The song ending irked Bernadette. The fiends may have her friend already, so dashing was her quickest option. She drove like escaping cattle from a pack of wolves. The jolt of boot on grassy earth, the air filled with death, and the sinking light were like a swinging pendulum. To be safe, the girl made sure to angle her tanto away from her flesh. Trusting her favored yet injured hand, the blade was ready to slice any incoming fae, regardless of the smarting it began.

The danger of the aroma caught her off guard. Probably nearing her course, the girl shifted back down to thicker greenery, making sure she was covered amongst lupine, prone. Forcing another sense to work with her, Bernadette’s eyes scanned her bluish field. Within the surging flora, the girl’s ears saw first the flap of black wings. Not long after, the horrible laughter followed.

They looked hideous. Dressed with nothing other than the scales of their claws and the impossible shape of coracoid upon gaunt tits. The creatures were all female and laughed like aunts who have not seen each other in years. Luckily, they had faces of humans, but like fairy tale crones, their jaws were angled long, parallel to their elongated heads and ears. With their illiterate conversation, the faes were crouching at a rising bluff, a good view for the hunter but a bad angle for any flyers up above.

Worried now of her strategic position, Bernadette further hid in to thicker foliage. In the hopes she was buried properly, the forester multiplied her reconnaissance area. The girl was but checking her eastern horizon when her split vision saw the gathered harpies struck their heads high in surprise. A few breathes later, a dozen of then pulled from the earth like carrion birds finished with dinner. Disturbed by the flock’s reaction, Bernadette’s hand teased between her tanto and the remaining birds on the field.

She was just one girl and those creatures were taller than adults, by the distance of a few strides could tell. More so, Bernadette was not sure of the actual number of the avians as the stuck weeds hindered her periphery. And the smell, just trying to breathe made her want to vomit.

“Help!” A squeak and unfamiliar crier sought for assistance.

The voicer rendered Bernadette rooted to her plot.

“Someone, please help—ah!” The fae was silenced with an ache as an evil squawk, probably a harpy, fizzled their feathers in the distance. The very thought echoed throughout Bernadette’s bones. It wasn’t that the creature Bernadette was supposed to help was not her friend, but the fact there was someone else in the fray boiled something within her. And she sounded too scared.

More squawking followed from the dark spots up head. The evils sounded like gulls, too human gulls, clearly as language was formed beneath their screeches and cackles. Bernadette wished only then to run to her. Whoever that person or creature or being was, the rowdiness and the sniffles, the choke of the girl’s tears tore through the forester’s heart.

And then the she screamed. Reacting to the violence, Bernadette erupted from her perch and gusted a battle cry.

By the wail of both her fear and anger, as the girl ran towards the cursed chickens, these cursed chickens spun their bony tuft to the raging sprout.

Flight carried Bernadette. The ability one harpy lost as when the lumber of the girl, spurring like a flooded river, plunged her silver blade into the dark being’s shoulder. Barely reacting to her quick stab, Bernadette immediately took out the weapon from flesh and went for its chest. The forester was still able to plunge when an unknown force, one that felt like hot blades clasp on her left arm, pulled and threw her to a clear dirt path.

Bernadette’s vision twisted between sky and earth before landing and skidding to like a heavy bundle. “Oof,” she clamored to her feet when the still thunder was gripping into her unfiltered mind. She saw again another freak of a morbid bird on her line of sight, its foggy eyes straining to her menacing growl before she charged. Again, the fowl had thought senseless as Bernadette struck for its heart and was only able to hack at the empty weapon. Both the harpy and Bernadette took to her missing blade, surprise in both their faces before the tearing stole the cogs of her driven frenzy.

“Aah!” Bernadette howled as char ignited upon muscle. Like smith fire smoldered and ran through the girl’s back. Swallowed in agony, Bernadette went down with the claw’s sweep, falling to the ground cold and shivering.

Bernadette! Allura’s thought went through her mind.

There was something the freezing claw mark left on her back as it extinguished Bernadette’s blurred vision. She must have been exhausted as heart beats sang like a drum festival marching in her veins.

Bernadette!

Her toad friend called again. And Bernadette remembered to breathe.

The girl sucked so much air before rolling to her back. The smear of pain that followed made her regret that decision.

Turning to her stomach, the girl blinked rapidly and was just wiping her eyes with her hand when the cacophony of cackles finally parched her ears. Swatting dirt to her face, Bernadette tossed between the pain on her back and the smudge on her vision when her mind simultaneously tried catching what the freaks were laughing about.

“She got you good,” one vulture said.

Humorous teasing laid waste upon their nest. It was not clear to her but Bernadette knew the beasts were laughing at a downed companion. One, as slowly her eyes parted over particles, blood, sweat, and tears, found a prostrated harpy. Chest barely heaving as it struggled upon the gurgling cruor on its throat and the heavy weight of the tanto, now smoking, still embedded to what it’s supposed to be heart. 

Bernadette’s world crumbled. Although the harpy was a hybrid between bird and man. But still it had man. And to Bernadette’s realization, amongst the cries of joy and mock, the deliberate callous upon life, the smell of intoxicated death and burnt tissue, the child victim of their torcher caught up. Bernadette had finally awoken upon her quest to save a stranger, and taken a life without regret.