teradoration:

You listen to the screams that echo all around you, feeling
sick. You can barely breathe, a thick fog making you choke on the air as you
desperately try to inhale, your skin sticky with sweat and blood that feels
like hot tar, burning you.

Where are you?

You can’t see past the smoke, the ground hard and gravelly
beneath your knees, but the noises are enough to keep you rooted to the spot.
Agonised cries that trail off into gurgles, pleas for help that go unanswered.

This can’t be real. You must be dreaming. You pinch your arm
hard in the hope that you’ll wake up, but all that seems to happen is that everything
becomes more vivid, the disgusting acid taste in your mouth getting stronger.

Your stomach sinks as you hear something being dragged
towards you, slow scrapes that seem to vibrate along the ground. All the bones
in your body seem to rattle with it, but you realise you’re just trembling as
you try to move, none of your muscles cooperating as the smoke parts.

An elongated skull-like face peers down at you, eyes burning
with an otherworldly fire. Great obsidian wings protrude from broad shoulders,
extending slightly, smoke billowing around them. You can see dark shapes now
through the mist, hunting and pouncing and maiming anything that crosses their
path.

It doesn’t matter. Suddenly you find that your legs have
strength. You dig your heels into the ground and push up with all your might
and run as fast as you can.

Right into the arms of the figure before you.

“Oh god,” you sob, taking in deep, shuddering
breaths of the now-clear air. “I thought you were… I didn’t
think….”

“I’ve got you,” the figure says reassuringly,
holding you tight. “Nothing can hurt you now. I’m here. I will take
you home.”

You don’t even bother to look back, burying your face in that firm shoulder as you are lifted right up, strong wings snapping right out and making a soft ‘swoosh’ as you leave the ground
and that hell-world behind.

You’re safe now.