as she forced every step to carry her further in her terrified flight. But it didn't matter. No matter how hard or how fast she pushed herself, she couldn't outrun her hunter; a dark beast as black as the night, towering heads over her and slavering for her blood.

The trees broke away and Mau nearly slammed into a rock wall in the darkness. Briefly, she wondered, how she hadn't seen it coming, with her better than average night vision, but she was too exhausted and battered and cut by tree branches and thorns to care as she wheeled around in terror to face the beast chasing her through the night.

She was met with silence. The leaves barely rustled as a wind gusted slowly through the woods, moonlight shining through the leaves made every tree branch and bush into a menacing and ominous shadow that reached out as though to claw and grab at Mau from the gloom. Her breath slowed as nothing came out of the night to kill her in a violent display. But she knew it was out there. Watching her. Stalking her. Hunting her.

Gulping down spit and blood she pressed her back against the rocky wall and slowly shifted herself to one side, inching her way along the rock face until she nearly fell back on her ass with a grunt and a sharp exhale as she hit the ground and found herself staring at a cave ceiling. In an instant, Mau's heart was racing again, not with fear, but with hope. Perhaps she could hide in the cave from her stalker, at least until morning and then she could escape the forest while it slept during the day.

The villagers had warned her about the monster in the forest. That it slumbered when the sun was up and hunted their people in the dark of the night, how it chased anyone foolish enough to travel the woods by darkness until they died of fright only to feast upon their corpses and leave them to be found savaged and mangled.

Mau whimpered at the thought as she rolled onto her belly and scrambled to her feet, staggering into the pitch darkness of the cave in hopes of succor without so much as putting a second thought to the idea.

She dared not light a torch and let the beast know where she was as she dragged herself against a cave wall, hand over bloody hand to guide herself along.

That was when she heard it again. A low rumbling growl that sent a thrill of terror down her spine from the nape of her neck to the very tip of her tail. Mau stumbled faster through the darkness until she could go no further and collapsed. That's when she felt it draw nearer, that's when she felt the hot breath steaming against the back of her neck. That's when she looked up and saw the smoldering eyes glowering in the darkness.

"Did you think you could escape me...?" A rumbling voice whispered in the darkness as the beast opened its jaws and...

 

❧

 

Mau's eyes shot open as she sat upright with a sharp gasp. She was soaked in sweat and her hands wouldn't stop shaking as she struggled to catch her breath and slow her racing heart.

"Fuck." She breathed as her world finally started to slow and calm.

"Are you alright?" Suvdaa asked, and her voice nearly made Mau jolt out of her skin again. "You were tossing for hours.

"Cripes." Mau grunted as she clutched her chest over her heart with a scowl, but eventually relaxed again. "... Yeah. Just had a nightmare. You didn't think about waking me up, once, that whole time?"

It wasn't completely a lie. But it wasn't completely the truth, either, as Mau reminisced on one of her many previous lives. She had gotten unlucky that time and met one of the Devil King's four top generals. His name was Golgoroth or Golgotha or something like that. She couldn't remember the particulars at this point, just that The Hero royally screwed up and almost didn't escape with their life that instance. Hell, even now she hardly remembered how she did get out of that situation back then, just that she spent years growing in power and strength afterwards so that she could go back and kick that bastard's ass the next time she saw him.

It still wasn't one of her particularly fondest memories as she flopped back onto the fur she had been using as a bed, one arm draping over her eyes to cover them from the light of the rising sun.

Suvdaa shrugged. "I tried. A few times. You weren't waking up no matter what I did. If the wendigo chose to attack tonight you'd have gotten yourself eaten, dumb cat."

Mau scowled again. Though she opted to not respond to her companion's verbal jab this time as she rolled onto her side.

"How long until we should get moving?" Mau muttered, feeling as though she hadn't gotten any sleep at all.

"About an hour. If you need more sleep get the rest in now. We've got a long day ahead and it's not going to get any easier.

"Yeah," Mau replied. "Wake me up in an hour." She said with an exhausted huff as she drifted off.

About an hour later was no better when Suvdaa shook Mau awake. She wiped the drool from her face and grumbled as she pushed herself to sit up. Breakfast was cold water and tough jerky. Mau would have much preferred the clan's hot butter tea and something more substantial for breakfast, but there would be none of that while hunting the wendigo. A groggy and sour Mau trudged through the snow after Suvdaa rubbing her eyes as she clutched her bow in hand.

"Stop now." Suvdaa said and Mau nearly stumbled right into the other girl's back. One problem with being a catgirl, that she had learned long ago... Cats sleep a lot. And if she didn't get that sleep in, she was going to essentially be shot for the whole day, and that meant she was going to be absolutely miserable.

"Do you hear that?" Suvdaa asked. Mau perked her ears up in response.

"... I don't hear... Anything." She admitted, before realizing in the next instant that it was a very bad thing.

"Shit." Mau spat.

"Yes." Suvdaa agreed as they turned to stand back to back. Already adrenaline was coursing through Mau's veins and she was awake in a heartbeat as the pair drew arrows and nocked them to their bows.

Mau heard nothing. Not so much as a chirp nor squeak of wildlife. The wind wasn't even blowing. The only thing she could hear was her breathing and Suvdaa holding her breath behind her.

"It's nearby." Suvdaa said.

"We can't fight it like this in the open. We'll be torn to shreds." Mau pointed out. Suvdaa nodded.

"If we stand and fight we die. If we move we die." She said their options and Mau didn't like them in the least.

"Aim for the eyes." Mau said as she swiveled her head and her bow left and right. "Maybe we can stun it and make a break for it."

"It's our best bet." Suvdaa agreed. "It will likely try and separate us, then pick us off one then the other."

"That's why we have to absolutely stay together."

That was about as far as they managed to plan before they heard the wailing cry of the wendigo practically on top of them.

It was the only warning the girls had, before the beast emerged from the nearby trees. Up close and in the morning light the wendigo was terrifying to look upon; with bare-boned animal skull for a face, decorated with the long horn of pronged antlers, the beast howled at them. It's tall, lean, lanky body towered over both girls, covered in shaggy brown fur and skin pulled taut over perpetually starved looking bones, the beast had long flensing claws on its scraggly hands and bird-like taloned feet.

It lunged at them faster than they could react, and in an instant Mau felt herself casually batted away from Suvdaa with a grunt of pain as clawed fingers tore through her furs and scrabbled on the plate of her armor beneath. It saved her life, but the impact was strong enough to knock the wind out of her and would promise a nasty bruise later.

"Fuck!" Mau grunted as she tumbled through the snow, landing flat on her ass and briefly stunned. She looked up just in time to see that the beast had turned its attention off her to attack Suvdaa. And while Suvdaa placed a perfect shot between the monster's eyes, it simply blinked as though the razor sharp point of the hunting arrow that pelted its brow was little more than a gnat trying to bite it.

Mau pushed herself back up to her feet just as Suvdaa took a tumbling dive aside to evade a lethal swipe of those flesh rending claws. While the wendigo was preoccupied with trying to murder the young raider, Mau snapped a quick shot off at the beast's back. The arrow bounced harmlessly off its hide.

This already wasn't going well. The two of them on their own had no chance of taking down the monster without resorting to whatever gambit Suvdaa was planning, and that required waiting another two nights for the full moon.

The beast's full attention was on Suvdaa, as though it viewed her to be the greater threat of the two girls that couldn't so much as put a scratch on it. She continued to dodge and weave and pelt the beast with arrow after arrow to no avail, she wasn't even making it flinch. It was as the monster bore down, moving in for the kill, that Mau resorted to using the ace up her sleeve.

Shifting her bow to a one-handed grasp, Mau aimed her palm for the wendigo's back, squinting as it raised its claws to rip Suvdaa apart, after cornering her against a fallen tree.

"Firebolt!" Mau snapped, and with a small peal of thunder, a lance of fire erupted from her hand like a bolt of lightning. The firebolt impacted dead center upon the wendigo's back with enough force to stagger it; the acrid smell of flash burned fur and flesh filled the air as the beast howled in pain and rage as it flailed wildly, claws missing Suvdaa by a hair's breadth as she took the opportunity to stagger away from the monster while it was stunned with pain.

The wendigo immediately whirled upon Mau, once it regained composure, and the smoldering glower of hate that filled its baleful eyes as they locked onto her spoke wordless volumes of fury.

"Ah..." Mau murmured as she realized: now would be a good time to run.

"Bail!" She shouted to Suvdaa, whipping around on her heels before breaking into a full tilt sprint, knowing the monster was going to follow her after she caused it such humiliating pain.

Snow crunched under every footfall as Mau didn't dare so much as glance back over her shoulder. She could hear the wendigo stomping after her.

"DUMB CAT! WHERE ARE YOU GOING?!" She heard Suvdaa shout after her.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, shit, shit, shit!" Mau huffed, cursing on repeat in a litany of profanity as she tore across the open plain towards a swathe of trees. If she could lose it in the thicket her chances of survival would greatly increase her chances of reuniting with Suvdaa later to come up with a better plan of attack that was more involved than 'shoot the monster and pray' for the next two days until the full moon.

"Meet me at Wolf's Crag tonight!" She called back over her shoulder while Suvdaa was still in hearing distance, praying the monster didn't know the regional landmarks like they did.

Pumping her arms as she bolted past the tree line, Mau's lungs burned as she charged through the dense copse, weaving and darting amid the timbers, ears twitching as she heard the crash of the slender trees being smashed down and swatted aside as the wendigo continued to chase hot on her tail.

With a loud crash, a log hurled clean past Mau's shoulder and slammed into another tree, bringing it down in front of her. She didn't stop, sliding under and past the falling timber on her knees as it crashed to the ground, picked herself up and continued to bolt.

Thankfully the fallen tree presented her with just a beat's worth of time to look back, as the wendigo had to now work its way around the collapsed logs, giving her just enough time to snap off another firebolt.

Flames lanced from her fingertips like a gunshot, crackling through the frigid air on a course for the monster's face. It howled in rage and pain as she scorched the space between its eyes, both of its monstrous claws patting out the sparks and singed bone and fur on its snarling skull as it staggered.

On the bright side, this meant that Mau and Suvdaa now had a means to injure the beast with Mau's magic. If it could be injured then it could be killed. However Mau's magic was finite in the sense that she could only cast so many firebolts before she tired out for the day, but the creature clearly hated fire.

She didn't stick around to revel in her small victory, Mau whipped back around and dashed through the thicket until she reached the other side and broke through the tree line once more. She didn't stop running for what felt like forever after that, but when she could no longer hear the footfalls of the wendigo on her trail, she allowed herself to slow, and then eventually come to a stop before she crashed into a heap on a snowdrift, panting for dear life.

Sweaty, lungs burning, huffing for breath and dizzy, Mau let herself collapse amid the snow and went limp.

"Ugh god." She wheezed to herself as she rolled onto her back and stared up at the sky, wiping the sweat from her brow on her arm as her adrenaline ebbed. Her muscles felt like they were on fire and every needy breath fogged the air as she laid herself out in a sprawl and gasped.

It took a good few minutes to recover, and when she didn't Mau still felt exhausted from the exertion now that the rush of her fight or flight instincts were no longer driving her forward. Slowly she picked herself up from the snow and dusted herself off with a few pats. She was going to have to take the roundabout way to Wolf's Crag if she didn't want to run into that beast again, which meant Suvdaa was likely going to be waiting for her, impatient and unhappy, by nightfall. Mau was likely not going to hear the end of the chewing out to come, but she couldn't help but grin a little bit to herself for managing to actually survive.