Yang looks down from the cliff she is currently perched on, her blonde hair blowing in the wind. She can see the fires of the village flickering below her in the shadows of the night. She smiles, she's almost home after months of being on the road, gathering medical ingredients needed to replenish her stores.
"Yang! Come on, it's getting dark!"
She can hear her sister yelling at her from the other side of the cliff. Yang knows that Ruby is anxious to return home, having left her fiancee behind to come with her, so she quickly stands and easily climbs over the rocks until she's standing on the lip of the cliff on the other side. She looks down and sees Ruby standing below her, hands on her hips, shaking her head
"Come on, if we move fast we can make it back before daybreak tomorrow"
Yang laughs and steps off the cliff's edge, falling the 15 feet gracefully and landing as if there was no distance between them at all.
"You're just cranky because it's been four months since you've gotten any"
Ruby rolls her eyes, "Can you please, just..." Ruby lets her sentence trail off while gesturing towards Yang's horse.
Yang laughs and swings into her saddle. The two of them start back towards their village, following the path between the mountain and the Balikin Forest. They had been riding for a few hours, and night had fallen, when Yang heard something coming from within the forest. She slows her horse to a stop and turns to look at Ruby.
"Did you hear that?"
Ruby frowns and shakes her head, she hadn't heard anything. Yang slides off her saddle and draws her bow, nocking an arrow in the process. She looked out towards where she knew the forest and tree line started, but couldn't see anything in the dark. She closed her eyes and focused on listening to the sounds of the forest. She could hear the leaves of the trees rustling in the wind, crickets chirping, she could hear water flowing in a creak nearby.
SNAP
Yang's eyes flew open just in time to see a silver tail come flying towards her head
"SHIT!"
Yang rolled to her right, just missing the tail as it flew overhead the sound of it slicing through the air. She came out of her roll, resting on one knee and let loose an arrow. For a second all Yang and Ruby could hear was the wizzing of the arrow as it flew through the air toward the forest. Yang risked taking a look to see if Ruby was okay, she was. Standing to Yang's left, Scythe out, knees bent ready to attack. Yang could feel the corner of her mouth tilt up into a small smile. Ruby had grown up a lot in the last few months, and it showed. Ruby turned to look at her and opened her mouth to say something, but her words were forgotten thanks to the most deafing roar either sister had ever heard. Both girls ducked their heads and grabbed their ears.
Yang slowly brought her hands down and picked up her bow that she had dropped.
"What the hell was that!?"
Ruby just shrugged her shoulders, tighting her grip on Crescent Rose
"I'm not sure...but something doesn't feel right"
Yang nodded her agreement, she had an uneasy feeling growing in the pit of her stomach. She started to calm her breathing while looking around, her eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness...well the moonlight was definitely giving her a hand. She could better see the tree line, granted it still wasn't much better than it was before.
It was that moment that the horses started to shift nervously and whine. Yang barely had a second to move as she noticed two sets of blood red eyes charging towards Ruby. Yang nocked another arrow and shot it towards the closest set of red eyes. Aiming to hit whatever it was between the eyes. She watched the yellow tipped arrow fly true. Then she watched it hit her target and bounce off with a metallic tang ringing out. The creature didn't even slow down, it just let out a displeased hiss and continued its course towards Ruby.
"Shit"
Yang took off into a run towards Ruby and was able to push her out of the incoming path of one of the creature's tails. Her success was short lived as she quickly realized she didn't have time to move herself out of the way. The tail collided with Yang's stomach, she felt the blunt force of the tail knock the wind out of her but there was also a sharp pain, but she couldn't think about it long. The force of the impact had her flying backwards until she crashed into a tree. She could feel the bark of the tree biting into the skin on her back, ripping through her shirt. She fell forwards onto her hands and knees, and let out a gasp, sucking in as much air as she could.
She could feel the tingle of tears forming in her eyes from the pain but she blinked them away. She quickly assessed herself and the situation. Her back was burning from the scratches, her abdomen was surely bruised from the blunt impact, and the left side of her abdomen felt warm...and wet. She reached down and let out a hiss of pain, her fingers came away covered in blood.
"Damn it" she whispered to herself.
She looked up and saw one of the creatures making its way towards her, she could barely make out the movements of Ruby and the second creature fighting behind it. But she could hear the fight, the sounds of metal on metal meeting her ears, giving her both cause for concern but also relief. It meant Ruby was still alive.
The creature was closing in on where Yang was still kneeling on the ground
"I swear whoever decided to put spiked armor on you and your friend over there is going to pay big time" she muttered to the creature and to herself.
She pulled a dagger out of the sheath around her thigh, not knowing where her bow had fallen and unable to make it out in the dark. Tightening her grip around the hilt she pushed herself up and into a run. She was able to dodge the first attack, sliding under the tail as it swung towards her. But missed the second as one of the creature's front legs made contact with her stomach, sending her stumbling backwards.
From what she could see the creature was entirely covered in armour, armor that her dagger would have less than zero impact on. She needed to find a weak spot, there had to be a spot that wasn't covered. Yang let out a sigh realizing that this weak spot was most likely located on the creature's abdomen.
And so the fight really began, the creature moving forward and lashing out with pure rage, wanting nothing more than to kill the target in front of it and Yang dogging and dancing around its advances, desperately trying to trick into opening a window where she could attack. Yang wasn't sure how long she had been dancing around the creature in front of her, but she could feel herself start to tire. Which is all it took. She managed to jump over a low swing of the creature's tail but ended up jumping directly into its outstretched arm. She felt the claws rake over the puncture wound on her abdomen and across her stomach on a diagonal, ripping the front of her shirt and then getting caught on the leather of her chest binding. Yang let out a scream as the creature used it's momentum to fling her back into another tree. Her back hit first and the back of her head connected with the tree trunk half a second later with a sickening crack. She fell forward onto her stomach and groaned, she could taste blood in her mouth and the world was spinning. Every part of her body hurt, her muscles on fire.
"YANG! MOVE!"
She heard Ruby call out to her, but her head was foggy, she heard what she said but couldn't decipher what it meant. She pushed herself up onto her knees and the spinning got worse causing her to fall to the side, she shot her arm out to catch herself from completely falling over. She shook her head, and pain exploded inside her skull
"Fuck, that was a bad idea" she groaned
She still couldn't think straight, the world around her was spining as she pushed herself up on more time, this time making it to her feet. But she stumbled to the side and then backwards when she tried to right herself.
"Shit"
She closed her eyes and brought both hands up to grab her head, ignoring the protest from her muscles and the pain radiating across her abdomen and back.
She had completely forgotten about her fight and the creature until she felt the impact across her chest as she was once again flying backwards through the air. She hit the ground on her back with a loud thump, sliding across the grass, dirt, rocks and twigs, the wind knocked out of her once again.
She tried to get up, but she was in too much pain, and too dizzy to be able to right herself. All she could see were the pair of red eyes moving towards her, floating around as the world spun in her head. She saw the flash of silver half a second before she felt the burning pain in her right arm, she felt where the spikes had dug into her shoulder and bicep, and felt another stuck in the leather of her chest binding. She let out a cry as she felt the spikes loge deeper into her arm and chest, ripping more of her skin and muscle, as she was pulled closer to the creature. Every nerve ending in her body felt raw and on fire as she was dragged across the ground. The pain was starting to make her vision darken. Black spots dancing across her eyes.
Yang let out a sob as the creature flicked its tail and dislodged the spikes from her arm. She could feel the blood flowing down her arm and pooling under her. The black spots in her vision getting bigger, her eyelids getting heavy and her hearing distorted. The creature moved closer, raised itself up onto its hind legs and opened its mouth letting out a roar that shook the ground around them.
The last thing Yang saw before the darkness took her was a purple tipped arrow loge into the soft skin of the creature's throat.