The slight sucking at the bottom of her boots as she pulled them from the mud with each step, paired with the heavy, wet air that fought every breath, brought Mila uncomfortably into the moment, the fog of sleep still clouding the fringes of her mind. Not that she was not still sleeping, she decided after a moment’s thought, feeling out the languid rush that she found herself in the midst of, finding it quite similar to the occasional lucid dream she had experienced before.
Her conclusion was only pushed forward as more details calmly filtered into her mind, her surroundings slow enough to give her time to latch on to each piece and digest it - the most peculiar tidbit being that while it all felt slow, it very much wasn’t - she was sprinting onward, tipped forward far beyond what felt safe yet controlled all the same, somehow not snagging her feet on any of the roots, fallen branches, clay slicks, or rocks that would spell a quick, shattered end to her ankles if she messed up for a split second.
The muggy, deciduous forest was drawn straight from back home, left years back, but grown to monstrous, looming proportions that Mila tried not to contemplate the metaphorical significance of too much, helped by the distraction of one arm coming up and into focus enough to lazily observe. The soft skin she spent so much to keep healthy and smooth was gone, replaced by small pink scales spattered by the red clay-tainted mud that she was busy kicking up, a heavy, stout machete gripped tight in a blunt-taloned grip angled out just slightly. One of two matching blades, she confirmed as her arms pumped.
A weirder dream, then, and maybe a sign that her role playing game characters were growing on her too much, perhaps was a bit too much of a self-insert, but the amusing observation was shattered before it could take hold too deeply by a shouted warning that was immediately drowned out and consumed by a harsh cackling. A cackling that Mila was busy sprinting right towards, as the imminent obstacle managed to claw its way into her attention despite her mind’s best attempts to not recognize it as an existing thing within the environment.
The creature was a canine, ostensibly, but what should have been a tawny-grey coat was marred by heavy patches of blackened fur with ugly, scar-white skin peeking though, and it was massive, even before its weird proportions were factored in. Its legs were twice as long as they had any right to be, almost cartoonishly spider-like in how its body sat up high, but worst were its eyes and its… paws, for a lack of a better term. The yellow orbs had the spark of intelligence there that Mila associated with a smart animal solving a problem, but tainted with a feeling of cruelty that she exclusively thought of as much too human, locked on to her as she moved towards it, shifting its weight back and raising a foreleg, bringing a paw that was far too hand-like to get in between them, laughing hungrily as it moved.
The yotel, because Mila just knew that it was a yotel, some awful mutation of a coyote, was not alone but it was the only one that did not seem to be panicking at her mad charge at them, the other two spooked by the person smaller than them acting aggressively, but the one just kept laughing, even as Mila planted a boot and dropped her weight, coiling amidst the mud for a moment. And then the spring of her own muscles, alienly toned, launched her forward through the air at her target, her own long mouth stretching wide in an angry smile.
The wild, distant leap threw her target off, as well as made the fourth yotel miss her arm with its snapping jaws as it deshimmered into existence under her like the fucking Predator, her mind only now helpfully supplying that the yotels could hide themselves from your mind, because OF COURSE THEY COULD. That horrific tidbit did not get time to settle in on Mila, though, as she was already batting away the reaching hand-paw of her initial target, rapping the flat of her blade against it to make its lunge go wide as she crashed into its chest.
Her other blade flashed forward with her momentum, steel chopping forward as she got a face-full of the disgusting beast’s gross fur, but her body thankfully knew what to do as she slammed into the larger, far heavier dog. Her opened mouth found purchase, slamming teeth into the flesh of the beast’s collarbone and clamping down, her chest coming to a lung-shuddering stop against its body but her lower body whipping forward, boots seeking a half-decent foothold against the scuffing legs of the yotel, her tail going wider, coated in the same bright pink scales that her arms and muzzle were. The long tail cracked like an angry whip as it found one of her yotel’s back paws, wrapped around it, and tugged it out from underneath the creature.
Mila rode the monster down as it fell, bracing for the second impact even as she kept her mouth clamped down, her own feet still scrambling, hands moving at lightning speed as she tried to simultaneously hack further into the yotel’s muscles while keeping its furious, pained jaws off of her head and shoulder. The vile blood rained over her as fast as she could move, a sliver of false hope present that she did not accidentally swallow any of it, and her vicious work had immediately turned the awful laughter into more natural, albeit still awful, canine cries of pain and distress as her victim did all it could do to remove her, scuttling back over the muddy ground even as she continued to yank at the foot her tail held captive.
There was a shudder and sag within seconds of her impact, and while blood still flowed, Mila knew that, for the time being, this yotel would be out of the fight. Which only served to remind her that there were at least three others of the freaks right around her, and that she could hardly hear anything outside of the hammering of her own heart, but she knew it was all loud. The red that creeped into the fringes of her vision was not helpful either, but was not blood, confirmed after she tried to clear off her eyes and it did nothing for the red. So instead she whipped up, head darting left and right to figure out what needed taking down next, eyes focusing on the yotel coming up on her right and stepping back as concern took over, Mila’s mind recognized, for a brief instant, that something was very very wrong with all of this.
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Seeming to sense the moment of fear, the yotel took a step forward, ready to press its advantage, but the squelch of a heavy footstep heralded an intercessor. A shining knight in mud-splashed armor came through the peripheral, slamming a heavy steel sword down into the beast’s back and dropping it to its knees before the large sword was wrenched free. Its wielder sported a breastplate, but it was the golden scales catching the light that really drew the eye, a tangle of similarly golden horns sitting upon her reptilian head and a stout tail shifting to balance her as she readied her sword to swing again. More knowledge bubbled up, providing Rora’s name to Mila, and explaining that the silver, shimmering plates that flickered in and out around the other kobold were some kind of innate magic the woman had. Magic of the moons, yet another fault line that cracked underneath Mila’s mental footing.
It was another moment of pause for Mila, pushing back at the sound of her heartbeat and at the red in her vision that wanted more, but that only let more of the chaos come through to her, trying to overwhelm her. Rora shifted, threatening to drop her two-handed sword on the grievously wounded Yotel as it danced forward and back, but there were more, more of the hell-beasts than she had thought even as she had gnawed on the neck of one of them. The beast to her left was slammed back and away from her by a torrent of water, sending it rolling out of the way, but two others were before her, focused on her as they shimmered and slipped in and out of reality, staring with those eyes, seeing everything. They tugged at her mind and her own mind found her wanting, easily throwing her to the not-wolves as she was dragged further into their gazes.
Rora’s scream, a soft voice being forced too loud for the speaker’s own comfort, shot through to her, “Mila, behind you! Duck!” And duck she did, half throwing herself forward and managing to avoid the sixth yotel’s fangs that sought her neck. Unfortunately, it did not keep the beast from accidentally catching her now off-balanced with its paws, tripping over her and sending them both crashing into the mud, Mila trapped below its bulk.
The crush of woman versus monster was much less in her control this time, with the one point to her benefit being that its long legs that she was tangled up in prevented the yotel from eviscerating her immediately. Its weight on top of her kept her from properly chopping with the machetes in her hands, but she tried her damnedest anyway, her tail slapping about in the mud as she kicked to free herself, and her mouth grabbing whatever she could reach and tearing away, releasing, and repeating. Between her own panicked sounds and those of the yotel that could not seem to extricate itself from her, she had no idea what was going on outside, but the same hers-but-not-hers knowledge that knew what a yotel was also told her that Rora and the others were likely doing fine, better than her, and if she just kept on fighting, they’d save her. They had her back.
That did not keep Mila calm, though, as her snout was smashed into the hide of the beast and its blood washed over her nostrils and through her mouth. Her frantic, short movements and jerks only intensified when the yotel finally managed to sink its teeth into her thigh, a fang feeling like it glanced off her damn kneecap. Her own retaliatory chomp manage to land and tighten right before the canine began to haul her out from beneath it, her teeth shredding even as her blades struck as deep as they could, drawing long gouges as Mila was pulled out and with a crack of the creature’s neck, tossed away, apparently much more of a threat than worthwhile prey to her attacker.
Hitting the ground shoulder first jarred her, even as she tried to bring one arm up to protect her skull, and she scrabbled through the slick, red mud to find her feet. The sharp pain of her leg and the dull ache of her mutant-coyote-crushed chest was all shoved down firmly as the kobold spun about, not willing to get caught off guard again. Thank the gods, though, no more yotel seemed to be paying much attention to her, as the three remaining were busy grasping on to the last vestiges of life they had and failing. The one that she’d been trapped under was taking faltering steps to escape, a pulped chest and armpit dumping blood too fast to last long, and a small part of Mila was glad to see that she’d given worse than she got.
Rora had another pinned down, the horn-crowned kobold’s heavy sword cutting off the yotel each time it looked to slip past her and threatening to dive in if it tried to turn and run, which gave opportunity for the thrown spears, larger than either of the frontline warriors, to sporadically slam home. The third was reeling in a stupor to one side, its eyes filled with burning symbols as its mouth dripped with hunger-laden globules of saliva and its body rapidly wasted away, muscles eaten up by the magics at work there, the work of a human man and a massive hyena person that stood a ways back next to a blueish fellow with the spears.
The other yotels were down, dead or dying, and the three soon followed, their death cries still managing to keep that cruel laughter buried within, but Mila did not have the thoughts to spare about it, too busy considering the cracks that were rapidly expanding in her mind. Magic and yotels and even kobolds were not real, but part of her was screaming against the other part, battering down the walls that separated them, because for as floaty as her thoughts felt, the agony in her body and the thick, burning hot blood that still coated her mouth and throat felt like no dream she’d ever had. Tasted like no dream she had ever had.
The very, very real taste of the yotel’s fur, flesh, and lifeblood made her retch, stomach threatening to expel its contents onto the wet forest floor at her feet but she managed to suppress it, fully aware that the acrid bile would not help her taste issues. And then her eyes fell down to the mangled, agonizing leg that somehow supported her, the fabric of her shorts just as shredded as the flesh below, bits of too-pink muscle overly distinct from the pink of her scales peaking through the blood that flowed down her leg. A glimpse of white, horrifying and all too reminiscent to how she had gotten herself a wide scar across her delicate, scaleless knee, was the final straw for Mila, eyes rolling up into her skull as her strings were cut, body collapsing forward and the cracks in her mind growing wide, trying to swallow her up even as the banging continued inside her brain. She did not even manage to hear the cries of concern from her friends, for as little comfort as that might have been for the panicking woman.