Inexorable

12: Of Dawn and Dust

In this moment, the girl racing towards the door is not Vera, but a different person entirely. The Vera that is consuming her body is not a human, but rather the tempered rage of a burning wildfire. She does not notice how in that very instant, in the very moments of time that was wearing down, that she was no longer a fearful girl, whom was afraid of shadows and towering heights. 

Vera endures the biting pain of the glass shards burying themselves into the sensitive flesh beneath her bare feet, each of her step sending a million of razor sharp crystals  piercing into her skin. The warmth of blood seeps into her skin and dribbles down her chin in a thin crimson line, the sharp and metallic bitter taste of it stinging her tongue. In the rush of it all, she had bitten down on her lip hard enough to cause it to bleed.

She places her left hand on the rusty copper knob, desperately twisting and yanking it in hopes of getting the door to swing open, however much to her absolute dismay, it does not budge beneath her fingers. The knob only rattles in show of resistance. Without hesitation, Vera moves to her side and musters all of her strength, drinking in all of her adrenaline and courage, before taking a quick breath. Her heart races in her chest and the world has gone quiet. In her raised right hand is the knife, poised and ready to slice into anything that is going to attack her.

In a single kick, her bedroom door flies open, the sound of crackling wood and snapping metal hinges ringing in her ears as she breaks into the room.

Clouds of suffocating dust and splinters of wood covers the air before her, before subsiding into the darkness. Around her lay remnants of what had been her room, where her closet used to be is now a pile of shredded cloth and splinters of lumber, while her bed is mess of broken rusty springs, torn wood, and feathers tipped with splotches of deep, dark red blood. But what causes her blood to go cold is the shadow that resides in front of  the window before her.

A ring of the jagged clear glass and fragmented wooden frame of the window lie around the shadowed figure, with its back turned towards Vera. It towers over the broken window, its crooked figure only visible in areas where the pale graying light graces it. Rows upon rows of obsidian scales cover its twisted and mangled thin humanoid body, its legs clad in the same black, glass-like matter, while the place where the creatures toes should be are long, jagged obsidian talons. 

Vera almost cries out as she realizes that a small, frail arm lies dangling from the side of the obsidian creature, in its grasp a torn and battered brown teddy bear, cotton spilling from its stomach.

Remi.

The hand that holds the knife trembles, however, it still remains tight within her grasp, before sailing through the air almost gracefully, and sinking into the black flesh of the shadow before her. Vera does not take any time to analyze her own actions, and nor does she have any time to fully comprehend the fact that it was physically impossible for any inexperienced swordsman to perfectly throw a blade at a target. All she can render is the sight of the knife sinking into the back of the creature. Vera can almost hear the sound of tiny pieces of glass fracturing as the tip of the blade sinks deeper into its inhuman obsidian flesh, the echo of it sickening and revolting in her ears. 

A substance of pitch black ink drips from where the hilt of the kitchen knife had sunk into and pools at the creatures taloned feet, coating the tips of its claws with the dark blood. A gasp could not help but escape Vera's lips as the shadow turns to show its face to her.

The creature does not have eyes.

All it had was a hair raising smile a row of razor sharp ridged obsidian, the tip of each jagged fang coated in a shiny red substance that manages to twist the insides of Vera's stomach. The corners of its ridged smile stretches from one side from its scaly obsidian face to the other - it bloody grin very much resembling a knife slowly tearing through skin from within a body.