One hung behind: two tried to escape. The darkness clutching at their feet writhed, shifted, until it was nothing more than a thick carpet of unbroken hair. Strands whipped up to snag around shoes and cling to their ankles, still in quantities fine enough to be broken with movement but multiplying fast -- if they failed to escape soon, it could only grown thicker and more constraining.

But the grip at their feet was not what needed to worry the defender. The body continued to shift, details blurring in between each blink of the eye: the bloodied hem of a dress. The rhythmic destruction of a damaged ankle, and finally --

Another blink --

And her hand, reaching toward Soushi with bloodied nails, and a face emerging from behind a fall of hair: wide-eyed, horrified more than anything else. A face alive with terrified rage on a body long-dead, and a mouth parted to give the endless death-rattle, even as she clawed toward his eyes.