[open quest] If you go down in the woods today…

[Anuya]

The pros: Anuya is now back in her beautiful, four legged, long-eared, starry body.

The cons: there are apparently a lot of dead in the area and they don’t look particularly happy to see her.

She can’t imagine why not, she’s a hoot to be around. Of course, it could be that they are very happy to see her and her red blood. She isn’t in the habit of judging anyone for a midnight snack but she would very much like not to be a snack for anyone. There are a few friends she might enjoy letting have a little nibble, sure. But she’s pretty sure, as she scrambles back to her aching legs, that the creatures lurching through the fog are not looking for a light, flirtatious teasing of her skin.

Which is too bad, because her head swims from her injuries and she’s not particularly looking forward to running again - even though it will be easier on four legs now. She skitters away from the lurching reach of a mare that may have been green once but is now a faded shade between khaki and grey. A truly depressing shade, though Anuya doesn’t know why her mind is choosing to focus on those details as she stirs herself into a run.

Maybe it’s easier to do that then to focus on the bone appendages and the eyes that are wild and milky when there are sockets enough in the rotting faces to hold eyes there.

It takes several long minutes to realize running isn’t putting any space between her and her persuers. They manage to stick close enough for her shaking steps to take her in new directions all the time and she’s pretty sure she’s in a canyon of some sort which doesn’t exactly help with the escape possibilities.

The first one she destroys is an accident. It appears before her and she is going too fast to stop or swerve and she plows right into it. Teeth scrape on her skin but her hooves break through the dusty skin and bones with ease and she tramples the creature in a few strides.

Luckily for Anuya, the sound of her hooves and the snarls from the pair behind her cover the sounds of the broken jaw still snapping after her.

A tight corner enables her to shove another into the wall, turning it into a dust-cloud of dead flesh that she unfortunately inhales. The coughing fit that comes afterwards drastically slows her frightened pace. She still has one of the dead with her, though, and it seizes the opportunity to strike.

Some instinct has Anuya strike too, though, and she bucks - hearing the crunch and squish of dead skin and bones. She's never killed anything before - well, okay, just an unfortunate chipmunk that had accidentally gotten in the way of a stone she had been practicing lifting and dropping. That doesn't count because it was definitely an accident (she did lift the stone up to look but immediately regretted it) and this doesn't count because they're already dead... right?

Now that she's covered in the dust of dead things, Anuya just keeps walking. Because what else is she going to do? And when she discovers a pumpkin-headed creature with glowing eyes, she barely even blinks. Of course that's going to be what's happening right now - and she very eloquently greets it with a "Hi."

Anuya