I can’t run why can’t I run
The apartments blurred past, mere window decorations that offered no hope of escape.
I mean I can run but what happened why can’t I run I can’t run
The fear was so great and so omnipresent that she launched herself across an alleyway, grabbed onto a balcony, and pulled herself into an adjacent building without so much of a thought as to how far down she could have fallen had she slipped on any ice. She was now three storeys off of the ground, a lethal height for any adult.
my legs oh my precious lovely legs you need to get going you need to do what you always do because something is wrong and I’m getting tired and I never get tired and I never thought I would curse this but you need to RUN
But her legs, her powerful, muscular, ever-moving legs refused to be anything other than normal. They no longer had a mind of their own, and because of that, Queen Daena wanted to throttle Julius, wherever and whomever he was.
The stinging odour of burning wood in her nose and the crackle of fire in her ears, Daena kicked down a door leading to a stairwell and threw herself at the stairs with reckless abandon. She came perilously close to tripping and tumbling down the stairs, but her sense of self-preservation seemed to keep the former queen healthy enough to descend without injury.
Above, something huge burst into the stairwell and hurtled down the stairs at a breakneck speed, apparently just as apathetic to the danger as Daena herself. It howled frustration, the sound of its throaty bellow the stuff of nightmares.
Emerging onto the street several blocks from the gate where her life had abruptly changed forever, Daena cursed - and revelled in - her ability to stop for a second and take stock of her situation, skidding to a halt on the building’s front porch. The opposite side of the street was now engulfed in flames, and the heat billowing down and out of the entrance at Daena’s back hinted at more fires from where she’d come. There were, for once, no werewolves in sight, though Daena suspected that was a temporary thing only.
She chanced a look at her legs. They did not fly up to greet her, robbed of those frantic kicks that had made Daena such a curio for so long a time. That in and of itself was a greater curiosity than the kicks had ever been in the first place. Or maybe she’d just forgotten -
The angered howl from inside the building snapped Daena back to reality. Forcing her aching legs back into motion - they seemed to want to rest rather badly, after so many years of relentless kicking - she headed for the nearest alleyway that was not currently adjacent to a burning building. That was, exactly, one alleyway, and it was a little too far down the street for Daena’s liking.
The triumphant bellow that sounded behind Daena as she slid into cover suggested that her pursuer, on the other hand, was quite content for Daena to remain within sight.
The alleyway proved much darker than Daena had anticipated, cut off as it was from the sun by two large buildings on both sides. Panting hard she started down it - and, in her haste, and thanks to a quick look back over her shoulder, Daena missed the heap of garbage piled in the middle of the alley. She tripped over the lumpy snowbank, revealing a frozen, mostly-ruined bed frame as snow sprayed into the air around her.
By the time Daena recovered, limping badly from a twisted ankle - Gods, what happened to my legs, they used to be so strong - she was face-to-face with the alpha female of the werewolves.
Antonia - because it could be only Antonia, Daena knew - was twice the size of the average werewolf, her shoulders so boxy and wide that she had to turn sideways to fit into the alley. Unfathomable amounts of muscle knotted her arms and legs, and a nasty red gleam lingered in Antonia’s lupine eyes. Thick strands of drool plummeted from her muzzle as she advanced on Daena.
“Please,” Daena pleaded, dread welling up in her as she struggled to get away. The pain in her ankle seemed to have robbed her of her bravery. “If you ever… if there’s aopnything left of my son’s kangaroo in there, please…”
The werewolf didn’t hear Daena, or if it did, it didn’t care, and just as Daena was realizing that she’d reclassified she as it, Antonia pounced, teeth poised to pump Daena full of a lethal dose of lycanthropy.
Daena screamed -
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