The Inevitable (Ashira)

[Substitute Author]

"Death smiles at us all; all a man can do is smile back." 



            Ashira had drawn her sword when she heard the pitter patter of paws and screams coming this way, after another ringing howl and she had been prepared to stand her ground.  What she was not prepared for were the slaves to run straight back into her arms.
            ?Ashira?  Ashira it?s after me,? the little brat squealed when she saw them, and quickly hid herself behind the ferret.
            The ferret shuddered.  She had never found anything slightly redeemable in children, and Cricket was hardly an exception.  Ashira swatted the rat?s tiny paws away and asked, ?What are you doing, fool??
            ?The Big Evil,? Cricket squeaked and abruptly rounded on her heel to continue down the passageway they had come from.  ?Run!?  The other slaves, including that gigantic badger pushed past them and followed the little rat down the tunnel.

            Ashira stared after them in disgusted surprised.  The badger is running?  Such cowards, the lot of them.  What could possibly be so fearful?  She turned back and glared down the empty tunnel the slaves had emerged from, and then suddenly she found herself staring into a pair of yellow eyes.  The crew shuddered behind her and she was certain a couple in the back had turned on their tails and ran.  ?Hold steady!  We outnumber it,? Ashira said.  But even she took a step back in surprised, for it was bent over almost double in the tunnel.  As it stepped into their circle of light, she suddenly had a picture of a great black body covered in rough fur, with a snout longer than any she?d seen, and its greasy black lips were peeled back to reveal rows of sharp teeth.  What in hellfire is that?
            A couple of vermin directly behind her whimpered, and she heard the frantic pitter patter of footpaws as a couple more broke from the group and ran.  Fools!  Running can only postpone the inevitable.  We must stand and fight!  The ferret stood up as tall as she could, and stepped forward to give it a guttural snarl summoned from the very depths of her chest.  It leaned back ever so slightly in surprise, and Ashira took the opportunity to leap forward and swipe at it with her saber.

           ?Raarrgh!?  It had turned its head away with the hit, and Ashira could see a sizeable bloody streak dripping from its cheek.  But she saw its eyes alight with fire and it threw its head back into another fierce howl, ?Aaaaaaarrroooooooooo!? 
            It?s calling for reinforcements, Ashira thought suddenly and she hissed at it.  ?We cannot win this one!  Take to your paws!? 
            Of the dozen or so she had dragged down into the depths, only half of them were left at her back and they needed not to be told twice.  Ashira still held her sword in her paw as she ran after and passed a couple of the crew.  The vermin with the torch had long dropped it, so the corridor was painted pitch black in her eyes.   The air, also, was stale and stagnant, and she sneezed at the pungent smell her crew had left in their wake, but behind her an even nastier smell was suffocating her nose.   Against the harsh gasp of her own breath and the crew?s footsteps behind her, she heard another set of pounding paw pads that was far up ahead, but it was there.  It would have to be her guiding light to get out of there.
            It was only a few minutes into running that Ashira was perturbed by the strange quiet that had settled behind her, and she slowed to a halt to look back and find that only three other vermin had made it that far with her.  Where is the rest of my crew?  She squinted her eyes and gingerly sniffed the air, but the rancid odor of the ?Big Evil? had dissipated and only the sound of footpaws was there to tease her senses.  She waited for a brief moment before she shook her head and started running again. 

            Without the creature to speed her paws, the ferret took her time to sniff out the proper exit out of the tunnels to correct her sense of direction.  Well, the crew is not completely made of imbeciles.   They remembered thus far from which tunnels we came from, the ferret thought and followed their trail carefully. 

            After what felt like ages being trapped in the dark, Ashira suddenly entered the underground storage room they had started in, and she jumped up the steps and burst through the wooden trap door.  Her eyes immediately flitted to the door where the brilliant sun seeped through and darted out with an extra swagger to her stride.
            The crew milled about in an uncontrolled mess.  She saw Silus in the middle of it trying to get one of them to say what had caused them all to tremble in such a fearful manner.  He finally hopped up onto a makeshift dais of a pile of wood and shouted, ?Halt!  What is the meaning of this?  You,? he pointed to a hapless stoat, ?speak of what has happened now.?

            ?No,? Ashira answered.  The weasel furrowed his brow in irritation and turned to see the ferret smiling with smug satisfaction at him.  ?We will barricade all entrances to the underground immediately!?  When the crew hesitated, Ashira darkened her glare and she growled out her next word, ?Now!?

            This got their paws into motion, and some of the beasts went to take some of the wood that Silus had been standing on.  The weasel strode over to her with his usual hard expression, but she imagined there was a storm of anger under the surface.  His paw was resting on his short sword when he said, ?Ashira, where in hellfire have you been?  I went to go check the food stocks?? 

            The ferret stared at him and shook her head.  Pathetic.  He?s worrying about the food when there are monsters threatening our lives?  ?Where do you expect I?ve been?  I?ve been trying to retain my profit!?

?I told you, you would be repaid,? Silus replied.

And how do I know you will fulfill your promise?  Believing in promises you have made for others will hardly lengthen my lifespan, Ashira thought, but instead she said, ?If I remember correctly, you were the one saying that there should be no more bloodshed?  Well, I?m afraid that law will have to be suspended.?  She held up her saber with an amused smile.  Silus tensed with his paw on the hilt of his blade.  She did not level it, but turned it in her paw so that even he could not miss the blood dripping from the tip.

            ?What happened??  Silus asked and Ashira?s smile only grew wider and wicked.

            ?We met the ?Big Evil? in the underground, my good Silus, and three more creatures have gone missing.  Our bodies are dwindling as we dawdle up here and action must be taken,? Ashira said.
            Silus huffed as his patience thinned and he said, ?What was it, Ashira??
            ?I am not sure what manner of creature it is that can grow bigger than a badger.  It had a snout like a fox, but much broader and the teeth much bigger,? Ashira replied as she started to circle Silus, who appeared intent on remaining unperturbed by the ferret?s theatrics.   ?Its eyes were huge and yellow, and its paws were bigger than your head.?  To emphasize her point, she swiped at the weasel with her claws, missing him purposely by inches.  ?There are also more than one.  It called for more after I stood my ground.?
            ?And why should I believe this, Ashira??  Silus said, looking at her with half-lidded eyes and an amused smile. 
            ?If you do not believe me, then ask the crew.  I am sure their accounts will coincide with mine,? Ashira said, gesturing a paw at a couple of the beasts standing and watching.  ?As for myself??  She hopped onto the pile of wood Silus had occupied and stared at the pitiful crowd of beasts. 

            So few, so few, she thought almost shaking her head.   Those spineless rats had hidden themselves away, to where she did not know but she had her suspicions of their involvement.  But now the monster she had just seen was at the forefront of her mind.  For a week it and the other monsters had skirted the dark tunnels, snatching crewmembers and rats alike with little distinction but now Ashira had confirmation of their existence.

            ?Everybeast, listen to me!  It can no longer escape our attention that there are monsters loose underground.   Since coming here, we have noticed the occasional disappearances of a creature here or there.  But now we know what is taking them.  We cannot allow them to run free as they please and snatch creatures when they like.  We must hunt them down and be sure their blood stains the ground!  They can be killed,? Ashira said, holding up her sword to show the blood on it.  ?They cannot escape my blade for long.?
            The ferret?s smile faded to frown pensively at her gleaming saber and the blood.  She had never been able to tolerate creatures who constructed a tough fa?ade only to allow it to crumble at the slightest approach of death.  She had been around death her whole life: her mother had died when she was just a kit, she had seen slaves succumb to their conditions, she had dealt death to unfortunate beasts, and she had even stared death in the face and escaped. 
            Ashira could still see that badger, driven to madness, break his chains and charge straight for her.  She had clearly felt those claws slice into her flesh and his gigantic paw sweep her to the side.   Her paw had come away from her chest drenched in her blood, but she had not completely lost her senses.  When the badger had come in for the kill, fully intent on ending her life with his teeth, she had stuck her saber into his neck over and over again until he had finally collapsed.  Not only had she come out of that scrape alive, but she had slain the giant. 

            You cannot get much closer to death than that, Ashira mused and her smile worked its way back onto her face.  She clearly remembered everything that had run through her when the badger had attacked her, and one of those feelings was not fear.  It had been exhilaration.  And disbelief.  She had almost laughed straight in the badger?s face, even as the blood flowed from her veins.  At the end it had felt like a game and it had been her intent to come out the winner.
            Death was an inevitable part of life she had come to learn.  They would all be dead someday, but whether it was in the next few days or in the years to come, she did not know.   What she could do was insure her future, for she knew it was not yet her time.  And when she did die, she wanted to enter the Dark Forest dragging her killer with her.