Aveliene felt the sun go down, her body beginning to cool down, and started to stir, her eyes opening up. Every bone and joint and muscle hurt but she opened her eyes anyway.

The stone pile was only a few yards away, and she began painfully crawling toward it, collapsing several times.

Finally she managed to pull herself into a small alcove, where she collapsed, closed her eyes, and let her dreams/memories take her again.

Aveliene awoke from dark dreams of her past, her stomach cramping hard enough to pull her from memories of sitting at her Step-Mother's feet and basking in her love. She rolled over, hung her head over a chunk of rock, and vomited up a thick knot of blackish tar, the Peeper venom bound to dead blood to purify her system. The inside of her armor felt sticky against her skin, but she knew that there was nothing she could do about it.

Sunset was only an hour or two away, the western sky an angry purple and crimson, lightning flickering off in the distance. The edge of the grass was only a few dozen paces away, and she could see the grass rustling when she peaked over the top of the rubble pile. Her sharp eyes caught a pair of apricot sized lizard heads ducking down into grass, right before a pair of dandelions popped up out of the grass and waved back and forth.

By my mother's widening ass, you have to be kidding me. Aveliene swore, seeing dandelions pop up and wave back and forth deeper and deeper into the clearing. They're signalling that I'm moving around again to the rest of the packs.

She could faintly hear the cries of "Yum yum back!" floating toward her, and knew she had to move soon.

Her limbs wouldn't support her when she tried to stand, going back onto her knees and curling up in a ball to shudder away a few minutes with the strain of the effort. Only one of her hearts were beating, thudding in an arrymthic pattern, and she knew that she couldn't run.

A small group of six Peepers exited the tall grass and Aveliene had to restrain an urge to laugh. They'd rubbed leaves on tree sap, attaching the sticky leaves to their snake-like skin, making each of them look like leaf covered lizards, the disguise unlikely to fool anything with any smarts. Each of them were holding sharpened sticks, and even though her vision was blurry she could see the thick tarlike substance on the tips.

The advanced slowly, the one at the back keeping an eye on the grass behind them, the two on each side swivelling their little heads watching their flanks, and the one in the lead keeping its beady black eyes on the stone pile, but watching its surroundings at the same time.

What are you little ones so worried about? Aveliene wondered. She'd seen Peeper "hunting parties" before, and they'd never moved in the same way as the six heading toward her. Never so nervous, and never with such attention to their surroundings. The rear one kept looking up, and Aveliene knew that it was looking for hawks, falcons, or other birds of prey.

Aveliene's leg spasmed, residuals of the venom still in her muscles, and a handful of stones fell to the ground with a thump.

With fearful cries the Peepers turned, as one, and raced back to the grass, two of them dropping their little spears. Red flowers erupted in the field, bobbing up and down a few times before vanishing.

What in the world?

Aveliene's stomach cramped again, hard, behind where a belly button would be on a normal woman, and a stuttering thump made her gasp. She squeezed her eyes shut, clutching her stomach, as the stuttering beating of her second heart began, taking several long moments before it evened out. She coughed, hawking up a gob of tarlike substance and spitting it on the rocks.

By the time she was able to look again, the Peepers had moved almost halfway across the distance between their grassy field. Aveliene could see that if anything, they were more agitated than before, often hopping foot to foot while the leader stopped and scented the air with nostrils and a flickering little tongue.

Curious, Aveliene kicked some more rocks down, letting them fall in a patter of thumps.

Just like before, the Peepers turned and raced away, and the red flowers bobbed in the grass.

She could feel strength returning to her muscles, her superhuman strength flowing back into them with every dual beat of her hearts. She kept watch on the field as she undid her small flap at her crotch, squatted down, and urinated another puddle of thick oily-like urine that stunk of alkaline. She began to feel better after expelling the liquid from her bladder, where her body had deposited the Peeper venom. She began to feel warmer, her body temperature going up as the last of the venom was expelled from her system through her sweat glands. She urinated again, only a few dribs, then wiped herself with a cloth she pulled from a pouch. She put away the cloth, then buttoned back up her armor, standing up and stretching.

"YUM YUM!" came the cry from the field, and Aveliene's sharp hearing could hear the answering cries from the ones across the field in the forest.

They're working together. My Step-Mother would be proud of her babies. Aveliene mused, watching as another group came forward. And look at you, little prince. Aveliene felt a rush of pride and affection, even though they were coming for her, as she saw that they were led by a slightly larger Peeper with shiny bronze scales beneath the leaves.

A hawk cried out, and all of them hunkered down, pressing their bodies flat on the ground, the bronze hissing and exposing a pair of translucent fangs that unfolded from the soft tissues at the roof of its mouth. They stayed that way for a few moments, waiting for the hawk to sound again, and Aveliene smiled. She'd seen Peepers do that before, in her Step-Mother's garden, which had literally scores of Peepers gathered together in dozens of small packs.

The last rays of the sun glimmered like fire as the sun slipped below the horizon, the shadows deepening, and a stillness came over the land around Aveliene.

Suddenly the Peepers leaped up, turning and fleeing back to the grass. Aveliene could hear the bronze urging them on, urging them to hide in their burrows, that yum yum could be found when the sky fire came back.

This isn't right. Aveliene's brow furrowed. Peepers, like the kobolds they would grow up to be, were perfectly comfortable during the day or the night. At night they saw with almost perfect clarity in hues of gray, but could see all the same even better than an elf.

Aveliene could hear a faint drumming, getting louder by the hearbeat, and the Wraithkiller looked around.

Deeper into the plain of blackened earth she could see a copse of trees she hadn't noticed when she was stumbling toward the rocks. The trees were twisted and malformed, their branches reaching up like the hands of a drowning man, the leaves black and oily looking, and the fruit that she could barely make out seemed lumpy and malformed.

The Peepers had just made it into the grass when it burst from the trees, the sight of it making Aveliene gasp.

Twice as tall as a normal horse, its flanks rippling as its muscles drove it across the oily feeling black dirt. The back hooves looked like unforged iron, a deep almost pebbly looking gray, while the front hooves were cruel looking paws. Its horn was as long as Aveliene's leg, as thick as her thigh where it joined the massive head, and the point at the end of the curling horn gleamed in the rapidly dimming light. From the bottom of its massive jaw a pair of thick tusks curved upwards, and from just below the nose the matching pair curved wickedly to below the bottom of the jaw. It paused for a moment, rearing high in the air, it's paws clawing at the air, its mouth opening up to reveal dentation more like a shark, or Aveliene's jaws, than the flat teeth of a normal horse. Its thick penis sheath told Aveliene that this was a stallion, and by its size, Aveliene guessed that if there were more about, this one would be the herd stallion.

It let loose a blood curdling scream of hunger, rage, and an obscene announcement of its dominance over the land. The sound of it curdled Aveliene's blood and made the small part of her mind scream at her to run, run as hard and fast as she could, to break away from her hiding place and run for it across the packed oily earth.

Aveliene's sharp hearing picked up the small screams of terror from the grass, bringing up memories of her youth when the Blue Ridge Berry Pack had been swept away by a flash flood. Anger swept the last of the venom from her system, her heart rates slowing, the beating of her heart becoming deeper and more intense, pushing more blood through her system although the beats slowed down. She felt the cool trickle of adrenaline release down her spine, in her groin, deep in her breasts, and at the base of her skull. Her senses widened, expanded, and sharpened.

She could identify where the individual Peepers were based on the terrified cries; the rustling of the grass that told her where they were located, where they had been, and which direction they were going; she could hear the heavy breathing of the black unicorn, the thudding of its heart, and the sound of her boots scraping across the moss covered rock as she twisted. She could see the veins pulsing with life beneath the black fur and skin of the abomination, the flecks of froth around its mouth, and the ropey spittle flying from its mouth as it let loose with another roar of rage as its front claws came down and it bunched itself to charge toward the grass.

Aveliene's leap took her over eighty feet from the edge of the rocks, her war-daggers appearing in her hands as she pulled them from her boot tops, the leather wrapped hilts fitting in her palms like old friends.

The black unicorn, its eyes red and maddened, launched itself toward the grass, its tail streaming out behind it, as Aveliene quickly closed the distance. Her lips were pulled back in what the rest of the civilized races thought of as a smile, what her species showed when they were fueled with aggression, their bloodstream filled with combat hormones and chemicals.

My Step-Mother wants your horn, beast, and be it to masturbate with or beat naughty children with, your horn is now hers. Aveliene's thoughts rocketed through her mind, more of a feeling than an actual thought, a brief flashing image of herself kneeling before the Eternal Elba, her head resting in the other woman's lap, being read a story from the huge book penned eons ago by Ancient Ping, her Step-Mother's face shining with love and pride as the hand not holding the book stroked Aveliene's hair, a pink ribbon woven into the Wraithkiller's crimson locks.

The beast's red eye facing Aveliene was full of rage and hatred, and... joy?

The realization that there was more to the black unicorn than a crude beast came to the woman as she threw herself up and forward, one hand reaching for the horn, the dagger stuffed back into the boot sheathe, the other bringing the knife back.

Her hand grabbed the curled horn just as the beast pulled back its head, beginning to rear back.

A normal woman would have had her hand torn free of the horn, but Aveliene's grip could crush walnuts. Instead of being flung loose, Aveliene curled around the movement, swinging out, then up, as if she were performing on the parallel bars for her Step-Mother's approval. Her weapon hand flashed down, the enchanted blade's engraving and inlays glimmering with an inner light, the edge swinging toward the base of the horn.

There was an artery was located in the horn, and a nerve cord as sensitive and important as one in another creature's limbs. Severing the horn would leave the unicorn screaming in agony and pumping spurts of blood from the stump, in intolerable pain in the few minutes before its heartbeat emptied its veins. The unicorn's horn was as hard as steel, and a normal weapon had no chance to sever it, but the blade in Aveliene's hand could slice through stone or enchanted armor alloys like tissue or be blunt enough that it had no edge.

The edge, more than razor sharp at Aveliene's intentions and will, swept down and met the base of the horn.

A sharp crack sounded out, a bright blinding light flashing from the blade, and the war-dagger spun from suddenly nerveless fingers as her whole hand went numb from contact. Sharp shooting pains went up her arm, and the useless limb flopped at her side as she completed the swing around the horn and let go. She tucked into a roll at the top of the arc, her good hand darting to her boot to pull out her other dagger, and she could sense the unicorn rearing back and swivelling to follow her as she came down and rolled with the momentum.

She came up running, hearing the odd combination of hoofbeats and paws thudding on the ground as the black unicorn voiced another scream and charged after her.

I'm not a little baby. Aveliene snarled in her mind as she kept running for the copse of trees. Let the big bastard follow me, and if there's any more of them around, they'll come to his defense.

She could feel the hatred rolling off the big black animal as she charged toward the copse of trees, her movements strangely fluid as she ran in more of a skipping motion than anything else, her long legs and her strength letting her lengthen out her strides with inhuman grace.

The abomination of an equine screamed again as Aveliene drew slightly away from it, her speed bringing forth another scream of rage and hatred from her pursuer. Another quick few paces and the twisted, loathsome trees were almost close enough, the black and oily leaves shining with what Aveliene knew would be venom. She was close enough now to recognize the trees, to see that they were trees that had been thought to be extinct since the First Humaniod War. The leaves were coated with a virulent toxin that not only killed anyone who touched them, but caused the flesh to mortify within minutes, providing nutrition for the tree.

A toxin that Aveliene was naturally immune to.

Screams of rage followed her as she leaped into the branches, the black leaves swallowing her from sight. Even though she'd gotten above the foul creature and vanished from its sight, she remembered the vile intellect she saw in its eyes as she swung around its horn, and kept moving deeper into the trees, leaping from branch to branch with the same speed she'd have on the ground.

The thudding of the "horse" following her weaved around the thick trunks that oozed venomous sap, and Aveliene paused for a second to get her bearing from the echoes of the black unicorn's movements, her mind creating a three dimensional map based on the echo returns.

Below her the black unicorn reared up and screamed, its front paws savaging the trunk of the tree and causing bark and splinters of wood to fly.

It screamed with rage again when Aveliene stuck her serpentine tongue out at it and blew a raspberry, rearing up even higher to rip and tear at the bark in its rage as if it was substituting the tree for Aveliene's flesh.

Aveliene took off running, moving deeper and deeper into the forest, noting the occasional cracked and broken stone or half rotted wooden beam sticking out of the rich loam of the forest floor. According to her internal map, built off of paper maps and her own travels, told her that she was at the edge of Joulienne-Wek, a metropolis before the violent clashes of the Lich King War. The thick threes had grown up where the city had once stood, the roots of the trees and bushes as well as the moss and grass had torn apart the ruins of the city in record time. Aveliene had seen it before, in places long abandoned, but never without elves encouraging nature's shock troops.

As she bounced off a fairly thick branch she spotted a large stag which was scenting the air. Two more steps and the stag was wheeling around, squealing in fright as it scented the black unicorn, and began fleeing from the predator it could hear and smell approaching.

Sorry, young one. Aveliene thought, dropping from the branch and landing next to the fleeing stag. A quick looping slice with her war-dagger opened up its neck from one side to the other, severing the windpipe and the veins and arteries in one quick movement. The dagger was sharp enough the stag didn't even feel it, instinctively flinching away from Aveliene in the moment she was there before she ducked underneath the stag's neck to the other side of the dying animal and then leaped back up into the branches, the stag's blood coating her from head to foot.

She stopped, pressing herself against the trunk, and went still, breathing slowly and shallowly through her nose even though her lungs cried out for more oxygen.

The unicorn burst into the clearing, its eyes wide and rolling, and it lunged forward, stabbing its horn deep into the dying stag's flag just behind the front shoulder. The force of the blow sent the stag crashing to the ground, blood pumping from the wound, and the black unicorn reared again, screaming in triumph as it forgot about Aveliene.

Not satisfied with a simple stab to the stag's flank, it lunged forward and began ripping at the body of the downed stag with its paws, the heavy claws tearing apart the stag, ripping free gobbets and flesh. The stag twitched, residual nerve impulses from a creature already dead, but it was enough to spur the black unicorn into a greater fury. It disemboweled the creature with two swipes, then spread its intestines and innards about in a frenzied burst of violence before stopping suddenly.

It looked around, sniffing the air, its flanks heaving, blowing foam from its nostrils as it straddled the downed stag and looked around again. Aveliene could sense its unease, and watched as it sniffed again, its baleful red eyes sweeping the surrounding forest.

A quick sweep of the treetops, and the creature didn't even pause when the hate filled eyes swept past where Aveliene was pressed against the tree trunk.

Satisfied that Aveliene was gone, and no threats were around, the creature snorted and shivered, the heavy muscle on its flanks rippling, then bent its head and began ripping off bloody chunks of the dead stag.

Aveliene watched with narrowed eyes as the massive black unicorn feasted on the body of the unlucky stag.