Title TK - Chapter 1

[Malevolence]

For background, I refer you to the background and prologue thread located here This is Chapter 2.

A General Note: If you see anything wrong with any of my writing, please comment in the OOC Comments Thread. Be these problems plot-wise, character-wise, clarity-wise, or grammar/spelling-wise, PLEASE for the love of all that is holy (or unholy depending on your beliefs) tell me! I hate it when people are afraid to be critical. I'm posting this stuff so you read it and give me feedback. That being said, enjoy!

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Chapter One

Alexia hit the dirt hard; the left shoulder of her shirt tore as she skidded over a root and skirted behind a large patch of brambles, skinning her elbows and shoulder along the way. Ducking under the massive shadow of a pyrus tree, she cradled her shoulder as she pushed her aching back up against the back of the tree’s colossal trunk.

“Fan out, she’s here somewhere,” croaked a guttural, raspy growl of a voice. Whatever sort of creature had just spoken began to walk forward, cutting through the underbrush with loud thwacks. Two humans came out from behind an outcropping of stone about twenty yards behind her, and fanned out to the left and right, brandishing menacing halberds.

More armed men came out in other directions from between two large pyrus trees Alexia had dodged between only moments before. One of the armed men came within five feet of where Alexia was crouched and shivering, but turned to his right and walked on.

A large, reptilian creature emerged from the undergrowth, and raised a torch in one of its four, blue-grey-scaled arms. The vaguely anthropomorphic beast flared the nostrils on the end of its long, beaked snout, inhaling a few large gulps of air. Alexia recognized it immediately. This beast was a Cryddri, one of the Cloaklands’ shock troops used for hunting – and usually killing – fugitives. She did not recognize this particular monstrosity, but she had seen many before, and had always managed to get on bad terms with them very quickly.

Entirely without warning, the large creature stopped dead in its tracks. The Cryddri spun around and focused its gaze on Alexia, and let out a deafening roar that sounded like a combination of a screeching drake and a shattering windowpane. It extended a long, clawed forefinger, pointed to where Alexia hid, and shouted “THERE!”

Alexia jumped up from her hiding place, and dashed off to the west, towards the rapidly decreasing darkness as twilight crested over the tops of the Eldûl Igen just beyond the treeline. As she leaped over bushes and under fallen trees, she could hear the clank of armor-plated boots behind her, and the roars and splintering tree limbs as the creature crashed through the forest.

As she ran, the crashing grew ever so slightly lower. She began to feel more relaxed, gaining more rhythm to her running, but never losing speed. As soon as the sounds of the creature were out of earshot, she stopped running, and, exhausted, began to walk.

Quickly surveying her surroundings, she noted a tree to her left that had large knots sticking out of its trunk. Using these impromptu handholds, Alexia clambered up the tree with the speed of a seasoned rock climber, and perched herself on one of the “Y” shaped branches near the midriff of the trunk.

Her breathing still shallow and fast, Alexia allowed herself to relax just long enough for the murmurs and rustles of the creature and its hunting party to come back into her range of perception. She perched herself more readily on the balls of her feet, and stared down. Just as the creature again began to probe the air for her scent, Alexia pulled from her belt a small glass sphere filled with a flowing, semi-gaseous fluid that sloshed about like bromine gas in an alchemist’s flask. Alexia tapped the sphere lightly with her fingernail, sending a hairline crack about three-quarters of the way around its circumference. She then grasped the orb lightly, and hurled it at a tree about three feet to the right of the creature, where it shattered violently. The volatile liquid exploded upward in a cone of greenish-yellow haze. The wind blowing through the trees quickly dispersed the thick brume, which stuck to any surface that would lend itself.

The imposing Cryddri doubled over and roared with pain as its nostrils began to blush a light red color, and it began to claw at its nose with its two unoccupied arms. The men around it proceeded to wax chaotic as they all became confused and frightened as their exposed skin began to burn and itch. Alexia chuckled as she leapt from her limb perch to a lower limb on a tree further ahead of the pack of unruly mercenaries, and proceeded down to the ground on her next leap. She turned around to marvel for a moment at the mess she had just caused, and then turned to leave.

It was then that a blue-grey-scaled arm wielding a small bough came crashing down on Alexia’s back. She blacked out.

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