My Savior

For writer's cramp 1/9/10 (Won!)

Cackles echoed through the air behind me as I sprinted along the trail. Leaves whipped my face, leaving my cheeks stinging as I sought to outrun my pursuer. I knew I was running in vain. I was much too far from the wall to escape the Ghastly Granny. But still I tried.

My feet pounded over the rough trail, and stumbling over a rock I went flying face first into a puddle. Pushing myself away from the ground, I sputtered and spit out the mud that had penetrated my mouth. I caught a trace of iron with the muddy water, and realized I had started bleeding. Great. Now I can't escape them. Ghastly Grannies who made their way close to the wall of our great city fort undetected had been known to find their way past our defenses when they caught a nearby scent of blood. We even spread the guts of chicken into traps to thin the predators that waited for us outside.

Still on my knees I looked back, and saw a bobbing black shape speeding along the trail under the moonlight. Twin specks of red penetrated the hood of the fast approaching ball, locking onto my position. I'm done for. By the time I get up, it'll be upon me.

Already resigned to my fate, to be torn apart and eaten by this monstrous perversion of life, I didn't notice the other being until she stepped in front of me. A foot stepped into the same puddle I was splayed over, splashing my face with more of the mud. I closed my eyes to prevent the mud from washing into them, but caught a glimmer of something shiny in the moonlight. Did I just spy boots with gold trim?

Opening my eyes again I saw the owner of the foot leaping toward the Ghastly Granny. The cloud of ash the Granny had spewed before its last leap, as all Grannies spewed while they bounced along the ground, trailed behind it as it collided with the leaping figure. The clash of steel rang through the air, and the Granny darted toward the side of the path. Just as fast a tree cracked across the night air and the Granny bounced back toward the center of the path. Steel rang again.

The Granny bounced back into the underbrush at the edge of the forest, though my eyes didn't follow my pursuer. They stayed fixed upon my savior. She was shadowed in the moonlight, but there was still enough light that I caught the reflections off silver and gold sword and armor. She looked like a knight from stories of old, before the nuclear holocaust, before technology itself even.

And then the Granny bounced across the path again. More trees cracked as the round beast bounced ever faster back and forth. One time when the pair collided there was a flash of sparks between the beast's staff and my savior's sword. The wizened old countenance which gave the Granny's their name was illuminated, yet marred by an expression of fathomless rage, crooked jutting teeth, and the red eyes that shone only at night. And then the beast was just a fast moving roly poly ball again, too fast to discern from a shadowy ball.

The knight that had intervened on my behalf stomped into the ground, sending up a shower of mud and dust just before the Granny. In the seconds that followed the broadsword she carried skewered the Granny, and voluminous clouds of ash spewed and billowed to the ground and into the sky. The Granny seemed to deflate like a balloon, and a thrill ran through me.

“How can I thank you enough for saving me?” I asked, finding my voice.

“Why are you still laying there?” asked the figure that had saved me, ignoring my own query. “More are on they're way. Get up and run.”

As if to punctuate her statement, more cackles echoed from the trail along the way I had come. “Run.” she said again, turning her back to me.

I didn't hesitate, and with a push off of the ground I was up. I continued to run along the road in the direction I had been heading. I turned back to gaze once more at my savior as I jogged over the dirt trail, and saw two bouncing figures in the distance which spewed clouds of ash every time they impacted with the ground. And then something else obscured my vision of them.

The woman knight who had saved me, who was standing in the middle of the trail. I realized I had been saved by something as amazing as the beasts that had come to dominate much of our world. She had sprouted wings.