animus vox

The night was thick with terror and blood. Underfoot the corpses of many, some twisted like bizarre phantoms, others meekly succumbed to darkness. Dogmeat piled them aside, the weak and broken -- these Inu would not see daybreak again.

They had quit the van's proximity when more Otoko came, their ululating voices strange to the Inu ears. Dogmeat shied quickly from their coruscating beams of light. In the cover of shuddering night he fled, ushering others behind him.

It was not his place to fathom Their thinking -- but he did not believe this a test. They were open to the fierce cold and exposed, and Dogmeat shuddered to think of the monsuta that haunted the timber. He cast a quizzical gaze behind him towards the distance where woeful cries of those left behind still assuaged the abandoned forest. This was not the manicured, ivory halls of their prison -- it was the untamed and harsh grove of the wild. Ahead he bespied two familiar figures, whose sight flushed warm relief through his tight bosom. "Where are the others?"