Chapter 7: It runs amok
Chapter 7: It runs amok
In a desperate air manoeuvre, I made a turn mid-flight, sharp enough to almost send me into an uncontrollable fall. The mouse jumped like a grasshopper. Its gleaming teeth swished through the air, only centimetres away from where I just was.
It fell to the ground with a thump and immediately turned and crouched for a second attempt at getting at me. Its scarlet eyes and the red glow of its fur pierced the darkness of the night. The rage coming from the animal was almost palpable.
I clicked my jaws and did what both my reason and intuition told me to—I turned away and flew as fast as I could, my mind muddled with fear. Several times I crashed head-first into twigs and leaves, but didn’t dare to slow down even for a briefest moment.
Behind me, a furious rustling of leaves and crashing of broken branches signalled mouse kept following me. It crashed through underbrush like like a bulldozer. A bulldozer going berserk. Closer and closer to me.
I had to get away, I had to get away!.. And up, of course, up. Now that my mind cleared a little, I remembered that with my wings I wasn’t bound to two dimensions like the mouse was. I only needed to fly up far enough, and it would lose me.
I strained my wings, changing my trajectory to almost entirely vertical, and hearing the mouse pausing in its tracks beneath me. As I rose higher, my thoughts calmed. I was safe now, and I just had to hide in some hollow until morning.
My blurry memories of the days old told me that the mouse that chased me before wasn’t anything normal. It was a monster, probably. Maybe even a rare monster? I recalled stories of the damned souls of adventurers who fell from a claw or a fang of one of those. I had no intentions of repeating their fates…
A crash underneath me made me jolt in the air and almost hit a tree trunk. I looked down and saw a familiar red glow beneath, approaching despite all reason and gravity. For a moment I hovered, frozen, before my survival instincts kicked in.
I flew again, in a random direction, keeping higher away from the ground in a dying hope to shake the mouse off my tail, but it kept up. I saw it on the periphery of my vision, jumping from tree to tree like a squirrel, not at all slowed down by the height we were at. Still following me like a guided missile.
I frantically thought about what I could do to get rid of it. A single glance at the mouse was enough for me to know that I had no chance of winning in a fight. If I slowed it a little, though, maybe I could hide somewhere.
It was time to test my ability to spin webs in stressful situations.
Never stopping moving my wings for even a second, I spat some not-sticky silk on my forelimbs. It formed tiny gloves that would prevent me from getting stuck in my own web again. Then I began to spit and spin more of more sticky silk. My forelimbs pulled thick strands of it out of my mouth and turned it into something like miniature lasso.
Not big enough to catch the mouse, but it will stick to it and to anything the mouse will touch, and hopefully, with enough strength that it would need time to get rid of it. I might even hit its eyes or nose.
My web spinning didn’t come without consequences. I realised I had dangerously slowed down when I heard a crash of a broken branch right behind me. With a single glance to confirm my target’s position, I turned in the air and shook my web trap from my forelegs together with my silk ‘gloves’ and then, without waiting to see results, dashed away.
With eyes as big as mine, though, I still could see a little of what the mouse was doing, even if I couldn’t see where the web hit it. The creature landed on a branch next to which I just flew and paused, clawing at its face—before rushing after me again as if nothing happened.
My spirits sank. There had to be something else I could do. I kept flying, knowing that I couldn’t afford to spin any more webs (not that it was very effective), and kept searching for possibilities.
The muscles that moved my wings ached, but at least my stomach was full. I didn’t know how long I will be able to keep flying, but the chase felt like it lasted for hours. Then I knew it lasted for hours, because the first crack of dawn became visible through the gaps between trees.
I had tried to fly higher and lower, make loops to confuse it, but the mouse still breathed into my nonexistent neck.
Finally, I spotted something that gave me hope again—a patch of thick brambles with thorns more wicked than my stinger. I dived into it. The increasing visibility made it easier for me to manoeuvre around the branches. I prayed to the forces above these bastards who called themselves gods, that my pursuer won’t follow me.
The mouse crashed through the brambles like they were just another innocent bush. Still, it didn’t come without consequences, as I saw the wicked thorns piercing its fur. By that time, I was flying away again, of course, but now it was with purpose.
The bramble had slowed the mouse down, and with light around to see I found a hollow in a tree. It was barely big enough to fit me, which suited my purposes perfectly. I darted into it and shoved my chitinous, rigid body in. There, I stilled, nervously listening noises from outside.
Birds were chirping, leaves were rustling… And something was climbing my tree.