you're gonna die

"Where'd you come from?" Brenley muttered, shaking his head at the bird as it hopped up and down the length of his hand. It chittered pleasantly enough, but the apparent absence of its owner was troubling. He had yet to see a single person since he had regained consciousness, yet someone had clearly created this creature, and if he had to venture a guess, he would have said they needed to remain fairly close by to run it.

He shook his hand, trying to dislodge the thing, but it was content to stay put, tiny metallic claws digging into his skin. "If you're not going to leave, then at least shut your—"

Behind him, something stirred. Despite several years of training in tracking and stealth, he still wasn't very good at either, which meant whoever was approaching wasn't trying to hide. Bren backed closer to the abandoned building, summoning a katar. The bird finally winged away, and as if that had been a signal, a sharp little silver blade whizzed out of the dark, clipping his upper arm. It was followed by a wide-eyed human, her face twisted with rage.

"Filthy," she hissed, her voice worse off than his. She brandished a large sword at him, its blade carved with runes as blue as his eyes had once been. They pulsed in a rhythm, as if the thing was trying to speak. It felt familiar. "Halloween." Hunter.

Bren feinted to one side, calling his other blade before running at her. The move was ill-advised. She countered easily, sword digging into his side. He fell onto his hands and knees, weapons gone, but hers remained drawn. As it arced toward him, no deep thoughts ran through his head. All he could do was wonder what had happened here. Why had he woken up alone? Where had everyone gone? Then, just before she struck the killing blow, Brenley heard a great, rusty growl and a heavy weight knocked him to the ground. He would have opened his eyes had the tackle not been immediately followed by a wet snap and a strangled scream.

He rolled over onto his back, the unresponsive woman rolling with him, and came face to face with a tiger.

The cat was rubbing its paws in the dirt instead of grooming them, which was really the only thing that kept Brenley from throwing some fire in its face and running for the city. It reminded him of a monster back at school who had spent the majority of his youth in his humanoid form and continued to act as though he was in it even as a wolf.

"Thank you for helping me."

The tiger snorted and he could have sworn she rolled her eyes. He had never known a monster not to speak in its natural form, but he supposed he didn't know everything.

"I am heading into town if you'd like to come with me," he continued, climbing to his feet and brushing off his clothes once more.

It... no, she... shook her head in agitation.

"All right? I just thought I'd ask since, you know..." He trailed off as he shook his own head. If she didn't want to mingle with civilization, there was little he could do about it. Giving her a final nod, Bren headed off into the dark. With a huff and a faint growl, the tiger followed anyway.

[ this was supposed to have like seven parts and be about halloween and the human world merging into one and underground halloween peeps rising up and smiting errywan who was trying to exterminate them while also finding out that the merging meant that they were susceptible to the "being in the human world" time constraint and that they were all going to die anyway, but i ran out of time yay ]