24. II:8: The Bleak Forest (1/2)

act ii: adolescencechapter 8: the bleak forestparty: ryu, nina, lance, james, leah

ryu yawned again as auria fell out of sight behind one of the gently sloping hills that lead toward the bleak forest. though he had eventually gotten to sleep the night before, the hour had been much later than ryu would have liked, and so he found himself wanting more sleep as the rest of the party had risen and at least looked more or less refreshed. even nina and leah seemed in better spirits than ryu felt. he did, however, try to keep the amount of sleep he'd had the previous night to himself.

the party reached the forest without any trouble and while it was still early enough in the morning that they hadn't seen the sun climb above the trees during their whole approach. when they reached the copse of trees that was to be their chosen entrance, lance took the lead. the party headed in, carefully following the path that wound from the edge of the wood.

as quickly as five or six trees in, the morning sunlight was basically nonexistent. by the time they had spent five minutes in the forest, it was as dark as night. lance, who was in the lead, and james, who had taken up the rear, now had torches lit and out for them to see by. ryu had offered to create light in the air by magic, but lance had shaken his head. "we can't, too dangerous to use magic unless absolutely necessary."

the monsters in the forest charged them with fang and claw, which was a relief to ryu who had been told that stepping off the path could be disastrous. leah took particular pleasure in taking down the local wildlife, and due to the prohibition on magic, she was the most effective of the party at it. an indeterminate time passed: it was impossible to guess on the amount of time they had spent in the forest, but ryu thought it couldn't be more than a few hours. suddenly, there were hissing sounds that could be heard, and they seemed to be coming from all directions.

lance froze, causing the rest of the party to become more alarmed at this development. james moved into the center of the group with ryu and nina, while leah took his place at the back of the line. the hissing grew louder. "it seems we've been found despite not using magic," lance remarked quietly. "magic is now absolutely necessary; use it to attack the bleak mamba…" ryu gulped.

leah cried out. ryu whirled to look down the path where she was and saw a rather large snake slithering its way along the path toward them. the snake reared up when it got within ten paces of the party easily becoming taller than leah as it hissed and spit a challenge at them. lance cried out as well, and with a sense of foreboding, ryu turned around again to find a snake that looked identical to the one challenging the party from leah's side was challenging lance's side of the party. ryu grumbled a rather impolite curse which earned him a shocked look from nina.

nina fired off air spells at a lightning speed, doing obvious damage to the snakes. lance joined in with his fire spells and james used earth. ryu was going to use his light spell, but leah, in the act of trying to prevent the snake from counterattacking the magical blows, had been bitten, and ryu was forced to cast heal on her. it didn't help much alone, but when nina noticed and cast cleanse on her wound, ryu was able to heal it. having discovered this, nina and ryu teamed up to heal any further wounds inflicted by the two snakes.

leah got off a lucky shot with one of her spear tricks and managed to deeply wound the snake on her side. james flung in a follow-up shot which stuck hard enough to lift the snake into the air before dropping it unceremoniously just off of the path, where it no longer moved. the party reshuffled the marching order so that leah faced the remaining snake, which was already getting angry at its inability to poison the party effectively due to ryu and nina's work.

the same strategy that had

ought the first one down

ought the second one down as well, but this time it was lance's flare that was the final blow, which caused the snake to explode into fragments that scattered the path in front of the party.

there was a beat of silence. "eew!" nina said, backing up a bit. "disgusting!"

lance sighed, looking dubiously at the mess. "we don't really have any choice but to walk over it."

"i do!" nina said indignantly. "and i will take advantage of it, thank you very much." she lifted into the air on her wings, but then was buffeted to the side as if there were a stiff wind that had blown into her wings. but the strangest thing wasn't the absent wind, it was the fact that once nina was no longer over the path, but over the uneven ground to the party's right, she disappeared without even hitting the ground.

"princess!" the three agents shouted at roughly the same time, easily drowning out ryu's call of "nina!" james was about to step off the path in the direction that they had seen nina blown, but lance stopped him. "no! she has to…" he swallowed before continuing. "she has to do this on her own. we can't help her until she's escaped the forest."

ryu's response was vile and to the point. "i'm going," he continued. he

oke into a run, vanishing before he had taken more than a single step off the path, leaving the agents in complete silence.

ryu found that he was completely alone very quickly. "nina!" he called out into the darkness of the forest. "this is stupid," he muttered between calls, casting a spell that

ought light to the forest where he stood. he knew that this would make him easier to find, but that was part of the point. if nina knew where he was, she could direct him to her. the fact that this had the unintended side effect of being more findable by monsters, well, they had been using torches while on the path…

"nina!" he called again, beginning to feel like his rash decision to go after nina hadn't been such a good idea after all. hope flared to life once again in his chest as he heard an answer. faint, but it was there.

"ryu!" and it was definitely nina's voice that was calling back to him. he turned in the direction that he thought the voice was coming from and followed it.

"nina!"

"ryu!"

he was definitely getting closer, though he had to deal with a pair of zombies that crossed his path, which he struck aside with a spell and barely a thought. "nina!"

"over here!" nina's voice was coming from his left now, and he stepped into a small clearing of the gnarled trees that were the standard of the forest. nina was laying in a heap on the opposite side of the clearing, and ryu ran to her side. she groaned in obvious pain, and ryu set about healing her injuries.

"what happened?" ryu asked as he healed her to the point that she could talk without any pain.

"apparently, it's not a good idea to fly in here," she replied dryly, wincing at ryu's ministrations. "i can't control myself while in the air, but extending my wings doesn't affect me when i'm on the ground, so i have no idea what's causing it. where are the others?"

"you… well… vanished," ryu told her gently. "the instant you weren't above the path any more. lance stopped james who was going to go after you, telling him that you had to do this alone." he finished the healing. "you should be able to stand up now."

"i don't want to," she said, "i'm beat. why – how did you get here, then?"