Tenna's head lurched backwards in surprise just as the necromancer's eyes turned into a milky off-white. "What? What are you--"
Clicking noises filled her hypersensitive ears, dragging her eyes to the source.
C-carapaces? thought Tenna in complete shock.
No, dead carapaces. "Necromancers!" She uttered the word like a curse.
For all her newly acquired speed, Tenna still couldn't get away fast enough. Soon they were crawling up her dagger arm. Feelings of dread and disgust sent chills down her spine, feeling like those blasted carapaces which were currently swarming up her sleeve. "Please, drop the knife..." said the necromancer. "V-violence isn't the answer...Please..."
Like hell she dropped her knife. Tenna jolted up from her position on the ground, fear and disgust squeezing her throat in a choke hold. Her dagger clattering on the dirt beside her, she swiped fruitlessly at her now free arm, trying to get the dead insects off her person.
They were crawling up her chest now, coming from all directions. Up her legs, up her spine, up her neck...they were going to trap her. She couldn't breathe. Up, and up, and up--
why can't she breathe?Something was wrong--so very, very wrong, and the realization crept upon her more startlingly than the carapaces ever could. She couldn't breathe. She was trapped, she was struggling, she...she
couldn't breathe.
"PLEASE!" She begged, trembling with a new sense of urgency that extended beyond her dread for the carapaces. "PLEASE, MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT--"
She was choking. The edges of her vision were turning red, a flipping sensation taking hold of her stomach with a vice-like grip. A loud ringing sounded in her ears. "Aggghhhh," she groaned, clutching her ears tightly.
She fell to her knees and curled up into a ball, the carapaces--almost--completely forgotten. She tried to focus on staying calm, staying...staying
human, but it was no use. The too-familiar feeling of transformation beckoned to her, and again, she felt split in two.
No, don't! she begged internally.
I can't...not again...Yes, please!! hissed her other self.
It's too much, I can't breathe, we can't breathe--
She screamed, and a familiar pain washed over her.
~~~~~
Corpses.She smelled corpses.
Tenna opened her eyes to see bodies of zombie-like carapaces, unmoving and doubly lifeless upon the dirt. Blinking, she shrugged out of a pile of cloth--her clothes!!--and looked around her.
Autumn. It was autumn...yellow and orange leaves fell everywhere around her, looking as dead as the insects before her.
How ironic it is to meet a necromancer during the season of death, she mused, despite the disgust clinging to her relentlessly.
She was a wolf again--the same wolf that killed her friends, her family. The same wolf that she once swore to destroy. The same wolf that she had become.
Her eyes met the necromancer's, and in that moment, hopelessness met dumb shock.
But the moment was brief. Hackles rising, Tenna sank her paws into the ground, growling in fury.