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Elphie flew through the forest, her paws beating a war drum on the earth, her chest heaving as her heart hammered in her ears. Great gasps of air burst from her open mouth into the cold as her tongue lolled heavily, her green eyes desperately, futily searching for some path on which to escape. But there could be no escape. There was no place she could go where the devil on her tail could not follow.

Leigh's claws dug further into the ground with every furious bound, his body a well oiled machine, muscled silver legs moving like angry pistons. With every step he took in which he did not feel his teeth close around the female's throat his rage grew stronger, deeper, and soon his silver eyes were completely hazed over with malice. He was no longer chasing this female simply to avenge Soul. No, now, with every desperate leap Elphaba took she dared to defy him--He, Leigh--as if she thought she might outrun him.

They always ran this way, with the same blind terror of a prey animal. But they never--never--outran him.

Elphaba was a strong, athletic wolf, as fit as any member of a solid pack could be, but she had not grown up on those artic wastelands, fighting to simply stay conscious each day of her life. She had not gained that otherworldly tenacity of the hunt and she did not feel the icy blood lust that had consumed the mind of the fox-colored male. The only thing that saved her was the overshot of epinephrine her body had released into her bloodstream, but she couldn't suffice on adrenaline alone. Eventually, he would have to catch up to her, or her heart would stop. She desperately prayed it would be the latter.

The trees were screaming in her ears as she ran past them, but she was running so fast that their voices seemed to be under constant doppler effect, rushing by like sirens. Eventually she caught their words.

Call hi--Ca--CALL H--CALL HIM!

SOL-LUN! Her mind screamed in reflex.

Elphie fought back a sob as a picture of the wise shaman flashed through her head. Had it really been just the other day that she had called upon him in that clearing? You might say that I am always nearby, for I am everywhere at once. He had said with pride, and infinite tenderness.

But not even a shaman could revive a dead wolf, could he? Her insides felt like they were already being torn out by the jaws of the monster behind her.

As fire had eventually surrounded Sol-Lun's mother, so this icy male finally set in upon Elphaba. Her paws were already numb from the ragged and unnatural beating against the earth beneath them. She was breathless and tired. Her thoughts were blurring. And behind her, the foreign wolf from the arctic badlands gained a step.

Gnashing teeth caught in the soft skin of Elphie's haunch, and she yelped as her form skidded to the side, nearly losing her balance. As she felt the hot breath at her back yet again, she leapt up vertically, with all the instinct of a young deer, and Leigh's jaws caught on a tuft of her thick brown belly fur rather than crushing her leg.

Any other time, she would have turned to face her death with tooth and claw, but for some reason, something told her to keep running, run as long as she could, as if stalling, waiting for something. For what, though? Even if Sol-Lun had heard her, even if he found her, what could he do?

Fleeter on foot that the menace at her throat, the female sidestepped long enough for a short madcap rush, only to stumble at a wincing jerk from behind--Leigh had clamped onto her tail and had bought himself the second he needed. Elphie gasped as if to cry out as his teeth caught in the ruff at the back of her neck but no yell came, only a strangled whimper as her own momentum augmented by the force from the brute behind threw her form forward at a shallow rock face. Her skull slammed against the jagged sandstone, plummeting her world into darkness.

Head throbbing with harrowing pain, she swiveled her muzzle blindly toward the force she felt descending on her, lips curled to reveal an arsenal of ivory daggers, unseeing eyes burning a furious fiery green. She was terrified by the loss of her sight, but even stronger than that confusion was the need to survive. Leigh's torso slammed against her and she lashed out with an uncontrollable snarl, her teeth burying themselves in his shoulder as she struggled to right herself in this new world of never ending night. The male roared with fury, and with a quick jolt sent her form crashing to the ground once more.

Elphaba let out a high pitched yelp and did not rise again. Her body hurt all over. Her unseeing eyes stared into space. She did not want to move.

So, this was what it felt like then, to die. She prepared herself for the final blow at her throat, but at that moment a tremendous gust of wind, comparable in her mind only to the blast that had leapt down upon Sol-Lun himself on their first meeting, roared through the clearing.

Leigh was nearly beaten to the ground with the brunt force of the wind, and in his struggling to orient himself in the sudden gale, his assault on Elphie was postponed. Elphie herself felt the lesser edge of the onslaught, and the wind buffeted her form slightly against the earth, sending shocks of pain down her still-feeling form, but she was numb to the agony. It could mean only one thing. Sol-Lun was on his way. She didn't know whether to rejoice with joy or weep with regret. Her relief was overwhelming, but the thought that she might be leading her mentor into danger--that she might be destroying yet another life--was almost too much to bear.

Her mind began to slip in and out of consciousness, and she didn't know how much longer she was going to last. She knew she was about to faint when the world of black was replaced by a fading white seeping into the corners of her mind.

Ssso... Don't want y... getting hurt...

(( Oh man! o_o! I don't want to make Sol-Lun angry at me! XD ))

All thoughts of Elphie left Leigh's mind at the otherworldly attack from above. The presence of the crimson shaman had signified a new advancement of the airborne raid. Helpless as a fish dragged from the water, Leigh gaped and writhed as the wind dug its way in through his mouth and nostrils. He tried to exhale, to cough, to wheeze out this foreign attacker but found he could not, and his lungs swelled painfully inside of him as he battled the vicious current.

But it was the shaman's own excavations that signified the new level of torturous agony for the fox-colored male. Sol-Lun's presence wedged itself like a dagger mercilessly through the mortal skin and tissue of Leigh's form, the pure energy causing myriad bodily nerves to fire in rapid succession, increasing the registered pain tenfold. The pressure found its way to Leigh's chest, settling in around his heart to cause increasingly stinging palpitations.

Elphie had remained unconscious for almost a full minute. Now she was in a haze of wisps of white. Had she not still felt the pain in her body and heard the steady roar of the wind all around her, she might have wondered if she was actually dead. She lingered on the edge of a dreamlike state, incapacitated, and not quite able to jolt herself awake.

Where... What... Mmmhh...

Wth the constant presence of the roaring wind blocking his throat, Leigh was unable to expel his carbon dioxide, and his blood was becoming dangerously acidic. Racked by blinding pain, lungs and heart near bursting, overwhelmed with nausea and dizziness, the tortured male finally gathered his last reserves of energy and fought out an explosive scream; a deafening roar, even above the howling of the wind.

It was the scream that kicked Elphie alive. It hit her like a thunderbolt through the blitzkrieg of the angry gale. Who had cried out? Was Sol-Lun alright? Was he even there?

"SOL-LUN!" She cried out in disoriented terror. Her voice was drowned in the tempest but her mental message would find its mark.