Silence.
The silence of the forest was the most unnerving thing about it. There were no bees buzzing, no birds chirping, all the familiar sounds of home...absent.
The only occasional sounds were that of wind barely managing to caress its way through the trees, or the occasional creaking of wood from a dead tree. Though those sounds were sudden, they strangely offered a comforting feeling to the spirits, a break from the oppressive quiet.
"They say this is what those woods used to sound like," said Keo. "I would say that I could never imagine it, but...now I don't know if I'll ever forget it!"
Mint walked behind Keo and Fir, her spirit arc drawn along with their spirit edges.
Apart from the deafening silence, nothing actually seemed off. However, the trio couldn't help but feel as if they were being watched.
A few moments later, the sounds of a four-legged creature could be heard approaching from behind.
Mint spun around to see a howler charging their way, but not just any howler. The one she'd hoped in vain to never see again. Yellow-eyes. The mere sight of his growing figure froze her in fear. It recognized her.
It wasn't charging the group: it was charging her!
She snapped herself out of her trance, notching an arrow and quickly taking aim.
But before she could release, it reached out with a massive paw and swatted her to the floor!
It then grabbed her with its massive jaws and lifted her screaming, glowing form.
Fir and Keo watched helplessly as their sister went flying into a pit of thorns, but there was no time to lose focus.
The pack-leader roared mightily before the two of them, calling his three minions into the fight, who lept out of the trees behind them.
Surrounded, Fir and Keo readied their weapons and stances for combat.
. . .
White-hot pain was searing across the front of Mint's body as she lay flat on serrated thorns!
She agonizingly pulled herself off the hazard, adrenaline the only thing keeping her from passing out as she began to trudge her way back to her brothers.
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see them leaping off of tree-trunks to get up and over their aggressors, gracefully slicing and dicing away at them.
The sound of their battle wasn't as loud as she thought it would be, as if the volume was turned down on the world around her.
She felt alone...and...hungry?
...Mom?... came a voice in her head. ...Mom...help!...
Mint suddenly felt a pang of unbelievable sadness.
...why'd you have to go?...why wasn't I fast enough?...
It was the voice of a child, younger than her. A baby. The innocence in his tone nearly broke her heart.
After nearly a minute of blood and pain, she stood before her final obstacle: a towering wall of thorn-bushes!
She couldn't climb or jump over it; the only way was through.
In a blur of whimpering, tripping, and yelping, Mint ungracefully found herself about halfway through.
Along with feeling disoriented from blood loss, she also felt lost in grief. Why?
...she...she gave me the last peach...I have to keep going...for her...
The subdued sounds of battle on the other side quickly faded into the sound of large paws scurrying away.
There was no turning back now; she wasn't about to trudge back and wait if it meant tearing herself through thorns that had closed up behind her! Worse yet, she was starting to taste blood in her mouth.
...I can't give up...I can't…feel...my legs...
Her consciousness slipping, she was too weak to scream.
...must...keep...going...
She had to break through. It was now or never.
. . .
"I think that's the last of them," said Keo.
As they watched the last living howler retreat into the woods beyond, the rustling of undergrowth could be heard behind them, followed by the sound of someone stumbling out.
"Guys...help…"
Fir and Keo turned around to see Mint clutching her chest and stomach.
"Oh no!" said Fir, bringing his paws up to his face.
She opened her arms and looked at her paws to see them dripping with a shiny and silvery fluid.
The grizzly wounds across her thorax and abdomen now completely visible, Mint looked up at her two brothers with her eyes wide in terror.
It started streaming from her nose before she gave a few guttural coughs and collapsed to her knees.
Fir and Keo rushed to her aid as she began to sob. Some blood had come well out of her mouth by the time they sat her upright on a tree trunk.
"...m-make it stop...please…"
Her voice was incredibly weak. She held her tail on her chest, feebly attempting to stop the bleeding as the pool of silvery fluid continued to spread beneath her.
"This is bad! Her lungs must have been punctured," said Fir. "Her breaths are becoming hoarse!"
"She's not conscious enough to use her regeneration spell," said Keo. "We'll have to use ours!"
"Together?"
"Yeah! Look at her! This is more than a one-person job!"
Mint violently coughed up more blood before struggling to gasp. Then she started weakly hyperventilating.
"E-ev-everything's getting blurred!" she said, her speech slurring.
She blindly slapped a paw onto Fir's chest.
"I can't see! Please hurry!"
"We have to act, now!" said Keo, placing his paws on her shoulder and stomach.
"Hold on, Mint!" said Fir. "Just hold on!"
Fir clutched her paw, and in unison, the two of them cast regenerate.
In a flash of green, Mint's wounds were no longer visible.
She gasped loudly as she regained the ability to breath, keeling over to the side onto her two paws.
You can't heal what you can't see; Mint could still feel internal wounds that Fir and Keo couldn't have known about.
Now that she was able to focus again, she cast her own regenerate spell with what little energy she had left, fixing the remaining damage herself.
Fully exhausted, Mint collapsed flat onto her face with her arms splayed in opposite directions. Fir gently helped her back up onto the tree stump as she tried to catch her breath. She slowly brought her paws up to eye-level and stared at the sticky substance covering them. She was still sitting in the pool of her own silvery fluid, quivering from the shock of it all.
Her face contorted, and she began to softly choke-up. It quickly turned into sobs as she buried her head in her paws, smearing blood all over her head.
"Hey, hey!" said Fir, giving her a hug. "It's okay! You're going to be okay!"
"I'm sorry!" she bawled, hugging him back. "I'm so, so sorry!"
"Whoa! Slow down! For what?" asked Fir.
"You have nothing to be sorry for," said Keo, shaking Mint's blood off of his paws.
"They had my scent," Mint explained through tears. "They cut my leg when they chased me through here. They must've smelled my blood and recognized me!"
Fir and Keo stayed silent.
"*sniff*I should've told you!" she continued. "I knew it was a possibility and I didn't tell you-I'm so STUPID!"
"Mint! It's okay!" said Fir. "We're all still alive! At least now you know to tell us stuff like this for next time."
"We all make mistakes," said Keo. "And believe me: it'll take way more than a few howlers to kill us two!"
"But the one with yellow eyes," said Mint. "He's...different."
Her eyes widened in terror.
"The pack-leader!" she exclaimed.
She grabbed Fir by the shoulders and held him at arm's-length.
"The one with grey fur and yellow eyes," she said. "Please tell me you killed him!"
"Well, no," Fir responded. "He ran away but-"
Mint held a paw clenched in apprehension up to her mouth.
"But we injured him heavily!" he reassured. "I don't think he'll want to mess with us again anytime soon!"
"I don't know," said Mint. "He'll be back. I don't think he'd give up that easily."
"He'd be a fool to keep trying to eat us!" said Fir. "We're so small, we'd barely fill his belly. No sane creature would keep up the hunt!"
"That one was a pack-leader, Fir," said Keo. "Pack-leaders are killers, not just hunters."
"What? That's news to me."
"Yeah, that's how Zar lost his eye. He had to fight three all by himself one time!"
"Geeze!"
"They get their food brought to them by the others. So if one appears, it's because they're out to kill. To protect the pack, I suppose? So he likely will be back."
Fir and Mint just looked at each other.
"Now, I don't normally say these words," Keo continued in a more light-hearted tone. "But Fir is still right about one thing: it needs to tend to its wounds for now. So we're in the clear for the time being."
His two subordinates nodded in agreement.
"And let's not forget why we're out here. Mint, you're still showing us the way. How much further is it to the meadow?"
"Not-*sniff*-not far," she said, slowly standing up. "There's a ravine that we need to cross just over that rise-"
She nearly cut herself off when she stumbled onto all fours.
"Whoa! Okay, you've lost a lot of blood," said Keo. "No need to push yourself!"