Page 40 of The Blackened Blade

A warmth.

Something that didn’t feel like leaves or a bush...it felt likefur.

I brush my hand against it. It was so soft and…shaggy.

I try to untangle myself and pull away from whatever creature this was before it woke up and retaliated, but I only end up slipping on something below my feet as soon as I stand up.

I end up falling back down to where I was before, but now feel wet and coated in whatever was covering the ground below me.

The creature still hadn’t woken up or even moved.

I place a hesitant hand back onto its soft fur, waiting for some type of movement or noise.

But nothing.

I bend in closer, leaning my ear against the shaggy fur.

One second goes by, then ten, then thirty…Nothing.

There was no heartbeat.

Whatever animal it was, was dead now.

I slowly drag myself up again, this time steadying myself using the creature's body below me.

A break in the clouds and trees above me allow for a small trickle of light from the moon to filter through and onto the area around me, and I immediately freeze.

The forest around me is destroyed; trees uprooted, bark splintered and strewn across the forest floor and chunks of tree roots upheaved, with no clear definition of what lay there before. It was pure carnage.

But the most disturbing thing was the body of the animal that lay before me; the body of a huge brown grizzly bear.

Or what remained of it.

Its corpse lay in a mangled heap before me, or at least most of it. Its limbs had been ripped off and lay in different parts of the forest around us.

I swallow the bile trying to escape my throat as I stare into the lifeless eyes of the creature's severed head. It sat nestled in between two woven trees on the opposite side of the area where I stand, with crimson liquid slowly dripping from its open jaw.

Staring into its empty black eyes, another cold shiver runs down my back before I turn away.

What had taken down such a huge and ferocious animal? What beast or monster managed to rip through such an animal so easily and lay waste to the area around it?

I take a quick look around me, my eyes scanning each direction for anything lurking in the distance.

A minute goes by, and then another.

But there was nothing.Thankfully.

I keep my senses about me as I turn back to the partial corpse.

Maybe there was some kind of clue left as to what creature did this?

I needed to know what was lurking in the same forest I trained in.

Granted, this was a far bit away from my little clearing, but who could say the creature wouldn’t find me or come looking for a little snack?

More light trickles in around me and down onto the body before me.

Even with just its torso and no limbs or head, it looks to be almost seven feet long.

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