Fox's Glade Story; three,

His shout fell on ears both attentive and deaf. Shell-shocked eyes could not depart from the grizzly scene, watching, helpless, as the dark beast seized and ripped. The face, torn from the fine lines of where bone and flesh should have met. Chewed down. Eaten.

He would not be able to place the moments that happened next. The cannibal moved towards him, barreled against him - and Merrit, simply let the blindness consume him. The world narrowed to that pinprick focus, bright, glaring, and dreadful. He saw everything and nothing at once; the forest grew brilliant, vibrant. The colours, unlike any he'd seen. His focus, sharp. His mind, anywhere but with him.

Merrit dropped and plunged upward as the cannibal soared into the airspace he once had been.

Clamped his jaws, strong and rigid, around the wiry neck -

and pulled.