The Day of Thunder

Yukara had experienced, putting it mildly, an exciting day.

Unfortunately, it also was a day that left her utterly spent, so even the pain she was in did not stave off sleep, perhaps due in no small part to the painkillers... Thus the nightmares came with it.

She had slipped back into consciousness in only the vaguest sense of the term, enough to see stone and candle light, to feel pain and confusion, and then the weight of the day and shock had dragged her back into the darkness.

Sadly, it was not to remain a soothing and quiet darkness, as her mental fortitude could best be described as tenuous, and otherworldly invaders would find her mind easily entered indeed, even if perhaps it was not a very pleasant place to be at the moment.

(Fail obviously https://sakkaku.org/r/11344)

Much like the other night, the dream started with the sensation of falling, of being out of control as your body is carried in one direction by forces over which you have no control. But this fall felt different somehow. After a few moments of down, there came a brief sensation of traveling up, before falling down again in a soft, consistent undulation. Almost like water...

Like an ocean...

An ocean that Yukara quickly sank into as soon as the idea had crossed into her mind. Around her was only darkness, but that darkness crashed and pushed around her, pressed up against her face and mouth, making it hard to breathe.

And through it all, despite the vague floating sensation that came with the water, Yukara could feel herself sinking.

The last dream, being underwater had allowed itself to become forgotten.

This time, it did not, with the rushing water, the pull and push... the feeling of losing control.

Yukara tried to flail, to swim up, but she could not figure out where... up was.

Panic gripped at her chest, air becoming sparse as she struggled - her arms didn't move right... she couldn't even feel them... why not? Why couldn't she feel it?

Distraction was only temporary, as the current flipped her over and shoved her another direction again.

Opening her mouth to scream, she felt no relief, only the strangling water and burning... yet there was no relief of drowning. No end to it, only a further constriction and pressure in darkness.

Was this death? Hell? Her memories were a jumble now, her thoughts unable to come together into a cohesive pattern, leaving only scattering emotions. Claustrophobia. Fear. Memories of a rushing river drowning out her thoughts, her reasonable spirit that told her this was only a dream... silenced by the roar of white water.

---

Absolute failure: https://sakkaku.org/r/11356

When sensation came back to Yukara, it arrived in the form of pain, sharp and hot, lancing into every joint and limb. The violence of the ocean seemed to intensify, going beyond a simple uncaring wave to an outright aggressive assault against her person, a foreign entity that took offense to her very existence.

Other things began to swim into clarity over time as the pain forced her weary mind into sharpened focus. A wracking cough ripped through her as her body tried desperately to get some air, and somehow found it? But something still felt off. The "water" that had left her mouth felt warm and weirdly solid, and what air she could find to fill her lungs felt humid and stagnant, with a certain musky smell laced through it.

Water was soft, smooth, uncaring perhaps, but delicate to touch. This ocean was coarse, rough and abrasive against Yukara's skin. Something was very wrong, but there was no light to see, only the vagaries of sensation coming from the press of darkness around her.

And then a stabbing pain shot through her arm, white-hot and intense, as if a core of ice had formed around the limb as it dragged her unceremoniously to the surface. The heat and claustrophobia of the dark ocean gave way to dry, chilly air, the pain in her arm waning as she felt herself flung high into the air, tumbling free and out of control.

It was only when her tumbling had slowed and she was falling freely that her sight became clear. Beneath her was not water, not the vast emptiness of the ocean, but a sprawl of dark, matted fur.

Wolves.

Beneath Yukara there were wolves as far as the eye could see, pressed together so tightly there was little space for them to move, yet move they did, rippling and rolling the same as any body of water might in the midst of a storm. And in the air around her, the roar of the waters had changed into something more feral, more animalistic, a wealth of fangs and claws roaring out in unison as she rapidly fell back towards them.

The agony was almost welcome, proof she was not dead... but then it intensified and she changed her mind again, immediately.

Maybe death would be a mercy.

Yet it was not until she was flung clear, twisting in the air to stare in mute astonishment at the oncoming wall of fangs, that she realized what was happening now. The beasts had come to join her river in her nightly torment, the bandits she had slain returning to get their revenge for their leader, their alpha bitch.

There would be no relief for Yukara, no comfort at journeys end.

She laughed with despair, the sound muffled by the blood that seemed to fill her mouth, sending waves of miserable aching through her body, and could do nothing but fall into the waiting fangs of her enemies.


----

Peace was never an option.

Time seemed to move in slow motion as Yukara fell towards the rising wave of wolves, the white peak of the rolling crest comprised of rabid, frothing mouths. Though each wolf seemed eager to leap from the roiling mass, they seemed constrained by the boundaries of the ocean, beholden to a set of rules that made little sense to the rational mind.

A howl of triumph erupted as the first of the wolves clamped its jaws around Yukara's arm, dragging her back into the press of canid bodies as fangs and claws found purchase once again in her flesh. Pain flared into existence once more as an especially powerful set of jaws clamped down at her shoulder, separating and popping the joint out of place as countless teeth pulled her in opposite directions. Somewhere amid the bleary haze the arm came free, tumbling away into the ocean, no longer truly a part of what was once Yukara.

But the pain did not subside. Even severed as it was, now so far away as to be barely visible, the pain of tooth and claw etched into flesh and bone, the limb far removed while the pain remained closer than ever.

And so on went the night, as Yukara found herself rent asunder one piece at a time, scattered like so many scraps of meat to the hungering wolves, unable to piece herself back together, yet never freed from the pain brought down upon her.