Running Red

Chapter 19 - Run of the Moon Dancer

Okay. I hate it. I really, really do.

But it is finished. Five months is such a long time...I apologize for that. The good news is that if all goes well, I shouldn't have anymore hold-ups on this story. I've worked out all the kinks beginnning to end. Look forward to future uploads!

Dedicated to Zeke because she's amazing and deserves it and also because I secretly hope to reinspire her to read this chapter. -FlyOn97

I was forced to follow them by scent alone. The fog was so thick that, combined with the speed with which I was running, I was almost blind. But I could smell their trail and so I raced after it with a vicious ferocity.

A blanket of consuming silence slept on the forest. The only sounds were my own padded feet as I crashed through the trees, my gasps for breath, and my heart thumping heavily in my ears.

Other than darting around trees and bushes, the scent was following an almost undeviating straight line away from the Sliding Mountains, and it was just seconds old. I was certain that I could catch them, so I poured speed into my limbs, stretching as far as I could for each step.

Suddenly, I heard something that sounded like a snarl and a growl and I had a heartbeat to change direction before I crashed headlong into a pile of limbs and fur. I overshot two wolves that were tumbling in the wet ground and skid to a stop a few feet away, the thickness of the fog already consuming the shapes of the snarling beasts.

Charging back, I had just enough visibility as I approached to see the two wolves roaring viciously and snapping at each other’s throats. I paused, unsure in the flurry which wolf was friend or foe.

They raged violently, leaves, snow, and mud kicking up in the heat of the battle. They raised on their hind legs to meet one another, whinijng and snarling as each tried to nick the other. I was uncertain of which wolf was winning, though I had seen the grey wolf bite meanly into Gleo’s shoulder. Gleo yelped loudly in pain and I was uncertain of whether or not he was seriously injured.

My uncertainty was short lived. Just as I was about to jump in and help as best I could, Gleo found a hold on the smaller grey wolf’s throat. I watched in fascination and awe as Gleo, without a blink of hesitation, tore the throat of the grey wolf out.

Blood gushed from the hole and the small grey wolf gagged in an awful drowning noise, thrashing around on the ground in oxygen starved dementia. The scent of adrenaline and blood permeated the air, filling my nostrils in overpowering doses.

Gleo, standing over the dying animal possessively, dropped the chunk of torn flesh, his jowls dripping blood, his hackles raised, a deeply rumbling growl coming from his chest. I could see his right shoulder shining wetly from flowing blood.

The wolf lived for several more seconds, pounding his own body into the ground in his uncontrollable state.

And then, finally, he died, though I quickly saw his death was not to be the end. His body lay still for hardly a few tense seconds and then, with muffled cracks, the wolf’s body boiled grotesquely and began to change. His back shrunk, his tail disappeared, his hind legs stretched, his face crumpled inwards, his shoulders broadened, his hair dissolved, and, after a while, nothing was left of the wolf and there was a middle aged man lying on the ground, his throat torn out and his expression vacant.

And there was a second, just a second, that I mourned for the man. He surely had not chosen the life of a blood hungry beast. He was nothing but a man. A man who, in another life, may have had a home and a wife and children and a job. A man with friends and status and hobbies. A man who liked to watch the sunset, who shopped at only the vendors he could trust, and who drank with other men who talked of bad roads and politics. A man who had been given something terrible and had found no way to cope. He had been, very simply, lost. And I mourned for one more fragile life shattered on the rock of reality. And I was very, very sad…