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'Keep running' Anya told herself. 'Keep running, keep running, don't look back. Don't you dare look back!'
Her lungs were on fire and her exhausted legs were feeling like lead. Every breath was a ragged gasp that tore at her throat. The pain in her body had long since been dulled with the soul piercing terror of survival.
She risked a glance.
The ravine behind her was empty. No Titans. No sounds. Just the lengthening shadows of the deep ravine as the sun continued to set.
'Maybe... maybe I lost them—'
The ground shook. Time seemed to slow down as she heard footsteps. No, not human ones; Massive, heavy ones, shaking the ground with each impact.
The Titans were coming. Dozens of them, their movements fixed on her. It was like as if her presence was making them faster than they should have been. With each step the distance closed between them.
Walls protect me.
Anya ran faster, her boots nearly slipping from the ground in her panic. The ravine was narrowing ahead, and she could see the open ground beyond, the last strip of fading light on the horizon.
'Just a little longer,' she thought. 'Just a little longer, and they'll stop. They always stop at night. They always—'
THOOM.
The ground shook beneath her feet. She stumbled and crashed to her knees. The impact sent a jolt of pain through her body while her hands scraped against the rough stone.
THOOM. THOOM.
They were closer now. She could feel their footsteps in her very bones vibrating them.
'Get up Anya,' she screamed at herself. 'GET UP!'
A shadow fell over her.
She looked up.
A Titan stood before her, its massive form reached for her.
Anya screamed.
She didn't think. She just acted. Her hand flew to her belt, her fingers closing around the laser gun that the veteran had given her. She raised it, aimed, and fired randomly out of fear.
The blast caught the Titan in its belly and one square in the knee.
The creature legs buckled and fell forward, its massive body slamming into the ravine floor, and the impact sent shockwaves rippling through the earth and sent Anya flying like a ragdoll.
Other titans that were approaching failed to see the obscuring path in their way and ended up tumbling too. In a matter of seconds, there was a mess of limbs and titan body tangled together.
Anya didn't wait to see what happened next. She scrambled to her feet, her heart pounding, and ran for the gap leading to the ravine exit.
She almost made it, not before a hand closed around her ankle. One of the fallen titans had managed to crawl its body towards its retreating meal and clamp its massive hand onto the tiny creature leg.
The female knight fell hard, her chin striking the stone, and her vision exploded in a burst of white-hot pain. Anya swore she tasted blood filling her mouth by the coppery ting on his lips.
She tried to crawl, to pull herself free, but the grip was too strong. Her fingers scraped against the stones, breaking her nails at her desperate struggle.
Slowly, she was being dragged backward.
"No," she sobbed. "No, no, no—LET ME GO!"
Anya kicked at the hand holding her, her heel connecting with something that might have been a wrist or might have been a finger.
The gun. Where was the gun?!
She had dropped it when she fell. It lay a few feet away, gleaming in the fading light, just out of reach.
She lunged for it regardless, her fingers straining to reach for the handle. However; the grip on her ankle tightened. She was yanked backward forcefully again. The gun was getting farther away, disappearing from her sights.
The Titan dragged her closer, opening its mouth to consume her like the several vitims fallen to it.
"Please," she begged, tears streaming down her face. "Please, I don't want to die—I don't want to die—"
The Titan ignored her pleas.
It lifted her off the ground, holding her upside down, her leg clamped in its grip. She was going to die here. In the middle of nowhere. Eaten by monsters that didn't even have the consciousness to recognize her as a person.
The Titan's hand loosened its grip, and she fell. For one terrible moment, she was suspended in midair, falling toward the darkness of the Titan's open mouth.
In the blink of an eye. Anya was gone.
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