"Just great," he muttered under his breath, suppressing the pain radiating through his mangled arm.
Still, he couldn't help thinking how lucky he was to have escaped with just that.
"What the hell knocked me out of the sky?" he asked aloud, voice hoarse.
Thinking back to the sight of the thick vine tendril that had struck them. It had appeared out of nowhere, too quick and precise, as if a trap that had lay there in wait for anything that dared to pass by.
He turned toward his mount. The wyvern still breathed, shallow and uneven, its body limp where it had crashed. A deep gash tore across its side, dark blood pooling beneath it and soaking into the forest floor. The sight made his chest tighten. It wouldn't be long now.
Oliver sighed heavily, then forced himself to take in his surroundings. He stood at the base of a colossal tree, one of many around him.
The trunks were massive, so wide that ten men couldn't encircle one, and the thick undergrowth limited his vision to barely thirty meters. Strange plants he didn't recognize grew everywhere, some glowing faintly, others swaying as if alive.
A distant howl echoed through the forest, making his skin crawl. The sound brought back memories of what what little he had read about the forbidden forest.
"If you ever find yourself in that horror of a forest," he recalled from one text, "you're better off giving yourself a quick, painless death. You cannot begin to fathom the horrors that dwell there. They'll devour your body—or, your mind—until you become one of them."
Oliver frowned. He had questioned the book's credibility when he first read it; after all, it was the same one that claimed most who entered this forest never returned. Surely it couldn't be that bad.
Then another memory surfaced, one far more unsettling. A biography written by a man who claimed to be the brother of a man who had once wandered into this same forest, and supposedly made it out alive.
"My brother entered the Forbidden Forest for a single day. The man who returned to us, however, was not my brother."
That was all it had said. No further detail. Yet it was enough to plant a vivid, dreadful image in Oliver's mind.
A sudden chill washed over him, as if a bucket of ice water had been poured over his head.
'I don't like it here,' he thought.
He wasn't feeling so clever anymore. Maybe he should've risked running into the scouts along the road instead.
But flying over the forest had seemed the better option at the time. At the time, part of him still thought stories of The Forbidden Stories were bedtime stories mothers told their children.
So of course he thought it was safer. He'd have been too easily spotted otherwise, and walking was out of the question.
The world was simply too vast to walk on foot. It would have taken him months to find any towns close by.
He knelt beside his wyvern, its breathing shallow and pained. Gently, he ran his hand over its scaled head.
"It would have been better to put you out of your misery quickly," he murmured, his voice low. "But I've got no weapons with me."
He glanced around while crouching, scanning the forest floor for anything that might serve as a blade or spike. Nothing. Only leaves, roots, moss, and....
He froze.
Through a dark gap between two massive trunks, something was watching him. Two large, blood-red eyes glowed faintly in the shadows, unblinking and malevolent.
"...!"
Oliver's breath stopped. Every muscle in his body locked in place. He didn't even dare to blink.
Whatever that thing was, it was looking, Right. At. Him.
Inwardly, he screamed—'What the hell is that!?'
The eyes suddenly closed, vanishing into the dark once they realized Oliver had spotted them. But the feeling of danger didn't fade. If anything, it thickened—pressing down on him, crawling along his skin like ice.
He couldn't see it anymore. That made things worse. Far worse. An enemy you could see was bad enough, but one you couldn't? That was a nightmare.
Oliver's gaze darted frantically across the shadows. Where did it go? Shit… shit, shit, shit!
Panic clawed at his chest. He had no weapons, no armour—nothing but a broken arm and a dying wyvern.
He didn't even need to think about what he should do. There was no other choice.
He turned on his heel and bolted.
Branches whipped against his face as he ran, weaving through the dense foliage. His boots slammed into the earth, sliding on moss, tripping over vines, roots, and fallen branches—but he didn't dare stop.
He didn't know what had been watching him, and he didn't want to find out. Whether it could catch up or not, he wasn't willing to bet his life on it.
Just keep running, he thought, his heart hammering in his ribcage. Get as far away from that thing as possible!
His breathing grew ragged, every inhale felt sharp and painful. He ducked under a low branch—
Wham!
"—Oooof!"
Pain exploded through his side. His body folded in half from the impact as something slammed into him, hard enough to lift him off his feet.
The sickening crunch of bone followed—a sound that tore through his mind as his already broken arm shattered further.
He hit the ground like a rag doll, rolling violently before crashing against a jagged rock outcropping.
"Haa… haa… haa…"
The air was gone from his lungs. Every nerve screamed. The pain was numbing and blinding, so complete he could barely think. His body refused to move—every muscle rebelling as though crushed beneath an invisible weight.
Fuuuuck! I'm dead! he shouted inwardly.
He couldn't even open his eyes properly, vision flickered in and out. Whatever had hit him—was it the same creature from before, or something worse? He didn't know. All he knew was that he was done for.
When his sight finally cleared, the world seemed to slow.
A shape emerged slowly from the shadows ahead.
A hulking abomination stepped into the light—massive, sinewy, and ripped. It had the body of a great cat, easily nine meters long and five high, its fur so black it seemed to drink in what little sunlight that managed to pierce the canopy. Two blood-red eyes glowed from its skull, locking onto him with predatory intelligence.
He would never forget those crimson eyes. This was the same abomination that had been watching him!