Her grip on the rough rock loosened, and with a scream full of agony, she fell down the cliff.
"This is it for me," she thought. "What a humiliating way to die."
The very last thing she heard before passing out was the sound of water, pouring down from the waterfall she fell into.
Valkyrie had never been a girl of plans.
Coughing and panting afterwards as if tugging onto dear life, she opened her eyes only to fill them with sweet, refreshing water. Terrified, vulnerable and weak, she struggled to even see clearly and shook her head multiple times. Gazing at her surroundings, she could tell there was nobody around, yet.
She then tried to get up on her feet, trying her hardest to do so, but she realized she was going nowhere as soon as she saw the bolt stuck deep in her thigh. Her head arched back as she groaned and swore to her relief, then wrapping two hands around the bolt, in attempt to take it out which only resulted in her groans and slight screams once more, eyes clenched shut.
She then heard a rather small branch crackling under certain weight, and leaves shuffling, along with gruesome groans. Looking over, she saw the tattered clothes and rotten body of the walker that was approaching her, slowly, from the far edge of the jungle. Seemed to be a businessman in his early life, by the looks of his clothes, possibly led a successful career.
Escaping from her inappropriate thoughts and then muttering to herself in pure panic, she reached for her inherited crossbow, just to see the groove was empty. "Oh, come on," she said as she looked around for her missing bolts, finally spotting them on the ground too far away from her reach. There was only one shot, one bolt she could use, the one in her thigh.
Sudden will and need to survive overcoming hesitation, she wrapped her hands around her prized bolt with force. Shutting her mouth not to scream and therefore, to avoid walkers' attention, she pulled, tears of pure torment escaping her closed eyes, fingertips white and the veins of her hand popping out. Halfway done, she looked up to see how close the walker was, which was not too far. Quickening her pace, she tugged on the edge of the bolt harder, and with a gasp, the bolt was out in her hands, glistening red with her own blood. As the walker got closer and closer, she panicked, realizing how vulnerable she was in the given situation, and crawled backwards, a terrified look on her face. She groaned as she pulled the string of her crossbow with both hands, the muscles on her arms tensing and heating up, she finally managed to put the blood-soaked bolt in the groove. She had to clean her baby soon, figures. As the grotesque creature came within arm's reach, she slowly aimed her crossbow, using an abnormal effort due to her exhaustion, looked through the scope and pulled the trigger.
The bolt went straight through the former businessman's head, mixing her blood with his dark and dense liquid, hitting straight to the brain. She let out a deep sigh of relief as the walker fell down, letting her head fall back and enjoying the sound of water hitting the base and the relaxing silence that surrounded her.
"Good Lord," she muttered as she got out of her little trance and looked around, no hostiles in sight, dandy news for a while. She washed her battered and bruised face, water hurting the profound and also significant scar on her right eyebrow. Kneeling inside the water, which was quite shallow, she draped some fingers across her fresh and deep wound, still bleeding. Sighing, she ripped some rag from her clothes and cleansed in the water, slowly bandaging the wound, and as she squeezed the bandage, her body arched back from pain, but she managed not to scream. If she was to get outta there, she had to be tough. Panting, she knotted the bandage and checked it once more. Standing up and now able to walk slowly, she swung her crossbow across her shoulder and began collecting her bolts, all scattered around, not forgetting the one in the walker's head and stacking them in one of her holsters.
All she needed was an escape route now, but with the dire circumstances she had there, that certainly was not going to be a dime a dozen. She checked her surroundings once again, the cliff that she'd fallen from seemed climbable, among other things. Sighing, she picked up a dry branch from the ground and moved over to the most climbable part. "Let's get this over with," she mumbled to herself, her voice slightly hoarse as her right hand gripped one tough rock, as her left one stuck the branch deep in dirt, and she pulled herself up and started climbing.
After falling multiple times and dealing with a couple of insects, she made it to the cliff, and with a gruesome groan, she pulled her body up, and laid on the ground, breathing heavily and holding her aching wound, her clothes all bloody, bruises and scratches all around her body. Opening her eyes, she then looked up, and a smile crept across her face.