She woke, groggy, feeling like every part of her body had been beaten with hammers. She didn't want to move, but she had to. Fighting a crippling weakness, she managed to pull herself up to hands and knees. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner of the previous day came up all at once, her stomach protesting what she'd done to herself.
When she was done throwing up, she wiped her mouth and looked around. Ugh. She was still on the cliff overlooking the orcish encampment. It looked very much like a tornado had torn up the area, tents and orcs strewn about like an angry child's toys.
At the center of the camp, a shadow stood, the inky black of the void reaching out and spearing nearby orcish corpses. She watched as a ghost was ripped free of its body. It struggled, trying to escape the thing's reach, but to no avail. The void consumed the spirit like so much candy.
She shuddered. The mission was apparently a success: dead orcs could not normally get up to march, much less to attack a village.
But what had she done?
A better question was, what forces had the orc been tampering with, that his death had loosed this monstrosity.
What would happen when it ran out of orcs?
Vladik! She realized it in a panic - where was her wolf?
She breathed a weak sigh of relief to find him standing nearby, all of his fur up on end. He was growling, his attention fixed on the disaster below.
"Let's get out of here," she whispered.
The wolf nodded, an entirely too human gesture, and trotted off.
When it became obvious that she would not be able to follow at any speed, he circled back to help. She rested almost all of her weight on him, grateful that he chose to be solid for h er.
However, when they got within sighting distance of the garrison, he disappeared like so much smoke.
They both knew that if he was spotted, it would be all too easy to identify her.
Still, she only managed to crawl a few more feet, collapsing in a heap without his support.
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