Maya, Dante and Rane proceeded to venture into the forest. They found it strange that there were no birds chirping or animals calling. The forest was eerily silent.
It was a thick forest with trees obscuring their vision. They couldn't see far ahead of them with all of the vegetation in the way. The forest was more akin to a jungle in the sense that extraordinary plants grew everywhere. The dirt was hardly visible due to this.
Occasionally, the three would hear creaking. Creaking that resembled the sound of an old floorboard or a loose hinge. It wasn't particularly frightening on its own, but the lack of visibility gave the forest a certain atmosphere; it seemed to have the three on edge.
The forest consisted of what looked to be pine trees. Fir and birch trees were seen every now and then, also. Each of the trees was tall; in fact, they seemed to be abnormally tall. It was difficult to see the sky because of this.
"Don't you think the air smells off?" Rane asks, unsure if she is imagining things or simply looking for an excuse to vent her discomfort.
"Now that you mention it.." Maya responds, "The air does seem rather stale".
Rane still didn't believe that the air could smell off. After all, they were in a forest; the air couldn't possibly be stale. It must've been Rane's imagination, and her question must've influenced Maya's senses. That was the conclusion Rane came to. However, in the back of her mind, she still believed that something could be very wrong with the forest itself.
Dante didn't know what a forest was typically supposed to smell like, so he stayed quiet.
The creaking in the distance became more of a common occurrence. It would be heard almost every few seconds. It had started coming from many directions, seemingly surrounding them.
"Something's wrong", Dante said, as serious as Maya had ever seen him.
It sparked a panic within Maya.
Dante stopped walking to hear clearly. Maya and Rane also stopped walking and waited. They waited patiently for Dante.
"We haven't seen a single animal here, and there are no fruits or nuts. Yet, there is a creaking sound coming from all around us. It may be that we are too far into this dense forest, but I do not feel any wind to shake the trees and cause the creaking." Dante said, paying close attention to his surroundings, making sure to take every bit of information in.
"Without any edible food, animals cannot survive. And we haven't seen any insects either. So how is it that so many plants are growing?" Dante continues.
"There must be some other way the plants get their nourishment. Such as absorbing energy from other things. It's a bizarre and unbelievable notion, but it wouldn't be the most unusual thing we have seen," he concludes.
As Dante had finished speaking, rustling in distant vegetation grabs his attention. Dante turns his head quickly to face it. The rustling grows nearer, as if something is approaching. As it draws closer and closer, Maya begins to panic. She grabs onto Dante's shirtless back as if to protect herself or ask him for protection. Rane stands on guard, ready to fight. She anticipates an attack at any moment.#
From what? That is what they're all asking themselves. What could live here?
As it moves close enough to be able to see, what they find is - nothing. There was nothing in the vegetation.
Impossible. There has to be something here.
Just as those thoughts cross Dante's mind, a small vine creeps out from under the plants. It's too slow for Dante to notice. It slowly wraps around his leg. He feels it and looks down.
"What? What is this?" he tries to gently pull his leg out from the grasp of the vine.
It refuses to let go of him. He starts to panic. By now, Maya and Rane have also noticed the vine around Dante and rush over to him. Maya pulls out the small knife she had been keeping between her breasts. She began to cut the vine, sawing back and forth along it. It was cut with relative ease, but it was no ordinary vine. Once Rane had cut it, a red liquid began to ooze out of the vine where the cut had been made. Blood. The vine that was wrapped around Dante turned grey and wilted like a dying flower.
"What the hell?!" Rane burst out in confusion and fear.
It was in this moment that they had all come to a terrifying realisation. The forest was not in the least bit ordinary. It was alive. The vegetation was made of flesh, it seemed.
"Could the forest be conscious or sentient?" Dante asks, clearly disturbed and panicked.
"Let's assume that it is, we need to run." Rane took command of the situation, put on a brave face and turned to head back in the direction they came from, "Let's go back quickly".
The direction they came from was seemingly gone. It is as though the forest had gotten denser in that direction to stop them from leaving. It was clear they would be unable to leave that way.
Dante and Maya also turned in the direction they came from. They too saw they could no longer make it back. They all turned again and ran instinctively, as if they could sense impending danger.
They were not alone.
The forest was alive.
They continued to run. Dante had to slow down so he would not get ahead of Rane and Maya. The trees, which were already very dense, began to close in on them. The forest wanted to trap them; that much was clear. There wasn't much they could do to stop it either. Just as the trees came together, Rane, who was behind both Maya and Dante, gathered a large ball of flames in her hand. She hurled this ball of flames towards the trees with all her might.
The trees did not burn. The bark caught on fire. But the trees themselves did not ignite. They had to stop. They were encircled by trees. The bark had burned away to reveal bones. The trees were not made of wood inside. They were a skeleton.
What the hell is going on?
They stared blankly at the bones, which had been disguised as trees. It was so absurd that Maya let out a small chuckle among all this panic.
All of the plants in the encircled area slowly retracted into the ground. As if they had reversed their growth and shrunk down into a seed in the ground. Then, nothing happened. Everything stopped moving. Everyone was still on edge.
After a few minutes of waiting for something to happen, they decided that they needed to find a way to escape. They did not know how long they were going to be trapped.
"The sun is going to set any moment now, I think. What should we do?" Dante asks.
None of them knows the answer. They cannot even see the sun clearly due to the trees being so densely packed. They needed food. All they had in the satchel was the crystal, no food. They needed to find something to eat.
A while had passed before Maya came up with an idea, "If the trees are the bone, then maybe the ground is the flesh. There might be meat underground."
Ordinarily, they would have laughed at such a ridiculous idea. However, these were desperate times where they would cling to any hope they could.
With their bare hands, they got together and began to dig a large hole.
To Rane's surprise, Maya was in fact correct. There was flesh underneath all the dirt. They kept on digging until they could cut out portions of the flesh. Whether the meat was edible was something they could only find out after trying it.
"Now we need to find something to burn", Rane says.
"The bark covering the bones could work," Dante replies.
They begin to peel off the bark. It took a long time, but they collected a large pile of bark. Luckily, the bark was easy to peel. They cooked the meat in small pieces so, not to have to wait as long for the meat to cook.
It was cold now. The small amount of light they got from the sky was all but gone. The only thing that lit up the fairly large area they were trapped in was the small fire in the middle of it. The air was not fresh and crisp as it should be during the night. It was filled with the stench of meat. It was almost sickening.
"Should we try the meat?" Dante asks, the meat looked about ready, and they were all hungry.
They all agreed to try it at the same time.
The texture was grainy and the flavour was awful. It didn't seem harmful, but it was not pleasant to eat.
They slept in cycles again in order not to get ambushed while asleep. The night was incredibly cold. The two that slept huddled together to preserve body heat. The darkness gave rise to paranoia. It was Maya's turn first. She had seen things that were not there. Creations of her own imagination, perhaps to keep her on guard.
Next, Rane. She had begun to hear things that were not there. She kept the area illuminated enough with her small flames, exhausting though it was. She would occasionally feel sensations on her body that never truly existed, such as a hand on her shoulder or a vine on her leg. A figment of her imagination. She heard talking in the distance, though she couldn't make out what it was. Perhaps because it too was a figment of her imagination.
It was Dante's turn. He had been warned about the hallucinations by Rane, who had also been warned by Maya. He knew more or less what to expect; he felt prepared.
An hour into his turn, a green light had appeared in the centre of the area, not far above where the fire had been. Maya and Rane were also underneath it. The light was small, so small that Dante had at first mistaken it for a firefly.
Dante had concluded that this was a hallucination drawn from his paranoia.
The small dot of green, stratched out vertically, becomes a line of green light. It was not especially bright. It was just bright enough that Dante could make out the area around it. Vines emerged from the ground below the light. They spiralled upwards toward it. They wrapped around the light, and something began to form around the light.
A large mass of what looked to be roots and vines. From this large mass, what seemed to be a head formed. Two eyes, dark green, the colour of wet moss, glowed. The rest of the face was not visible, or perhaps it didn't even exist.
The head had slowly grown two horns, also made of root and vine. They warped in a circle above the head, ending just before the two made contact.
From the torso, an arm sprouted abruptly; it was long, so long it nearly reached the ground from so high up in the air. It was most definitely larger than Dante. The hand had four crooked fingers, incredibly thick. The other arm grew slowly, matching the other.
From the back, Dante could see that it had begun to grow long, tentacle-like vines. The vines were nearly as thick as the arms. They swayed in the air like a ribbon in the gentle breeze. There were three of them, each were slightly different in length.
Finally, two thick legs grew from the torso. One was thicker than the other, leaving the creature unusually asymmetrical. They were not the legs of a human, as the knees bent backwards like an animal. There was something else about these legs which differed from the rest of the body. There was a layer of muscle visible.
Dante hadn't noticed any flesh before this on the creature.
He could only stare in fear and in denial as the creature formed before him.
He hadn't thought of waking up the others.
He thought it was all in his head.
Suddenly, one of the tentacles stretched behind the creature. It demolished a large portion of the bone-trees behind it. Opening a way into the rest of the forest.
It was in this instant that Dante had understood. He understood that this couldn't be in his head. Rane and Maya shot up at the loud sound. They looked over at the creature and then at Dante.
They found him staring at it too. They knew it couldn't be their imagination.
The creature spoke, but it was barely understandable. It sounded as if it had never spoken before. Its voice was deep, however, and eerie, "I love a hunt, run, and let me CHASE YOU!".
As soon as the creature had raised its voice to shout, the three of them ran through the opening the monster had made. They couldn't see very well. They would often stumble and lose balance.
"I'll shoot a fireball ahead of us now and then, try and memorise the terrain ahead of us!" she shouted, not too loudly; she didn't want the creature to hear them.
Rane got ready to shoot the fireball. She gathered the flames in her hand while running. As she launched it, it hit a tree which was right in front of her. It sent her flying backwards.
Dante and Maya stopped to try and help her up.
The bark on many of the surrounding trees had caught fire, illuminating the area around them. They could see fairly well now.
As they turned, they saw the green eyes of the creature approach rapidly. It was impossibly fast.
Maya looked at Rane.
"She's unconscious", Maya told Dante, clearly alarmed.
She didn't want to leave her here, but she also did not want to die before she found her sister. Will I have to use it here? she thought, panicking. She was unable to decide.
A choice between her friend and her sister.
Dante mumbled something to himself, "Please, take over and save my friend, I beg you, save her.".
His hair began to turn white at the roots.
Dante was taken to a void. It was pitch black. The last thing he can hear is a voice, cold and cruel.
"And in return, you will release me for one minute every day".
Dante then felt increasingly tired. He fell asleep in this void.
"Bitch, don't be scared to show everyone your secret, go on, use it, or I will kill her and Sasha", he said, practically laughing between each word.
Maya was stunned. How could he..
There was no time for that now. She stretched both of her arms out towards the creature. A barrier forms around the creature. The barrier was too small for all of it to fit; the parts of its body that were outside of the barrier when it appeared were severed instantly. All of the tentacles, its left arm and right leg.
"It only lasts for a little while, so hurry," Maya urges the man who took the place of Dante.
He looks at her scornfully, as if to tell her not to order him around. He turned and faced the monster with a smile on his face.
He raised his right arm towards the creature, still trapped in the barrier. He faced in a way in which the monster would be to his right. He closed his left eye and faced the monster again.
The barrier began to crack before ultimately disappearing.
The monster's limbs regrew nearly instantly, and it began to charge toward them.
From his closed eye, blood began to flow. As if he were crying. Yet his face remained composed.
His right eye switched instantly as soon as he had blinked. It was now completely black. It was a beautiful black. From his right eye, a black goo seemed to flow out, and it ran down his face. It met the blood from his other eye at the end of his chin. They combined as they fell.
The instant that the droplet touched the ground, an unimaginable number of arms flew out of the palm of his hands. They were all made of the same black goo.
Each of the hands had an eye on its palm. They travel at an unimaginable speed towards the creature. Each of the hands, in their countless numbers, grabbed a piece of the creature and tore it off. They then grabbed the piece and secured it in a clenched fist. Once they secured a piece, they returned to the hand of the boy.
This cycle continued until the creature was no more. Not a single trace remained of it.
Not only was the creature targeted, but the land around it was not safe from the gaze of the many hands. It was torn up and destroyed.
As the last of the hands made its way back, the boys' eyes returned to normal. He turned and walked toward Maya.
Maya was in shock. How could anyone have this much power? It was unfathomable that he was this strong. Not only that, but it wasn't any of the standard ascendancies. He would be a national treasure if anyone knew about him.
"You saw nothing, understand? The boy wanted me to let you live, so you will obey me if you want his wish fulfilled," he said into her ear.
Just as everything had concluded, Rane regained consciousness. At the same time, Dante had begun to return.
Rane had caught a glimpse of the white hair on Dante as she got up. However, she did not say anything. Mostly out of fear.
The trees all began to fall. The forest was collapsing. The bark had disappeared from every tree. It looked like the remains of a huge creature.
"What happened?" Dante asks.
"T-The monster was, erm, killed in Ranes' blast." Maya was clearly lying; she was no good at it after all.
Nobody pressed further. Everyone besides Dante knew what had happened to some extent.
Maya helped Rane up. She was bruised slightly and bleeding from the forehead. Not severely, but enough to be an annoyance.
They had only noticed once all the trees had fallen that it was noon. Was the forest messing with their perception of time, or just blocking all the sunlight? They had no idea.
Either way, something strange was happening here. They all wanted to know more.
They had no time now, however. They needed to head east. They carried on their journey.
They headed to Porden.
...