Run

The sun was taking far too long to rise.

Lee held his position, his legs cramping almost unbearably as he held his position and kept himself in place and hidden away.

He needed to conceal his presence as much as he possibly could, but it was getting increasingly harder and harder to do so as the swarm of red lights, looking as if they were the corrupted spirits and the corpse of the monster back in the forbidden forest of his village, came closer and closer to Lee, encroaching further and further into the territory that he had sequestered himself away within for the one, singular goal of safety.

The decision was now upon him.

Should he run, alerting his location to the lights, or should he continue to stay and beg for his life?

But when had the Gods ever accepted his pleas?

When had they ever listened to them when he had set up offerings and prayed within the silence of the dark nights, plagued by the storms of his mother's temper tantrums, when she raged and brought down destruction on the furniture of their house, ripping apart the fabrics that they slept on, wore, and used to keep themselves warm, when she spread about the fires used for cooking and sustenance, and when she screamed like a banshee, deep into the night, constantly yelling, over and over again without reprieve or the opportunity to take in more breath - letting Lee have himself a single break for clarity or something, anything, to disrupt the tirade of hate and anger that she leveraged against him, and solely him - as she screamed about each and every one of Lee's misgivings and failures, before topping off her rampage with a statement on how Lee wanted her to look bad, how he wanted her to act like this, making a fool of herself to all the neighbours that were hearing her screams, and shouts, and yells, and how he wanted her to be ridiculed and mocked in public for being a bad mother when all Lee really wanted for her was to stop, to stop, and to stop.

The Gods had never heard his prayers then, and they would have no reason to now.

Lee launched himself out of the coiled stance that he had held himself in, the world flashing white then black for a split second as the blood of his limbs began flowing again, the dizzying sensation almost enough to have him almost fall for a moment, dropping all the water skin bags that he was carrying in his arms.

Almost immediately, Lee could feel the red lights hone in on his placement and path, seeing them from the corner of his eyes eagerly following him as he rushed forward in an ever evolving scramble to get ahead, to move ahead, to just keep on going, further and further, running as fast as most possibly could on his shaking legs and on the air of his panting lungs.

He really should have expected what came upon him next.