Kenu’s face stung as branches and leaves whipped across her face. Her feet danced over bushes and roots with ease, sending her flying through the forest. Heart thumping painfully in her chest as she searched for the way back to their campsite. Kahi followed close, his brute strength allowing him to keep up by barreling over bushes and stomping through thicker undergrowth. Dante and his soldiers fell behind, struggling to move with ease in their thick armour. Fear was the one thing they all shared and perhaps the one thing keeping them alive. Eyes wide. Hearts racing. Blood pumping. Adrenaline coursing through their veins.

The sound. That’s what struck fear in them most. It was a deep reverberating growl, a moan of pain, a roar for blood, all at once. It made their bones vibrate and their eyes water, a song of anguish played without rhythm or cadence, changing constantly in pitch and tempo. Louder and deeper, it echoed across the forest, its origin; the fast-approaching cloud.

Kenu burst through the foliage and into their campsite, quickly diving for a small knife that the soldiers left behind in their haste. The roaring grew impossibly louder. Kahi stumbled out after her. The fog snapping at his heels. Their eyes met. Death began to seep through the leaves. Panic and fear ran rampant in the sibling’s short glance. That’s when it hit, with a guttural, beastly scream.

It was everywhere. All at once. All consuming. A tsunami of emerald swallowed them whole.

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Kahi instantly lost sight of Kenu as the thick green fog wrapped around him, isolating him from the world. The roaring and constant wailing came to an abrupt stop, almost as if holding its breath. It left the forest eerily quiet.

The swirling mass of grey and black obscured his vision significantly, but flickers of lightning revealed twisting shadows within. A flash, a shadow. Then again, a flash and shadow from a different direction, accompanied by the rustling of a bush. It moved fast. Too fast. Closer this time. A flash, a shadow. A blur right beside him. He was being circled. He was being hunted.

Kahi stumbled backward as he shouted “Kenu!”

His voice caught in the wind as the deep guttural roar interrupted him. It had no direction, no discernable origin. It was the fog. It was the earth. It was everything.

Kahi’s head vibrated as the sound echoed around his skull. His eyes shut tight as he strained against the intense roar. Then the shadows attacked. A giant blur leapt out of the swirling mist. His eyes flickered open, fighting against the pain. What he saw was a beast, an unimaginable, unthinkable, horrendous beast. A true abomination of nature, charging directly for him.

Kahi froze. What happened next took less than a second, but time felt frozen around him as he was locked in place. Like a waking nightmare, where movement is impossible, and the poor victim can do nothing but watch.

Impact was inevitable.

Or it was, until a hand suddenly appeared on his shoulder.

Was that there before?

And ripped him backwards.

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It felt incredibly odd for Kenu to go from being the hunter to being the hunted. Still lying on the ground where she dove for a knife, she watched in horror as the shadows dashed around her, obscured by the deep green cloud, waiting for an opening to strike. It made her feel guilty for the various beasts she had hunted and slain in a very similar fashion. But determination turned her veins icy. Now that she was the hunted, she was not going down without a fight.

As Kenu went to stand, one of the soldiers walked out of the emerald fog, confusion apparent on his face. Catching sight of her, he outstretched his hand to pull her up. She looked deep into his eyes as she grasped his gauntlet, they were wells of fear and dread. Rightly so, as Kenu heard the patter of heavy footsteps from directly behind him.

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Kahi dropped to the ground as time resumed its course. The beast flew over him, directly where his head was, and deep into the bush behind where he once stood. Dante stepped over him, sword drawn and at the ready. For a second he looked like a true knight. Armour sparkling, his helmet hiding everything but those piercing blue eyes which contrasted perfectly against the grey fog.

Blue eyes?

Yeah, I’m pretty sure they were blue.

Dante glanced down at Kahi.

“What the hell are you looking at? Get up idiot!” He shouted over the wailing symphony of erratic roaring and beastly screaming.

He turned his gaze back to the ever-growing number of shadows, which moved faster and more violently every second. One of the soldiers bravely walked in front of them as Kahi scrambled to his feet. Another piercing roar rattled their skulls. And that’s when the second attack came. Another beast launched itself into their midst. They got a better look at it as it charged and, on the surface, it appeared to be nothing more than a big wolf, running on all fours with a shaggy coat and large haunches. But that visage was completely shattered when it attacked.

It immediately brought down the soldier with its immense size and speed. Its wolf-like appearance vanished instantly as its face became more visible. Its mouth had ripped open, wider than possible, revealing gaps and holes throughout its maw, like a decaying corpse. Long tentacles sprouted out from deep within its throat, whipping wildly and writhing uncontrollably. Eyes clouded in white milky mist, the kind that only belonged in the eyes of the dead. As the mouth opened wider the stench became unbearable. Rot. Decay. Death. It was the smell of the end of all things. But worse still, was the sound. A piercing wailing and crying of pain and sorrow burst from deep within it. It could have been a desperate scream for help or a viscous roar for blood, it was impossible to tell.

But what really sent fear through their veins was a horrific realization that it was not the same all-consuming roaring and wailing that reverberated all around them. There was something worse out there. Hunting.

As the horrifying beast tore at the soldier’s face with its writhing tentacles, it also ripped into his armour with its giant claws, like it was nothing but paper. The grotesque sound of crunching bones and ripping flesh abruptly stopped as Dante sliced its head clean off. It was easy, too easy, to slice through the decomposing flesh and bone.

Dante froze as he stared at his soldier’s face, or rather the lack of it, in horror. A huge mistake. Another beast sprinted for them, from directly behind. He barely had a chance to turn before the abomination was upon him.

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Kenu hit the ground hard. The weight of the armoured soldier, and the beast on top, crushed her against the dirt below. The man was dead instantly, but the abomination couldn’t care as it ripped and tore at his skull with viscous animosity. Kenu, now pinned beneath the two, could only watch as its gaping tentacle maw wrapped completely around the helm, crushing it, and his skull, through sheer force. The sickening noise was followed by the tearing of skin as the grotesque beast threw what was left of the soldiers’ head to the side.

It turned its dead eyes toward Kenu’s. Opened its horrendous jaw. Revealed its unimaginable number of writhing tentacles. Each appendage surrounded an endless black hole, a mouth layered with infinite rows of teeth. All covered in blood. All hungry for more.

And it screamed.