(This scene contains content some might find upsetting. For a list of content warnings organized by scene, please check the chapter titled "Episode 2.5: Duxon")
Lenna lay curled in the damp earth, a tangle of thick, moss-covered roots overhead. When she blinked open sleepy eyes, she noticed the way that the moonlight through the roots cut the darkness of her shelter into silver ribbons. She nosed forward into the nearest moonbeam and darted a tongue out, imagining it must taste and feel like cool, sweet water. Instead, it only tasted of dew and wet leaves and soil—no, there was another taste on the air.
She perked, one-and-a-half ears flicking forward eagerly, nostrils flaring. Breakfast.
It took some time for Lenna to get all four legs under her, and some time more for her to force them steady enough to prop up her frame. She stumbled once, smacking the side of her face into the earth, and she noticed a small object that stank of magic tucked under one of the roots. Hunger dismissed it from her mind immediately. Well, while she was here, she decided to just use her face as a fifth leg and pushed herself up. Finally, Lenna freed herself from the roots and entered the night.
The stream, newly repaired by the large Inhuman, burbled cheerfully ahead of her, calling to her. Her cracked lips worked in the air, eager for a morning drink, but she was more focused on the smell of breakfast wafting from just beyond her shelter’s entrance. She snuffled the air for a second before she found it. A rodent, ripped in half, lay at her feet. Lenna snatched it up immediately, barely having time to register the scent of the black Wolf on the little daybeast before it was down her throat.
Lenna lifted her head and glanced around. In the Darkness, the forest made itself known to her. She heard little beasts chittering away in the branches above her and the undergrowth around her. Far behind her, a much larger beast slithered over the ground, heading toward a pack of hoofed beasts who went rigid a moment before they bounded away. The scents of all three of the Wolves passed by her shelter—they’d been by recently, one after the other. The black Wolf most recently.
And on the other side of the stream, all the people were gathered together making an enormous racket. Tantalizing scents of cooked meat drifted from that direction, but Lenna knew she wasn’t supposed to go there. The honeysuckle human who called herself Belle had told her to stay away from there. It wasn’t safe for her.
Lenna didn’t understand why the honeysuckle human went there if it wasn’t safe. She worried about her there, in that unsafe place. But Lenna trusted that the honeysuckle human knew what she was doing.
The half a rodent hadn’t completely sated Lenna’s appetite, so she picked her way forward to drink from the stream, and decided she would follow the black Wolf’s scent and search for more food in the meantime. The black Wolf had protected her before, and she thought perhaps she would again—that big slithering beast had given up on the hoofed pack, and she was worried it might come for her next. The other monsters stayed away from the Wolves.
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Thirst quenched, Lenna straightened and started after the black Wolf’s trail—when a small pop sounded from within her root shelter, echoed by several other pops in the forest beyond. But Lenna heard none of these. She heard nothing. Because out of nowhere, fear hit her so hard it knocked the air from her lungs and killed all sense, all thought in her head. She heard screaming and didn’t even realize the sound came from her own stretched jaws.
Her body rushed ahead of her brain—she ran. She didn’t feel the water as she splashed through it, didn’t feel the warm night air on her sagging skin, didn’t feel her mangled feet touching the ground. Everything was fear.
Get to the human. Get to Belle.
Next thing she knew, she was surrounded by light and sound and screaming bodies. Everything was fear. Belle was there, reaching for her, but the fear didn’t leave. She flailed, screamed, thrashed.
And then she stopped, and she didn’t know why. She was confused when she suddenly couldn’t breathe. She was confused when she felt warm blood pouring from her mouth. When she sagged to her knees and Darkness bled across her vision, so Dark that not even a monster could see through it. That scared her most of all, that she couldn’t make sense of any of this.
Finally, she felt the pain. She tried to scream, but only blood and desperate gurgling passed her lips. Her body seized with every futile attempt at a breath—it hurt, it hurt so bad, but she couldn’t make herself stop.
Why? she thought. Why is this happening?
She looked at Belle’s blank face.
Help, she tried to say. Belle had always understood her before. Please. Help.
Lenna shot up in her bed, her lungs seizing. Her body was so panicked, so confused that it heaved, sending a stream of bile past her lips and down her front, followed by a furious belch. Finally, she managed to suck in a desperate breath. She felt around with shaking hands, looking for anything that might steady her. She clutched at her bedsheet, damp with cold sweat, and tried to understand what was happening.
It was the same nightmare she’d had the night before, except even more vivid this time. It clung to her, the fear hooking deep into her flesh, pulling her to pieces when she tried to free herself from it. Her chest burned, and she couldn’t help the little whimpers that slipped out of her. Even her neck still stung, she could practically feel warm blood trickling down—
No. She could feel warm blood trickling down her neck. She lifted one hand to touch the right side of her neck, but before she could she saw the blood already on her fingers. In the darkness it looked nearly black.
Lenna stumbled out of bed and to the table across her room. Atop the table was a bowl of water, and on the wall behind it hung a small mirror. But it was too dark to see clearly—she had to fumble around for her glowstone lantern. When she’d woken the glowstone, she held up the lantern to the mirror and pulled her hair over one shoulder so she could clearly see the right side of her neck.
Raw, weeping scratch marks in a strange, swirling pattern covered her neck. And—she glanced at her bloody nails—she seemed to have carved the pattern herself.