I ran. I ran as if the ground below me was crumbling away with each stride I took, collapsing with each breath I hurriedly sucked in. The fallen leaves crunched beneath me, and I cringed at how loud they were, how inconsiderate they were of my situation. Naked trees and fireflies rushed by me as I continued moving forward, never stopping, never taking a curious glance behind me.

The three half-moons gave little light in the encompassing darkness. Enormous, swollen grey clouds crowded the sky and masked the stars. Shambling aimlessly through the thick white fog were the figures of mindless humans. They had been diseased and were now forsaken to stumble upon a desolate purgatory. Their minds had long since fled from their bodies, which slowed  and rotted with time, pushed forward by an insatiable hunger for those still considered ’living’. The only way to truly silence them was to cut off the head, but because there were so many, most of the people just fled the area in fear. I’ll admit, it was a miserable sight to see as all signs of life had escaped the contaminated area. Everywhere the diseased tread, death and decay followed.

I could feel my pulse hammering with the panic in my mind. My breath was short, shallow, and unstable as my nostrils flared sporadically. If I could just stop for five seconds…if I could just rest…

No!

Stopping would be the equivalent of giving up, and ultimately, losing my life. I was positive that they were after my horn.  Unicorn horns were prized for their magical abilities, and above all, the ability to cure a recently diseased person. People also string the horns on necklaces worn around their necks as the horns also bring tremendous fortune to those in its presence. Horn-hunters was the title given to humans dedicated to tracking unicorns and taking their horns. If a unicorn’s horn is cut from their body, the unicorn will die. Sadly, because of the plague that suddenly arose fifty years ago, unicorns were now almost extinct. The last time I’d seen another was twenty years ago. The country of Zair was almost completely inhabitable, and many of its civilians had already abandoned it for one of the other, better surrounding countries. However, the plague had spread to other countries, and with it the demand for unicorn horns. Luckily, the diseased only had an appetite for living humans, so I was ‘invisible’ to their heightened senses.

I myself had been desperately trying to escape the country of Zair for seven years now. Many of the neighboring countries have blockaded the borders with high, impenetrable walls. I made it to these walls once, but was chased back by a group of horn-hunters. I have to leave this wretched land, have to see another unicorn before I die. That’s all I want and ever will want. I was determined to accomplish the goal I had set, and I promised myself that I wouldn’t die before it was completed.

Before I knew it, my hooves had lost the footing beneath them and I was tumbling down a rocky incline. Something sharp lashed against my right back leg and I felt a second of pain before continuing to slide and scrape along the dusty terrain. Everything in my vision was blurred and shaky and had no form, just a whirling, bursting collage of colors.

My ordeal finally ended when my back crashed against the thick base of a tree. The sound of the impact sent the birds nearby flurrying away in surprise. I quickly stood up and ignored the intense throbbing in my back leg. A diseased woman staggered toward me, reacting to the sound of a possible meal. Her hair hung in wiery grey wisps, her skin missing in a few places, showing bone and muscle. She wore the remnants of a blue dress and was barefoot. A horrible wound at the base of her neck festered with flies and maggots, and her dull brown eyes searched tirelessly for the presumed living human that made the loud noise, not thinking at all that something else could’ve produced the sound.

The woman let a shrill moan from what was left of her throat, revealed yellow, rotted teeth, and stepped closer to me. I trembled slightly as she reached out withered hands, fingers missing and broken, and lightly touched my side. I was still as a rock, and watched in pity as she wandered back into the forest to resume a never-ending pursuit to satisfy a never-ending hunger.

I heard the shouting of humans and turned my head to see the hunters skillfully skidding down the slope I had rolled from. Two had already made it to the bottom and my heart pounded in my ears. I took off at a slow gallop, grateful that the injury to my leg didn’t hurt full-score yet. Something long hurtled through the air and buried into my flank. I knew from experience that it was an arrow. But there was something else about it…this one was different. The area around it began to feel hot, so internally hot, and that was when I realized what was different about this arrow- it was tipped with poison.

The area where the arrow had landed felt hot, so hot, as if my flesh were being burned by a fire under my skin. The heat started to course outward everywhere from the initial spot. It didn’t just burn, but it throbbed too, as if a thousand needles were piercing through me.

The shouts of the humans grew louder with each passing second, and my pace was beginning to slow. The pain pulsated throughout my body and I ground my teeth in frustration. They were steadily gaining on me, kept coming, kept following. I couldn’t outrun them. I couldn’t fight them. My mind whirled with so many scenarios, compared all the possibilities of my fate, and then I noticed the forest I was so close to.

I dashed into the cover of the trees, scraped past ferns and branches. The humans chased after me, slapping their horses in urgency for more speed, when the miserable creatures were tired and hungry. More arrows raced past me, barely missing. I leapt over a mossy log and veered right, hoping to catch some of my pursuers by surprise. One horse refused to jump and sent the rider hurtling forward into the trunk of a wide maple. I stopped and breathed deeply, then quickly resumed galloping. I wove through the maze of trees, felt the sweat and blood trickle down my chest, then suddenly stumbled over a root and crashed onto the ground.  

The humans surrounded me before I could stand, and three simultaneously threw a rope around my neck. My hooves slid on the damp ground, rendered me unable to get up. Two more ropes caught onto my legs and tightened. I thrashed against my bonds and screamed to the heavens. I was not going to lose so easily. I was not going to die so soon.

The poison had settled into my bloodstream and seized me whole. I felt as if I were a raging inferno, a fiery beast with a will of steel. I realized that I was now paralyzed and heavily intoxicated. I became limp and the cries died down in my throat. The humans dismounted their horses and cheered.

“You think this knife will do?” a short, round man asked.

A woman replied, “As long as it’s sharp.”

“How should I kill it? Should I cut it’s throat?” asked the same man.

Another man said, “I heard it’s better to cut the horn off while it’s alive. That way there’ll be more magic in it.”

The knife-man spoke again, “Can someone hold it’s head still while I saw off the horn?”

My breaths were ragged as two men stepped right beside me and touched my neck with their cold, cold hands. I shivered and snapped at them, and they just laughed in my face. There had to be someway out of this…there had to be something I could do. The diseased woman from earlier abruptly flashed before me and I knew what to do.

I squeezed my eyes shut and concentrated all my remaining energy into my horn. A bright blue light emanated from the tip and engulfed everything for a brief five seconds before fading away. The people murmured amongst themselves and dismissed my final act as a failed attempt to flee.

One man wrapped his arms around my head and another pressed my neck against the moist earth. The knife-man placed his blade against the base of my horn…and then a scream pierced the silence. A diseased man had tore off a chunk of one of the men’s necks and continued screaming as the dead man fed eagerly on his flesh. Moans and shrieks soon echoed through the woods as more and more diseased shuffled from the shadows and attacked the humans that had chased and hurt me. Some of the people mounted their horses and tried to escape, but the trees and the dark and the panic overwhelmed the horses, and bony, rotted hands reached up and pulled them down, and the horses fled without their riders.

A diseased man wearing rags knelt in front of me and gnawed at the knife-man’s arm. In all the chaos, the three men whose task was to cut off my horn were caught between the trees and the bodies of their companions, ensuring their ruin. The diseased man was no more than a skeleton with some patches of skin, and vines twined around him as if he were part of the forest. His toothless mouth sucked at the insides of the fallen men, and his moan was silent as he had nothing to produce sound. I felt the blood of the humans raining upon me, staining the ground and soaking the small plants and fungi. It was warm and comforting to my frozen body, and the sounds of the diseased ravaging the humans like wolves to deer was almost like a lullaby to my slipping conscious.

I let sleep wash over me like a soft wave rolling through an ocean of carnage sweeping me into a pleasant darkness.