Chapter 5: A New Confidence
Holly ran. She ran away from Safe Haven as fast as adrenaline could carry her. She ran towards the salvation of her parents and neighbors and fellow villagers. She ran away from every frightening image she had seen in the Forest. She ran from the locans and the toxes and the deaths of her mentor and her friend.
She ran for the Painted Bridge.
And Holly had guessed that the best way to the Bridge was to follow the stream that came from Safe Haven. She followed the stream with Lync until Tebo came along, and Tebo had sailed Holly down the exact same stream. It stood to reason that it led to the Painted Bridge, right?
So, Holly ran along the stream, she waved her lantern around constantly, trying to luminate every patch of darkness. "After all," Holly reasoned, "Who knows what's in the shadows?"
But the darkness was pressing in. If sleep could be made solid, then a curtain of it was surrounding Holly at all times. And the music. There was still that music that had been haunting Holly ever since she stepped across that Bridge.
Holly's knees finally buckled. She felt as if she could run no more. It was like the darkness and the music had intertwined. Like they had become a single physical burden to Holly. They were blurring her senses beyond the help of her lantern. They were choking her, stuffing themselves down her throat.
And there was one particular sound, like a string instrument of some sort, that was especially heavy. Like it was lulling her to sleep somehow. That sound was so beautiful. Holly knew that she was falling asleep, and that she would be killed if she fell asleep. But if she focused on that one bit of music, maybe death wouldn't be so bad.
And then something caught her eye. It was a pair of wings. They were like miniature spider webs, made out of a silk that glowed pale blue. They were fluttering lightly right in front of Holly's eyes, but she couldn't see what the wings were attached to. She squinted hard at the space between the wings, but she still couldn't make out what was there. In fact, it was like the wings themselves were fading... and the string music was growing louder.
She focused on the music until it filled her head again. There were the wings, plain as day. Holly stared at the wings for a while, and then she did something without even realizing it. She reached out and gently stroked a wing with her fingernail.
The pain was excruciating. It was like Holly had stuck her entire hand into a bonfire. And it got worse.
Instantly, the string sound had reached a deafening volume, and dozens of pairs of the wings had appeared out of nowhere. A second later, the wings were swarming around Holly, setting invisible fire to her flesh. Holly immediately got a second wind and started running again.
She ran along the stream again. But the wings were faster. Holly let out scream after bloodcurdling scream as the wings branded her with immaterial red-hot irons. But the burning had a side effect: It boosted her adrenaline and forced her to move farther toward the Forest's exit.
Nevertheless, every step towards that Bridge was filled with pain. And screaming. And visions of floating spider webs. And that accursed string music... Holly stopped.
"Where's the music?" Holly wondered. "And what happened to the pairs of wings?"
Indeed, the wings and their sounds had just disappeared. But there was a much more disturbing sound in the air. It was a very low-pitched sound made in a perfect rythym.
"Oh no... "
Holly cast her lantern around furiously. The sound was slowly growing louder, and there could be no mistaking what it was, but Holly could see nothing. Walking nervously, Holly continued to shed light every which way. Her movements grew jerkier and faster with every passing second. The rythmic noise became incredibly loud, and Holly grew wracked with nervous anticipation.
She spun around one final time... and found herself face to face with a long wolf-like snout and a pair of tufted ears.
Holly screamed from fear and surprise as she ducked. The locan's claws sailed above her head. She backpedaled furiously, her wide eyes staying trained on the locan at all times. And then she felt an impact a mere inch to her right.
Another pair of locan claws were embedded into the groud next to her.
Holly retreated to the stream. She was just in time to see a third locan enter the fray.
The first one pounced toward Holly. She dodged him by a mere inch. She tried to run away, but she was cut off by the claws of another one. There was nothing for Holly to do but keep dodging. She could hear the snarls of the locans. She could smell their mouths watering. There was no mistake; the locans were enjoying every second of this.
And then Holly felt something firm pressing into her back. She swung the rucksack off of her shoulders and into her hand. She dodged one more impressively sharp blade and pulled out... the box. Time seemed to stand still as Holly looked at the useless metal box given to her by Lync. But a loud thump had brought Holly back to reality.
She saw the locan in midair, brandishing its claws. Holly shut her eyes, and turned her head away. By reflex, she brought the box to where it could shield her head.
Holly felt the impact of claw meeting metal, and she also heard a loud, pathetic howl. She looked up in time to see the locan nursing a claw. It looked as if the claw was... dissolving somehow. The locans traded looks and bounced away into the darkness. Holly was saved, but how?
She looked at the back of the box and saw some sort of white liquid dripping from the claw marks. Holly wiped a finger across the liquid and examined it closely. She smelled it, rubbed it between her fingers, and looked at it closely. There was no doubt.
It was paint.
Everything suddenly made sense to Holly. "Paint kills forest creatures," Holly realized. "That's why the Bridge is painted! Oh, Master Lync!"
Holly quickly gathered her belongings and ran forward with a new confidence. The lantern was in her left hand and the box was in her right. More toxes and locans came, but the paint had easily dispatched them. A single drop of paint was all it took to scatter the ranks. Nevertheless, the toxes and locans and the wings had all gathered together to form an army behind the girl. The creatures had all been making their music throughout this grotesque parade, forming some bizarre kind of symphony.
Before Holly knew it, her lantern had cast light on the Painted Bridge. By some miracle, the creatures had stopped chasing her. Holly looked all around, and there was absolutely nothing to stop her from going home. One thought crossed her mind as she approached the Bridge. "This is too easy."
Then she heard the cymbals.
Or at least, it was some short, soft noise that sounded like cymbals. Holly tightened her grip on the box. The cymbal noise sounded again as Holly looked with bated breath for the problem.
At that moment, something had shown up in Holly's lantern. She didn't know what it was, but it was gray, thin, getting bigger by the moment and coming straight for Holly. Holly ducked out of the way only to hear a cymbal coming from where she had been just a second earlier.
It was a tentacle.
A gray, rubbery, spade-shaped tentacle that was withdrawing toward the stream under the Painted Bridge. Holly cast her lantern along the tentacle. Swimming before her was a dark-grey squid. On the surface this squid might have looked normal, but this particular squid had blood-red horns and tentacles that were at least fifty feet long. A second later, the squid had launched another tentacle at Holly. Except that this time, she was ready.
She sidestepped out of the way again, and the tentacle slammed down to where she had been a second before. This time, however, Holly had quickly slammed the box down onto the tentacle, draining the remainder of the paint. The desired effect took place, with one small exception: The horned squid had washed the paint off into the stream before any real harm was done.
Holly now had no weapons, and the squid had about six.
The squid proceeded to throw its tentacles all over the place, destroying every nearby tree. It was also slapping Holly around quite successfully. Holly had done a good job of avoiding danger so far, but she took a real beating this time. After all, no one could dodge six moving assailants at once.
"Wait a minute," thought Holly. "No one can dodge? That's it!"
She waited until one of the tentacles had slammed down on the ground. And then she stood on it. "Hey!" Holly shouted. "I'm over here!"
Sure enough, the squid raised a tentacle above Holly. Then, she dived out of the way, and watched as the squid pummeled its own tentacle. There was no reaction. Holly had a split second to register that the squid was fine. And then a tentacle swung over and blindsided her.
Holly was sent flying until she hit a tree that was still standing. She slowly picked herself up, wincing from the hellish pain in her spine and her ribs. Then, Holly heard a low-pitched rythmic sound just behind her. "Not again!" she thought.
The girl limped toward the squid, trying to outrun another locan. Unfortunately, this one wasn't taking its time like the last three. This one was leaping. And then Holly ducked. Without Holly in the way, her pursuing locan was knocked down and out by a tentacle.
Options flashed through Holly's mind as she tried to keep dodging. She couldn't turn back, because there were locans and toxes and other creatures who would tear her apart for lack of paint. However, Holly couldn't go forward, as the Bridge was being guarded by a horned squid with impossibly long limbs, gradually pummeling her into oblivion. Worst of all, there was now nothing in her rucksack that could save her.
"Or is there?"
Holly swung her rucksack into her hand one more time and stuffed her hand in. All the while, she was blindly running toward the squid. She was being stung and slapped around and hurting from the pain in her midsection, but that didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was getting close enough to the stream....
After the whole ordeal, Holly could never remember how it happened. She didn't know how she managed to do it amidst all the chaos. But there was one thing that she could clearly remember: The stream turning purple. She remembered the way that the stream had turned into thick purple syrup. She remembered the way that the horned squid was flailing around hopelessly, trying to free itself from its sticky environment. She didn't know how, but somehow, at least one dewstone came out of her rucksack and into the stream.
Holly had a diversion, but the squid was no less dangerous. She ignored the pain and ran to the Bridge in adrenaline-fueled determination. But the squid was watching.
As soon as she started crossing the bridge, she caught a glimpse of something. Holly had only seen it out of the corner of her eye, but she knew what it was. It was a tentacle. A tentacle taking one final try to kill its prey. The squid raised the tentacle above her, and struck with incredible force. Once more Holly rolled out of the way.
A flash of light blinded her, but she heard the sickening crunch of wood.
***
For a moment, Holly did not recognize where she had landed. As her eyes adjusted she realized something: She was lying face-down on a road. It was a very familiar road, and she could see it clearly because....
"Daylight," Holly said to herself. "How long has it been light out?"
She looked back to the Painted Bridge. There was no longer anything there. Just some loose planks and splinters. Even more amazing, the stream was crystal-clear again. There was no sign that dewstone juice or vites or tebos or giant squids had ever been there. Niomo had said that the Painted Bridge was the only gateway into the Dark Black Forest. If that was true, then no one would ever witness the horrors of the Forest again.
"Niomo," Holly thought. "The Cure! The dewstones! Are they still there?" Holly checked her rucksack. Her rucksack was still crammed to the brim with dewstones, and she could make out the green aura of the Cure.
Holly sighed with relief. Everything would be okay now. Humans were safe from the Forest. The Forest was safe from humans. The bloodbarb poisoning would be Cured, Holly would become the new village doctor, and all would be well.
But for some strange reason, something that Lync said was lingering in Holly's mind. Perhaps it wasn't what he said, but how he said it. He had sounded so foreboding, as if he knew that some unpredictable chain of events was going to happen. At the time, it was the last thing Holly had wanted to hear:
"Into the Dark Black Forest."
~ ~ ~ *** ~ ~ ~
AN: And so, I beg you one final time: Please tell me what you think!
Holly ran. She ran away from Safe Haven as fast as adrenaline could carry her. She ran towards the salvation of her parents and neighbors and fellow villagers. She ran away from every frightening image she had seen in the Forest. She ran from the locans and the toxes and the deaths of her mentor and her friend.
She ran for the Painted Bridge.
And Holly had guessed that the best way to the Bridge was to follow the stream that came from Safe Haven. She followed the stream with Lync until Tebo came along, and Tebo had sailed Holly down the exact same stream. It stood to reason that it led to the Painted Bridge, right?
So, Holly ran along the stream, she waved her lantern around constantly, trying to luminate every patch of darkness. "After all," Holly reasoned, "Who knows what's in the shadows?"
But the darkness was pressing in. If sleep could be made solid, then a curtain of it was surrounding Holly at all times. And the music. There was still that music that had been haunting Holly ever since she stepped across that Bridge.
Holly's knees finally buckled. She felt as if she could run no more. It was like the darkness and the music had intertwined. Like they had become a single physical burden to Holly. They were blurring her senses beyond the help of her lantern. They were choking her, stuffing themselves down her throat.
And there was one particular sound, like a string instrument of some sort, that was especially heavy. Like it was lulling her to sleep somehow. That sound was so beautiful. Holly knew that she was falling asleep, and that she would be killed if she fell asleep. But if she focused on that one bit of music, maybe death wouldn't be so bad.
And then something caught her eye. It was a pair of wings. They were like miniature spider webs, made out of a silk that glowed pale blue. They were fluttering lightly right in front of Holly's eyes, but she couldn't see what the wings were attached to. She squinted hard at the space between the wings, but she still couldn't make out what was there. In fact, it was like the wings themselves were fading... and the string music was growing louder.
She focused on the music until it filled her head again. There were the wings, plain as day. Holly stared at the wings for a while, and then she did something without even realizing it. She reached out and gently stroked a wing with her fingernail.
The pain was excruciating. It was like Holly had stuck her entire hand into a bonfire. And it got worse.
Instantly, the string sound had reached a deafening volume, and dozens of pairs of the wings had appeared out of nowhere. A second later, the wings were swarming around Holly, setting invisible fire to her flesh. Holly immediately got a second wind and started running again.
She ran along the stream again. But the wings were faster. Holly let out scream after bloodcurdling scream as the wings branded her with immaterial red-hot irons. But the burning had a side effect: It boosted her adrenaline and forced her to move farther toward the Forest's exit.
Nevertheless, every step towards that Bridge was filled with pain. And screaming. And visions of floating spider webs. And that accursed string music... Holly stopped.
"Where's the music?" Holly wondered. "And what happened to the pairs of wings?"
Indeed, the wings and their sounds had just disappeared. But there was a much more disturbing sound in the air. It was a very low-pitched sound made in a perfect rythym.
"Oh no... "
Holly cast her lantern around furiously. The sound was slowly growing louder, and there could be no mistaking what it was, but Holly could see nothing. Walking nervously, Holly continued to shed light every which way. Her movements grew jerkier and faster with every passing second. The rythmic noise became incredibly loud, and Holly grew wracked with nervous anticipation.
She spun around one final time... and found herself face to face with a long wolf-like snout and a pair of tufted ears.
Holly screamed from fear and surprise as she ducked. The locan's claws sailed above her head. She backpedaled furiously, her wide eyes staying trained on the locan at all times. And then she felt an impact a mere inch to her right.
Another pair of locan claws were embedded into the groud next to her.
Holly retreated to the stream. She was just in time to see a third locan enter the fray.
The first one pounced toward Holly. She dodged him by a mere inch. She tried to run away, but she was cut off by the claws of another one. There was nothing for Holly to do but keep dodging. She could hear the snarls of the locans. She could smell their mouths watering. There was no mistake; the locans were enjoying every second of this.
And then Holly felt something firm pressing into her back. She swung the rucksack off of her shoulders and into her hand. She dodged one more impressively sharp blade and pulled out... the box. Time seemed to stand still as Holly looked at the useless metal box given to her by Lync. But a loud thump had brought Holly back to reality.
She saw the locan in midair, brandishing its claws. Holly shut her eyes, and turned her head away. By reflex, she brought the box to where it could shield her head.
Holly felt the impact of claw meeting metal, and she also heard a loud, pathetic howl. She looked up in time to see the locan nursing a claw. It looked as if the claw was... dissolving somehow. The locans traded looks and bounced away into the darkness. Holly was saved, but how?
She looked at the back of the box and saw some sort of white liquid dripping from the claw marks. Holly wiped a finger across the liquid and examined it closely. She smelled it, rubbed it between her fingers, and looked at it closely. There was no doubt.
It was paint.
Everything suddenly made sense to Holly. "Paint kills forest creatures," Holly realized. "That's why the Bridge is painted! Oh, Master Lync!"
Holly quickly gathered her belongings and ran forward with a new confidence. The lantern was in her left hand and the box was in her right. More toxes and locans came, but the paint had easily dispatched them. A single drop of paint was all it took to scatter the ranks. Nevertheless, the toxes and locans and the wings had all gathered together to form an army behind the girl. The creatures had all been making their music throughout this grotesque parade, forming some bizarre kind of symphony.
Before Holly knew it, her lantern had cast light on the Painted Bridge. By some miracle, the creatures had stopped chasing her. Holly looked all around, and there was absolutely nothing to stop her from going home. One thought crossed her mind as she approached the Bridge. "This is too easy."
Then she heard the cymbals.
Or at least, it was some short, soft noise that sounded like cymbals. Holly tightened her grip on the box. The cymbal noise sounded again as Holly looked with bated breath for the problem.
At that moment, something had shown up in Holly's lantern. She didn't know what it was, but it was gray, thin, getting bigger by the moment and coming straight for Holly. Holly ducked out of the way only to hear a cymbal coming from where she had been just a second earlier.
It was a tentacle.
A gray, rubbery, spade-shaped tentacle that was withdrawing toward the stream under the Painted Bridge. Holly cast her lantern along the tentacle. Swimming before her was a dark-grey squid. On the surface this squid might have looked normal, but this particular squid had blood-red horns and tentacles that were at least fifty feet long. A second later, the squid had launched another tentacle at Holly. Except that this time, she was ready.
She sidestepped out of the way again, and the tentacle slammed down to where she had been a second before. This time, however, Holly had quickly slammed the box down onto the tentacle, draining the remainder of the paint. The desired effect took place, with one small exception: The horned squid had washed the paint off into the stream before any real harm was done.
Holly now had no weapons, and the squid had about six.
The squid proceeded to throw its tentacles all over the place, destroying every nearby tree. It was also slapping Holly around quite successfully. Holly had done a good job of avoiding danger so far, but she took a real beating this time. After all, no one could dodge six moving assailants at once.
"Wait a minute," thought Holly. "No one can dodge? That's it!"
She waited until one of the tentacles had slammed down on the ground. And then she stood on it. "Hey!" Holly shouted. "I'm over here!"
Sure enough, the squid raised a tentacle above Holly. Then, she dived out of the way, and watched as the squid pummeled its own tentacle. There was no reaction. Holly had a split second to register that the squid was fine. And then a tentacle swung over and blindsided her.
Holly was sent flying until she hit a tree that was still standing. She slowly picked herself up, wincing from the hellish pain in her spine and her ribs. Then, Holly heard a low-pitched rythmic sound just behind her. "Not again!" she thought.
The girl limped toward the squid, trying to outrun another locan. Unfortunately, this one wasn't taking its time like the last three. This one was leaping. And then Holly ducked. Without Holly in the way, her pursuing locan was knocked down and out by a tentacle.
Options flashed through Holly's mind as she tried to keep dodging. She couldn't turn back, because there were locans and toxes and other creatures who would tear her apart for lack of paint. However, Holly couldn't go forward, as the Bridge was being guarded by a horned squid with impossibly long limbs, gradually pummeling her into oblivion. Worst of all, there was now nothing in her rucksack that could save her.
"Or is there?"
Holly swung her rucksack into her hand one more time and stuffed her hand in. All the while, she was blindly running toward the squid. She was being stung and slapped around and hurting from the pain in her midsection, but that didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was getting close enough to the stream....
After the whole ordeal, Holly could never remember how it happened. She didn't know how she managed to do it amidst all the chaos. But there was one thing that she could clearly remember: The stream turning purple. She remembered the way that the stream had turned into thick purple syrup. She remembered the way that the horned squid was flailing around hopelessly, trying to free itself from its sticky environment. She didn't know how, but somehow, at least one dewstone came out of her rucksack and into the stream.
Holly had a diversion, but the squid was no less dangerous. She ignored the pain and ran to the Bridge in adrenaline-fueled determination. But the squid was watching.
As soon as she started crossing the bridge, she caught a glimpse of something. Holly had only seen it out of the corner of her eye, but she knew what it was. It was a tentacle. A tentacle taking one final try to kill its prey. The squid raised the tentacle above her, and struck with incredible force. Once more Holly rolled out of the way.
A flash of light blinded her, but she heard the sickening crunch of wood.
***
For a moment, Holly did not recognize where she had landed. As her eyes adjusted she realized something: She was lying face-down on a road. It was a very familiar road, and she could see it clearly because....
"Daylight," Holly said to herself. "How long has it been light out?"
She looked back to the Painted Bridge. There was no longer anything there. Just some loose planks and splinters. Even more amazing, the stream was crystal-clear again. There was no sign that dewstone juice or vites or tebos or giant squids had ever been there. Niomo had said that the Painted Bridge was the only gateway into the Dark Black Forest. If that was true, then no one would ever witness the horrors of the Forest again.
"Niomo," Holly thought. "The Cure! The dewstones! Are they still there?" Holly checked her rucksack. Her rucksack was still crammed to the brim with dewstones, and she could make out the green aura of the Cure.
Holly sighed with relief. Everything would be okay now. Humans were safe from the Forest. The Forest was safe from humans. The bloodbarb poisoning would be Cured, Holly would become the new village doctor, and all would be well.
But for some strange reason, something that Lync said was lingering in Holly's mind. Perhaps it wasn't what he said, but how he said it. He had sounded so foreboding, as if he knew that some unpredictable chain of events was going to happen. At the time, it was the last thing Holly had wanted to hear:
"Into the Dark Black Forest."
~ ~ ~ *** ~ ~ ~
AN: And so, I beg you one final time: Please tell me what you think!