Chapter Text
Agony overwhelms Charlotte the moment she stirs.
It feels like her back has been whipped with tongues of fire; gashes blazing with burrowed embers. The rank tang of old blood sits on her gums.
The girl’s head feels as if someone had stuffed it full of cotton. She can’t remember what happened or why she’s here...
Yet what hits harder than the pain and the white noise is the realization that the cavity in her chest is empty; leaking a dribble of fluids from the bottom of the split in her flesh.
Where is Victor?
“Vict- Aghhh!..” Charlotte tries to call for her brother and stumbles into a bout of raw coughing. The fresh taste of metal comes spraying over her tongue. She gasps hoarsely, shifting onto her hands and knees as a sharp pain tightens around her flanks. The contents of her knapsack shuffle around with a soft thunk, but she pays no mind.
The forest air is moist and heavy. Deshayes wheezes for breath as she crawls through the underbrush, blindly groping for her sickle. She paws through dead earth and gnarled roots with shaking hands, searching for any trace of worn metal.
She doesn’t have much time. She needs to recover her blade so she can go look for her brother.
But the Fog hisses in denial, thickening to a veil of black before Charlotte’s eyes. It gives rise to sinister shadows, whose freezing fingers trail over the older twin’s beaten figure in the bitterest of caresses. She’s racked with a chill that consumes her whole body.
Charlotte’s heart starts to hammer madly in her chest. "...Maîtresse? Where is Victor?"
Your dearest brother is hiding, Charlotte. The Entity's whisper coils around the girl’s throat like a freezing serpent formed from ice. Go and run to him, little pig.
The girl staggers to her feet with a cry of rage. She rips away from the malevolent presence and flees into the Fog, screaming for her younger twin.
“Victor! Victor, where are you?! Come out, Little Brother, please! Victor!”
Dark rows of elm and oak flash by, slimy trunks shrouded in mist. The pines’ bristling fingers snare on Charlotte’s unraveling dress and tug stubbornly against tattered sackcloth. The pressure on her chest expands the longer she runs; soon it feels like her lungs are getting clasped in hot iron bands. Thorns, pebbles, and other forest debris tear the soles of her feet open.
But the worst hurt is the cold, hollow absence in a space usually filled by Victor’s squirming body. The younger twin’s leave is resurfacing nasty memories in his sister.
Flying through a wall of free embers and crackling flame, diving for the sunlight even as the black smoke steals away Victor’s life.
Sleuthing through the slop in the pig pens, shoving hogs’ snouts away as they snuffle at the oozing body tucked beneath her filthy clothing.
Lying curled in a heap of dirty snow, cradling her brother’s corpse close as she shivers with cold and waits for death to take her.
Charlotte grunts and furiously scrubs at her dripping eyes. The lashes along her back pulse with every pulling movement. Her heart is thrashing like it wants to burst free from her chest.
Each step along the treacherous forest trail leaves a smeared crimson footprint in her wake. She’s bleeding out from the holes in her feet; racing from the jaws of a predator she can’t even see.
“Victor! Victor! ”
Charlotte thinks she can spy the shadows lengthening from the corner of her eyes. She's too panicked to notice any glint of rusty metal lying hidden along the dead leaves until it’s too late. The crude wire ensnares her ankle and sends her tumbling. Her coif comes flying off.
A ruby arc of droplets is left streaking the forest floor as the girl slams right into a tree trunk; head making firm contact with the knobbly roots stretching out from its base.
*
Anna’s voice turns low and detached as she calmly wrenches her axe from the half-severed neck of her latest prey. The wild boar lies in a broken heap, tongue lolling from its hairy mouth.
Genuine game may be much more dangerous to hunt within the Entity’s Realm than the frequent human prey, but Anna finds that stalking down the forest’s rabid animals keeps her skills sharpened and hatchets always at the ready. The Huntress ties the beast by its hooves and slings the carcass over one shoulder, wiping her blade on her sarafan.
The crooning notes of her lullaby drift among the gloom as she treks through the foliage, stomping down leaves and branches in her rounds back to the snares.
When she nears the area of her springe, the Fog parts enough for Anna to spy through the darkness a large shape lying slumped over on its side, caught in one of her traps. A throaty purr of satisfaction claws its way into the tune of her song when she glimpses her prize.
But as she paces forward, the Huntress notices that the prey is rather out of proportion. It’s too big to be a wolf, yet too scrawny to be perhaps anything other than a starved bear. It isn’t making any noise or attempting to free itself.
It doesn’t even seem to be conscious.
Anna tilts her head. She slings aside the body of the boar and creeps closer. Her curiosity gives way to bewilderment, then disgust when she recognizes the squashed, puggish face and gaping chest of that one intruder girl. Only now the thief lies bloodied and motionless, without a weapon nor the grotesque little imp at her side.
Why has she come crawling back?
The Huntress takes a hatchet from her belt and sneers as she lifts Charlotte's chin with the dull end, staring up and down in disdain for signs of life. She prods the other Killer roughly in the shoulder and grabs at her face before shoving her over onto her back. This action elicits a rattling whine of pain from the fallen female, which makes Anna wrinkle her nose.
It’s like looking at a sick cub whimpering to be put out of its misery. And yet…
Anna pushes Charlotte onto her stomach. She growls when the scents of burning flesh and stale blood suddenly waft to meet her nose.
Beneath the sag of the knapsack, tiny rivers of red run from long lash marks that tear over the girl's back in flayed lines. Bits of shredded flesh cling to the swelling edges of the slits, which are black with dirt. The cuts themselves sizzle in an amberish hue; glowing faintly, as if someone had struck a sparking match against the skin.
Anna’s lips pull into a frown, despite herself.
It appeared the ugly little cub had gotten her first taste of the Entity’s wrath.
The Huntress remains crouched next to Charlotte's crumpled form, wondering what she should do. This girl, injured or not, is still an intruder- and she's trespassed within the Red Forest before. Anna knows she has every right to dig her axe into the other Killer’s skull, but…
Seeing the girl trapped in a line of lead, rasping in agony, awakens faint memories of the last time she'd lain at Anna's mercy.
She hadn't gotten off as easily then.
Setting her jaw in a low snarl, the Huntress snaps the snare’s rusted wire from the deform's ankle and hauls her limp, beaten body up unceremoniously over one shoulder. With her axe gripped firmly in her other hand, Anna moves back down the trail toward home, leaving nothing but the lilting hum of her lullaby in the air as the shadows engulf her and the stray.