The forest burned hot but Menov burned hotter with resolve.

Her bestial arms, thick as marble pillars with layer upon layers of ribbons, were taut with tense energy, ready to explode into action. That bestial girl, Pyrik, spiralled down from the sky toward her like a speeding bullet. She braced, crossing her arms, and the impact was a comet of a cannonball hurdling into her. The nearby flames and burning branches on the canopy were swept with a strong gust that put out the fire. The power was extraordinary. The pair of bestial arms that stood her up buckled from the attack, almost sending her shooting a league into the dirt.

An impressed yet straining grin formed across her lips. Upon meeting Pyrik that night in the house, Menov had sensed a bestial aurora in that girl, the flaring of fangs from a wolf, a deadly nature that stank up the room worse than the dozen sweaty men crammed into the living room. However, never did she fathom that such an apex killer resided in her tiny frame, nitroglycerin just waiting for that fateful spark. Menov grimaced, hating the taste of regret. She should have confided in the girl, and helped get that rabid mongrel on a leash before it started snarling and foaming all over the place. Oh well.

With her grin falling to gritted teeth, Menov reared back a ribbon arm and slammed it into Pyrik with all her might. Pyrik flew, crashing into the ground, throwing up chunks of earth. A good enough walloping should shake that girl to her senses, shake that beast loose. Seizing the moment, Menov pushed off the ground, mustering enough force to launch herself up and leap the whole distance, two large fists raised and ready to hammer them down like taking to an anvil. A sinking feeling pulled her stomach down. Pyrik was already up, standing, without a scratch on her from the strike except for the dirt on her coat. After brushing some dirt from her shoulder, Pyrik shot into Menov. The speed was frightening, blink of an eye and Pyrik was a hair’s width away from her face. The fact only registered when a shock of wind blew back stray strands of hair, and as ribs broke as Pyrik punched her claws into Menov. She coughed up blood as Pyrik twisted them like treacherous knives. A disbelief settled strangely in her chest. Nothing had ever managed to draw a drop of blood from her, not even from a faint scratch, yet blood was running down Pyrik’s claws, hands, dropping to the ground below like droplets of rain. An assault of panic made her heart pound as she felt the claws close around her broken ribs, starting to tug in earnest. Pyrik laughed with all the cruelty of a child torturing a crippled dog, yet when Menov glanced at her fiery purple eyes, she saw tears streaking down her cheeks. There was no joy in undertaking the task. Then, as easy as popping the head off a dandelion, Menov’s chest was torn open, brigandine and all. And she fell from the sky.

***

Cutter watched, blinked away the dryness and disbelief several times, then sharply tilted his head down when Menov fell to the ground. It was like watching the moon plunge to the earth, incredible, impossible. He had thought that Menov was the most powerful among them, and now that girl usurped the position. He would have stood there, completely terror-struck, however, his men were yelling at him, desperate for orders, any direction at all. His senses rushed in like plunging into freezing water.

“To the burning forest! Now! Restreat back to the settlement” Cutter pointed to the fire steadily spreading through the canopy.

The command was admittedly questionable, however, at least they would have the cover of the burning canopy and the crowd of trees to make any fly-throughs harder to slay many down. Luckily, the men did not question the command and immediately ran for the burning trees. He was about to join his men when he saw Ira struggling to get up, a hand pressed against her stomach, the other still holding onto that curious looking pod.

Steeling his shaky nerves Cutter scrambled to Ira’s side and helped her up. “We have to leave the forest,” he said.

As the arachne up in the unburned treetops tried to escape the forest fire, Pyrik used her antlers like a lance, flying through them, ripping bodies apart, ensuring that they did not leave the forest alive.

“But… my home.” Ira started sobbing. “My family... my people...”

Cutter felt a mournful squeeze in his heart. Strange considering that they were beasts, yet something profoundly human in her voice had reached across to make him empathize. For all she knew this was the genocide of her people, an existence ending in blood and flames.

“Don’t you dare acquiesce, not now. You’re still alive,” Cutter said as he shouldered more of her weight, carrying her to the relative safety of under the burning canopy.

“Promise me, Cutter. If I should die, please find my child a new home,” Ira hugged the pod closer to her body. “She’s a mother, you see. If… if you can escape with her, my people may just survive.”

“Save your energy, will you?” Fiery debris was falling from above. A burning ember grazed his cheek and Cutter winced. “I reckon the shot went clean through you, nothing that can’t be matched up. I'll have you good as new.”

“Please, promise me…”

Cutter was a Hospitaller, his creed was to uphold the virtues of fire and light, destruction and discovery. Such a promise rested incongruently to the creed, the way of life he had devoted himself thus far. However, if such a promise would get her to save her energy and continue placing one appendage forward after the other, then it was no burden on his back. Just a small lie.

“I promise, I promise. Now please, let’s get out of this burning forest, shall we?”

“Thank you.”

The raging fire surrounding them was suffocating. Cutter had sweated through his undershirt and now it stuck uncomfortably to his body. He was terribly exhausted, only adrenaline and the certainty of death if he stopped kept him up and moving. At night it appeared like the sky was on fire whenever he glanced up at the burning canopy.

The riving, glowing oranges and reds of forest fire gave way to a starry night when they finally stumbled out. The air was cool, fresh and they breathed deeply. Cutter wanted to drop, however, a mad bellow of laughter tore through the raging, cackling fire. He stamped down the exhaustion and hefted Ira the rest of the way to the settlement.

Settlers had gathered at the open gate, gawking at the forest fire burning a horizon into the night.

“Get back inside! Close the gates!” Cutter yelled at a settler.

“But the forest is on fire!” the settler said it with joy, unbeknownst to the monster Pyrik had become. “It’s all over now!”

“No it’s not! A monster is coming.”

The Hospitallers that managed to escape the red forest, roughly twenty or thirty or so, Cutter’s mind was too hectic to patiently count, scrambled to usher the settler back into the settlement like sheep and barred the gate once they were inside.

“You,” Cutter said to a Hospitaller. “Find the physician, now.”

The Hospitaller ran off to do as ordered.

Carefully, Cutter settled Ira to the ground. “Hang in there. A physician is coming.”

He stared at the burning horizon and felt the egg of despair hatch in his stomach. The smoke, the fire, it was a premonition for things to come. Once Pyrik moped up any last resistance within the red forest, she would set her sights on the settlement. A massacre was on the horizon, and Cutter did not know whether it could be stopped. If Menov could not do it in her bestial form, then what could? The lead shots were as useful as peas from what he saw. Flee maybe? No, too many folks. He would simply make it easier for the bestial girl with wings. Feeling tears coming on, he looked to the ground. He had failed to save any lives. This was all for nothing.

“I may have a way to stop her.”

Cutter blinked away the tears and looked up. It was the witch woman.