Fire within

It is one of the corrupted treants.

Closer and closer it comes to the helpless girl and Sygnya screams again, and again, calling out her name.

From where she is, too far, near the road, Laandra watches impotently the scene, almost pinned to the ground by the sudden wave of despair.

How can she draw the creature away from her child?

Her mind races, yet she feels she cannot think.It's like being trapped, at night, in an endless nightmare, except for the fact that this is real...awfully so, and the beast is only movements away from killing Sygnya.

Panic.Fear. Agony.

The treant tramples down at the young body and Sygnya barely manages to move a little, so as to avoid the blow.

She yells out again.

Laandra stumbles forward and falls on her knees, her ankle trapped by the strange angle of a root.

And she screams herself, holding out her hand, in a desperate gesture to reach the child.

The treant suddenly disappears, engulfed in a ball of flames, that consumes him in the smallest fraction of a second. The breeze blows the ashes back at her, as Laandra takes her head in her hands, with a writhing sound of pain and slides into unconsciousness.