Wolves of Weirdward Woods

Taking everything into account, things were not going well for Ffion. Keeled over, gasping for breath, she rose from the mud, crossbow in hand. Sweat, blood, and dirt dripped down from her face. The grime twisted, becoming war red-brown war paint to cover the fresh wounds and old scars. Ffion's heart thrashed inside her chest. Maybe she could run, perhaps she could fight, neither option seemed desirable. But anything was better than lying half-dead and accepting sweet death. She reached for her crossbow. Parts of the wood had been splintered. The metal was battered and bent. But it had to work. It just had to work. Distant snarls told her time was up. Foot down on the stirrup, Ffion yanked the bowstring back, eyeing her quarry. The canopy cast a shadow over the beast, concealing its true horrid size. Yellow eyes flickered like hot embers, burning with a sadistic thrill. A black tongue glided across teeth the size of daggers. Its red fur bristled, glimmering with the splendor of sunlight when it finally emerged from the underbrush. The giant fox wore a smile as it loomed over Ffion, letting her witness her own killer in its most beautiful and vile form.

Whatever sculpted this creature, they left it wanting for nothing. Each step echoed with the crunch of rotten leaves and branches beneath it. Its breath was virile and fierce, accented with a low cautious growl. The thing had the height to rival a stallion, and the muscle to match a lion. It saw the crossbow. It knew Ffion could make one last shot. It waited at the edge of Ffion's space. Eyeing the last arrow in her hand, it paused, waiting to counteract whatever decision Ffion would make before her demise.

Ffion loaded the crossbow and the monster pounced. Ffion squeezed the trigger and prayed. As the moment unfolded, Ffion immediately regretted not aiming for the head. She had no certainty the bolt would pierce the skull, nor did she have the confidence to know it would kill. Instead, she fired at the fox's leg. The instant the bolt loosed, Ffion was back on her feet, scurrying away as the monster wailed in pain. Limping, it tried to pursue. However, it struggled to leap into a full run. Ffion held some luck, the arrow must have struck some key tendons. With speed on her side, she vanished through the bushes and the brambles. The fox became a distant threat. Even if it could track her, even if its hunger for her persisted, she could now outrun it, even to the end of the earth.

And even if she had to trek that far, she would do it without complaint. Through clenched teeth, she admitted failure in her retreat. As a hunter, she was utterly trounced. A thousand warnings told her the Weirdward Woods was a nest of monsters and beings beyond belief. And she took those tales to heart years ago, but a hundred folktales and legends that led to nothing conditioned her to believe the magic of the world was long dead. This mistake would not be made twice. When she took the pay and the permission to track and cull the wolves of Weirdward Woods, she thought it was merely mundane dogs. Not this. Not that thing.

Better instincts tried to rationalize the fox. A grotesque malformed bear or a wolf blessed by impossible features of size and strength. Nothing made complete sense. But it surely prepared her to think of ways to slay it. Taking inventory of her possessions was easy. She had the clothes on her back and that was it. She lost her map and compass in the mud, her tinderbox was lost in the retreat, and her crossbow was broken in the fall. It fired once, but maybe not again. Besides, she had no more arrows. And to only add to her desperation, the trail had vanished miles ago, and the duel had only pushed her deeper into the unknown. Lost and without resources, she wondered if returning to the fox and climbing into its jaws was the wiser move after all.

Instead, she chose to live, if not by fear of death, then through spite. The dense forest attempted to make her regret such a decision. Fields of brambles awaited her as the trees broke into a clearing. Shuffling through them, Ffion felt the thorns cut into her trousers and into her skin. Her straw blonde hair, a scraggly mess, got snared in the barbs at every opportunity. By the time she pushed through them all and re-entered the stretch of wilderness dominated by trees, she was out of breath, panting, covered in sweat. She pressed on, assuming the fox could not pass through that natural hellscape any faster than her. And she held the illusion of safety for the next several miles.

The sun sank deep into the sky by the time Ffion collapsed. She hiked for hours, with a scant drop of water to be found along her improvised trail. Falling into a pile of dead leaves, Ffion decided to die there, ready to let the abyss take her and for the next land to punish her for poor planning and poor execution. Instead, she heard the roar of a river. This sent her right back onto her feet. In a sprint, she rushed down the hill, leaping over rocks and logs, tripping and sliding, only to then rise and run again. Hope spilled in her veins, pumping to every part of her body. And the taste of cold water graced her tongue as she plunged her head into the rolling river.

Ffion lay at the water's edge, letting her back sink into the wet soil and her finger skimmed the surface. The other hand teased at her tunic. The moment of relaxation always came far too late after the deadly hunts. She gazed up at the sky, watching the clouds pass by. She was so unfathomably lost in these woods. She'd sooner build a homestead by herself than find her way back to civilization. A thousand warnings told her to stick to the trail, but the fox tricked her anyway. Maybe it was still hunting. A few buttons undid themselves, allowing her blameless hand to sneak into her shirt. Her fingers rose from the stream and began hooking themselves around the waist of her trousers. Ffion bit her lip. She never did her secret out in the open before. Only in the cramped inn rooms with thin walls or empty barracks. The life of a mercenary, bounty hunter, whatever gave her gold for blood, gave little time for privacy. She had to make do with what she had. Her shirt came off, and both it and her tunic were thrown into the high grass, as if Ffion was claiming this pocket of land as her own. She traced old scars, from the shallow cuts to the deep slashes that told grievous war stories in just a glance. Then her touch migrated past the burly blemishes to the soft delicate skin that had yet to be paved over by war.

She would die in these woods, one way or another. Starvation, illness, maybe tangled in the fox's teeth. Interlopers pinched her nipples, tasting the soft flesh. Ffion scanned the brush. She spotted the yellow eyes. It was still prowling, still wanting. Ffion thought of previous skirmishes with goblins, bandits, and even a wyvern. How many times had she almost perished? So close to danger, her heartbeat quickened. She saw the fangs. The snarls trembled in the still air. Ffion kept her breath low, silencing her panting in the back of her throat. She kept still and quiet, letting the moment reach down between her legs. She remembered how close the knives and arrows had come to killing her. She knew how reckless she was. How could caution ever matter when the opposite felt so good?

The fox lingered there, watching. Ffion felt something rubbing against her. It couldn't have been her hand. She was a proper mercenary, trained by the best, she'd never lose, she'd never die. She'd never end up draped across the tongue of some beast. She'd never admit how good it felt to be on the precipice of annihilation. She pushed her fingers inside and grabbed her tit as if it was the last thing she had to hold on to. A yelp tumbled from her lips. She looked at the fox again, just as she roused her most sensitive spot. Danger intoxicated her, and she continued to drink it up, devouring it out of death's hands. Some fight for honor, some fight for gold, and some fight for pleasure and pleasure alone. The adrenaline flushed over her. The fox came lurching out of the brush. Its ears perked and its nose probed the air. Ffion watched its shadow emerge from the forest and envelope her. She squeezed tighter on her chest. Her breasts were small, and she could feel the tense muscle underneath she pressed her fingers fully into herself. Her index and middle fingers guillotined the nipple, trapping it. As the beast approached, Ffion kneaded her supple tit with the palm of knuckle. She wanted death to be slow. She wanted to feel the fear in its entirety. Her fingers down below did their work, penetrating deep into her, then quickly out only to enter once again. She wanted the fox to see her cry, to see her grovel and beg. She wanted so badly to beg. Her toes curled, digging into the wet soil. She wanted to beg for life. Beg to do anything to live. She couldn't keep the moans silent anymore. The fox loomed over her. One sharp claw hovered over her neck. Ffion thrashed, trying to roll away from the monster. It was no use, the hunter had caught its prey. Like a rabbit, all Ffion did was stay shuddering in place.

"Take me," she moaned, words cut short as she bit her lip and let the pleasure tear her apart. The orgasm came as the fox aimed its claws at her, ready to swipe. Then it paused. Frozen in place, the burning hunger vanished from its eyes. It was like watching a spring dry up. Paw still raised, the beast backpedaled. With a meek snarl, it scurried into the brush, vanishing into a quick silence. And Ffion was left there, panting, drool running down her cheek.