Tryal's Curse 2.2

~1978 words

~*~

Let it be clarified here and now: a hungry wabbit is anything but comical-looking. This one, in particular, was especially not comical-looking. Its tongue lolled around, licking the cold night air. Spittle dripped down its chin.

A wabbit is a creature of the night, Arlene remembered. It is six feet tall when standing at its full height and will chase its victim until they either die of exhaustion, or are tired enough to be caught. The swirly writing from her school Texts swam before her eyes. Vainly, she attempted to suppress the information, but it rose like a tide and seared at the forefront of her brain, until she found herself silently mouthing the words:

Wabbits are incredibly common in Northern Adreitus, and widely feared. A wabbit is easy enough to identify, with its long, ribbon-like ears and coat of mucous across its hard shell. Its eyes are razor sharp, large and black, and its teeth are even more so. Hare-lipped, wabbits are known for slicing through their prey with their poisonous fangs (which have been described by the renowned Seretian poet, Robart, as: ‘pitch blacke night in colouring and darker even in what they reap; they cast me, in what may, forever fitful sleep’).

Arlene had never hated her incredibly good memory as much as she did then. Words swam across her brain, swamping her, swallowing her whole. She could feel another scream rising in her throat, shrill and sharp, like a kettle that has begun to screech after being left on the stove for too long. Her lungs caught on fire. Fear ballooned in her chest: a strange kind of fear, the kind that mingled with excitement—excitement?—and panic. Arlene would have inspected this odd feeling with more vigour, had it not been for the fact that she was firmly rooted to her spot, paralysed.

It is advised for one to never directly instigate a wabbit. If, however, unforeseen circumstance arises, one must not panic.

‘One must not panic,’ Arlene recited to herself. ‘Not panic, not panic—don’t panic.’ She raked in a deep breath as Prince and the wabbit ran full throttle up the slope towards her. ‘Don’t … panic,’ she said, her vision beginning to swim.

It is a sad truth to accept, but accepted it must be that Arlene Randerfort, although especially bright, and especially level-headed, panicked in this rather trying situation. It was not something that occurred very often, because Arlene always found a way out of problems, but the issue appeared to lie within the fact that she was entirely too scared to think. The wabbit was hurtling towards her at a speed of something fast, and her senses were all abuzz and aflame and a million other things that could not be conjured into words, but streamed into a singleness that overpowered her every action. Her mouth sagged open, but Prince was fast approaching her, fists bobbing up and down as he ran, like boats on troubled waters. He grabbed her by the wrist and spun her around. Arlene stumbled. Unperturbed, Prince dragged her along with him while her feet struggled so as not to trip over themselves.

‘Run!’ Prince cried again, exasperated. ‘Get your head on the right way and run!’ He continued dragging Arlene along and she obliged, skittering behind him and—

He stopped at the edge of the wabbit hole Arlene had just climbed out of. He attempted to side-step it.

Arlene crashed into his back.

They fell.

Later on, Arlene would find herself cursing this moment, not simply because it was so very vivid, but because it involved falling very hard on the ground. It also involved an uncomfortable tangling and untangling of arms and legs, and backing up against the wall of the wabbit hole, and harried breaths as the unfortunate pair realised they could very well be killed. This realisation was not a new one, by any means, but it seemed to weigh more heavily on them as a pair of glittering eyes peered at them in the darkness.

The wabbit appeared to cackle, a high-pitched, broken noise escaping from its wide mouth. Up close, it was terrifying, even more terrifying than the clumsy illustrations and blurry Hollusions Arlene had seen at school. The air around her seemed to heat up alarmingly; her nails dug into Prince’s arm. She looked at him, knowing his expression and her’s were very much the same at that moment: wide-eyed, pale, and breathless.

‘Do something,’ she whispered. The wabbit was sniffing the air, its cord-like ears slapping the edges of the hole. Slowly, it began to paw its way into the hole, its sticky feet gripping onto the slimy walls in the most disgusting fashion.

‘What?’ Prince gasped, cheeks burning like red beacons in the dark—no doubt from all the running. ‘It’s been—chasing me—can’t—do what?’

‘Sword, you idiot, sword,’ Arlene said, slightly more able to string together a coherent sentence. She wondered for a second where Prince had gotten the sword from, but dismissed the thought almost immediately. Now was not the time for such ponderings. Prince sucked in a deep breath and reached for the sword. His sweaty fingers slipped on the guard and he cursed, tugging at it harder

‘Hurry,’ Arlene hissed, her dark eyes focussing intently on the wabbit’s progress. The wabbit, upon cornering its prey, will slow down as it chooses a path of attack. Researchers argue that wabbits do this as to intimidate their prey, although this could also simply act as a form of entertainment for them—

‘Yeah, Arl, I get that, thanks,’ Prince snapped. ‘Not the time to spew your vast knowledge at me.’ Arlene stopped talking abruptly—she hadn’t realised she’d been speaking. ‘I—ugh, I can’t get this sword!’ Prince said, rubbing his hands furiously on his fleecy tunic. 'Akiel,'  he swore, ‘it’s close—akiel.’ He fumbled with his belt. ‘It’s jammed—jammed in the ... scabbard—we’re going to die, bloody heck, we’re going to die—Arlene—’

‘Shut up!’ In the darkness, Prince’s amber eyes were like copper coins—and, Arlene thought, they looked as though they were about to fall out of his skull any second now. Quickly, she pulled Prince to his feet and backed into the corner farthest from the hulking wabbit. Her shoulders pressed hard against the slimy wall, its solid surface anything but reassuring. She hoped the wabbit’s large, heavy paws would not land on one of the boots she’d stuck into the wall—they were the only way they could climb out of the hole … if they lived.

No, don’t think that way, Arlene, she thought, shaking her head. Her eyes followed the wabbit as it stepped completely into the hole, taking up at least half of it. Not daring to breathe, Arlene gripped Prince’s hand tightly. He winced. Seconds ticked by, and Arlene’s grip on his hand grew firmer, until she felt she had cut off the circulation in Prince’s entire arm. His face was pallid and green, his hand once more fiddling with the sword belt. Arlene pushed her hand past his and curled her fingers tightly around the grip of the sword.

She waited until the wabbit had ceased sniffing at the air, its ears gripping the sides of its already wide mouth. Its fangs gleamed at them like a lamplight. It edged closer, until every shaky breath that Arlene took was hot and stank of manure. Still she gulped for air, knowing she needed it. Still she waited until the wabbit moved in—closer, closer…

An instant before it pounced, Arlene’s fingers deftly unbuckled the sword belt, one hand still tight around the sword’s hilt. With a loud thwack she launched the sword at the creature, catching it in the eye. It groaned—and Prince yelled—in surprise. Nimbly, Arlene moved past the wabbit and unsheathed the sword. Her hands were trembling; the sword was heavy, and her muscles ached, but she held it poised, waiting for the wabbit to charge at her.

Another thing Arlene had learned at school was to never mess with an angry wabbit.

But, she reasoned with herself, most lessons were to be disposed of anyway, soundly and swiftly. She did not flinch as the wabbit turned to glare at her, cackling—this time out of sheer rage. She glared back with more courage than she actually possessed. The wabbit hissed, claws digging into the dirt, its body gleaming in the moonlight.

It cackled and it charged.

Arlene raised the sword above her head and struck out at the wabbit, succeeding only in slashing it across the face—too quick, Arlene—and had to keep herself from stumbling as she avoided the wabbit. One of its ears grazed her across the shoulder and she cried out in pain as it made contact. The sword clattered to the floor; the belt lay too far away, still at Prince’s feet.

Prince’s feet. 

Prince. Arlene had completely lost track of him. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him, a grey figure bobbing against the wall behind the wabbit. He was tugging at something. Arlene wanted to call out to him—yell at him to help—but her mouth couldn’t form the words. A faint prickle of anger rushed through her body. But then the wabbit snarled and snapped at her, and she tensed.

Her left arm felt numb and heavy. Her vision was swimming again, black beetles crawling in from every which way. She leaned down to pick the sword up as the wabbit inched towards her again—like this was some stupid game, thought Arlene angrily, like it was fun to tire her out before the monster struck.

She had barely raised the sword again that something struck the wabbit from behind.

It was a boot. And it crashed straight through the wabbit’s head, its dirt-covered, sharp-as-knives heel glimmering in Arlene’s line of sight like a brilliant something that was hardly mundane. A laugh escaped her mouth—shocked laughter, as Prince let out something resembling a war cry—and the heel went straight through the wabbit’s mouth. 

It took a second for both children—and the wabbit itself—to realise that it was dead. As such, it also took a while for the unconscious wabbit to slump to the ground with the realisation that it had been killed. And it took a while for both Arlene and Prince to breathe normally, whereupon they hugged each other and laughed.

Climbing out the hole after that was easy. Prince stuck the sword into the wall and jammed the scabbard onto it—rather clumsily, but both of them made it up without cutting their feet. Once out, Arlene took a shaky breath. She smiled at Prince, who was slimy, and sticky, his white-blonde hair sticking to his forehead in clumps.

‘Well,’ she said, when she’d found her voice. ‘You’re late.’

He laughed. ‘I’m not. You lost your way.’

‘Yeah, but—look, take me to Ixister Quixa now. Please.’ Arlene looked at Prince beseechingly.

His eyes widened. ‘Now? But your family—’

‘If I go back now, Prince, I’ll get into trouble. Who knows how long I’ll have to wait until I can run away again? If I’m going to get into trouble,’ she argued, ‘I might just as well make it worth my while.’

‘So you just want to get into tons more trouble instead?’

She nodded jerkily. ‘You know why I’m going there,’ she said shortly. ‘You know about—the nightmares.’

‘I do know,’ he admitted. His shoulders sagged and he frowned at the ground. Looking up at Arlene, he met her determined eyes. He sighed.

‘C’mon,’ he said, and began to walk down the slope. When he turned to look at her, Arlene saw the fatigue weighing down on him—it was in his posture, in the way he dragged his feet.

‘Prince,’ she said, just as his eyes rolled into the back of his head.

He then proceeded to slump over in a dead faint.