9. the First Attack
I don't recall exactly how I ended up in the forest. All I remember is walking out of Ms. Tall's room and then I was so shocked from information overload that here I am standing outside of the woods near the school, stuck walking home.
My house is pretty far from the school, thus why I take a bus. But the activity bus doesn't leave for a while and I don't feel like sitting around and nobody at home could pick me up. So now I was walking. Usually I hated having to walk with my backpack full of heavy books, however my backpack no longer really felt heavy and the weight didn't slow me down. On the contrary I was walking faster than ever.
Taking the sidewalk the walk was about an hour, through the woods it was about 45 minutes so that was the route I was planning to travel. And based on the time a lot of it will be in the dark, but that doesn't bug me.
I felt at home near these woods too, always have. Living here for 14 years makes things familiar but even as a kid I was able to navigate these woods better than the majority of people. Maybe it had something to do with my past life, if I did believe that.
Now a little way into the walk I find a rock to sit on near the creek so that I can pause and think for a moment. The information that I was told just began to sink in. I'm still not sure what I believe though. What Ms. Tall told me makes complete sense, but at the same time it's so outlandish. I mean apparently I was some superhero prince in a past life and for some reason I'm remembering it. Oh and plus someone wants to kill me because of this, I think that's why, and my destiny is to save the world.
Well obviously the superhero thing is a cover for the truth that was close enough to reality, but still it's insane. But a part of me doesn't think it is, and that scares me. It makes too much sense. The dream, the weird blackout visions, déjà vu, my unnatural strength and speed, and well everything. I wonder how Bill fits into all of this.
My guess is that he works for the people hunting me down; the fat guy in rainboots from my dream seems to be involved based on Ms. Tall's reaction. But why is it that I hold the key to saving everything? I shudder, this seems eerily familiar.
On top of that I'm on edge, strange considering where I am and how I go here to calm down. It seems to be the creek that's setting me off. Usually the sound is calming, but now it's just making me anxious. Not being able to stand it anymore I walk over to a relatively high tree and start to make my way up.
When I was younger my friends and I always used to climb up, even though I'm petrified of heights. Of course being about Sarah's age we never actually made it to the top, hell we barely made it to the first branch. But now I was older and a star athlete, not even mentioning the weird powers I have, so it was extremely easy to make my way to the top of the tree where the sound of the creek was less irritating. Actually I'm surprised I can still hear it, but my hearing seems to have improved too.
Really, I'm just glad to get away from it. For some reason I imagined myself drowning, actually I seemed to remember falling and drowning just as I did the other day at the creek. My head hurts and once again I am somewhere else.
This time I'm in the same cave where my dream took place and I'm being carried away by the river in the middle with a skeleton next to me.
Back in reality on the tree fear overtakes me. I don't get a chance to figure out what it meant or to even think about it because suddenly I hear a twig snap, odd that I could even hear it, and voices arguing.
"I smell him," one of them says in a deep voice.
"He's close," another replies.
I look down and notice a third one right behind them sniffing at the base of the tree, "He's up here," she screams and the three of them look up.
My first thought was to stay completely still and quiet, but they could see me ana apparently smell me so I'm guessing they could hear my breathing and my chest. Either way they knew where I was and I was trapped.
"Get down here Halfling," the fat one snarls, yeah snarls.
"Who are you talking about," I yell back. "this is not the um Halfling you are looking for."
They either do not understand my joke or just don't appreciate it since they don't laugh and instead the extremely fat one and the female one look to the hairy one (the leader from the looks of it)and he nods.
Faster than I can see they start to climb and in a second are right in front of me. I'm not proud of it, but it couldn't be helped and I scream. The female opens its mouth as if to bite me while the other one grabs my arms and legs. She stops right before my neck and snaps her teeth together before they grab me more securely and jump off the tree with me in tow, landing on their feet.
Throwing me to the ground they look back up at their leader and he starts stalking me as if I'm prey, which more than likely I am. He takes his grotesquely long finger nails and slashes my arm. Then even more disturbingly he leans down and takes a sip of my blood and I start to feel it enter his mouth. Definitely not a feeling I want to experience again.
In an even weirder turn of event he spits it out, "What's going on?" I shout and watch my arm as it heals suddenly.
"Oh Halfling how out master will be pleased to have you in his hands."
"Halfling? What do you mean I'm just human?"
They all chuckle and the female answers me, "Silly Halfling your blood begs to differ. If it wasn't than David here would not have spit the poison out."
I'm even more confused now, but all I know is that it isn't a good idea to stay ehre and let these sadistic animals torture me. Using my new found strength I start to push them away, only they won't budge and they hit me with even more force.
"You are strong for a Halfling?" the fat one muses. "How peculiar I believe this is definitely the exact one now. No normal halfie would be able to do that.
This time I use my free leg and kick the female to the ground. The other two growl at me and when I say growl I mean in an animalistic way. "Don't touch us," they yell and punch me in the nose. I squeal in pain as blood trickles down my face and onto my chest. Damn I think they broke it.
I start to struggle again to no avail and then after the female comes back over and punches me in the chest before kicking my head. After that it takes all of my energy just to stay awake and I begin to give up.
At this point I realize that there is no way that I can live. This pleases the three and the leader throws me over his back before taking off at an alarmingly fast speed. And by alarmingly fast I mean I can't even see what's around us and I'm pretty sure I'm going faster than a car.
After a few minutes, and probably hundreds of miles away from home, something hits the leader and he drops me. And of course the impact is my head once again and I'm just glad I do not have a broken scull.
Now that I'm not moving as fast I see that another item comes towards us and see that it's a boomerang. Peculiar saying that I've only seen them in movies that take place is Australia and didn't realize that people actually used them as weapons. This one hits the fat one and the female all at once.
They don't fall, but I push through the pain and use the distraction to go and attack them. Of course they don't just let me beat them up though and start to attack me in return. But somehow I have learned martial arts in the past five minutes and find that the moves to get them away come relatively easy to me.
Well the moves do, actually landing a blow against three of them is much harder. I manage to knock the female down and the fat one, both lying on the ground unconscious. But the leader is strong, wicked strong and lands another blow to me, knocking me onto my knees.
He pulls a dagger out from his belt and takes it to my head to kill me except another figure with a dagger comes up and slits his throat, effectively killing it. I look up to my savior and see a filthy guy with green hair who was wearing animal skins and who has red skin as if he had been in the sun way too long.
"Thank you," I whisper through my horse voice.
He smiles, "No problem."
"Whoa are you?"
"Can't tell you that yet, just know that I'm a friend." I cannot answer because at that moment I pass out.
The next thing I know I am lying on my bed, but my eyes still will not open. "What happened?" a familiar voice asks.
"They tried to kidnap him but in the process ended up about to kill him," my savior answers
"But they need him so why would they kill him?"
"Your guess is as good as mine Harkat, he should be waking soon though so we should get out of here."
Neither of them move and the one whose name I now learned is Harkat spoke, "I feel weird leaving, I was always there after he passed out."
"It has been a while, but it's not time and we'll see him soon."
They disappear out of the room after that and after a few more minutes I start to regain use of my body and sit up with a groan. Thankfully I am able to walk down the stairs though and ignore most of the pain. I look in the mirror on the stairs and gasp at my bruises. I really am dreading changing and having to see the rest of my body because my face is bad enough. God knows what the hell I'm going to tell my parents.
I sit down at the table for dinner and wave meekly. "Hey."
"Matt," my Dad starts.
"I can explain! I was pushed down the stairs today at school by some senior I beat in wrestling. Actually he's why I stopped because he was making my life miserable."
They seem to buy it, "Oh my gosh sweetie are you okay? I should call the school."
"No Mom don't, it's over and it wouldn't help at all," I plead.
"Fine, but one more incident and I will call," she vows.
I nod and conversation switches from that to Sarah telling us about how Annie's going. It's nice to have a normal family dinner and talk about normal things. Much preferred to the fantastical story my life has become recently.
Later my Dad and I are sitting in the family room watching college football and I turn to him, "Dad do you believe in past lives?"
"Why?" he asks confused, I don't normally talk very philosophically.
"We were reading a book in English about them," I tell him and am surprised at how easy it is to lie to them.
He pauses for a moment before answering, "Not sure, but it would be cool to live more than one life Although it may get monogamous if you remember them."
I just nod because I agree with him now, past lives have to exist for at least some people. Or at least it is for me even if it isn't the norm. The term Halfling strikes a chord and could be the truth instead of just saying I'm a superhero. Plus the guy who saved me was so familiar and I knew how to fight.
Maybe I should talk to Ms. Tall again. I needed to anyway since I forgot to ask her about the blood thing. If I knew what a Halfling was maybe I could understand it.
A few hours later I'm lying in bed when I do a double take. It just occurs to me that my attackers weren't normal, but in the moment I didn't consciously notice it.
All three of them had red eyes and purple skin.
I'm using creative license and making Halfling a thing, it should be obvious what it is and if not either ask in a review or PM or wait a few chapters and find out with Matt. And yay I introduced two more of our favorite characters who will soon become important and appear a lot!