A Lullaby for the Dark Fic

by sealettucex

Arina is a young woman living near the Red Forest, a place haunted by tales of a terrible beast that stalks the woods hunting anything that moves. Some say it wears the face of a rabbit, of a bear or wolf. Some say it hums and sings taunting its prey. Stories of it dance from ear to ear, but Arina is about to find out the reality of the twisted Huntress.

7. Chapter 6

~ 6 ~

Each step was agonising. Pain reverberated through her very skull, each step seemed to shake her deep, and well up a new feeling of nausea but Arina was getting used to it. Bile covered her long dark hair and had frozen the tips solid and the blood trickling down her forehead had almost blinded her left eye. She needed real medical attention, not her botched wrap job, and soon.

Even so Arina pressed on deeper and deeper into the maw of the forest. She was neither huntress nor tracker but she didn't need to be to follow the trail of the rabbit. A great commotion had wrought chaos on the forest floor. The hardiest flora that had fought tooth and nail to survive the harsh winter was crumpled and crushed. Arina's feet began to stop hurting along with her hands. She felt unable to bend her fingers but she didn't need to. Her hand locked firmly around the cleaver. Despite her exhausted and battered state her mind remained vigilant darting her eyes from left to right, from right to left waiting anxiously to realise those two tall ears. Her fear was eating her up but she couldn't begin to imagine the fear that had enveloped Vanya, as long as her little girl's heart still beat there was no fear or entity existing in this realm or any other that could deter Arina.

Dawn light turned into morning light but it revealed little more than when she was trailing through the midnight void. The dense trees of the Red Forest swallowed up any penetrating light. The forest floor was shrouded in a great darkness that only the most well adapted predators had accustomed to.

Any birdsong was long passed as Arina trudged on through silent darkness. The chill was seeping into her bones and she felt the weight of her eyelids growing heavier and heavier. Until the pain, the cold and the tiredness were washed away in an instant by a sound it felt not so distant from her and unnatural, it sounded metallic. She froze and spun and spun trying to find its origin. One minute passed, then two, then three and Arina began questioning her own sanity. Did I imagine it? She thought to herself.

Click.

Arina span around and locked eyes with a tall blonde man. She pulled the cleaver deeper beneath her robe concealing it as best she could. A devil.

The man stood six or so feet away holding in his grasp the cause of the sounds, a small pistol. The barrel stared deep beyond her eyes far into her very being. The man seemed jumpy and with his finger tittering on the trigger she daren't antagonise him. In a deep Germanic accent he strung broken Russian sentences together fading in and out of German and Russian. Arina struggled to understand the man but what he did next needed no words to understand.

The man closed the distance between them and thrust the barrel of the gun at Arina's head, it hit her and revived the dormant agony swirling around her damaged skull. Still holding the barrel of the gun firmly against her head he used his other hand to spin her around and pushed her forward slamming her face against the cold bark of a tree. The rough pines grated against her cheek. The man yelled something else then tightened his grip on her hair, pulling her face from the tree and smashing it back in. She felt herself dissociating as an almost overwhelming wave of nausea washed over her, the rough bark tore apart her face but she was thankful for it keeping her conscious as her head spun. Arina felt the gun on the back of her head begin to pull back as the man thrust a gloved hand onto her backside attempting to tear away her robes. With his focus down low this was her chance, she slipped the cleaver down out from her sleeve and without hesitation twist herself right swinging her arm out blocking his gun from reaiming itself onto her. She knocked it right then swung her cleaver up blade facing the sky. It lodged itself in the man's jaw, he gasped immensely and yelled a disgruntled screech to which Arina screamed back. She was being pushed to her limit and felt a primitive animalistic bellow form within her.

The man gurgled and stumbled back clutching at the cleaver still stuck in his jaw. The gun slipped from his hand and landed with a soft thud in the snow and as he struggled to maintain his balance Arina leapt for the weapon. She raised it immediately realising her own incompetence with the gun. She wasn't familiar with its design nor that of any guns but there was no time to fiddle around. She pointed the weapon at the man's head and fired. A plume of brains and blood splattered across the trees and painted the snow as a terrible bang rang out throughout the forest and the man fell back.

Arina's ears echoed with a sharp ringing that almost forced her to her knees, but she knew if she fell she'd never be able to rise. There was no time for the gore across from her to sink into her psyche; however, soon more soldiers would arrive or worse, the rabbit so she forced herself forward following the trail once again after taking the man's coat. The adrenaline from this encounter revitalised her some but in doing so the cold and pain began seeping deep into her core.