The footfalls of the wolf behind him hit audibly against the ground, and Chris screamed for all he was worth. His mind whirled faster than it ever had, searching for any escape. There was none. The wolf slammed claws first into his back, raking deep furrows of pain into his body as its weight sent him tumbling to the ground.

Its breath was on his neck, warm and heavy. He could feel how it longed for the blood in his veins in every rotten exhalation, and in the saliva that fell in tiny rivers along his skin. The beast's weight shifted as it raised its head, preparing to bring it down one final time. Time seemed to stop as Chris waited with an empty mind, senses overloaded as his adrenaline brought everything into painfully sharp focus. One moment. Then two.

Metal clicked rhythmically as the Raksha wove the air in between their dexterous fingers. The wolf froze, and then sat. Its weight settled into the grooves it had cut into his back, which caused Chris to resume screaming as his body instinctively jerked his weight around in an attempt to throw the wolf off.

For his trouble he managed to turn his face to his right. A view of the unearthly glide of the Raksha, his only reward. He tried to swiped at the lithe figure but it batted his hand away with painful ease before grabbing him by the hair. It jerked him up with monstrous strength. The muscles in his neck grew taut as it forced him to look up its masked visage. The hand that held its bundle of trophies rose with a slow, taunting taunting grace. A singular finger extended to hover over the bottom of its mask. Chris watched horrified as the floral pattern that the mask was woven into shifted to become a geometric facsimile of his own face. It even shifted and moved to match his own changing of expressions

The Raksha sighed in audible pleasure as Chris grew deathly pale. The screams died in his throat even as the Raksha jerked his head to and fro, examining him from every angle. It was by chance that this twisting allowed Chris to see the barest glint of light, reflected off the barrel of a gun. Ray had turned back to take aim at Chris’ captor, intent on freeing the burden from his own mistakes once again.

Distraught Chris watched the branches above his friend’s hiding place dip silently in the still night air. He screamed at Ray to run, his voice coming out shrill and pained as it strained against the muscles of his throat. Then for a brief moment the night was alive with the soft rattle of M16 fire and Chris whipped his head around as the Raksha's grip on his hair loosened. In that brief instant he believed that Ray had saved him again and he wanted to watch as the monster fell.

Instead what he saw was the Raksha peering curiously at a tight grouping of small pieces of metal that still spun in the air before it. His mind couldn’t process what he was seeing, even as the monster released its grip on his hair to poke gingerly at one of the bullets in front of it. “That’s not real,” Chris whispered. The sputtering hiss of his tormentor’s laughter was all that answered him.

The sound of struggle made him turn back, and there was Ray. His head hung limply as two of the winged apes dragged him across the ground. Behind him came the sound of bullets thudding into dirt as the Raksha glided into view. For the first time Chris could see that from their back hung a sickle, the straps of its sheath hidden deftly within the folds of their dress. A gauntleted hand reached forward and gripped the wispy white hairs on Ray’s scalp, turning and studying the man in the same way it had done for Chris.

Then it turned back to him. The Raksha handed off the bundle of heads in its right hand to an ape that stood hidden in the darkness of the night, its wrinkled hands becoming briefly visible in the starlight before ducking back into the shadows around them. The metal of its gauntlets clinked and there was a shuffling to his right before a new weight settled onto his shoulders in front of the wolf. A pair of hands gripped him by the back of his throat and pulled his hair once again forcing him to face the cruel visage of their captor.

The Raksha skimmed the ground in between them as it drew its wicked sickle. It was made of a dark, purple crystal and it rang with a wailing cry as she drew the pointed tips of her fingers along its length. Chris was filled with such paralyzing fear that he was hardly even aware of his sputtering attempts to beg for his life. This amused the Raksha and it drew the back of its parabolic blade across his exposed neck. It spoke softly then, in a low rasping whisper that made every hair on his body stand on end. The words themselves had no meaning, and as it spoke his perceptions seemed to dull around the edges and a terrible ache birthed in between his eyes as they threatened to roll back into his head. The Raksha’s other hand came forward and slapped him, hard enough to force his vision to clear even as the pain grew.

“Do you understand me yet?” With one last spike of pain that almost made him vomit, the whispered words grew clear to him. Some flicker of understanding in his eyes obviated the need for his response, “There we go.” The demon hissed. “I’m going to kill your keeper.”

“No. nononononno please you can’t,” Chris sputtered.

“Oh? I can’t? Is there perhaps some hidden danger? Or perhaps you know of some great treasure with which you can bargain for his life?” The creature laughed. “No. I am going to kill him. This has been decided. You will watch. This has also been decided.”

Chris stared in horrified silence. “Why? Why are you doing this?”

“He is the first of your kind to escape me. You will honor him by keeping safe his memory. I will ensure this.” With a flick of its wrist the sickle snapped forward in a nightmarish arc.

There was no pain at first. The blade was so sharp and the cut made so fast that it was not until he tried to blink, and found that he could not that the wound began to sting. His eyelids had been removed. There was no blood, which drew some cold and clinical portion of his attention for a brief moment. Chris did not know whether to scream, cry, shout or rage and instead attempted to combine the four. Then the Raksha slapped him and grabbed him by his chin, “You will be silent. And you will watch.”

The Raksha drifted back to Ray’s side. It caressed his face gently, almost lovingly, as it hung limp. Then they pulled his head up and began whispering, now too low for Chris to hear, as they brought the sickle to rest just against the skin of his throat. Chris watched, tears stinging his lidless eyes. The Raksha’s threat kept him silent even as it pulled its blade in a nightmarish, twisting motion. Ray’s eyes shot open wide as the blood poured from his throat and he opened his mouth as if to shout, but the blade parted his windpipe and all that escaped was a rattling gasp.

Then the blade was through, and the Raksha carried their newest conquest with a tender care back to where Chris kneeled on the ground. “Stand.” The beasts jumped off of him. For a moment Chris couldn’t move,the shock and pain too much. His eyes wouldn’t move from Ray’s face, limp and lifeless in the Raksha’s hand. “Stand.” The demon commanded again. Still he couldn’t move, couldn’t even find the heart to hear their words. The back of a gauntleted hand caught him across the cheek. “Stand.”

He rose unsteadily to his feet. “I will give you the honor of carrying him. Until you are sold.” He didn’t understand them, and no longer cared to. He cradled the head in his arms, and stared at it wordlessly. “Follow.” The Raksha turned and glided along the ground. Chris’ feet followed the command that his heart could not process as they marched off into the night.