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Oh.

Oh Dear God.

Reyin swung from the talon, not really able to do much other than attempt to hold on as hard as he could. His eyes were downcast towards the canopy below him, and he flinched.

"Damn...it."

Reyin held tight for as long as he could, but once he hit the trees, there wasn't much he could do. He bounced off a branch, lost his grip, and started a long fall all the way down.

"OOF! AH! GGHK! AH! OOF!"

Thirty feet, all the way to the ground.

Reyin slammed into the tree branch, but hung on out of the need for self preservation. There was a sigh of relief before he lost his grip and dropped the rest of the way to the earth. It wasn't much of a fall, so he didn't take any additional damage.

"Eesh."

Reyin stood up, checked his supplies, and sighed. Seemed he lost his duffle bag back in the roost of the Wyvern, which meant all Reyin had working for him was his sword and his hunting knife.

Ahh well, he'd been in worse situations before.

Maybe.

Assuming the wyvern didn't return to finish off its snack, Reyin would start running in what he assumed was North.

Because sitting around and waiting for more creepy crawleys wasn't high on his priority list.

The sound of the mysterious object being crushed caused Reyin to freeze in mid-stride, his head bowed downward, eyes focused on the path ahead.

"Son of a-"

KSSSSSSSSH

The smoke was blinding, it burned his nostrils, and it made breathing a fairly unpleasant activity. He dropped to a knee, coughing and covering his mouth with his left arm while his right hand moved to draw his sword once again.

Leaves rustling, the sound of footsteps, all sorts of noises alerted Reyin to a presence.

He kept his head down, eyes focused on the single patch of ground beneath him. He had to focus on trusting his ears, or risk crapping his pants when something appeared not more than two inches in front of his face.

That doesn't sound good.

Reyin took a deep breath, then lifted his head up as soon as the growl stopped. A second or so of silence, then...

"AHH!"

Reyin fell backwards as soon as a pair of angry a** jaws descended upon his arm, clamping down on the thing like a vice as Reyin slammed shoulder first into the ground. With his left arm temporarily incapacitated by the goddamn demon wolf, Reyin was forced to roll onto his right side and attempt to unfasten the hunting knife from his belt. It was hard work, what with the wolf on top of him and all.

Also there was pain.

Lots and lots of pain.

"Rrgh!"

Reyin was gritting his teeth now, biting through the pain as he finally freed his knife from the sheathe. The weapon spun around in his left hand, if only so Reyin could get the point to face towards the wolf. Then, he'd stab towards the wolf's vital areas. Head, face, chest, anything that looked particularly juicy and vulnerable really. Reyin was typically pretty friendly towards forest animals, seeing as how his great grandfather was particularly talented at dealing with all sorts of creatures.

Unfortunately, Reyin hadn't really learned how to calm down or speak to animals. Still, most animals understood the need for survival, and a few well-placed jabs with the knife would have been able to get the creature to back off.

The red eyes were different, though. They burned with hatred and malice instead of hunger. This creature was trying to kill him for the hell of it.

So Reyin would return lethal force in kind.

Reyin pulled himself up to his feet, obviously nursing his right arm as he held his knife in his left hand at the ready. He was spinning in circles, eyes narrowed and vision focused upon the wolf that was pacing around him.

Reyin wasn't an idiot, though, and he was practically waiting for another wolf to come bounding out of the smoke behind him. The things were pack hunters, after all. It'd be pretty foolish of him to not be expecting more than one.

That didn't really mean his situation had improved at all. His right arm felt like it was on fire, and he was losing a lot of blood.

He needed to deal with the wolf and anything else quickly, then set about tending to his wounds.

His right arm, bleeding as it was, started snaking upwards to grab at the hilt of his sword.

Reyin flinched at the sound of the tree canopy shaking, and he shot his eyes upward to inspect the sound. Unfortunately, this was also when the wolf lunged forward.

"Tch!"

Reyin stepped back, pivoted on his left foot, and turned away from the wolf as it lunged past. His reaction was two-fold. As the wolf shot past Reyin unsheathed his sword and then stabbed the point straight down into some sort of meaty section of the wolf's body. The weapon was sharp, certainly, but even it couldn't cut through bone without a solid swing backing it. And with the point of Reyin's weapon entering first, well...unless the wolf was traveling pretty fast it would find it had a nice large hole in its back before the sword ran up against one of the wolf's rear legs, stopping its forward momentum entirely.

Reyin fell forward from the sudden pull, unable to support the wolf's momentum with a badly wounded arm, but hopefully the wolf would be stationary long enough for Reyin to get a few good head-centric stabs in with his hunting knife.

Once the thing stopped moving, Reyin took a moment to catch his breath before standing up, panting. He kicked the wolf over onto its side to make sure it was good and dead, and then dropped to his knees, his bladed weapons falling to the wayside as he tore off his shirt.

Using the hunting knife and his good arm, Reyin tied off what was essentially a long bandage and started dressing his wound. Things would have been a lot better if he still had his duffle bag, but that was back off in the forest somewhere, so improvising would have to do. The white t-shirt immediately flushed red from the wound on his right arm, but all things considered Reyin probably could have been in a worse situation.

Biting down on a corner of the shirt, Reyin tied off the makeshift bandage and took a deep breath through clenched teeth as a surge of pain shot through his arm in protest to the pressure.

"Alright."

Flexing his arm to make sure he could still use it, Reyin finally nodded his head in approval and sheathed both the sword and hunting knife.

Now, to many fangirls delight, the blonde swordsman was shirtless, sweaty, and pretty dirty after rolling around in the dirt with a demonic wolf. Speaking of which...

Reyin looked down at the wolf one last time.

"Sure hope you're not a werewolf."

And then went along his merry way.