In one of the widest dry valleys, under the lightless skies of the genesis remnant mountain cluster , sat the Drant forest .The forest was named by Mike after the word Drant, the shortened form of the word Dra'veni-avrant, which when translated from the old tongue of the Nondu people of the Elt race of Pan continent of the planet of Zina, Mike's home planet, meant Grotesque statues or Grotesque figures.
The forest was characterized by twisted, strangely shaped, haunted looking trees that seemed to be formed from the remains of creatures that were frozen in place by fright and in time after seeing something horrific, before being twisted into very strange, bent, postures and turned into trees , from which the forest got it's very fitting name. Even now, one could make out the various body features of different creatures on the trees with ease.
The forest was also characterized by a whitish, sparsely spread, mist that hindered ones ability to see anything that was a long distance away from them. Eireely though, there was an absence of animal life of any sort in the forest.
" I can never ever get used to the strangeness of this place." Mike who was dragging his battered body along the strangely shaped trees of the arbitrarily named Drant forest, muttered bitterly under his breath. Taking a peek behind him and noticing that the Chande* like creature, Chromo was still hotly pursuing him. And as it appeared, the creature was gaining in on him.
"Can't that creature just give up on me?" He thought as he picked up the pace with which he dragged his heavily injured body across the forest floors with his only useful arm in a desperate attempt to widen the distance between himself and vengeance driven beast, causing his body to accumulate even more cuts , injuries and bruises.
The beast was , despite being in a rougher shape , not relenting on the chase. Either it knew it could not survive it's injuries and thus wanted to take Mike along with itself in death, or simply because it wanted the debt of revenge it was owed to be paid with the blood of the murderer of it's kid. Whatever it was was a sufficient motivation for it to continue chasing after Mike.
Mike did not head in this direction without plans. He was not driven by an obsession to die in his place of birth, or what was closer to it in significance, which, in this case was his Spawn point, as was the culture of the Nondu people, neither did he head here hoping that a miracle would magically happen when he did. No! Rather, his escape from the pursuit of Chromo in this direction was based on solid plans, or rather very logical deduction he made and conclusions he reached by observing his spawn point.
The first clue that had given him a hint about the unnatural nature of his spawn point was the very nature of the trees that had inspired him to give the forest the name Drant.
The second clue was total the absence of animal life.
The third clue, he had noticed, was in phenomenon he observed where while most of the trees were around the same height , some of them tended to grow into epic proportions, some more than most, with these trees not being situated in any particular location, but were rather scattered across the forest.
The his clue was the subsequently sustained height gain of the particular tree under which he was spawned, which began shortly after he was born.
With these observations ,he had put together an hypothesis that sound very stupid , even to himself, in the past. His hypothesis said that:
'The Drant forest has a supernatural factor that is largely unaccounted for, which tends to suddenly and rapidly turn creatures not born in it into weirdly shaped, haunted trees but have no effect on the creatures that were born here. The tree under which they were born rapidly gains height for a certain duration until another tree hosts the birth of another creature .'
Now , he was staking his whole life on the credibility of it. A drowning man would grab unto even the tiniest of straws.