Chương 65: Slithering Skin

He first noticed the tree bark pressing against his forehead. His mind struggled, piecing together who he was. A dream? No, those were memories, not mine, but Elenya's and that dog's. He opened his eyes to a sight of purple and the bite of cold air. Whatever had made him sleep had done nothing to keep him warm during the night. From the thick bark of the tree, purple flowers had sprung during the night, growing around him with a scent of powdery sweetness.

Rustling leaves and the song of birds filled the forest as Wretch pushed himself upright.

"What the hell happened to me?" he said to himself, rubbing his head. A few mysterious prickly wounds covered his skin, but otherwise he felt fine. Swinging down from the tree, he looked around with weary eyes. The forest looked much the same. The only exception was the flowers that had sprung up around his hiding spot. The sun filtered through the canopy, casting wisps of light on the soft moss of the undergrowth. Wretch furrowed his brow. I don't buy it…

Searching through the surroundings, he tried to find the trail of Elenya, a feeling of tightness growing in his chest.

"Gone…" It's fine, he told himself. She will keep heading southeast. With a limp, I will catch up to her. His stomach growled, but he ignored it. For water, he squeezed a patch of the green moss over his mouth, producing a thin trickle of water. He kept going through the dreamlike wilderness. At one point, he heard something large flying overhead and he hid low for a moment. As he walked deeper into the woodlands, the bark of the trees twisted and the branches grew to be adorned with the odd purple flowers.

He gave a glance inwards to his flame and raised an eyebrow. It wasn't full, but rather about three-fourths. Yet he didn't remember using any Blessing. Not good, not good at all. He gnashed his teeth and quickened his pace. By lunchtime, he was drenched in sweat, and the trees were choked with purple growth, their branches contorting like limbs. He ducked under a branch to come upon a glade. Twenty meters ahead, a broad-shouldered silhouette stood amid the flowers. Relief washed over him.

"You're damn quick even with a limp," he called, pushing through the leaves with a grin. He reached out through the foliage, and his fingertips scraped against bark. He froze. A face stared back at him, a purple flower in each eye socket. Wretch staggered backwards. Sharp teeth were exposed and the skin squirmed on its face. It wasn't Elenya, but a figure of a man made of knotted roots and intertwined branches. A statue of living wood, crowned by blossoming purple.

Wretch licked his dry lips and glanced back around the glade. In a revelation that made his hair stand, he saw the twisting trees in a new light. Figures all around him, some melded into each other while others stood alone. A few were human, stretching twig-like limbs in silent pleas towards the sky. Most were beasts, Blessed woodland creatures with a wide range of forms. All of them were covered in the same flowers. A chill crawled down his spine, and he looked up at the suns trailing towards the horizon.

"We have to get out of here." He discarded any semblance of secrecy, crashing through the undergrowth to the southeast as the sun sped towards nightfall. Nowhere did he find a trace of Elenya, only the frozen figures of the trees watching him barrel through the undergrowth. When the light changed to orange from the setting suns, he threw himself up into the canopy.

"ELENYA!" he roared at the top of his lungs. He held his breath, begging the flame for her to answer. Come on… A sound answered. A pleasant chime, filling him with dread and lethargy. He swung down from the branches, adrenaline fighting away the drowsiness. He ran, dashing through the brush as the branches whipped against his skin. The chime called once again, and he blinked. Or he tried to. His eyelids refused to open. He fell onto something soft, like a bed of warm water, and he exhaled.

"No," he whispered, trying to string together thoughts that refused to align. Wood splintered somewhere far away, and his eyes shot open. He was lying on a bed of moss surrounded by gnarly figures. The lichen was moving, creeping up over his fingers. A shout came from the east, a shout he knew. Elenya. He bit down on his tongue, the razor teeth almost severing it. The sharp pain gave him reign of his body. He ripped his hands free from the mossy embrace and crawled up to his feet, clawing at his own face.

With a sudden, brutal motion, he ripped his eyelids free. Blood drenched his vision, but the pulsing pain burned away the haze, and he struggled to his feet.

"Get to her…" he said as the underbrush caressed his boots and naked feet. He stumbled towards the call, then burst into a sprint through the undergrowth without remorse. The branches and flowers reached for him as he went. Another chime called, more unyielding and demanding than before. The sound calmed him despite his cupped hands over his ears. He gave a scream and raked his claws across his temple. A scent filled his nostrils, the iron-like and familiar scent of a hunter he knew.

Bursting through a bush with blood dripping down his eyes like tears, he found her. Next to a tree on her knees, moss reached up her torn armor. One arm held onto a branch that was melding over her hand, purple flower buds growing out of her skin. On her back, the cleaver was fastened with a worn belt. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

"You…" he let out. The lethargy fought against him, but a burning anger grew to fight it. Two massive arms plunged out of his back. They ripped her free and slung her over his shoulder. Moss crawled up to his ankles as the two black arms tore into the ground, lifting them both forward like living stilts. He rushed through the forest as his flame dimmed, Elenya breathing easy on his shoulders, fast asleep. He couldn't keep this form for long, but he would use every second to increase the distance from the chime.

It barely lasted a few minutes. When his flame ran out, he dragged her through the moss with shaking muscles. He didn't know how long he kept it up, perhaps an hour, fighting against the unnatural lethargy. Slowly, the purple flowers reaching for them grew more scarce, and a wind blew in the night. The chime played again, but this time a crackle of lightning answered from afar. With a sudden change of scenery, they tumbled out of the woods onto a rocky cliff.

From far away, the chime struggled against the noise of roaring lightning from the cloudy sky, breaking any semblance of a curse. Wretch wheezed as he continued to pull the larger figure, her heels dragging in the dry dirt. Under a protruding rock, he found a depression large enough for the two of them to take cover. He hauled her into the shelter and collapsed beside her. Elenya seemed unfazed by the ordeal, her chest rising and falling without a shadow of tension.

The drowsiness had left him, but he didn't allow himself to relax, instead watching their environment through the night. At dawn, the lightning died down, and when the first rays of the suns breached over the Scar Spines, he allowed himself to exhale. A minute later, he heard Elenya's breath quicken in the crevice behind him.

"Hey there, sleepy hea—" he began. A shin slammed against his ribcage, catapulting him out of their hiding spot. Rolling over the dry dirt, he came up on his feet while still sliding to a stop.

"It's me, you tin-head!" Wretch wheezed, palms pressed against his chest. Elenya moved out of the crevice, wild-haired and wide-eyed.

"Ratty! What happened to your eyes? The forest?" Wretch walked up to her, rubbing his ribs.

"Damn nightmare out here. You were halfway inside a tree when I found you, pulled out my eyelids to not fall asleep and dragged you out." She breathed out.

"Sorry about the kick, I've never been so glad to see that rat-like face of yours."

"Are you hurt?" he asked. Elenya nodded.

"A sprained ankle and some nasty cuts from the rocks. There was something in the water back there. I had to run."

"The thing with white scales and silvery hair?" She nodded.

"You saw it too?"

"It did a number on… something else that tried to cross the river," he said, thinking back to the encounter when he'd just woken up in the river. She pulled him close with her muscular arms and rubbed the top of his head.

"Hey, stop!"

"We aren't out of here yet. We are still in kind of deep shit," he said as he struggled under her grasp. Elenya grinned between the red locks falling wildly from her face, but as they locked eyes, the smile evaporated.

"The dreams," she said.

"I dreamt that I was a hound, the one we fought. The man we met on the train had raised it, and he was behind the attack." Wretch pushed himself away.

"Grendel and his hound. I saw its tracks. That dog is somewhere in the forest," Wretch said. Elenya raised an eyebrow and looked over the cliffs at the looming forest.

"Maybe the trees killed it. Saint knows what would have happened had you not shown up."

"I doubt that. If it couldn't stop me from breaking free, how could it hold that thing?" Wretch said. A rumbling roar echoed over the canopy, sending birds fluttering towards the sky. They looked at each other.

"We should head east." They began walking over the cliffs, and Elenya rubbed her hand as Wretch finally dared to regenerate his eyelids.

"Did you hurt your hand?" Wretch asked as he gave the woods one last look. She pulled up her sleeve. The skin had a few cuts along the elbow and a crude bandage covered her wrist, made from a piece of cloth ripped from her trousers.

"It's probably fine." They began their walk across the cliff-like environment. Coming upon a stream, they drank from the water, but no other meal presented itself. In a sudden change of scenery, the cliffs ended and they walked out onto a precipice. Beyond was a crater reaching as far as he could see to the left and right. A sandy slope led down to the bowl where fine sand continued into the horizon, broken only by the occasional jutting rock formation.

Each of the strange, jutting rocks filled with holes as if the stone itself had rotted like a festering wound.

"This looks more ominous than the forest, but maybe that's a good thing," Wretch said.

"As long as we go east, we will get to a stronghold eventually," Elenya answered, leaning on a rock and catching her breath.

"You good to go?" Wretch asked. She scoffed and slid down the sandbank into the shallow crater. Wretch shrugged his shoulders and jumped down. They walked through the sand, stopping only to inspect rusted armor buried in the sand. The armor was incredibly heavy, and all depicted waves and massive creatures breaching the surface under a storm where a singular figure hovered. Interesting, if they weren't lost far from civilization and safety. For an entire day, they walked undisturbed through the strange desert.

The dunes grew in size, appearing like frozen waves, as did the hollowed-out rock formations, becoming more and more common. The crater that held the desert must be massive. Had it formed from an impact or had something else caused it?

"Wonder what deadly trap this place holds for us," Wretch said as he shielded his eyes from the setting suns. Somewhere far away, the rumble of a storm shook the sky, and a gust of cold wind scattered the sand.

"We should find shelter," he said.

"Who knows what happens here during the night." Elenya nodded. Wretch pointed towards one of the bigger stone outcroppings, holes filling its bulbous top.

"We can hide up there," Wretch said.

"Let's gather some firewood. We will need some heat to hold out through the storm," Elenya said as she gestured towards a growing wall of clouds to the west. A few crooked trees grew under the strange rocks. They chopped away a few branches and moved up towards the base of one of the hollowed-out rock formations.

"It will take some time for me to climb that," Elenya said.

"You've got an expert beside you," Wretch said with a hint of cruelty. She looked at him with a puzzled expression, then a look of realization as his eyes lit with fire. Arms burst out of his ripped shirt, thin and long human arms that covered his entire body. A few grabbed the yelping Elenya as the rest furiously crawled up the rocks. In a matter of seconds, they had entered the vertical entrance and Wretch released the struggling woman. The arms shifted back into his regular form.

"See, that wasn't too bad," he said as arms were still shrinking back under his skin. She shuddered.

"By the Saint, out of all the Blessings out there, yours is the freakiest." He looked around the cave. It was far from spacious, barely a few meters deep.

"Elenya," he said with a serious gaze, sniffing in the air. A scent had tickled his senses as he held her close.

"What?" He stepped closer, looking straight at her with eyes of pure black.

"I can smell something on your arm, something sweet."

"Show me," he demanded.

"It was just a bruised cut this morning. I even bandaged it. Worry about yourself instead." She shook her head, and turned to the cave but he grabbed her wrist. Not forcefully, but with enough pressure to deliver his meaning. She looked at him in silence for a moment, then sighed in defeat. Pulling up the sleeve of her left arm, she revealed a makeshift bandage. Removing it, both their eyes grew wide.

Around her wrist, brittle branches poked through the red and swollen skin, a purple bud forming on one of them while something slithered beneath the skin. The forest had not let her go just yet.