Killing Butterflies - Empires SMP

Fifteen - Hunt

A/N: Ty for 1k reads!!!! :D

It didn't take them long to fall asleep again, too exhausted from whatever the day had been to force themselves to stay awake. Sleeping, if anything, was an escape - somewhere where they could try and hide from the torment of their life, even if it was temporary.

A part of them scoffed at having seen the sun still in the sky, staring down at them as if it were immortal and not on a painfully slow march towards its demise. Sleeping was supposed to be for the night, at least in the eyes of ‘society’, but they didn’t really care.

It was the dreams that they cared about.

Dreams weren’t solid things to them. They were fickle and fluid, sometimes barely memorable and other times so confusing they would be wiling to die to try and understand what they were about. Exor had drilled into them many, many times, how dreams were a pathway to all things fragile, but they were too stupid to not try and indulge in them.

There was a woman running through the woods, a horde of dogs snapping at her heels - not at her, but at someone else. Her hair must have been a light brown, but the shadows of the trees were so dark that it looked like it had been burned. Her cloak flowed, blood red billowing in the wind.

A glittering iron axe hung from her hand, coated with blood. An arrow stuck out from her shoulder, barely hindering her movements, and every step seemed to pound on the overgrown grass. The dogs surrounded her in a thick blanket, barking as someone in front of them crashed through the trees, and the woman let out an unhinged, laugh that sounded almost familiar, laced with bittering insanity.

A Red Riding Hood in the woods, surrounded by wolves. Except this time she was the hunter.

Although the sun was just about risen in the sky, the moon was still perfectly visible. It seemed brighter than it should have been, tinted in a sort of reddish hue. Even through the morning, it seemed to latch onto her in the spaces between the shadows. Everything about the woman screamed power, and it became very clear that in that moment, she was about to kill.

She whistled, a piercingly sharp note that made every dog in the area perk up and run even faster, growling and snarling, driven to the very edge of their limits.

"You killed her!" The accusation tore from her mouth in a shout, an involuntary shiver running down their spine as rage wept through her voice. Most people slowed down when they talked, but she sped up, fueled by whatever anger drove her. "How dare you ally with them! How dare you kill her!"

"I didn't kill her!" A panicked protest echoed from the trees in front of her. "I never touched her!"

Their shadow stumbled, a gasp ripping loose from their throat, and within seconds a dog had leapt up and latched its jaw onto their arm. The person screamed, shoving at the animal with all their might, but they'd been slowed down and another dog was clawing at their leg before they could try and run again. "I didn't!"

She whipped her axe out in a slinging motion, ripping it through their armour in a painful SHINK, iron scraping along iron. They fell back again, fumbling for their own weapon in the process, mouth opening with a cry. "Help! She's crazy"

"Where are you?" Someone yelled, crashing noises sourcing from the thicket of trees. The ground was almost entirely made of snow, they realised. The blood of the woman's axe dropped into it, red spoiling the once pure white. "I'm coming!"

The woman laughed, a hysterical giggle that pitched in about five different directions. It sounded closer to a screech then a laugh, as she yanked the axe up and hoisted it into the air. "Something wicked this way comes!" She was practically shouting at the top of her lungs, and they could feel the deranged grin leaking off her face and into the soul of whoever was killing, poisoning them, burning them.