@quainttrelle
She could never recall sleeping in her life. So she wasn’t entirely certain how it felt to awaken from a long slumber---but perhaps this was it. One moment she was expansive and powerful, but scattered, spread amongst a thousand blades of grass and miles of river, and hundreds of skittering creatures in the brush. She was herself, but she was in them all. The next moment all of that felt like a distant memory or perhaps like a dream she had observed from afar. Now all her memories were from a life she’d had before merging with the wilderness.
Now---nothing was right.
The forest was too quiet. Aside from the whisper of the grass and the trees it felt--empty. A sickness was settling in her stomach as she reached out across the expanse to try and find the creatures of this vast, unfamiliar jungle, only to find just a handful. Nothing right. Nothing natural. The land felt scarred and tired, and it called to her desperate for a witch’s touch.
Beck carefully made her way across a slow moving stream, stooping half way to splash the cool water on her face. There was still magic here. It was old and stagnant and burst into life when she reached out for it. Her eyes couldn’t see it, but she could feel it in her spirit. Hunger. Longing. There had been no witch here for a very long time. Where were her people? Where were her animals?
Her trembling foot slipped on a rock as she stepped out of the stream and she stumbled but didn’t fall. She thought she heard something unfamiliar like the hiss of metal and scanned the forest. There was a light up ahead in the shadow of the trees, sending a beam of bright red up against the canopy. She reached for her wand on her hip as she approached. It was beeping, but it didn’t look like any bomb she’d ever seen in her life.
She knelt to brush her fingers against the object and it shot into the sky with an awful screech that made her flinch. For several seconds she stayed frozen on the spot, too confused to react the way she normally would.
Something hit her in her shoulder hard, throwing her across the path into a rock and slashing her arm open. Another horrible mechanical screech, and there was a blinding light in her eyes, then the ground erupted beneath her and sent her flying again. She muttered a spell and struck out blindly with her wand, and struck something hard. A vile liquid sprayed over her face, and before her eyes a metal---beast, like a rat without flesh, appeared in front of her. But it was four times her size at least and bucked her off like a bronco. Her hand was ripped away from her metal wand and she flew into the bushes. She couldn’t shift, she was too disorientated, the terror was making her mind thick and slow.
She could only watch in horror as the beast’s unnatural gaze focused on her once more and it began to run straight for her.
