CHAPTER SEVEN #2
Our crunching steps echoed through the trees as we made our way into the thickets for over an hour, time passing incredibly slow in the eerie silence of the trip.
Noctis stayed close to my back like an unwanted appendage, setting my nerves more on edge than I was sure he intended.
When I hesitated at certain parts of the path, throwing vines to the side or slicing my blade through bushes to clear the walkway, his front side brushed up against me.
And I didn’t understand why it made me feel as if my heart skipped, but my blood boiled.
A cawing shadowed raven soared overhead and perched atop a tree’s crooked, broken branch that splintered open like exposed bone. Its head cocked to the side as if examining us, but we kept strolling the graveled path.
A screeching whistle impaled the quiet forest, piercing my mind.
My vision swam, pain sharp and blinding.
I fell to my knees, face twisting in agony as I clutched the sides of my head, searching for any escape from the noise drilling deep into my skull.
Noctis and Calvin crashed into the same position.
Viscous blood dripped from our ears beneath our shielding palms. We needed to do something fast, or the first obstacle we encountered would have been the last.
Gods, the pain ripped through me, pinching every nerve through my brain.
Noctis raised his hand, sending a powerful flurry of wind into the leaf-riddled ground.
It rumbled with his magic, faults cracking in all directions around us.
The gusts of air intensified until the pain began to subside slowly like a tea bag steeping in cold water.
He lifted his other palm, trees snapping in half with a mere flick of his fingers, falling to the shaking ground under our bodies.
The ringing halted, a sharp buzz hanging around in my head.
The forest lay in ruin, destroyed in a circle of eerie precision. The ground cracked in jagged webs in every direction around us. Tens of broken, destroyed trees lay scattered across the foliage.
“I could happily live the rest of my life without that again,” Calvin stated as he wiped blood from the side of his face dripping from his ears.
“Same.” I dug through my satchel and pulled out cloth, ripping it into two smaller pieces.
“Here.” I tossed them to the two males to clean the crimson blood, doing the same as it trickled out of my own ears.
A dull screech continued in my head, lingering from the attack, but the ache that gripped my brain became more irritating than painful.
A rustling of leaves sounded from behind, jerking me from the silence.
“Did you hear that?” I whispered under my breath, carefully.
“It was just a breeze,” Noctis assured, assessing the injuries.
Gradually, the stirring increased from all around. Leaves billowed from trees like caught in a tornado, guarding the guttural noise that rang behind us.
Then, I saw it.
The trees shifted with unnatural precision, their roots lifting and planting like legs as they dragged their trunks forward.
They stopped immediately. In mere seconds, the trunks closed up entirely in a circle around us.
No gaps to squeeze through, as they looked intertwined to each other like woven wicker of an iron basket.
The forest trapped us inside.
I lost my ability to breathe, my mouth overwhelming in dryness, hands tingling as if falling asleep.
Black smoke covered Noctis’s feet, summoned from his lifted hands like meditation.
He breathed deeply and then splayed his arms outward.
His dark, onyx power expelled lightning fast and shot toward the blockade.
On impact, a boom echoed through the forest, but the power dispersed in thousands of tendrils and dissolved into the air, leaving behind unmarked, still standing trees.
His eyes widened in disbelief as he shook his arms, aiming them again, but nothing expelled. Panic settled over his features, eyes scouring his palms, scrutinizing the trees. And still, there was no way out.
The god unsheathed the sword from his back and trudged toward the wall. He lifted the blade over his head and brought it down, making impact with the bark. Sparks flew everywhere, throwing him backwards and landing with a thud on his ass across the mossy ground, sword still in hand.
My palms turned clammy, a sheen of sweat trailing down my spine. Each breath came shallow, like the air itself was thinning.
“Breathe, or you won’t be able to think through our next steps,” Calvin lectured from my side as Noctis rejoined us, dusting the grounds remnants from his clothing.
Suddenly, the ground rumbled again, and the trees shuddered violently along the wall. A jagged hole large enough to fit the width of my shoulders broke open before us. Then, the forest stopped all motion.
“There’s no way I’m going through there,” I breathed.
“I’ll go with,” Noctis reassured.
“Not everyone has powers that will protect them from what’s in this forest,” Calvin quipped, and a factual memory resurfaced: all merfolk had water manipulation magic, but I didn’t feel it under my skin.
I couldn’t muster up anything, not that my oceanic powers would have helped us in a forest anyway.
“Last I checked, she is far from being powerless, even without magic. She survived the Ocean Mother’s sacrifice and took down an Oricaan by blade.”
The god was wrong, though. Uncertainty and weakness trailed my every decision and every thought as I tried to bring forth my stolen memories.
“I’ll go first to look up ahead and then come retrieve you both,” he whispered as he unsheathed his second sword from along his back, equipping both hands with a black-hilted weapon.
He approached the opening cut into the tree line, and the darkness within swallowed him whole.
Sweat dripped down my body even in the cool of the night.
I paced back and forth, careful not to get too close to the surrounding wall of greenery caging us in.
My hands grew clammy, and no amount of wiping them on my pants dried them.
I unsheathed the dagger along my thigh and flipped it, catching it by the blade's tip. Over and over. Like muscle memory.
“You’d think you’d done that before,” Calvin said as he crouched low to the ground, resting.
“I think I have.” In the days I’d been on the land, many things felt natural, even in my sluggish, empty mind—blades, wind, pants, bread…
small memories that came back as the hours trudged on.
I clung to them desperately, a newfound appreciation for the workings of my mind and its ability to hold together who I was.
Steps sounded from the orifice, and slowly, Noctis exited, stepping over the large branch running across the ground.
“Are you coming or not?” he huffed as if irritated to the bone.
He wasn’t gone for more than two minutes.
“Was it clear ahead?” I asked.
“Clear. Even you shouldn’t mess this up.” Annoyance dripped from his words. “Now let’s go.”
“You can’t just pick and choose when you want to be civil with people,” I snapped as I passed his side to the opening.
“A merfolk would say that. Get over it.”
I slowly turned to face him, my nose turned in disgust and rage.
“This merfolk,” I spat, “will leave you in this forest and not lose any sleep over it.”
A dark sinister smile covered his face, right at the same time a deep man’s yell in the distance split the air.
My name.
“You aren’t Noctis.”