Blackfeather Woods hanging on in quiet desperation is the english way

Set in Spiderlings' Glen. For the quest "Be Thou My Vision"

She was dying.

Her belly was split down the middle, like a gutted fish. Blood and entrails spilled slowly, blooming across the cold ground of the clearing. So hot--the tang of her innards seared her nostrils. She was still breathing, for now, but barely, shallow inhalations that barely provided her the energy she needed to survive. To live.

She was dying.

And then she blinked, and her wound now oozed sludge, black mud, like in the swamp. Worms and spiders followed the slow-moving fluid, skittering, inching slowly. . . Her bicolored gaze watched them, pupils shrank to nothing in her poppy haze. She felt no pain, only the emptiness of a woman rotting from the inside out.

Her fur came off in clumps. The exposed skin began to decay before her eyes.

"Don't you know that this is your destiny?"

---

The girl of pestilence woke in the middle of the glen, eyes popping open suddenly, like a corpse come back to life.

Well.

Maybe she had.

How he had stumbled upon her was a mystery but there was no denying the odd popping of her eyes like she had come back to life from some endless slumber. It made his heart beat furiously in his chest and he approached her closer. Hey... He whispered softly. You need me to get you something? There was a rare tone of genuine concern in his voice for the deformed girl. He was kind of freaked out by the way she had woke up, all bug eyed and such.

A soft frown dug into his features but it was out of concern and lacking disappointment.

She stared at Kalganov for a long time, not moving, not registering his presence nor comprehending who he was. Then the horror of her dream faded, and she came to life once more, sitting up, licking dry lips. No. . . she said quietly, shaking her head an infinitesimal degree. No, I'm fine.

Maegi stretched, wiry muscles rippling, letting loose a jaw-cracking yawn before turning to Kalganov once more. Peryite came again to me in my dreams, she said, as if discussing what to watch on television. The god of pestilence, the one I'm named for. I-- It suddenly seemed sacrilege, to tell the other what she had seen, what she had been told. Was it? Was the knowledge for her, and her alone?

She felt trapped in this knowledge, though, completely and utterly alone. If this was truly her destiny, there was no way she would escape it. What more could Peryite do to punish her for an instance of loose lips?

Apparently, I'm going to rot from the inside and die, eventually, Maegi continued, laughing--though the sound came hollow and cold from her maw.