Page 8 of Blood Red Woes

Pulling away from the skeletons of the children, I go to the nearest door. I knock out of habit, but the door isn’t latched, so the action pushes it open a few inches. I step inside the house and look all around. A two-story abode, it smells of dust and forgotten things, but nothing more. No bodies in this one.

“It’s like… they’re just gone,” I say.

“Maybe most were able to flee.”

“Maybe,” I say, but deep down it doesn’t feel right. No one would leave their kids here to fend for themselves. Just because those two kids were the only skeletons I found so far doesn’tmean there aren’t others somewhere else. I don’t really want to search every single house to find out.

I exit the house, not knowing what to do, when the silence of the village is broken by a strange sound. It’s a sound I never heard before, so I can’t place it, I can’t say exactly what it is, but it’s coming from the other side of the settlement.

Damn it. I have to go check it out. I don’t want to, but I need to know what happened here. The curiosity is too strong, the situation too strange.

I follow the sound. Past a dozen houses, the sound grows louder. I don’t know what could be making the sound, so once I reach the edge of the house nearest the sound, I hug the wall of it before peering around.

And when I see it, my stomach drops.

Bones. The sound I heard was bones, all black and charred like the two children’s. And the thing that’s making the bones clink against each other is… adog? The dog is in the middle of what looks to be a massacre about twenty feet away, its back to me as it sniffs amongst the empty bones. Its hair is long and brown, a mutt if I have to guess.

I breathe out a sigh of relief and push away from the building. “I didn’t know Laconia has dogs,” I say.

Turns out, that’s a mistake, because as soon as I say that, the dog whips its head in my direction—and in the process shows me that it isn’t not a normal dog after all.

I’m frozen as I stare at this… this thing that should be a dog but is definitelynota dog. What makes it a dog? The body, the face, the snout. What makes it not a dog? The body, the face, and the snout.

Confusing? Yeah, I know.

At first glance, from the back, it looked like any mutt, but now that it’s turned toward me, watching me with eyes a little too narrowed, I can see how disfigured it is. Its hair stopshalfway down its stomach, revealing bones jutting out of its gut, a bloody, ugly mess. Its face is almost otherworldly; besides those eyes, there’s something hideously wrong with it. The snout is too long, too jagged, and the teeth that are attached look like they’re a few inches too big. So large they stick out even when the dog’s mouth is closed.

“What the fuck isthat?” I breathe out the question, slowly backing up as the disfigured dog approaches. “What the fuck is wrong with it?”

“I don’t know, but it looks as though you’ve caught its attention. Running—”

I turn around and run as fast as I can away from the nightmare-inducing dog.

“—is not the best idea!” Rune finishes, but it’s too late. I’ve already started to run, which means the dog lunges after me at a breakneck speed. The asshole should’ve saiddon’t runinstead, but I’m too frantic to get away from the twisted beast to yell at him for his poor way of wording his advice.

“Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” It’s all I can repeat to myself, mostly because I don’t want to die here, in this weird place, with this thing on my wrist, from thatResident Evil-looking dog.

“Rey, behind you!” Rune shouts, and I instinctively duck and crouch, as if curling into a ball will protect my important bits from this animal attack.

Now that he’s caught up to me, the dog-like creature lunges, and I shut my eyes, not wanting to see those ugly teeth coming at me. I brace for pain, but nothing comes. Nothing at all comes. No teeth clamp down on my skin. The only thing that happens is a growl leaves the dog.

I peek my eyes open and find that a protective golden barrier surrounds me, shielding me from the dog’s attack. “What the…” I can’t even finish the question, too stunned to speak.

The barrier fizzles and cracks, as if made of living energy. Parts of it are white, so bright it almost hurts to look. Swirls and non-shapes, the barrier is powerful enough to stop the dog from attacking me.

Is this…magic? How? Why? I didn’t—

“Don’t just sit there,” Rune instructs. “Do something!”

“Do something?” I echo, slowly standing to my feet as I face the dog—who’s growling as it shakes itself off from the impact on the barrier. “How do I… I don’t know how that happened!”

“We are connected, Rey. You have my magic at your disposal. Use it!”

The barrier is from Rune? Okay, that makes sense, but that doesn’t answer my question of how the hell I use his power. It isn’t like I know instinctively how to do this shit. I’m just a normal girl, failing at life. I don’t do freakingmagic.

“I don’t know how,” I say as the barrier around me fades—which the dog is quick to notice.

“It’s inside you. It’s a part of you now. We are one, Rey. Feel it,” Rune guides me as the dog starts to circle me, as if trying to find the one place to attack where it won’t trigger another barrier. “Feel the power from me ebbing into you.”

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