Kell's Legend

insideher, and with shame she feared him, but more, with guilt she feared the cold darkness of death.
    “I am laying a trail,” he said, and gestured. Mary, the sweet little one who had attended Alloria so honourably, was dragged by her hair from the room. Blood streaked her face, her breast and her loins. She had not been treated well.
    “He will kill you,” hissed Alloria. “He will kill you all!”
    “We will see,” said Graal, and struck a savage blow which knocked her to the bed; then to the floor. Darkness flooded in, and she remembered no more.

EIGHT
Stone Lion Woods
    The canker leapt with a howl, and the girls hunkered in terror. It landed, and with a blink they realised they weren’t the target. One of the woodsmen was still alive, groaning softly, and had lifted his sword and rolled, groan turning to a snarl at the sight of the canker…which stooped, suddenly, and with a crunch, bit off his head.
    Kat eased through dead pine needles, through the rotting forest underlay as the canker ate the corpse noisily. It tore long strips of meat from his thighs and bones with crunches and rips, and then from the man’s broad arse, huge lumps which glistened. It swallowed them down in a fast, slick gobble.
    They both crouched, watching the canker. Nienna felt herself shivering, and they scavenged around for what torn items lay at their feet. As they dressed in rags, so Kat stood on a dead branch, which cracked. The canker lifted its head from its feast, blood rimed around the massive open jaws, and stringing from its twisted teeth. Nienna saw, suddenly, that this was a different creature from back at the cottage. The mouthwas smaller, more lop-sided to the left, the teeth like blackened steel stumps, which bludgeoned meat rather than sliced it. It was also slimmer, less bulky than the first canker they’d witnessed, and with a start, Nienna saw it had breasts, small and rounded, hanging down between its stumpy front legs; the nipples gleaming like polished iron, aureoles of copper, and within the frighteningly thin translucent skin tiny pistons worked.
    It was a woman, Nienna realised, and this, somehow, made the cankers a thousand times worse. One thing to be a monster; but to be a monster created from a human shell? To think that through a series of twisted decisions, of incorrect choices, of random bad luck, one could end up…like that ?
    “Gods,” she hissed, and the canker tilted its head, focusing on her and Kat as if for the first time. Its tiny gold-flecked eyes narrowed, and raising its head, it bellowed up into the dark night forest in something akin to pain…
    Not waiting to see if it attacked, Nienna and Kat turned and ran, sprinting as fast as they could, tearing down forest lanes and leaping fallen trunks, ducking under thick branches, as all around the snow continued to pepper the forest innards and the cold stillness invaded them, their bodies and their minds, threatening with icy chill…
    Breaking branches told them they were being pursued. Nienna glanced back to see the canker wedge between two boles of trees that must have been a hundred years old apiece; it roared again, a terrifying squealing bass sound that echoed offthrough the forest, through the trees which swayed high up as if in hissing appreciation of the gladiatorial hunt taking place within.
    With a grunt, and the cracking of wood, the canker broke through the trees. They fell, toppling from high above, crashing through branches and other smaller trees and bringing a whole mass of forest down in a howling crunching terrifying clump.
    Nienna and Kat were running, pine needles peppering their hair from above as trees fell and whipped. The canker howled again, and continued to crash after them, clumsy in its passion.
    “Thick woods,” panted Nienna, face streaked with sweat and covered by numerous tiny scratches.
    “What?”
    “Head for thick woods; the trees will stop the canker. Slow it down!”
    Kat nodded, and they veered left. The canker altered its course, crashing and smashing, thumping and tearing its way through the forest like a whirlwind. Soon, the trees grew more closely placed, but this plan didn’t work as well as Nienna and Kat anticipated; for one thing, the more dense sections of forest were the younger sections of forest. The older, thicker trunks were more widely spaced; they had conquered their territory, their particular arena of forest floor, and at their bases where little sunlight reached were