Cormac

The stalker looked a little taken aback with his ears flat against his head, but a sudden burst of true blood-lust hit Lycosia and she knew the feline was just getting worked up. Lycosia leaped for the rocky cliff and made it up onto an unwieldy branching tree root sticking out of the dusty side of the canyon. The stalker began leaping on the backs of the giant scorpions, swatting at their eyes and biting at the antennae that waved from their tiny heads. Lycosia took a brief moment to mutter the spell that gave her arrows a forceful draw and taking a deep breath, put herself into a deep frame of mind where she drew and fired without ceasing. She heard her arrows thump into their targets one after another. The last on the ground she took great pleasure in aiming right for its tiny brain.

She did not see the scorpion above her. Neither did the stalker. Seconds after the last bow left Lycosia's arrow she felt the weight of a monster bear her off the tree root and right to the ground. She dropped the bow and wriggled, but could not get free. She heard the stalker above her screaming angrily.

She heard, rather than felt, the scissored jaws sink into the bone of her shoulder. The crunch of her shoulder collapsing preceded the terrible pain. She screamed and pushed with all her might against the thick shell. Above her she could see the stalker had ripped off both the monsters antennae and was digging into its eyes. She felt the breath being squeezed out of her as the rest of the legs began an inexorable advance around her body in what promised to be a fatal hug.

As she began to see spots in front of her eyes from lack of air she felt the scorpion shudder. Another voice joined the stalker.

"Let go! Let go foul creature!"

Two hits. Three. Faintly, Lycosia thought it sounded like a woodcutter, chopping his ration for the day. Then the monster relaxed and she sucked in a wheeze of breath. Another breath began to bring her vision back. Her throat felt tight and dry as she struggled to regain her air. The monstrous scorpion was yanked off her and Lycosia stared up at quite possibly the biggest man she'd ever seen. He was dressed in a set of slightly used plate armor and a massive axe was laying by his feet. Lycosia could see bright red tendrils of hair sticking out from the edges of his helmet.

"Are you alright?"

Lycosia blinked. "what?"

The man knelt down and removed his helmet. His wild red hair captured almost all her dizzy attention.

"Are you..alright?"

Lycosia smiled, "When I grow up, I want to be just like you....." she breathed.

The man looked confused, then looked down at her shoulder, "You've been bitten! No wonder you aren't making any sense.. the poison, we have to purge the poison. I've got wormwood, or was it althea..?"

Lycosia drifted off to the sounds of the man making a fire and taking pouches out of a pack. She felt warm and sleepy and content. Except for that nagging sensation that there was something she needed to deal with.

Then came the pain.