Chapter 1 – Defiers of the Gods
Part II: Into the Lost Forest
With the crimson rays of the dying sun shimmering above their heads, Rufus and his recently acquired charge, princess Alicia of Dipan, set out into the Lost Forest.
He couldn't deny that he was just a mite apprehensive. Not of the princess – though she raised a veritable minefield of questions, his instincts told him there was nothing to fear from her – but rather, of their location. The Lost Forest was far from whimsically named; many a traveller's tale told of a wood that spanned the entire northeastern coastline, so impenetrable that it prevented armies from crossing over on foot to Dipan. Add that to the rumours of adventurers disappearing without a trace, and it was the stuff of nightmares.
Maybe princess Alicia, who was ahead of him as usual, stepping nimbly over the thick undergrowth, hadn't heard the rumours. He didn't have to look at her face to know it was rigid with the same determination that had driven her to approach his reclusive self at the tavern. Even now, she moved inexorably forward as though guided by some inner compass.
He was in the middle of pushing some low-hanging branches aside when a purple shadow suddenly sprang into sight, startling them both. He took a reflexive leap back, his hand automatically reaching for his bow.
"We've got company!"
The purple shadow – wraith, unidentified creature, whatever – did not seem to be composed of solid matter. Tendrils of darkness trailed from its incorporeal limbs, giving it an ever-shifting appearance that watered the eye to follow. It made not the slightest rustle as it moved one ghostly foot over the other across the forest litter, which would explain why his keen ears hadn't picked up on its approach. No doubt his arrows wouldn't even pierce its unearthly flesh.
The hairs on the back of his neck immediately stood on end. Was this the evil that had brought the plucky adventurers of rumour to their doom…?
Then, to his great surprise – and against all good sense – the princess took a step towards the wraith, looking for all of Midgard like it didn't bother her in the slightest.
"Uh… Princess?"
She stilled briefly, as though consulting some kind of inner wisdom, and stretched out her palm. A burst of light shot from it, encasing the wraith in what appeared to be a translucent, golden crystal upon impact.
In all of his twenty-four years, he had yet to see a sight that more bizarre than the one he had just bore witness to.
His bewilderment found its way to his mouth, manifesting itself in a question. "Hey, what did you do?"
"I hit the monster with sacred light," came her matter-of-fact reply, as though hitting monsters with sacred light was an everyday occurrence to her. "It's imprisoned in a crystal. Temporarily."
"Sacred light, huh?"
"Curious?"
Of course. Who wouldn't be? "Yeah."
She cast a sideways glance at him, her eyes alit with a wisdom that did not belong to her young, round-cheeked face. "I absorb energy flowing from the roots of the world tree Yggdrasil, and convert it to light."
She could convert energy from Yggdrasil's roots to light? There was no one he had heard of who possessed such a power – no one mortal, at any rate. Could it be that the princess was not actually a princess (as he had suspected), but rather some deity in disguise?
"That's some power," he said conversationally, playing along. "I guess you're not exactly your average princess."
She didn't seem to have heard him; her gaze was riveted on the wraith in its crystal prison.
"What's wrong?" he asked, turning to look at said wraith more closely.
It was then that a loud cracking noise filled the air, and sure enough, visible cracks appeared along the sides of the crystal. Not a second later, the crystal fragmented into golden shards, which instantly vaporized as though they had never been. The wraith, free to move once more, began its lumbering movements towards them anew.
The princess looked completely unperturbed by this. "Looks like we'll need to fight it to purify it."
"Oh yeah!" he quipped, knowing that sarcasm was inappropriate in their current situation, but being too agitated to care. "That worked very well!"
"Weren't you listening?" Her tone belied her irritation at him. "I said – temporarily."
There was a zing of metal as she unsheathed her weapon – a shortsword with a slim, tapered blade. Its fine craftsmanship was a matter to be appreciated at another time, however. He had barely readied an arrow as clouds of purple mist began swirling around the wraith, building up into a miniature storm before dissipating abruptly.
A skeletal soldier stood in its wake, bony hands clutching a spear that was immediately thrust in their direction. Twin lights of sickly yellow glared out from its eye sockets, bespeaking its malevolent intent.
He wasn't foolish enough to let it have the first strike. The arrow he had strung but a moment ago flew from his bow, splitting into a double helix of swirling blue energy that smacked into the skeleton's ribcage. The force of the blow knocked the skeleton back a few yards, but otherwise did no lasting damage.
"Princess!"
She took the cue, having already covered the ground that would enable her to attack their enemy from the other side. A precise upward slash after, and skeleton's skull was severed cleanly from its vertebrae. Disorientated by the loss of its head – and consequently, sense of sight – the skeleton began swinging its spear blindly in an attempt to defend itself. Alicia raised her sword in time to parry its frantic attack, but even her strength would soon give out under the barrage of continuous blows.
Nevertheless, as focused with Alicia as it was, the skeleton had made one dire mistake – and that was exposing its back completely to Rufus. Not one to miss opportunities – especially in combat – he fired an enchanted shot at its unguarded pelvis. The lightning-infused arrow shattered upon impact, causing fragments of electrified bone to fly off in every direction.
Legless now, the torso of the skeleton wriggled feebly on the ground, but Alicia did not give it any chance to recuperate. Stomping down on its bony wrist as to prevent a possible counterattack from its spear, she thrust the blade of her sword into its sternum, dislocating numerous ribs with a sickening crunch. Their enemy gave one final shudder, and then went still.
With his bow still tensed for another shot, Rufus warily approached the skeletal remains, giving it a prod with the toe of his boot. He jumped aside with an exclamation as purple mist swirled around it like before, reforming into a ghostly husk that floated in midair without any tangible form of support.
"Huh. Looks like there's something left."
"The body that held the enemy's psychic energy," replied the princess, who was studiously wiping her blade on the ground, cleaning it of undead residue. "It usually vanishes after the psychic energy is purified."
He frowned, not comprehending at all. "So, what exactly did we just fight?"
"Something not native to that body. Fighting it was the only way to reveal its true form. The psychic energy possesses the body, and uses it as a sort of vessel." The business of cleaning her sword complete, she stood up and sheathed her weapon, before turning to look over her shoulder at him. "We will be encountering more of them ahead. Watch yourself."
"Sure."
They trudged deeper into the forest.
"So, this'll take us all the way to Dipan, huh?" Rufus jerked his head, indicating the entrance of a cave that was gouged into a nearby cliff face.
They had stopped by a stream for a brief refreshment. The high-pitched warble of trickling water filled the air, soothing his overexcited nerves. That said stream was situated conveniently beside the underground path entrance was a note he tucked into the back of his mind for future use. Had he any need to return here, he could simply listen for the sound of running water, an action his otherwise accursed half-elf heritage granted superiority to.
They had encountered a few more wraiths on their way here, but all were dispatched as swiftly as the first. The princess proved to be something of an anomaly in combat, alternating between confident competency and – dare he say it – cowering reluctance. It was as though two completely different personalities were wrestling for control of the same body.
Either something very weird was going on, or he had an insane (possibly demon-possessed) princess on his hands.
"It seems that way." The weaker of the two personalities appeared to be in residence at the moment. Her voice was all but quivering with uncertainty, which irked him to no end.
"What do you mean, 'seems'? Is there something you're not telling me?"
Of course there were plenty of things she wasn't telling him, but he had hoped to catch her off-guard with the question.
For one fleeting moment, she looked like she was going to relent and divulge the secrets of her predicament to him. But that moment was gone in the next second, her demeanour changing abruptly. The soul that greeted him from behind the blue windows of her eyes was that of his leash-yanker (as he had so unaffectionately dubbed her in his mind) once more. And worse yet, she wasn't paying the slightest bit of attention to his words.
Annoyed, he stepped in front of her and bent down to plant his face directly into her line of sight. "Hey, are you listening to me?"
Her eyes were focussed on something beyond him, and curiosity bade that he follow her gaze. A wizened staff sat in the pebbled shallows of the stream, propped up against a rock. There wasn't anything remarkable about it, save for the way it held her attention so.
Then, quite suddenly, she and the staff were engulfed in a mist as bright as the open heavens themselves. An unearthly hum roared in Rufus' ears, causing unpleasant tingles to shoot up his spine and his skin to erupt in gooseflesh even under the many layers of fabric. He fidgeted in discomfort, frightened by what was happening. Was she summoning a spirit back from the dead?
Just who had he gotten himself involved with?
As though in a trance, she began to walk towards the staff with her hand outstretched, white mist spilling copiously from the vicinity of her chest all the while. That same mist coalesced into the vague, blurry shape of a ghost, who detached from Alicia's body to reach out for the staff himself. As his – Rufus assumed the ghost to be male, judging by the height – hand curled around its handle, his form became increasingly defined, if still colourless. A distinctive, pointed hat materialized atop his head, and embroidered mage's robes wove into existence around his body.
"My einherjar!" cried Alicia, sounding more like a field commander than a princess right at that very moment. "Come now to fight alongside me, for the sake of Midgard! You know of what I speak."
Einherjar? Did she just say 'einherjar'? The human souls of those who had perished in battle, selected to be reincarnated into spirit flesh and brought to Valhalla in preparation for the end-apocalypse, Ragnarok?
Could it be that he was unwittingly paying escort to a valkyrie? A battle maiden goddess, chooser of the slain?
By the time his mind had caught up to what he had just seen, Alicia was facing her newly-summoned sorcerer einherjar, her palm outstretched to him. Then, in a move than caused Rufus' jaw to gape wider than it already was, said einherjar disintegrated into white mist, which gathered in her palm and solidified into a crystal.
"I'll call for you," she said softly, tucking the crystal into her blouse with tender care. "Until then, wait in here."
And at long last, the unearthly humming that had held Rufus' senses captive died, signifying the end of this very odd incident he had just witnessed and relinquishing his temporary inability to speak along with it. Nevertheless, his words were clumsy and garbled as they formed around his tongue. "I – I don't believe it!"
She merely acknowledged his astonishment with a nod, and immediately made in the direction of the cave entrance. "We should make haste."
Mind still fuzzy, he tilted his head up to look at the sky, which had deepened to the hue of indigo. "But it's dark now," he grumbled. "Can't we set up camp? We'll feel better rested in the morning."
She narrowed her eyes at him. "And who'll be keeping first watch? You?"
Of course he wasn't going to volunteer that – not that he would admit it. Having travelled with none other than himself, he was used to indulging whatever urge that happened to overtake him at the time, be it resting at the first sign of weariness, or eating as soon as his stomach protested. It appeared that he would have to make some personal sacrifices in her company, unfortunately.
Her knowing eyes told him she knew exactly what he was thinking. And far be it for her to grant him these small, if slothful comforts.
"I suggest we keep moving on while our senses are still keen and alert." Her tone brooked no argument.
He sighed, trailing after her obediently. "Yes, princess."