A breath. She quivered.

As if in response, the ground trembled. She felt it through her fingertips, providing some vague comfort from somewhere far beneath the dirt. Etching lines of its nearing influence on the ripples of time. 

Pebbles on the ground danced in frantic circles at the rumble deep within his chest.

To her, the sound came from everywhere, ringing clear as day.

It was louder now.

This time wasn't like the last. One of them had gotten too close. Wherever he was, he could see her. She was certain of it.

She looked at the shattered fragments of her past, scattered across the earth before her eyes as panes of glass.

She could see in each of them a window to another time. One that she could escape through, if only she could cast a spell.

But he was watching.

Even still, she considered.

Her eyes drifted down to the shards. 

She reflected, letting her fingertips graze its surface.

In another, she glanced the cold gray metal of a rifle.

At that moment she caught herself reaching for it, but her fingers twitched, recoiled as if they'd been burned.

If she made that mistake, he'd kill her. It'd be over in an instant.

Fear gripped at her nerves. Her eyes darted. Beholding each fragment for a split second before racing to the next, indecisive, panicked. Seeking any option better than this, while her mind tried to rationalize that none of them were available to her.

Once more her eyes darted, looking to distinguish what her mind hadn't quite been able to place.

Then she saw it, and she froze.

A single green eye reflected in one of the shards, staring back at her.

She flinched.

Wait. The rumble, it'd stopped. She hadn't even noticed. How could she not notice?

This wasn't a reflection of another time, but the reflection of something physically there. Her time was up.

She allowed her denial  to linger for just a moment longer as her eyes stole a glance, following the sound of the glass crunching under each footfall. She saw his claws pressing into the ground with every step.

Her breath caught in her throat, and she forced herself to gasp so that she might breath. Her head shot upright, and there he stood. 

A monster masquerading as a wolven.

He was still, watching her. Sea water dripping from his fur that shined in shades of blues and greens. If not for the fires still raging from his previous attack he'd have blended in with the night. Now he stood silent. Why? Was he waiting for something?

She bitterly realized.

"Please—"

She looked up to the wolven towering several feet above her head. His green eye reflected the intense gleam of his magic, but the other was pale.

"I could just disappear, never come back—"

He didn't move, not even to blink.

"I would've never come here, if I'd known."

"I can't fight. Surely you've seen that. A warrior like you wouldn't even consider this a sporting chance. Let me leave, please—"

"......"

He never made a move. Never flinched, never twitched. 

She knew it. She knew it just as well as she knew that if she tried, she'd be dead.

"... Why are you doing this, Fenrir?"

She asked.

Immediately she felt like questioning was the wrong decision. Would he mistake it as a challenge? Even in her pitiful state, the blood flowing freely from the wounds in her legs, would he mistake her as someone brave enough to oppose him?

"... I don't understand."

She thought. He had her dead to rights anyway.

"You've already taken so much... Why can't you stop? What could you possibly have to gain?"

His jaw cracked open, creaking and popping like a body stricken immobile by rigor mortis.

She leaned back. His voice was deep, gravelly. Its unnatural, almost metallic ring strange to her ears. She'd never spoken to one, though. Not before now.

"The clos... What does that mean?"

She asked weakly.

His eyebrows furrowed, the most he'd emoted throughout this whole ordeal. He thought the question through, and for the first time since he'd caught up with her, his head moved. Curiously tilting to one side with a loud, uncomfortable crack that made her skin crawl.

"Mercy!?"

In spite of herself the anger took hold, denying her fear of expressing it. Threatening to shove her from the careful tightrope of survival she was struggling to walk.

"What could be merciful about this!?"

His face wrinkled, the uncomfortable pops of every motion drowned out as his teeth were drawn bare and his rumbling returned. His words erupted from his throat, so loud she felt them sting in her ears.

"This world should be free of your mercy!!"

She screamed.

For just a moment, barely perceptible to her eyes, she thought he'd stepped in her direction.

Before she could even process the image, her vision was overtaken by an explosion of white, her hearing lost entirely to the roar of the eruption. Her back hit the ground, her head smacking.

The geyser, pressurized by the destabilizing earth had reached its limit. The sound was impossibly loud, unlike anything she'd ever heard, and yet, she could hear his blurred screams within it.

Then it struck her.

With every ounce of her strength, she lurched her body forward, dragging herself with her arms.

She swore that she saw his teeth through every flash of water.

She screamed, her magic gathering and winding down her arms.

Anywhere, just, please...

She didn't care which fragment she touched. She could barely see them, but her hands fell upon one. She took a deep breath as she felt her body get whisked away. There was a familiar, gentle whoosh of wind, and she was gone. To a place between time and space. 

Wherever she landed now, it would be better.