Chapter 3

     Blaiz could hear the heart beat next to her. She wasn't exactly sure how long she had been listening to it. Her mind was resting again; she knew that it would eventually take to another dream world. Blaiz sat there with her strange thoughts. 'What am I doing? Is this what death feels like?' she wondered. She tried to move her eye lids and her legs, but they refused to respond to her brain's commands. She suddenly found herself in another dream.

     Blaiz glanced at her new surroundings. It was the same field that she had been in for however long. She wandered in a random direction, not caring where she went. The sun was shining high above her and the grass provided the perfect cover for her. It all seemed so real but deep in Blaiz's subconceinsce, she knew that it wasn't. She wandered in one direction until she finally found the forest. One she entered it; the world around her became dark. She looked up at the trees that towered above her and sighed. A familiar scent filled her nose. She smelled the air again. 'Rabbit,' she concluded and felt her mouth begin to water. Blaiz dug her nose into the ground and tracked the scent. After a few minutes of tracking, the rabbit's scent crossed with another scent, a scent that Blaiz found displeasureful. She backed away and snarled. Whatever it was, it had already tracked the rabbit and probably hunted it.

     Blaiz sighed and continued on her way. A lot of the forest was familiar to her but some of it wasn't. Blaiz had spent many hours exploring this strange forest, when her brain got tired from the dream it would turn the world black and Blaiz would it in darkness until the dream world came back. When Blaiz stumbled onto a small clearing that hadn't seen before, she began to investigate. Most of the scents were familiar. Blaiz was about to leave when she caught the scent of a wolf. 'Wolf? Could it be?' Blaiz thought astonished. She sniffed the wolf scent more intently 'It is." Blaiz threw her head up and wagged her tail excitedly. She put her nose to the ground and began to track the scent.

    She had followed the trail all day when her vision suddenly got blurry. Blaiz stood straight up 'No! I'm running out of time!' she thought franticly. Blaiz picked up the pace. She knew that was deep into the forest and getting back to this point would take all the energy out of her brain again. She detected that the wolf scent had gotten stronger. Blaiz pin pointed the scent and started to follow it. She followed the scent into a clearing, when she looked up, her hackles rose. The clearing was stained with blood and the carcasses of a mother wolf and her pups lay at the entrance of their den. 'How could this be?' she thought astonished. She took a closer look at the bodies and found that their throats have been ripped out. She was sniffing the bodies of one of the pups when she detected a faint scent mixed in with the blood. It was the scent that she had found earlier when she was tracking the rabbit, but this scent was very much older than the when she smelled it that day.

     'I have to go warn the pack!' she decided. Blaiz took off at top speed deeper into the forest, her energy was endless. She suddenly heard a howl coming from up ahead and picked up speed. Blaiz soon found herself in a clearing; she was only a few feet behind the pack. The pack suddenly stopped dead in its tracks forcing Blaiz to stop with them. She opened her mouth to speak but no sound came from her lips. The wolf pack wasn't even paying attention to her anyway; they were all focused on something that lay ahead. Blaiz looked past them. The horrid scent that she had found on the rabbit trail and on the wolf families bodies filled her nostrils making her gag. The alpha of the pack stepped forward and snarled at a dark, shadowy figure. Blaiz soon realized that that was where the scent was coming from. The alpha said something to it but Blaiz couldn't hear him. The dark figure laughed and leapt on top of the alpha and killed him right then and there. The rest of the pack stood there, mortified that their alpha had been killed just like that. The dark figure turned to the pack and roared. The pack turned and ran past Blaiz and back into the woods.

     Blaiz was frozen in fear. The dark figure took slow steps towards Blaiz. She could sense that he was enjoying every second that Blaiz stood there looking like a fool. 'Please don't hurt me,' Blaiz thought to the dark figure. It only laughed and picked up the pace. It was soon standing over her. Blaiz coward to the ground 'Please, don't kill me,' she pleaded. The dark figure laughed and raised its paw. Blaiz shut her eyes and waited.

     Lub-dub

     'There it is again-'

     Lub-dub

     'The beating heart.'

     Lub-dub

     'I'm not entirely sure how long I've been listening to this heartbeat, but I just realized that I have no clue whose heart it is,' Blaiz confessed. 'It isn't mine, I know that much.'

     Lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub.

     Blaiz sighed and let the mysterious beating heart quiet her thoughts and soothe her into another dream.