We ran.

  Ohna was right on our heels, and we knew we couldn’t stop. If we did, then only death awaited us, and a painful one at that. We had injured her multiple times, mainly Wryn had, but I was there too, and Ohna was now out for blood. She was angry that we were putting up a fight, and she was ready for this chase to be over.

  Wryn and I were pushing forward with everything we had, sprinting up the dirt road towards the village as fast as we could.

  “Turn left!” Wryn said between gasps for air. We were running for the travellers’ house, and I had no idea where it was. All I knew was that it was more inland than the village was, and that meant it was somewhere to the west of where we were. We turned left at a crossroads before reaching the village, and no longer than ten seconds later, Ohna did the same thing. We had been running for a little over five minutes now, but it felt like twenty at least. I was not in the best shape for this, and it was showing through my running. I almost stumbled and fell multiple times, but caught myself and continued trying to keep pace with Wryn. We needed to make it fast, I didn’t know how much longer we could keep this up.

  I turned around to look at Ohna, and what I saw gave me the slightest boost of energy. I couldn’t make out her entire face because of the darkness, but I could tell that she was smiling from the moon shining off her white teeth. That frightened me, and fed my desire to live even more.

  “How far do we have left,” I struggled to ask.

  “If we keep running like this,” Wryn started, “then it should take us about ten or fifteen more minutes.”

  That was not what I wanted to hear. I didn’t know how I could keep up the pace for that much longer.

  I turned around to see if Ohna was getting tired or showed any sign of slowing down, but she was nowhere in sight. There was no trace of her at all, she had completely disappeared!

  I started unconsciously slowing down, and Wryn quickly noticed my pace was slowing.

  “Jack!”, she said, “We can’t stop, we have to keep going!”

  “Look, Wryn! Ohna’s gone,” I replied.

  Wryn looked just as confused as I was, and she stopped running herself. Neither of us knew what had happened to Ohna, which in some sense was more nerve wracking than still being chased by her.

  “We still need to go to the travellers’ house,” said Wryn. “Even if we don’t know where Ohna is, being with the travellers is more safe than staying out here by ourselves.”

  “I agree. Let’s keep moving.”

  So we did just that. We settled down into a light jog, as we didn’t need to push our bodies and sprint anymore. We kept looking nervously over our shoulders to check if Ohna would reappear, but she did not. As the dirt road we were on went through continuous green farm pastures, we were able to monitor the area around us to keep looking out for her.

  She was nowhere to be seen.

  There was a wood in front of us, and looking towards it was unsettling. It was a stark contrast to the pastures we were walking through right now, as the moonlight struggled to pierce through the trees. Entirely darker than where we were, I was not looking forward to making it there.

  Apparently Wryn wasn’t either. She sighed when she saw the wood, and she began to look incredibly hesitant. Maybe a break was in order for us.

  “Should we stop for a second to rest before going in?” I asked.

  “I think that’s a good idea,” she replied. “We need to conserve our energy for the wood up ahead. It’ll be much darker than it is now, and we’ll need to be extra careful that we stay on the path. Once we get through the woods, it’ll take about five more minutes to get to the travellers’ house, if we sprinted that is. If we keep jogging, then it’ll take about ten most likely.”

  “Okay, sounds good. We need to stay close too, getting separated won't be good for either of us.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. Let’s sit down for a minute though, my feet are killing me!”

  We passed by a log on the side of the road, and decided to sit down there and rest for a couple minutes. We knew we couldn’t rest for long, Ohna may well still be pursuing us.

  After we had rested for two or three minutes in silence, we decided it was time to get up and keep heading towards the woods. As we grew closer, a sense of unease grew within me. All I wanted was for us to get through there as fast as we could.

  We reached the edge of the wood.

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  “Ready?” Wryn asked nervously.

  “Yeah,” I replied. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  So, we started walking cautiously into the woods, entering the darkness. It seemed to consume us, as it got pitch black almost immediately. It was already hard enough to see before going into the woods, but now that we were in there it was a whole different level of darkness. The light from the moon and stars couldn’t penetrate the trees, so we held our hands in front of us as we walked.

  Then, Wryn grabbed my left hand with her right. My heart skipped a beat, I’d never held a girl’s hand before. I know that it was for making sure neither of us got lost, but it was still enjoyable. My heartbeat picked up, so I’m glad that Wryn couldn’t tell.

  Then, I tripped.

  I had let myself get caught up in the surprise of Wryn holding my hand, and now I was flat on the ground.

  “Ow!” I whispered.

  “Oh no, are you okay?!” Wryn said, obviously worried.

  “Yeah, I just got distracted, sorry.”

  “It’s ok, as long as you aren’t hurt, then we can keep going. Here, grab my hand.”

  This was most likely Wryn’s secret way of asking for my hand again, so that she wouldn’t have to grab it again on her own.

  Right when I reached out my hand to grab onto hers, we heard a rustle in the bushes further off into the trees. We both froze. Was Ohna back?

  We couldn’t see anything in the darkness, so I grabbed onto Wryn’s hand and pulled her in the direction we were heading before I tripped. We went as quietly as we could, but without being able to see what was under our feet, we were making more noise than I liked.

  The rustling seemed to be moving with us. If we moved, it moved. If we stopped, it stopped. Maybe it was an animal, or maybe it was Ohna. It wasn’t outright attacking us though, so we kept pressing forward.

  The uneasy feeling of not knowing what was beside us was worse than any other feeling that I had in those moments.

  Then, we saw the end. The edge of the wood was coming closer and closer to us. We were gonna make it!

  “Let’s run,” I whispered to Wryn. “If we run now then we can leave whatever’s moving with us behind.”

  “Okay,” she replied. “Sprint as hard as you can and don’t stop until we’re far away from the treeline.”

  I squeezed her hand in confirmation, internally counted to three, and took off. Wryn followed, and we both sprinted for the edge of the wood as fast as we could. Whatever was beside us soon copied our actions, and started barreling through the woods towards the edge of the wood. We were about twenty yards from being outside of the darkness when whatever was moving with us stopped. We reached the edge, and kept running for about a hundred yards before we slowed down to a walk. We turned to look behind us, but didn’t see anything at all besides the darkness of the woods.

  I was glad to be out of there. Now, we were back into green pastures and we could see the dirt road, illuminated by the moon, a little to our left. Apparently, we had somehow gotten off of the path and were moving beside the road instead of on it. We made our way back to the dirt road and headed down it, moving away from the woods at a steady pace.

  “We made it,” I said, slightly out of breath.

  “I’m glad. What do you think was moving with us back there?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” I replied. “It could’ve been an animal, but I’d be lying if I said the thought didn’t cross my mind of it being Ohna.”

  “I didn’t want to say it, but I agree. If it was Ohna, I wonder why she didn’t just attack us. She had the perfect opportunity to do so.”

  “Let’s just be thankful she didn’t. We need to keep moving toward the travellers’ house.”

  “You’re right, let’s go.”

  We did just that. Without another word, we started jogging towards the travellers’ house at an easy pace.

  About two minutes later, I turned around one more time just to make sure we weren’t being followed.

  I could’ve swore that I saw the outline of a figure standing on the edge of the wood, but when I looked back again a couple seconds later I could no longer see it. Maybe it was the moonlight playing tricks on me, and I couldn’t be sure that I had even seen anything since it was dark outside. I also didn’t wanna scare Wryn, so I didn’t say anything about it out loud. I kept my face forward and we kept jogging for about five more minutes without any interruption.

  In the distance, a dim light was shining throughout the darkness. It looked like a campfire, but I couldn’t really tell anything about the area around the fire.

  “We made it!” Wryn exclaimed. She breathed a sigh of relief, and I did the same. I was surprised we made it, just an hour ago I had been sure that I was about to die. Since then, I fought off Ohna, been injured by Ohna, met Wryn, ran with Wryn for longer than I liked, and made it to the travellers’ house.

  Unfortunately, we were optimistic too soon.

  Footsteps were rapidly approaching behind us, and we both spun around to see Ohna sprinting straight at us. Smiling and brandishing a knife, she caught us completely by surprise. We thought we had lost her, but we couldn’t have been more wrong. She must have been following us the entire time, stalking us as if we were her prey. The thought was unsettling.

  Ohna rared back, jumped and kicked towards me as hard as she could. I blocked it with my hands, but was sent flying back over the grass of the pasture beside the road. I rolled until I came to a stop, the breath knocked completely out of me and my nausea came back once more. This situation seemed familiar, probably because Ohna had done almost the exact same thing to me earlier.

  I looked up, and Wryn was now on the ground too. I hadn’t heard her scream or anything, but she was rolling just like I had been. Ohna must have kicked her as well. She was incredibly strong, and as we currently were, neither Wryn nor I could stand up to her in terms of strength.

  I heard footsteps in the distance running towards us.

  “Looks like I made it just in time,” I heard a deep, manly voice say.

  I looked up towards Wryn and as we made eye contact, I felt relief wash over me since she was at least somewhat alright. I didn’t know who the man was, and I didn’t know why he was here, but I knew I could no longer fight.

  Right after I saw Wryn was okay, my body gave out, and I fainted.

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