User blog:Galeforce's Wrath/Lost Souls: Chapter 24

Two months had passed by the time Ayra and I got to the forest and started trying to get to St. Lamia. From what I’d heard, this place was called the “Blood Forest” because of how everything, or almost everything, was blood red. That wasn’t what made this place creepy for me. I’ve been to some pretty scary places before, but what really freaked me out was how silent the whole place was. Occasionally we’d find a mutilated corpse of one of the monster inhabitants of the forest or a random piece of well… monster. Very rarely did we see any living thing, but when we did, they either fled with pure terror in their actions, or said monster stayed with us. A few “mandragoras” and a dryad followed us around after promising them that we’d protect them. I had the feeling that something, or someone, was killing everything in their path. Even worse, we were catching up with it.

Every time we came across a body, it seemed fresher than the one before it. Whenever we came across a clearing, it seemed that somebody had been there recently. Every sign that you could think of had presented itself to us that we were getting closer and closer, yet we decided to keep going. Our curiosity had gotten to us, and we wanted to find out what could have wiped out a whole forest full of animals and monsters seemingly single-handed. If we came across this someone, I don’t know what I’d do. This... thing was definitely a professional at killing. All of the wounds inflicted on any of the monsters seemed to all be fatal. All of the wounds were near a major artery or a major organ, but seemed to have been done after said monster was killed. Having been an army commander with my home country, we had seen many cases of animals being killed off en masse without any explanation, but nothing as strange as this.

Before long, we had come across a fork in the road. The path to the left seemed to not have been touched for ages, while the one on the right showed clear signs of several battles had occurred there recently. I gestured to ayra to look for cover while I did something stupid just to get this over with. As soon as she gave me the signal, I used up a lot of my energy to create a massive behemoth out of maelstrom. It roared so loud that my ears hurt before plowing down all the trees in sight. If there was anything in this forest, it’d have to have heard this noise that we were making… And I was right. A person darted from behind one of the trees the behemoth was by and leaped onto it’s back. The person quickly dispatched the monster as if it were nothing. As it crumbled to dust, the person jumped off of it’s back and turned to me.

From what I could see of the person, I was able to note a few things. The first thing was that he was male, and seemed to be around my age. He wore a strange bone-like armor and wielded an axe which was hanging from his side. His hair was a spiky mess, and he had a short beard growing from his chin. He stood proud, and seemed to not care that I was standing there. “Done staring at me?” He asked suddenly. I stopped observing him and nodded. “S-sorry, it’s just… I wasn’t expecting you to be the one that wiped out most of the forest.” I admitted. He grinned at this. “I know you came here to attempt to get me to come with you, or battle, eh?” He asked. I yet again nodded. He looked up into the air thoughtfully, his hand on his chin, and his index finger tapping his cheek. He looked like the textbook example of someone who really wanted to be annoying. He looked back at me. “I choose… BATTLE!”

Right after he said this, he bolted towards me. I had no time to react, so instinctively I summoned a shield and blade out of maelstrom and charged at him. He stopped and threw his axe at me as I was running, and it hit me in the shoulder. I fell backwards, sliding forward a few feet before coming to a stop in front of him. I smiled and waved before stabbing him where it hurts the most. He got a look of both pain and anger on his face when I did that. He kicked the axe into my shoulder, (the one with the maelstrom) cutting my whole arm clean off. I didn’t feel any pain from that so I wasn’t affected at all. I grabbed the axe and sung it at his face, leaving a massive gash in it. He cried out as I jumped up and blasted him with a bolt of maelstrom. He was sent flying, and slammed into a conveniently placed tree. The tree shuddered from the impact but didn’t fall over. That surprised me as almost every tree that anyone around me hit fell over, but this one was the tree, this was the cure to my ome- and then the tree fell on top of the person, killing him instantly.

I stood there, dumbfounded. It was almost like I was blessed or something! The mere fact that the tree was there and then fell on top of him, a professional killer that outclassed me in almost anything, and allowed me to win against all odds was awesome! I pushed the thought out of my mind as ayra and the collection of monsters that had accompanied us walked over to me. The mandragoras screamed at the top of their lungs, causing me to go deaf for a few moments. When my hearing returned, the dryad thanked me and said that the mandragoras had also thanked me. “No problem, just don’t thank me ever again.” I said jokingly. Ayra laughed at this and gestured for me to head down the road. I quickly asked the dryad where to go, and she led us through the forest to the exit. I let out a sigh of relief as we stepped out of that forest and into the valley leading us closer to Maxwell’s Palace. In the valley, I thought I saw the quick glint of a gun scope on the walls, but it was probably nothing. We headed out, ready to continue our journey.

Ending Note:
I'm so sorry for not posting in ages! There were things going on (moving and summer work) that prevented me from writing this at all. It's not a real excuse, but... I'll use it as one. Now if you all will excuse me, I will go back to writing my summer essay. (all five of them.)