it's another hell day.

 

The war dogs.

The war had come, it's devastation now written in blood, a scene squalid with all that had been torn into. She felt her side again, the blood, warm on her hands, breath limited, as she fought to stay quiet. She could not move, and yet the pain soared anyway, like a puncture that had gone all the way in. She knew it was bad, something had  now shredded,and was silently opening; quickly filling and becoming a mass of matted and coagulating tissue inside. It would not be long now she thought, as She pushed her self into the wall, checking for sound, wedging into the relative cover of the corner; straining for any movement, or hint of the marauders return.. All around on the outside, the night dogs growled rooting through the out posts of the settlement sending fiery sounds of terror into the night. Each howl a terror, that sank and rose with blood. They were already in, and her smell would be unstoppable. Soon they would scent her.and lock in on the trails of blood.  She tried to think of Ewan, gone now, how brave he had been. By tomorrow, save a rag, or cloth, or fragment of bone; she knew there would be nothing left. The mass of his body, by now, already torn up and carried away to be prepared for the mounds. This was how the wardogs violated. Even now she found it hard to believe that they had ever been human. They were fools, to have ever come this far, she knew that now. To think that they, a small party of five, could ever have stood against this kind of savagery. A flimsy light from the citadel against this incontrovertible dark.?.. The war dogs were horror it's self, beyond civilising. But like fools they had come with their ideas of noble conquests to the darker regions- adepts with salvation in their throats. Bringers of the gospel of the mother, to men, who lived in the rotting belly of heathen souls. And now here she was, bleeding through a wound she could not survive. No, they should never have come. The mission had been fool hardy. The Committee of the nine should have known. She tried to move, but the pain was rising, shifting on a body of its own; and with it came the slow creep of weakness, which she knew would soon turn into shock. She leaned back, against the wall, the heavy of the gun with it's last shot, a hanging  weight in her hand. “ one bullet” she thought . One bullet to take her life. The other option she couldn't even dare think about, entombed in a war dog burial mound - the endless half death that came with  half life. No, the tclosing of her light  would be the lesser sacrilege. But she needed these last moments, these fading thoughts, these memories, this last Remembrance of the rites. There had to be a transfer, if there was to be  even any chance, however small, that some detail, of the lineage would survive. Even now she could feel her heart starting to fail, erratically pushing the thinning, dying blood, through smaller and smaller passages, away from life. Instinctively She fought it. willing her self to stay above the tide. But damn she felt so weak,  even as the scuttling,sniffing heavy animal noises, told her with repugnant horror that the terror had moved beyond the secondary wall, and was now inside. In moments, the unvocalised savagery would find her, separating her etheric from the last of it's draining life. She could not risk it, not even for a moment, not even for Elycion.If they took her with the portal stll open,? she shuddered  with the cold.Looking into the void around her, she knew She had to time it right. And so with her finger poised on the curve of the trigger, even as the power of the darkness seemed to deepen and open in it's rush towards her; with the last of her strength  and a prayer to the mother to forgive her; she closed her eyes and  put the gun in her mouth. MB