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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 896993" data-attributes="member: 143">Thanks, guys!  I had hoped to wrap up the story this week, but the board shutdown last week threw that timeline off.  I'm taking some time off over the holiday weekend, and will be gone 5/22 through 5/27.  Rest assured I'll leave you with a cliffhanger before I go...* * * * * Book VIII, Part 34Dana’s heart pounded in her chest as she ran.  All around her the forest seemed to press in like a malignant, conscious entity, with low branches swiping at her face as she passed, bushes clinging at her leggings, and roots jutting up from the carpet of damp, rotting leaves just waiting to snag a careless boot.  She could not remember how she had come to be in this place, or even what this place was.  But she knew that enemies pursued her, and that other evil things lurked in the shadows all around.  Those shadows were deep; only a pale, diffuse light filtered down from between the boughs high above, casting everything into a faded gloom that only added to the malevolent feel of this place.  A sound behind; a twig cracked loud.  The noise distracted her for just an instant, and a root caught her foot, and she was rolling through the damp leaves.  She was up quickly, and running again, but even in that brief interval she thought she could feel the sounds of others approaching, a wedge closing behind her.  She had to run on.  She could stand and fight; she had her skills, and the power that came at her command, but even though she had no solid memory of what it was that pursued, something deep within told her that she could not battle these foes.  She lacked her weapons, and her gear; she only wore her light traveling clothes, flowing loose about her body as she ran.  Something blazed against her chest, a pinprick of echoed power, but when she lifted her hand to touch it, there was nothing there.  She came to an abrupt halt as her foot sank into a soft, yielding surface.  She drew back, the ground making a sucking sound as it released her boot.  Ahead stretched a bog, with the muddy flat ahead giving way within a dozen paces to a broad, stagnant pool thick with floating leaves and other detritus.  Through the shadows she could make out the slanted forms of ugly, misshapen trees, though she could not make out a clear path that would take her safely across the bog. She started to turn to the side, to move parallel to this new obstacle, but even as she shifted she could hear them coming, the sounds of her enemies moving through the wood.  On three sides, now, clearly.  There was only one way left to go. Something buzzed at the edges of her mind, a stray thought not quite conscious, strangely similar to that disjoined presence hanging just above her breast.  She tried to clear her thoughts enough to bring into clarity those twin warnings, but before she could draw them into focus a loud crashing erupted in the wood along the way she had just come.  Too late.  No time. She crashed ahead awkwardly, stumbling through the bog.  The water was cold, the mud deep and clinging.  She sank first up to her hips, and then her chest, but thankfully no deeper than that as she pushed on.  She reached the first tree, a half-submerged willow, its roots jutting out of the water to form a cage around its base.  Something... not right... came a whisper, but it was nothing against the fear that pounded in her chest, and the sounds that continued behind her.  Then splashing—her enemies were following her into the bog. She hurried onward, pressing blindly through the swamp.  Ahead, she could see a low rise, a mound that rose up out of the waters, covered with dense plant growth.  From one side of the mound a tree jutted at an awkward angle, its long drooping branches reaching down to touch the water below.  Atop the rise, its summit only ten feet or so above the level of the surrounding mirk, she could just make out the outline of a blockish structure.  A building?  Sanctuary?  She was already pushing in that direction, but the bog seemed almost willful in its efforts to stop her.  The mud grew deeper, causing her to nearly founder with each step.  She felt a boot sliding off, but before she could stop she’d stumbled and it was gone, lost.  The reeds and the muck that covered the surface of the bog like a carpet clung to her clothes and skin, until she felt as though she was wearing a woolen dress that dragged out behind her.  Her arms churned at the surface, until the sound of her own passage drowned out the noise made by her pursuers.  She refused to look back, filled with the irrational yet powerful premonition that if she did, they would be right behind her, reaching for her...She stumbled up out of the water, onto the edge of the mound.  Her body was coated in a mess of mud and decaying plant matter.  Exhausted, she tried to lift herself up the slope, but only slid back into the water.  She looked down at her arm, a pale white outline that contrasted starkly with the black all around.  She turned up the limb, revealing a fat, ugly leech that seemed to swell with her blood as she watched it.  No doubt there were more of them on her legs and torso, sucking the life out of her greedily.The sight of it filled her with disgust, and an anger that reenergized her enough to lift herself up decisively from the bog.  She crushed the leech, barely able to feel the tiny jolt of pain as it tore free from her arm.  She found a few more and killed them likewise even as she slipped and slid her way up the short but treacherous slope, toward the outline she’d spotted earlier.  It wasn’t a building after all, she saw as she drew nearer, but rather a single solid mass of stone, a boulder that someone or something had fashioned into a rectangular bier.  It was easily five feet high, and at least twice that in length.  Shadows moved all around, emerging out of the bog.  She fell back against the stone, watching with horror as they crawled up out of the mud and started up the sides of the mound.  She didn’t need to look around the stone to know that they were coming up from the far side of the mound as well; she was surrounded.  There was no escape, now.  A steely determination fired in her and she forced herself to stand free of the reassuring strength of the stone.  Very well, then.  She would not go down without a fight.  Her enemies slowed as they neared the summit, comfortable now that they had driven their prey to ground.  The shadowy figures resolved into humanoid forms, blackened with mud and dripping wet from their chase.  And then, as they came close enough for her to distinguish their faces...“No,” Dana whispered.  “No, not you.  Why...”There were over a dozen of them, with more creeping around the stone from behind to join them.  She recognized each and every one, though the harsh, almost feral looks that graced their faces were alien to those that shone in her memory.  Servants, from her household when she’d been just a child.  The kindly monks from the monastery of the Sun Soul where she’d been fostered.  Clerics from her Order, some still clad in the remnants of what had once been vestments emblazoned with the sigil of the Moon Lady.  Others whom she’d known for a time, friends...One of them came forward.  Dana felt a sob choke her throat as she saw him, his smooth features now twisted into something almost unrecognizable. “Seral, my teacher, my friend.  Why are you doing this?”The elf’s grim smile was ferocious, cruel.  “We have come to take you back, Dana.  Too long have you been away from us, your true people.”“You betrayed us, Dana,” came another voice to the side, a familiar voice that stabbed into her like a dagger.  “You deserted us.”Reluctantly, she turned to face this final speaker.  “No, father.  No, that’s not how it was.”  The buzzing in her head from before had redoubled, now a furious cacophony that filled her head and caused everything around her to grow fuzzy, indistinct.  For a moment, there was another presence there, something familiar but not in the warped, terrible way that those around her were.  She reached for it, but it was as if her mental probe slid off an invisible wall with no cracks or weaknesses.  “This isn’t right,” she said, decisively.  But her father only laughed, a cruel song echoed by the others.  “You are right, my child.  But that knowledge will not save you, not here.”With that, he began to change, his features twisting in an unnatural transformation.  The others were shifting as well, but her eyes were filled with whatever it was that was in the shape of her father.  A lie, she knew, but he was right about one thing.  There was no escape.  Still, she tried.  With a desperate cry she hurled herself backward, trying to leap up atop the slab, to flee the circle that had closed around her.  Her limbs felt leaden, refusing to follow her commands, but she’d still nearly managed to pull herself up atop the slick rock when the first blast of pain exploded through her back.  And then the claws were tearing at her, drawing her back.  She screamed and lashed out desperately at her attackers, but they only laughed.  The familiar faces were gone, replaced now with hairy, bestial visages—wolves, rats, boars.  Werecreatures.  Lyncanthropes.  Shapeshifters.  They drew her into their midst, and they piled onto her, slashing with long, bloody claws, grasping, tearing.  It took a long time, and she felt every moment, even her body finally betraying her as it refused to let her fall into the comforting bliss of unconsciousness.  Finally, though, there wasn’t anything left but tears and a haze of blood and pain.  Oh, the pain.  Finally one of them loomed over her face, and its jaws opened wide, wider, until all she could see was the black pit of its throat.  Blackness.</blockquote>

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