You should have turned back.

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After visiting with the broken, burned, and still Uwaritace, Taivas had set her path south.  She decided, quite without thinking her decision all the way through, to walk.  After her startling yet fruitful venture in the Siren's Summit, the shaman began to believe deeply in the words spoken by Kisamoa.  She needed to bring hope to others in this world, all sorts of creatures, if she were to restore whatever wound the realm suffered.  This required her to be upon the earth, feeling the steady heartbeat of the world under her hooves, so that she could encounter those unable to test their wings by flight.

However, as she begins to traverse the long expanse of fog and mist before her, the decision to walk seems foolish.

At first, it starts as the slowing beat of the world's heart, the sickly pattern growing even more dim.  The land under her hooves is strange - wrong, even.  The loose dirt looks barren and lifeless, yet every once in a while, a shoot of bamboo, long since dead, is discarded on the floor.  The mists swirl and pulsate with a vengeful air, and everywhere the shaman looks a face, pointed and sharp, seems to form in the fog.  She clasps her eyes shut desperately for a few moments at a time, convincing herself it is the stark, grey world setting her nerves on edge.

Yet, the sense of upheaval and loss pools in every hoofprint she leaves in the dirt.  Only whispers of spirits remain here, so thin like the air.  Something awful happened here.  It was as if life had been ripped and torn out of this portion of the Rift, and the sensation of injury, the awful injury told by the sickly beating of the earth's drum, grew stronger here.

Taivas wondered what this place was, for it looked to be nothing now.

Then, she hears it.  The ever-so-slight sound muffled by the dense mists, a shuffle and slide of teeth.  Panic begins to fill her gullet for a moment and her eyes dart about in the thick grey, realizing her dull light has become a bright beacon in this dark, lonely place.  The small orb at her side jitters with fear, mirrored in her quivering figure, and that is when she sees it.

A giant beast in the dark with pale, slimy skin and nothing but a snout and boring teeth for a face.  The mare lets out a shriek before turning tail, hoping she can outrun the monstrous thing behind her.  After all, while Taivas had the lineage of great warriors, she had hardly been raised to be one.  She knew nothing of battle outside of how to repair wounds.  She knew not how to defend herself.  And now, her naivety had once again landed her in a situation where she was ill-equipped to prevent her own end or the end of others.

She should not have come here.

we tried to dream ourselves awake

image credit to the lovely Blu

[ ooc - For @Aryel
She's being chased by a Magnus Metus!  I left it open but I can change that if you want.  I figured the more the merrier. ]

(Open is fine!)

She had braved the mists in search of her missing companion, but she was beginning to regret doing so. The thin trails beaten out through the fog seemed to twist and turn and double back in on themselves, leading the diminutive mare in circles. There was next to nothing to mark her path, only a few strewn boulders and charred bamboo shoots--several of which she was sure she had passed already. Her nerves were on a hair-trigger, and the only thing stopped her from igniting the peat underfoot with her magic was the indescribable feeling of malice in the air. She could have sworn she heard whispering here and there, or spied flitting movement that vanished as soon as she turned to look. As satisfying as burning this haunted place would be, she somehow got the feeling that attempting to do so would bring down the wrath of something she wasn't keen on meeting.

To her frustration, as the fitful light began to darken, a sign that day was turning to dusk, she found no sign of her beloved bat. Perhaps more worrying at the moment was the fact that she found no sign of the edge of these mists either. Surely, if she kept walking, she'd find the way out eventually, but she was certain that, despite seemingly travelled in a straight line, she had been turned about at some point.

She was about to risk flying through the fog and get away from this place when the scream cut through the mist. Immediately the grulla froze, ears and eyes high. That had been a mare's shriek, but some superstitious part of her wondered if it was just another trick of the presence that seemed to hang over this place. Trick or not, though, she had sounded utterly terrified, and Aryel's nature simply didn't allow her to sit by idly.

Heedless of the whispering voices and distorted faces in the mist, she broke into a run, heading in the direction the sound had come from. She strained to see, hear, or scent anything, but was gradually able to pick up the sound of rapid hoofbeats and the pace of something much larger behind them. When she first saw the creature's hulking form in the fog, she nearly stumbled over herself. Easily twice her height, moving with a bizarre bipedal lope, it gallumphed in hot pursuit of a smaller fleeing horse, likely the source of the scream.

The stocky mare quickened her pace, her striped limbs a blur as she tore across the ground in pursuit of the creature and its prey. Although not suited for speed, desperation propelled her forward, gradually gaining on the hairless monster until she was almost side-by-side, only trailing behind a few feet. With a growl, she lowered her head, bringing her horns to bear, and then threw herself into its leg, aiming for the back of its knee in order to buckle the joint and cause it to stumble--and hopefully, to fall face-first.

@Taivas

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Caught in the mist and struggling for gasping breaths, the shaman runs, quickly pursued by a massive and terrifying figure.  She dares not turn around to look again at the faceless, massive monster in hot pursuit.  She need not see the teeth forming a voracious maw to know he is still behind her.  The sound of imposing feet can be heard crashing into the earth, even through the dense cover and quieting fog.

Her heart thrums in her chest, feeling the burn in her muscles as the healer wishes she had more physical proclivities for the first time in her life.  Then, almost as if out of nowhere, a dark shadow appears in the fog.  For a moment, the panic in her heart and throat threatens to seize her legs and halt her breathing, until the shape begins to clear.

A mare, small in stature, but every bit as determined as she is miniature, rushing to the aid of the pale painted girl.

Relief does not set in, though.
No, for they are still far from relief here in the mists.

The approach of another does not deter or stop the Metus at first.  In fact, the monster continues to follow the shaman as if nothing has changed.  And why would he?  Why would a cat stop chasing a mouse just because another mouse appeared?  However, the newcomer was no mouse.

Her horns bend down with atheletic grace, and, fearlessly, the smoke colored mare drives her weight directly into the leg of the great beast.  Her attack is well aimed, and the Metus's leg immediately buckles underneath him, causing him to fall onto the ground and providing the mare with much needed time to escape from the brute.  The gap which had been steadily closing between them grows.

For a moment, aside from the pounding of hooves in the dirt, all is silent.

A groan, foreign and terrifying, is then bellowed by the Magnus Metus.  Taivas turns her head back to view the giant, who appears to shrug before stalking off in the opposite direction.  It appears the intervention of Mighty Mouse has made the girl an uneasy prey.

Slowing her pace, the little moon takes deep, fast inhalations, looking with bewildered eyes but an otherwise calm and placid expression toward her small savior.  "Thank you," she gasps out between breaths.  "I could have been killed."

we tried to dream ourselves awake

image credit to the lovely Blu