Chapter Twelve: The storm

I got back round to the place where I was before I started to head East along the cliff. I decided to sleep there over night before I headed into the dark forest. After all, what’s the point in going into the dark forest in darkness, I wouldn’t be able to see anything.

“I have a feeling this is where we were meant to go.” Athena assures me.

“I agree. I’ve had a feeling this was always the route I was meant to go, even before you starting talking in my head.” I say back to her in my head, rolling my eyes as I do.

I smile, knowing that I won’t be alone going into the dark forest and I know Athena is also smiling. Even though we’re both looking forward to push on in our adventure, something has me feeling off about the forest. I know the Elders warned me to avoid this place, but I feel drawn to it, as if my body is telling me this is the way to go.

I shake off my thoughts and lie down, using my bag as a makeshift pillow. After all the non-excitement from today, it takes me a while to sleep, but I do eventually drift off.

When I woke up, I packed up my stuff, ate some bread and drank the water, which was starting to run out. I suspect I have only a day or so left of each, but I can worry about that later.

The first thing I notice as I look to the West, is the storm that was forming yesterday is now covering most of the dark forest. I’ve spent plenty of time with nature, and I can’t say I mind the rain. However, I have a feeling this rain is not the same, or, well normal to any other rain I’ve encountered. It seems to span for miles and looks to be a heavy downfall, which is not normal at this time of year. I continue to walk towards the forest lining anyway, knowing I will have to face it sooner or later.

As I get closer, I pick up on something strange. Silence. There doesn’t seem to be any insects, birds…nothing. Why? I put this thought to the back of my head and carry on to get closer to the trees. I start to feel flecks of rain on my face letting me know I am walking into the rain from the storm.

I reach the tree line and as I had noticed before, looking through the trees I’m not able to see much else bar other trees. The trees are fairly small and have a light brown colour to them. The trees are fairly close together, but I can see up ahead they start to spread out slightly and the girth of each tree increasing. I try and look to see if there’s any sort of path further on, but none that I can see from here. Luckily with the trees this close together, the rain is not able to fall directly onto me without some branch getting in the way, so for now I am not getting too wet.

I push myself deeper into the trees, and before I knew it looking behind me reveals more of the same trees. Great, I’m now lost, I think.

“Don’t worry about it, just keep going.” Athena nudges me to go on, and so I do.

I spent what seemed like hours going through the trees. The trees were farther apart and getting larger than what they were when I first entered, so I feel like I am getting somewhere. But this means the rain is starting to seep through and I’m starting to get wet. So much for it being summertime.

I keep walking in the same direction, hoping that I get somewhere. I continue looking for any indication that I am going towards something, rather than walking in a circle. That’s when I spot the strangest looking tree yet come into view after walking mindlessly for ages.

A shade darker than grey looking tree, seemingly almost black comes into view. I hesitantly walk towards it, curious to see why it is so dark. I get closer, feeling slightly drawn to it, and I see the leaves of the tree are teal, rather than the natural shades of green the other trees leaves. The bark of the tree looks stygian. I was at this point standing, staring at the tree, mesmerised. It was beautiful. It was extremely large and seemed very old compared to the trees around it. The girth of the tree at the bottom would take a few people holding hands to go all the way around it.

I ran my hand along the bark and felt what I think was the water from the above rain draining down on it, which was giving it a sleek look. I took a step back, and looked up, to see how tall the tree was. I could tell that it looked taller than the other trees, but I was unable to keep my eyes looking up due to the rain seeping through.

All the other trees in the area were normal looking, so why was this one different? I looked to my feet to see roots emerging from the ground all around this tree, obviously part of the tree itself as they were black also. That’s when I noticed, the hand I had touched the bark with still had water on it, but it was black water, as if the tree had dyed it somehow.

“What the fuck is this.” I think out loud. I can tell Athena thinks the same, as I look down at my hand, unsure what to do with it. I smear the black water onto the grass below my feet until I pull my hand up and see it all gone.

Suddenly, I hear a small rumbling coming from the tree. It’s the first sound I’ve heard in hours other than the rain drops splattering on the trees around me. I try to take a look to see what caused it but all I see is the tree. There’s no movement but I know the noise came from the tree.

I stalk around the tree to see if I can figure out what caused it. A few minutes later and nothing emerges. “I think now is the time to leave, Ali.” Athena says in my head and I agree.

I start heading in the opposite direction from where I came, so I didn’t cover the same ground. After getting a few meters away from the tree, I take one last look at it. It is beautiful, but seems to present that dangerous vibe. I turn round to continue my journey in the opposite direction when I hear a horrendous crunching sound coming from the tree I just left.

I turn my head round slowly and I can see something that looks like a hand coming out of the ground from the tree, where I had wiped my hand to get the black water off. It had seemed to be wiggling as if it were waving, but then drastically changes to start clawing at the ground. I find that I am unable to move from fright as I see the hand start to move and try and grab hold of something. When it manages to find one of the roots, I can see that it starts to drag itself up from the ground, and an exceptionally long arm on the end of the hand I can see.

“Run.” Athena screams in my head. She and I both sense that whatever that thing is, it’s dangerous and we should not be hanging about.

Her screaming in my head slaps me out of my trance and I start high tailing it in the direction I originally was going in before. After several minutes, I hear an atrocious roar from the direction I had just came from. I don’t stop running, but that noise sounds like nothing I have heard before.

I shove that thought to the back of my mind, concentrating on running away from whatever that thing was. I feel like I have an unlimited amount of stamina, which is weird because I used to get wheezed out after several minutes of running.

As I am continuing to run, I note that the trees have started to ease up ahead and are starting to thin out, similar to what it was like at the tree line when I first entered the forest. I can see what looks like a clearing….no, a path! It’s a path I think to myself. Finally, heading somewhere. I run onto the path and stop momentarily to see which directions are available. The path itself seems like it has not been used in a very long time as it’s overgrown with bushes and roots, not very well maintained. At this point, all care leaves my mind at this thought. I can see that I can either go to my right, which winds downwards, or to my left, which seems to be a long straight, heading to a corner.

The storm is in all force above, the rain thundering down on me, and my clothes are starting to soak through. I hear shuffling far back in the direction I came from so I start running on the path to the left, remembering if I was going straight in the first place, the cliff will be somewhere to my left.

I run down the long straight as fast as my legs could take me using the new found adrenaline. I take a glance behind me and I wish I hadn’t. I saw a strange dark silhouette prowling out of the trees, its gleaming eyes also back. “What the actual fuck is that?” I whisper to myself. Athena is silent but I can feel her fear in my mind.

I finally reach what seems like a corner but in actual fact is a downhill bend, heading towards the river. At this point, I’m soaked from the rain thrashing down from the sky. I hear the monster or whatever that thing was behind me, and I can tell it’s getting closer, chasing me. I get to the river and halt at the bank of it which I can now see has a slight drop. I can see the river violently rushing downstream, probably even more dangerous than usual as it seems to be influenced by the storm.

I take the bow Elijah gave to me and fix an arrow from the quiver into it and turn to face the thing following me. If I jump into that river now, it’ll be a death sentence and will take me to God knows where.

I take a deep breath and I aim at the head of the beast that is nearing me, running along the tree line at a rapid speed. I take a shot and hit it square in the face. It’s taken aback for a few moments, checking its wound with its elongated hands. I manage to get a good look at it and it doesn’t look like anything I’ve seen before. It’s fairly small compared to a human but severely disfigured. Its head seems too big for its hideous body and its arms and legs are abnormally long. It’s completely black. I can see the two eyes I had seen earlier at a glance and can confirm after taking a better look they’re completely black, but they gleam as the last light of day hits it.

The beast seems to pull itself together and turns its evil looking eyes to face me. I pull out an arrow from my quiver and nock another arrow. The thing is now slowly stalking towards me, gnarling as it gets closer. I draw the bow back, and let an arrow loose, aiming for what I thought would be it’s heart, if its anatomy was any close to an elf or humans. I manage to puncture it in the spot I aimed for and this seemingly has made it even angrier rather than double over. What is this thing made out of?

It seems to shake off the most recent hit as if it were nothing. It starts to pick up the pace towards me. I drop the bow as I wouldn’t be able to use it this close range. I pull out the dagger I always keep at thigh level and take a defensive stance. In my mind I feel Athena preparing also for a fight with the unknown.

The beast lunges at me and I manage to quickly roll to the left, managing to nick its side with the dagger. I notice the stench coming off of it, like rotting flesh. The last time I smelt anything similar was back when I was finding human corpses in the middle of the road. I gag at the smell, not wanting to remember all of the dead I had seen before.

As I compose myself, I’ve wiped my face free of all of the rain that had fallen onto me, leaving me with little visibility. When I look around to see where it had gone, I can see it’s moved into the treeline on the left side of the path and is hopping from tree to tree…why?

I see the Sun is setting, which is very bad for me. I am unsure what I would be able to see in the dark and with the rain pouring. I take one look at the river which is still behind me and can hear it roaring, lining with the mood right now.

Just then, the beast pounces out of the tree line further away from the river which catches me off guard, as I had took my eyes off it for a mere moment. It lands a meter away and then manages to quickly leap to my right. In a rapid movement, it extended its long arm towards me and I saw the instant its long claws protrude and collide with my right flank.

I couldn’t believe what just happened. I can feel the pain in my side but I am just shell shocked. I can feel Athena’s alarm in my head and trying to pull me out of the daze I’m in. I realise that the warmth of my blood is seeping down my side. “Aliana, snap out of it” I hear Athena scream. I notice the monster has moved back into the treeline stalking my every move and looks to be moving in for the kill.

The pain is unbearable, and without realising, I feel myself falling backwards, into the water.

I’m still conscious enough to notice that as soon as I hit the water, I can feel Athena trying to take over my body to swim, but instead we sort of thrash about in the water expelling the little energy I have left. I feel myself being taken for a rollercoaster ride and at one point, I can feel my ankle taking a bad hit from a rock, or something under the surface as we’re being dragged away.

As the rushing water takes me downstream, I feel myself slipping into darkness. I manage to grab onto a pointed rock after being hurled about, which cuts my hand. I use all of my strength which I’ve seemed to gather since falling into the river to pull myself to the opposite side I was originally.

A sense of relief fills me, and I stay where I am, unable to move. I feel myself starting to slip into an unconscious state. Just before I pass out, I move my head to the right, and see a large pair of eyes, the irises lined in a golden colour, staring at me.