"Look, only one of us is gonna leave this place alive and in case you hadn't noticed - I'm already dead." she hissed, as if I'd somehow missed that she was currently carrying her own head as she drifted beside me. I don't think I'd ever seen her so close to the ground before, not even when she pretended to sleep.
Whatever had been chasing us down was now close enough to frighten her and I should have been more afraid but I was just tired of it all at that point. It's hard to say what annoyed her more - my sleep-deprived apathy or well-rested optimism. Honestly sometimes I think she just despised me for outliving her.
As we peered around the corner of the old stone hut we'd been hiding inside for the past few days, I noticed the horizon shifting. Breathing. It was so damned close I could practically count every eyelash and stray scrap of flesh caught between its jagged teeth as it rose from its crouched position and began to survey the area.
We retreated back behind the hut, silently praying to every deity we knew that it wouldn't catch my scent on the wind or hear her angrily muttering to herself. It's not like she had anything to fear - she'd already died once. She just wanted me alive long enough to tell everyone else how bravely and heroically she'd been in her final moments.
Given that she'd died to save my own skin I'd say I had good reason to lie and call her a hero when the reality was that she gave up and sat in the middle of a clearing waiting for the end. The creature hunting us wasn't her killer but from the way she reacted, it would be worse than spidery-things that hid in the canopy and spun the thinnest strands of silk to decapitate their prey.
This was far larger, its head was probably the size of my torso, if not bigger. Damned thing was too well camouflaged most of the time and what little time it spent moving was coincidentally the time we spent running and trying to out-hide it. Having a ghost on my side definitely helped... would have helped more if she wasn't such a coward most of the time but she made a good enough spy that I couldn't complain too much.
If only she'd stop whispering to herself, that's probably been helping it track us down.
Still, she's on my side and has adequate reason to see me live through this.
I only hope we reach the next town before it reaches us.
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