Dragoncrest Cliffs I - declare - BANKRUPTCY!

You're much too tiny to be fighting

bears,

darling!

Sudden darkness. A muffled, meaty thunk. Pain exploding across her face.

you're much too tiny to be fighting bears,

darling!

Darkness that subsided on one side but not the other;

The pain not at all.

It rippled through her body in waves, pulsing like a heartbeat, lingering in the wounds the brute had scored across her body.

Tiny tongues of flames upon her face.

Oh, her head.

Lilitu lifted it, then let it fall—slowly, carefully; it felt like her brains were free and loose, sloshing around her skull.

She was alive. She thought.

The world was half night. She blinked, and found she could not move her left eye altogether. Squinted, blinked again. The tears came, cascaded down her right cheek.

She began to moan, a ghoulish, mourning sound, a frightened girl in a sea salt cave.