Howls In The Dark

Full moon hung brightly in the sky, with stars sparkling like lovely infatuated eyes.

It was such an amicable and ravishing night.

At least, that was how the Misty Town seemed to be…

In the forest before reaching the Misty Town, Sasha firmly held the knife as she cautiously took every steps on the leafy ground. Her eyes were scanning her surroundings under that darkness and sensing it as if detecting something that was lurking somewhere nearby.

She even held her breaths as to not to create unnecessary sounds, otherwise, she would be doomed.

Honestly, it was quite stupid to walk and breath surreptitiously as the particular thing that she was dealing with was no human. No matter how sneaky she was, darkness was on that thing’s side.

Sasha has been dealing with their kind for so many years, and it honed her senses by a lot. However, she could not stop her heart from beating louder, louder than her breathing, which made her cursed in mind, ’Shit, stop making noise. Or perhaps… you want that thing to stop you?′

Rustles caught passed her ears once again.

Out of reflex, she abruptly turned to face the direction of the noise as she drew her knife ahead, preparing for the bloody fight to break in.

She gradually made her way towards the source to conduct a quick check, with her every steps being calculative as she imposed a defense stance, only to find silence dominating the entire forest again.

“So, it’s a false alarm.” Under the beams of the moon, her brows furrowed displeasedly as she put her hands down, lowering her guard, which in fact was only a pretense.

Sasha could vividly perceived the danger within the vicinity and it was something she was unable to ignore. She could sniff the metallic taste of fresh blood and felt the pair of sinister eyes watching her every move, that exuded a strong intent to kill and craved for her blood.

Then, successive loud rustles entered her hearing once again, with the same noises passing around her in circles in exceptional speed. It appeared that there were not only one of their kind present in the perimeter, but several of them.

What exactly were they?

A random wild animals?

The sounds made her sharp eyes narrowed, and stood there for several seconds, unstirred, but letting her whole senses worked for her.

Along with the noises, Sasha spotted several unknown figures dashing around from the peripheral view of her eyes, which made her eyes restlessly move around, following those figures until they completely disappeared from her sight… like, they had run away from her.

Odd silence once conquered the entire forest, leaving no signs of mystery, only an ineffible pitch darkness. Even crickets or night animals couldn’t bring to make any sounds, as if something had oppressed them, or terrified them.

Sasha was left with no clues about the surroundings. Her senses failed to work properly, which alarmed her. She never believed that it had gone just like that, as she always knew that their kind was perfidious in nature.

Until… few green leaves fell on her right shoulder.

Sasha immediately looked up, and was greeted with bloody devilish eyes glaring at her.

That thing with a figure that was similar to a dog, a giant one, perched on the branch, with its fangs protruding out of its bloodstained mouth, saliva drooling all over its lips as it was on its position to pounce on her.

A second later their eyes met, it leaped towards her with a whizzing sounds, shaking off numerous leaves like rain to the ground.

As those leaves touched the ground, Sasha was pinned by it on the ground, cutting her arms with its knifelike claws as they wrestled for dominance, most importantly, as for their common goal— survival.