Smokeheads

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Blood roared in his ears and his heart thudded as he scrambled across the ice.

Behind him, thousands of heavy shapes filled the night sky and covered the frozen loch, panicked birds creating a mayhem of flapping and crying. From somewhere amongst them a flare sent fingers of violet light searching across the land. He ran on, desperate to escape the nightmare chasing him.

He looked ahead for his friends, but there wasn’t enough light to make anything out. He struggled to breathe as panic forced him onwards, his legs aching and head pounding.

There was a low, heavy creak and the ice split up ahead, slivers of black reaching towards his feet. The ice gave way under him and he plunged into freezing water, the breath hammered out of his body.

He grabbed and scratched at broken shards of ice as he went down, the shock of the cold tensing his muscles and sending spasms through him. His head went under and his face burned.

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