Mother always warned me such

Forwarded to.... let's say 3/25/2021 in my mind, cuz massive terrain + distance from where she was at

---

The soldier had been moving without much rest. 
Somehow, her body did it, and somehow, she didn't mind. 
Nor did she currently feel any effects from constant movement. 
After all...perhaps she was used to it, in the past? A time and place before here. 

Eldra looked around with a newfound wariness...After being ambushed, she didn't quite feel like having a repeat quite like that one. Even if it ended in her favor. 

The warbeast-to-be sighed softly; These must be the lands Vengeance had described....
The woods he wanted to claim. 
Now, it was her job to look around and note any potential problems...or potential allies. 
Neighbors, and the like. 
Ears perked forward, she prowled through the trees, scanning around with her purple hues for movement large enough to be worth investigating.

+2 Points

---

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 Of course, for Sam, the stakes were far lower. Or, perhaps nonexistent. For Sam, things were as they were forever and never ago. He knew no one. He wanted no one. He thought of... no one.
 Occasionally, the persons he had met along his vague pathway would come to mind. He knew, though, that they must have been little more than visions. He had been on a seemingly meaningless trek for many days, hunting for the sound of humming and hushing as he grew closer to greenery.
 Today, he ran into a woman. She was, as many people he met, no ordinary woman. She was massive. Sam cowered away from her, standing many metres from her within the fog-ridden wood. “Hi,” he answered vaguely, hoping for anything from the strange woman.

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From the depths of the fog came a bluish greyscale man. Eldra watched with twisted glee as the fear flash through his eyes, and as he greeted her, at first she may have been stoic, but soon, the hunger in her made itself present and she offered back a borderline disturbed -minus the wide eyes- smile in return, purling out her own greeting in the form of...

"Hello, darling." Eldra canted her head very slightly in sharp, small movements, as if ticking. This happened for only a few moments as she took a few steps forward. 
"You don't look like you belong here, of all places." She remarked with mild interest, poison-purple gaze boring into him as she licked over her teeth. 
She would play ''nice'' for now, which in her ever-curling mind currently only meant: don't eat him. and don't be disrespectful on purpose. pretty damn nice if she did say so herself!

After all, For all she knew, he could belong to one of the Nightwalker's allies.
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 He was uncomfortable immediately.
 Whatever strange charm she held in her eyes, those moments of doubt he had long been trained for, even he didn't buy whatever it was she was selling. He knew there was something wrong with her. Immediately. Eyes too light. Scent too thick. Answer too fast.
 She moved forward. He moved instinctively backward, staggering back as though drunk on her beauty. “Defintely not!” Sam agreed with her assessment, watching her movements as he shuffled backward in weird, quick movements.
 Fear began to take a central seat. For Sam, this was strange. But this was... she was going to take him out back and slaughter him. So he kept moving backwards, hoping she wouldn't notice.

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Poor Sam might need a hug after this ;w;

---

 

The monolith only continued to smile like a damned demon as the male skittered backward, which to her, looked like he was tripping over his own feet to get away.

Not that she minded any.

Eldra chuckled a surprisingly sane-sounding chuckle, though everything about her face betrayed the reality - she was breaking. Twisting. Snapping.
After what Vengeance did to humiliate her, and she signed away her soul to join him despite that...
Yes, though she wouldn't admit it, and would probably rage upon being told it - something was definitely wrong with her. 

"Let's play a game." She mused after a tense pause, and after a brief second pause, she explained. 
"You run, I chase. If you make it out of this place, you live. If I catch you, well, then..." Her somehow widening grin said it all - then, you die. 
If he chose to fight, she would take the opportunity. But if he did turn tail to bolt, she had zero issue being the monster he would be running from. 
Perhaps her Warlord would be pleased if she brought back a prisoner? 

Time would only tell what happened.
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 Sam could feel his heart in his throat. The bottom of his stomach growled and rumbled. Deep and thick, his blood raced, pumping to his ears and feet and draining from his gut. Fear. It was palpable, and he wasn't used to it.
 Sam swallowed. Why was she doing this?
 He didn't think she would answer, and time slowed down anyway and rendered him incapable of speaking. Instinct told him he was in real trouble, but he froze in his spot for what felt like an age before he was able to move again. The reality was less than two seconds.
 Sam pushed from his back feet into the forest, unknowingly following the line deeper. There were the vague smells of wolves that stung the inside of his nose. Tunnel vision set in quickly and Sam flew as fast as he could. The only thing he had physically on this strange white beast was his size, which naturally might make him more nimble. His heart blasted angrily in his ears as he rushed, terrified.

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He froze at first, like a deer in the headlights.

Then he ran, and like a viper on a mouse, she chased.

Big, bulky, was she. But also, to even her own brief surprise, she was quite fast herself, weaving the woods like an expert maze-runner, despite not having claimed the Blackwood - yet -.

Eldra cackled ominously behind him, taking great strides and leaping sprints as she tailed Sam. 
Should he trip, should he falter, she would burst forth the last extents of her stamina will the full intent to take him to the ground.
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 Behind him he could hear her footsteps. Paws forced away earth as he pressed on, sticks snapping under him as he raced. The pounding in his ears was vicious, and through the wind and fog her terrible laughter snatched away what little courage he had. The wolves ran. Other, smaller animals scurried from their battle of wills.
 His breath was all he could hear for a moment as he kept going, even though his chest started to hurt and rocks had worked their way into his pads.
 Sam kept going. The longer he ran, the more he knew that he had run further into the wood. The fog thickened, and he preyed internally that it might shield him from her terror. He changed direction as abruptly as he could muster, pivoting and hoping to whatever terrible god was out there that the demon could not follow.

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 Keep going, keep going. He weaved, and she seemed to weave right along with him. He couldn't shake her, no matter how hard he tried. His maneuvers were enough for her freakish physical stamina. There was no possibility of her being a normal wolf. Whatever she was, it wasn't something wolf at all. She was from somewhere beyond, somewhere deep and hellish.
 The cold air began to sting his nose as he heaved. Sam was not made for this long-range sprinting.
 When he couldn't hear her anymore, he kept pushing forward, trying his best to pick up speed, pushing forward in a straight and true line. He seemed to have lost her, but Sam dared not tally.
 But he was heading right into the heart of the wood.

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Eldra trotted at an easy pace, her poison-purple hues locked on the twisting and fainted movements of his fleeing form in the fog. 

And he was headed further in, still...
...PERFECT.


With her cheshire grin, the Soldier picked up her sprint again, running as parallel to him as she could possibly get from the yards of distance between them. Whether it was exact or not, she wanted to be on par with him as much as she could be, so she could do exactly what she was about to do.

Eldra swerved inward from the trees, picking up her pace faster than she ever had before as soon as she could see the male much more clearly, to the point it was a miracle - or a hell-amused curse - that she didn't falter or trip over her large paws as she continued like a flying arrow, aiming her teeth and full weight in an aimed effort to connect with his face, or neck, or shoulder, anything, anything she might possibly collide with that would send him falling, instead of running. 

It had become clear from the start Eldra had every intention of winning her own game if she had her way. 
Would she return with a prisoner? The hellish woman gleefuly hoped so with a sick laugh.
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 Sam swerved off in a direction he hoped would lose the demon. His heart had long since forgotten how fast it was supposed to pump, racing angrily with an uneven and dangerous rhythm. For many seconds, he couldn't see her, and it seemed like he might escape. For many seconds, he was almost safe.
 But somehow the angle he had chosen favoured her, and her white figure appeared in the peripheral from the thick fog.
 He tried desperately to change direction, to out-maneuver her, but the loss in speed provided her with a window of opportunity.
 The demon smashed into him, and despite him digging in his feet, the contact was too much weight, and he toppled and rolled onto his side. He felt significant pressure that had come from her teeth on the fur of his shoulder — it hurt. His will to live and fight activated again, and Sam pulled himself up, but he was not fast enough.

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Maybe she would have killed him, had she not already wanted to toy with him, too. This young man was proving to be a delight to torture, and she cackled sharply as she successfully took him to the ground. But Eldra, she didn't stay entirely upright as her teeth and momentum met his flesh, instead trying to take what hold she had with her, as she continued to roll and snarl and twist and jerk while also rushing to try and subdue Sam before he could run again. 

"You. Are. MINE!" Eldra hissed with demented dedication through her teeth.
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My heart hurts for him ;3; poor Sam

---

If Eldra were a mother, or an older sister, if Sam were her ward and he came to her crying, asking why anyone would purposefully hurt another...She might have had to explain that bad people do bad things often for the hell of it. That not everyone in the world is good, kind, merciful, selfless.

But it didn't turn out that way. 
Instead, Eldra was not his mother, or his sister. 
Instead, she is the bad guy, and she is the villainous demon who hurt him. 
Perhaps she could see it in his eyes, the fear, and the unspoken question: Why?

And as Sam struggled and attempted, then succeeded, to stand, Eldra's purple gaze settled on him with some contemplation. 
There was little to no redemption for her, not now, she felt. But then she began to ask herself why she was worried, why she cared...
Nope, shoving those thoughts down until they die.

A tired sigh later, the demon looked around for a potential spot in the fog to shelter her self-awarded prisoner. 
So far, no immediate avail to anything. 

Eldra backed off from Sam a couple steps and started forward a few strides, turning her head to see if he was coming. 
Once he was, the wraith would begin to move again at a slower pace - one meant to accommodate for the break she made in her new ward's foreleg. 
And the search for a den would commence. 

"For now, let's find you a place to rest for the night. I will do my best to place you near water." She mused quietly, though audible enough to hear, even if barely. 

Strangely, perhaps if not immediately alarmingly, it seemed Eldra wanted to take care of him even though she had literally kidnapped him, and terrorized him, and tortured him. 

Maybe deep down she wanted to make his imprisonment...not entirely shit? But who knew.
,
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He's literally the worst character for this to happen to

---

 Sam sniffed away his tears as his body began to take over for his own survival. It was over. He would not win against her, and if he didn't do what she said, she would kill him. He didn't know why, and at the end of the day it didn't matter. If this was the afterlife, then it was a really shitty one.
 When the white demon moved away, he limped slowly behind her for several paces. Each was agony, and each he punctuated with a muffled wince. Because it was his front leg that had been broken, he was forced to look at it sitting at a disgusting angle every time he looked down. Sam didn't want to look up toward her, either, out of sheer fear of her turning on him again and hurting him more.
 Sam shook and shivered as he followed.
 The tone she took as she seemed to talk to herself was very different from the grating nastiness she'd sounded like before. This confused him, and he perked his ears forward to try to hear her. Near water?
 Sam did not answer her, keeping his head quite low and swivelling his ears back to an overly submissive splay. His tail was tucked tightly to his belly. What would happen now? Was she just saving his death for later? He knew no one in these weird lands. He was worth no ransom. No one would come for him.
 Worthless.

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Eldra just gives no damns ;V;

---

 

Eldra continued on in silence for a while, leading him carefully as she continued to search for somewhere to put Sam.
The quiet was saddening, to some degree. She had just acted, hadn't gaged if he would be worth imprisoning. Hadn't asked of his skills, made much conversation...nothing. 

It was becoming clear in her mind that Vengeance might see Sam as just another mouth to feed.

Eventually, Eldra found a stream, and a nice boulder leaning against the thick trunk of a tree close to the water. It even had some shrubbery growing over top, strangely enough. Like an overhang of sorts...
Here, between the boulder and the tree, the demon saw a decent sized little den of sorts. It just needed some widening...
And she began to dig, making the impromptu den a bit deeper and bigger over the course of maybe 25 to 30 minutes. 

"If you'd prefer, I will sleep outside while you take the inside. This should suffice for shelter from nasty weather for a little while." She mused a bit more audibly as her gaze landed on Sam. 
For once this entire time, she seemed to be showing some sort of remorse. Regret, sorrow...
Eldra sighed and moved aside a bit, so her new ward could move forward and get comfortable. Or...as comfortable as one can get with a broken leg.
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 They came upon a brook nestled beside a strange shelter formed by a boulder and greenery. Sam hazarded a flick of his gaze toward the white demon, wondering if this was where she would decide he would die. By the water she had said. Perhaps it was in her plot to let his sacrificial blood run into the river to feed whatever sick fantasy she had thought up. As they stopped, Sam continued to shake. His fur had shed considerably while following her and was coming off of him as though they had walked in the middle of a hot summer day.
 When the woman began to dig, Sam imagined that she was digging his grave, even though it looked closer to a den than a grave. He didn't understand that she had kidnapped him to present him to her leader. He assumed she was her own leader. He'd been too busy wailing in pain and near blacking out to hear what she had told him before about it.
 Awkwardly, he sighed and found a way to lie down and watch her. He waited for death, feeling his broken leg pulsing painfully as the blood circulated back to it. It had swelled considerably during the short distance. The demon dug, and he sat still, looking occasionally around as though he might spot an opportunity for escape. Eventually, he resigned himself to his fate.
 When she eventually turned to offer him a place to sleep, he lifted his head, confused. “W-what happens now?” he finally asked, shivering and unable to answer her question. Why was she offering him a choice when he had no choice?

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He seemed confused. Rightly so. 
Eldra sighed heavily as Sam asked about the now.
What happens now?

Eldra tried to meet the young lads gaze with her own, still full of conflicting emotions, but heavily - regret.

"Now, you rest. Whether you sleep or not is up to you." 
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New one with Vengeance maybe? :o

---

 Sam couldn't read her, couldn't understand. He looked away, afraid of enduring more of her wrath. She wasn't right. He was scared.
 He pulled himself up with some effort, his useless front leg dangling uselessly. He could put no weight on it, such was the severity of the break she had inflicted on him. He hobbled over toward her, his hair standing on end as he drew closer. Clambering into the makeshift den, he found his spot beside the dirt wall and curled his tail around his face. “Th-thank you,” he mumbled, hoping that kind words would appease her terrorizing nature for now. He didn't know what lie in weight beyond his next sleep.
 In one way, he was lucky. Sleep had always come easily to him. He wept into the fur of his tail silently, but it did not take long for him to drift into a calm slumber.

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