"Ah... Ugh!"
Gravity wanted to crush her mercilessly. Every cell in her body acquired a massive weight that threatened to make her collapse into the ground, and taking a couple more steps towards the motionless bunny required a combined effort of energy that she almost didn't have anymore.
"What the hell is happening to me?" the girl complained. "First my memory, then this world with spiny, talking rabbits, and now this?"
She had lost all physical resistance. Without a doubt, running could not cause that in a human being more than tiredness and a heart attack in the worst case...
No, that was something else. Something had happened to bring her to such an extreme of fatigue, and there was no doubt that it had to do with that rabbit, a couple of meters ahead, lifeless.
Very slowly, she closed the distance. As her body regained strength, the sunset became more than evident in that sea of trees, dyeing the skies orange. And, little by little, gently but relentlessly... Darkness was coming, and Tristessa could not stay adrift in a place like this.
"If there are rabbits in this forest... There must also be predators," she thought, with emptiness in her stomach. It was the balance of nature in its purest form, just as she had learned in school, and if she did not hurry, she ran the risk of experiencing it firsthand. "The little rabbit…"
When she reached the little animal, she intended to bend down to touch it but something inside her prevented her from doing so. A feeling of a bad omen.
"If I touch it… Even with my toes…" She didn't dare, she couldn't. She could verify that the animal was dead just by seeing that it wasn't breathing. And yet, she couldn't shake off that heavy feeling. "How did it die so suddenly?"
That question had burned into her mind. Did life and death work differently in this world? Before, she had thought that the rabbit had been sleeping or unconscious, but now, seeing it there, motionless and unresponsive… Tristessa wasn't sure, and she had no evidence to support her terrifying theory, but she couldn't ignore the option that this rabbit had been dead from the very beginning.
"…anyone?"
"Hello…?"
"…over there…"
"…son…"
Various voices, of men and women, began to be heard in the bushes ahead. Open-mouthed, Tristessa saw many of those spiny rabbits coming out of the thicket.
"Others?" she whispered, and consequently those seven rabbits repeated that same word, asynchronously and so disturbingly that the girl felt shivers run down her spine. "You repeat what you hear… So, you heard people!"
The rabbits stayed in place, repeating that word over and over again, waiting until Tristessa was ready to walk towards them. It was then that they went in a herd in the same and unknown direction, towards the darkness between the trees with the most abundant leaves.
"Where are you going?" she asked them. Of course, there was no answer, but some rabbits stopped and waited for her, as if asking her to quicken her pace, making her unable to hide a hopeful smile. "Are you…leading me?"
"Leading… Leading… Leading…"
It was early to declare victory, but at last, Tristessa was firmly optimistic in her present situation. Those rabbits had undoubtedly heard other people speak, and the way they were guiding her, there was reason to have faith that their destination was going to be with the original transmitters of the words that those animals had learned.
Time passed and Tristessa was so attached to that hope that she tried to ignore the imminent fall of night over the forest. The trees seemed endless, the rain of red leaves did not stop, and now the bushes that the rabbits were forcing her to cross hurt her with thorny plants. If it weren't for the strong luminescence offered by the Twin Moons, there would be no way for Tristessa to see beyond her own outstretched hand.
"Almost there, huh? Almost there, yes… Almost there," she said under her breath, laughing as she passed for the umpteenth time through a bush that caused several cuts on her legs and thighs. "I'm going to… huh?"
Her foot kicked something that was hidden among the endless leaves. Round and not very heavy, it rolled out of the woods, almost reaching the small horde of rabbits in the middle of what seemed like a clearing. Tristessa walked towards it and had it at her feet, with the light of the Moons shining between the tongues of shadows that abounded in the forest.
It was a human skull.
And around it, bones. Many bones, hundreds of bones. A cemetery without tombstones, full of human remains and those of other animals; there were so many bones that they even managed to match the volume of leaves that had been falling.
Tristessa was left open-mouthed, looking at that mortuary landscape with wide, bloodshot eyes that seemed to want to come out of their sockets. Her hands were shaking like crazy, her legs too, and the fear that she had held back for the last hour regained its place of predominance. She saw the rabbits that had led her there mixed with dozens of other rabbits, getting lost among leaves, bones and hundreds of mixed words.
Lost voices of all those who inhabited that cemetery; voices of victims of that vile trap; voices that now belonged to those rabbits, giving them a connotation devoid of emotion but that, in Tristessa's ears, also expressed mockery. It was as if they were laughing at her, insulting her for having been so naive to have followed them to that place.
And in the center of the clearing, were a pack of canine creatures, new to the girl's terrified eyes. Giant, hairy monsters, with mouths full of sharp teeth, eyes that shone menacingly in the dark, four legs, and two tails full of fur.
"W-wolves…" Tristessa managed to articulate, shaking from head to toes.
More than wolves, these monsters must have been the equivalent of the legendary Fenrir of her world: there simply was no wolf as big as a car, or a baby elephant. Three of these monsters stood up upon noticing Tristessa's presence, cruelly betrayed by the rabbits that approached and passed between their giant paws with sharp nails. They growled, hungry and eager to provide dinner for the pack.
It was simply worthy of admiration, the way in which she had been deceived. A second before turning around and starting to run for her life, Tristessa remembered that concept that explained everything: why those bunnies had brought her there, and why they lived so comfortably among those natural predators, without fear of being devoured.
Symbiotic relationship. Animals that cooperated with each other so that one or both could benefit from working together. In this case, the rabbits guided fresh food to the wolves, facilitating the hunt and ensuring the continuity of their species by not being hunted.
That cooperation had just doomed Tristessa.
"SHIT! FUCKING SHIT!" the girl screamed, running desperately through that labyrinth of ancient titans and a perpetual rain of red leaves falling in the darkness. "HELP!"
Everything was going against her: the panic caused by the howling of the wolves behind her, the bushes dampening her advance, and the roots and rocks hidden in the bed of leaves hitting her toes. The trees were endless and there was nothing that could guide her to a safe place, in so much darkness.
"PLEASE, HELP!" Her screams echoed in the shadows, but no one answered. "HELP…!"
From one second to the next, Tristessa felt a violent jolt on her back, followed by a deep burning pain in her shoulder. The impact made her fall rolling on the ground, although the impact was cushioned by the bed of leaves. Without understanding what had happened, the girl with hair as black as that night looked up, and with the help of the moonlight that filtered through the roof of branches dozens of meters above, she saw and heard:
"Grrr…"
One of the giant wolves had caught up with her and had successfully hunted her: in its mouth, with sharp teeth firmly embedded in it, it held Tristessa's left arm, torn cleanly from the shoulder joint. And the former owner of that arm, in a fraction of a second, understood what had happened.
Her mind and soul understood it, penalizing her with a punishment for her failed attempt to escape: an eternity of torment.
"Aghh…aaaaAGGAGGHHHHHHH," the scream Tristessa tried to get out of her throat was drowned by the indescribable pain that flowed into her head like a raging river made of fire, as if hot embers had been poured inside her skull.
Her wide eyes found what was left of her collarbone, shattered by the wolf's bite, and a grotesque spectacle of veins, flesh and skin torn to pieces that spit blood with each frantic beat of her heart. Writhing on the ground was of no use; kicking and tearing her throat out by screaming neither; nothing could stop her agony. She felt her crotch wet and hot, and a constant whistling in her ears that she could hear above her own screams.
Nearby, the wolf chewed on his prize, vilely looking with those malicious red, evil eyes at the girl writhing in pain on the ground. Warm saliva dripped from his hairy mouth and blood-stained teeth, while the severed veins and torn muscles at the end of her lost arm caused fresh blood to drip out.
"Kill me."
That wasn't her voice inside her head, but it said what she could only think about in order to stop feeling that pain. It was unbearable, squeezing the stump full of splintered bone and warm muscles with her remaining hand was of no use. She wasn't dying, she wasn't, not even close to losing consciousness. Maybe it was the suffering that kept her from fainting, condemning her to suffer being devoured alive until the end.
Inevitably, the other wolves joined the feast, pouncing on Tristessa with ravenous hunger. She managed to see a shadow fall upon her and then dozens of teeth against her throat, extinguishing her voice forever as her arteries and larynx were pierced.
The noise of the baying of those dark-bound hounds and the sounds that followed were truly chilling. Her body became a fountain of blood; pieces of clothing, skin and flesh flew in all directions; the wolves had torn through her easily breakable ribs and were tearing her organs out of place one by one. The air was instantly filled with a potent smell, somewhere between salty and septic, from the combination of fresh blood with the contents of her burst intestines and the acid from her stomach, which had been torn into several pieces.
Her mouth filled with blood, her eyes too, and each orifice also became an escape route from the desperate pumping of a heart that refused to give up. She could no longer feel pain, her threshold had been far exceeded, and yet she did not die. Not even when another wolf joined the one chewing her windpipe and spine, sinking its teeth into her face and tearing off her right eye and nose in a single bite.
"…Killme…"
With her vision so suddenly violated, dark and tinted red, Tristessa had a very brief revelation: an unlocked memory, of a hallway plunged in shadows, dimly lit by candles scattered across the floor, stuck to the smooth walls; a long red carpet that led to the end of the hallway, where a black door stood imposingly.
"…Kill…me…"
The door swung wide open, revealing a darkness so deep, so dense, that not even the candlelight of the hallway could penetrate inside.
"…Mom…?"
That was her voice, at last. Thinking of the unknown, what was inside that Dark Room, Tristessa ignored when the giant wolf managed to break the upper part of her spine and separate her head with an unrecognizable face from her body. It was there that the little visual capacity that the girl had left began to fade rapidly. Her mind also stopped working, abandoning all attempt at reasoning and survival instinct.
"..."
Dying was a strange experience. There was no pain anymore, not even the slightest sound could be heard, and consciousness was blurred into infinity. Fear lingered, unfortunately, like a cancer, parasitizing her shattered soul and feeding itself permanently.
The Darkness she had seen inside that room rose like a colossal shade, embracing her from all directions; a dense, heavy, cold fog. A miasma of doom.
Tristessa felt the precise moment in which her existence was an infinitesimal second of frozen time away from being erased, the pieces of her soul ready to fade into nothingness, fall into the void and get lost in its turbulent depths.
And she waited. She waited an eternity, or what the blink of an eye takes, it was difficult to interpret.
Was that really what dying felt? Heavy, dense darkness, so much so that it seemed like it could touched it with the hand?
"…"
No.
No, that Darkness was something else, something more ancient and incomprehensible. It was Discord, breaking the Balance between Life and Death; capable of banishing Tristessa from that fundamental equilibrium, suffocating her in its cold and horrifying embrace; the girl's soul was torn to pieces, trapped, with nowhere to escape.
"…still here, Tristessa?"
Her mother's voice.
That was her mother's voice, so arrogant that the girl, even suffocating in the embrace of the shadows, remembered:
Her mother's name was…was…
"…Se…le…ne…"
The embrace of the darkness felt colder, terrifying. Her shattered soul cried.
"…Selene…"
That was it, her name sounded in the darkest void.
And it catalyzed the progress of infinity, forcing the Darkness, in its relentless Discord, to release Tristessa.