For the Blood Is the Life

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The bushes parted and a young girl stepped cautiously into the clearing and peered about alertly, searching with every sense for danger. These, the Yuthog Woods, were reputedly the haunt of the most terrible predators—ghouls being the least dreaded.

The girl was young, no more than sixteen, and ill-equipped for this savage wilderness. She was tall for her age, and slim, with long coltish legs and strong arms, well-muscled as those of a boy. But she was no boy, not with those ripe, firm, pointed breasts and warmly curved hips and thighs. Her eyes were large, tip-tilted, green as emeralds between their thick fringe of sooty lashes; her mouth full, soft, lush and sweet, her face heart-shaped, with a small snub nose sprinkled with toast-brown freckles, her long hair crimson as sunset flames.

She was as naked as a babe, save for the soft leather buskins which shod her small feet. And her only weapon was a long, leaf-shaped dagger which she clenched in one fist. It was made from an alloy of silver wedded with steel, and etched along its length were strong protective runes—strange and alien sigils, cut into the curious metal by needles of adamant dipped in the slobber of Gorgons.

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