"We're going to need to hurry if we want to beat the reset," Eva said as we jogged along the moonlit road, the shining space rock beginning to dip down in the night sky.
"What's the reset?" I barely managed to gasp out.
"It's a fog that rolls through at sunrise and disappears at sunset," Sparky answered. "It spawns a Mystery Dungeon that can disorient the best explorers, which is bad for us."
"W-what's a m-mys-" I tried to ask them what that was, unable to do so, as fast we were moving and as tired as I was.
"I'll explain it to you later, Dusk," Eva told me, understanding what I was trying to say. "For now, we just need to get through the Twilight Forest. We can take a break and slow down after that, I promise."
I just nodded and focused on the road in front of us, doing my best to keep up. As we ran the moon dropped further and further in the sky, signaling an urgent need to get through the forest. As we made it to its edges we just kept going, Sparky barely making time to use his Flash, and we booked it at a fast pace...for me that is. My friends looked like they weren't really trying all that hard.
We made our way through the Twilight Forest at a good pace, but as we neared the other side it got darker and darker overhead. The moon was beginning to drop below the horizon, and we were running out of time. Sparky and Eva began to pick up their pace and I started to slowly fall behind, doing my best to keep up in my new body.
"There it is!" Sparky shouted ahead. "I can see the end of the forest, let's go!"
I looked up from the road to see both Eva and Sparky bolt off even faster down the road, leaving me in the dust. I looked back down and began to pick my pace up slightly, struggling to breath properly as I started to run to catch up.
"Come on Dusk," Eva called from ahead. "You're almost there." I looked up again to see them both standing at the edge of the forest, only about three hundred feet ahead, waiting for me. Out of nowhere I see her eyes go wide and she shouts "Dusk! Run faster! The fog is behind you!"
I turned my head to look and saw a wall of fog taller than the trees approaching at a lightning fast pace. I turn my head to look at Sparky and Eva and sprint as hard as I can, my breathing ragged and broken. I put everything I can into my legs and then some as I try to stay ahead of the approaching wall of fog.
"Dusk you need to run faster!" Sparky shouted. "The fog is catching up!"
'I can't do it,' I thought, my body screaming for me to stop and give it a much-needed rest. 'No,' I thought, shaking my head, 'I have to go faster, I can go faster.' My vision began to blur as I suddenly gained a massive burst of energy and speed, almost flying as I made it out of the forest just as the fog met the edge and stopped there.
The ground was just a blur as I barreled down the road at a breakneck speed. As I realized I had gotten out of the forest I tried to slow down and tripped, falling hard into the ground, rolling and sliding for a good fifteen feet before I came to a stop.
"O-ow, ow, ow, ow, ow," I shouted in pain, unable to get up in my exhaustion, my legs and lungs screaming at me.
"Dusk!" Sparky shouted, running over with Eva. "Are you ok?!"
"I'm alive," I manage to cough out, the moon disappearing behind the horizon completely as light from the sun began to fill the sky in the east.
"Phew," he replied. "Well, we can rest here for a moment. You look like you're about to collapse any second."
"You know," Eva said as I lay down, trying to catch my breath and slow my heartbeat, "I've never heard of a Zorua who could use Extreme Speed before."
"Me either," Sparky pitched in. "How did you do that?"
"Is that what I did?" I say quietly, still catching my breath. "I honestly don't know what I did, I just thought that I had to go fast, so I did. I don't really know how to explain it." I finally calmed my lungs down enough to get up and clambered to my feet, a little dizzy and wobbly. My breathing was still heavy, but controllable now.
"Well we're just glad you made it Dusk," Eva tells me. "Sorry for not staying with you the whole way. I should've noticed that you were falling behind and slowed down for you."
"No," I tell her, shaking my head. "If you two hadn't gone ahead I probably wouldn't have been able to push myself as hard as I did, and we wouldn't have beat the fog."
"Well, I'm glad we all made it, but you legitimately look like you're about to pass out Dusk," Eva told me. "Are you sure you don't want to rest longer?"
"Yeah, I'm su-" I began to say, taking a step and immediately feeling sick. Not shortly after that, I puked all over the road near my friends. Sparky came over, patting and rubbing my back gently as I heaved out everything I'd eaten in the last twelve hours.
"Feeling better bud?" Sparky asks me as my heaving comes to an end. "Come on, let's go over here, off the road, and have you lay down for a moment. You need to rest."
Not having enough energy to argue with him, I let him guide me to a thick patch of grass nearby and lay down on my belly. I could still taste the half-digested poffin in my mouth and felt extremely dizzy, so I lay my head down and shut my eyes. I'm pretty sure that the reason I felt sick was a combination of exhaustion and dehydration, but I'm no doctor so I can't say for sure that's what it is.
"Hey, seriously, sorry for making you work so hard Dusk," Eva told me. "We should've noticed that you were getting tired, especially after you told us that the effects of the Sitrus were wearing off."
"Mmmmm," I just grunted, eyes still shut as I tried to not hurl again. "Honestly, I don't really care about just being tired, but where could I get some water before we continue? I'm feeling dehydrated and want to wash this nasty taste from my mouth."
"There's a creek nearby that we could go to," Sparky told me. "You think you can make it about one hundred feet?"
"Yeah," I tell him weakly, trying to get up.
"Here," Eva says, coming to my side, "lean on me as we walk. I'll support you."
I got up successfully this time, leaning on my Eevee friend as we walked slowly down a shallow hill to the creek, which I heard trickling along quietly as we got close. I approached the running water slowly, laying down on its bank and put my mouth in it, drinking water slowly. It was cool and tasted like heaven, washing away the nasty taste I had in my mouth and soothing my throat, which was on fire from the stomach acid.
I just lay there for a few, my face soaking in the cool water, as I tried to not hurl all the water back out as well. I rotated in place slowly so I wasn't in the water and just lay there for a bit. Sparky and Eva lay next to me and chat quietly as I focused on trying to feel better. About half an hour after I stopped drinking water I moved again to get more water, but as I was about to lean down for the creek I noticed movement in the early dawn sky.
I looked up to see something flying above us, circling slowly. It was a bird-like pokemon, but I couldn't tell what species it was in the low light of the early morning. I could however tell that they were looking for something, their head on a swivel as they circled. They continued until I watched them look in our direction, squak something, then fly off in the direction of the town. As they did, I saw that they were tan with brightly colored feathers and heard faintly "I found em!" as they got further away.
"We need to go," I say, getting up slowly, still feeling nauseous. "Now."
"Why?" Sparky asks, seeing me get up. "What's wrong?"
"Kabutops is nearby," I tell him.
"Are you sure?" Eva asked.
"Yes," I told her. "I just saw Archeops, one of Kabutops' buddies, flying overhead. He looked directly at us, then flew away." Eva and Sparky shot up at that and looked at each other.
"You think you can make it all the way back to the guild?" Eva asks, looking at me.
"I don't know, I'm still feeling a little sick," I reply, shaking my head in an attempt to clear my nausea. "But I don't have much of a choice right now, so I'll just have to try regardless."
"Let's go then," Sparky said. "I'll let you lean against me when you need to, and we'll stop when necessary. Eva, I need you to send an SOS to the Guild."
"Got it," she replied, touching her badge. I heard her click it two times, a pause, then two more. "Done."
"Good, let's get moving," Sparky says right as I see a tall figure emerge from the grass not even twenty feet behind him. Kabutops. The frenzied pokemon raised his arms and dashed directly at us.
"Sparky, dodge right!" I shout. "Eva, go left!" I dodge to the right at the last second, Kabutops' blades brushing my tail fur as he misses his target.
"We meet again, little Zorua," he hisses like a snake, turning around to face me as he stood in the creek. "Come and die like a good little Child of Arceus."
"We're not going to die today," Eva told him confidently. "It's one on three. We outnumber you."
"Oh is that right?" Kabutops retorts. "Look around you and you'll see that that's not quite the case." He gestured to our flanks with his arms.
Slinking out of the grass from both sides of our group came both Archeops and Armaldo. They stood about fifteen feet from us with an intimidating presence, clearly ready to finish the job from the cave. They began slowly approaching as Eva, Sparky and I went back to back.
"Hey," I whispered to the two of them, "when I say 'go', Sparky needs to use Flash and you two need to run like hell for the Guild and don't look back."
"Oh no you don't," Sparky whispered back. "I'm not letting you run off alone again."
"Look," I reply, "we can have either you and Eva make it out of here alive, or we all die here. I'm not strong enough to deal with these three, and I'm pretty sure you two aren't either."
"There is another option," Eva whispered to us, "but you're not going to like it, Sparky."
"Well, whatever it is has to be better than this," he replied.
"Then you give the signal Dusk and when I take off you two follow me," Eva said.
"Got it," I say. I waited as they slowly got closer. Ten feet, seven feet, five feet. "Now Sparky!"
He used Flash, blinding the trio of hostile 'mons, and we all ran dashed away, following Eva as she led us back in the direction of the Twilight Forest. We ran right back up to the fog engulfing the forest and Eva stopped for a moment. We could hear Kabutops and crew roaring as they looked for where we went behind us.
"We're going to have to go through the dungeon," she says.
"This is a REALLY bad idea Eva," Sparky said.
"Well we don't have a lot of choices right now, do we?" Eva retorted. I look behind us and see Kabutops' head peeking over the hill as he comes charging at us.
"Guys, if we're going to do this, we need to do it now," I tell them.
"Quick, into the fog," Sparky says, seemingly convinced by the threat behind us.
We jumped into the fog and I did my best to stay with them as we entered, but the fog was so thick that I quickly lost them. I ran around, looking for Eva and Sparky, not daring to shout their name as that would surely just give myself away to Kabutops. I was about to start panicking when I felt a strange floating sensation and suddenly I was no longer in the fog, but instead in another part of the forest.
I found myself in a place where the trees and bushes made a literal wall of sorts, forming a living hallway in the forest. About twenty feet in either direction the hallway turns to face another direction perpendicular to the one I was in. It was very strange that the forest I was in last night could transform so suddenly into this maze-like place.
I realized I couldn't see Eva or Sparky and began to worry about whether they too had been sent to this strange place. Shaking my head I looked down at my badge, remembering what the Guildmaster told me before, and pressed the center three times.
"Hey," I say quietly. "Can anyone hear me?" I listened for a moment, hearing only silence. "Sparky? Eva? If you can hear me please say something. I'm in some strange part of the forest and have no idea where to go or how I got here."
Still more silence from my badge. After waiting a while longer with no response I pressed the center one more time having decided that I was probably in some place where the communication function of my badge didn't work. Looking both directions down the hallway I decided to take the one on my right and followed it. Right, left, then right again, opening up into a room about fifteen feet across by twenty five feet long.
'This is bizarre,' I thought as I wandered through this maze. 'There's no way the forest grew this way naturally. I wonder who or what built this place, and why?'
Stepping out from the hallway I was in, I looked around the room. There were no other Pokemon around, which meant that I wasn't in any immediate danger myself, but it also meant that I still had no idea where Sparky or Eva were. There were two hallways leading out of the room, in addition to the one I just came from, with one being on the opposite side of me and the other to the wall on my left. Not seeing anything else in this room I decided to follow the path to the left.
Making my way through the maze I came across other rooms just like the first, just as empty and randomly placed apart, and kept moving in hopes that I would find Eva and/or Sparky. Eventually, I ran across some stone stairs leaving up out of the canopy above, just sitting in a corner of one of the rooms I came across. I got closer and inspected the stairs, wondering where they led, when I heard a voice behind me call out.
"Found you," Archeops screeched behind me. "Time to die now little Zorua!"
As I saw he was about to charge at me, and not seeing another way out, I decided to sprint up the stairs and hope that they actually led somewhere. Breaking through the forest canopy I exited into the fog again when I blinked and suddenly found myself in another room like those from the previous maze.
'Oh great,' I thought. 'More helpless wandering. Well, at least I don't have to deal with Archeops.'
I sighed and started to wander the maze again, but noticed that nothing seemed to line up with the maze I was in last time. The hallways were twisting in different directions from the place I just left, and the room placement was also not the same. As I wandered I came across a room with a singular item on the floor in a corner. I walked up to it and upon closer inspection I saw that it was a large apple, shining a little in the sunlight that peeked through the canopy.
My stomach growled at the prospect of real food, and I paused for a moment to consider my choices. I could skip it and risk passing out from sheer exhaustion, or I could eat this random apple off the ground that comes from who knows where and fill my stomach before continuing on. Weighing these two options I finally decide to eat it, my hunger winning the battle of safety over comfort.
I cautiously took a bite and after not tasting anything off about it I snarfed down the rest of the apple. I began to immediately feel better, being happily full, and no longer felt any nausea. At the moment I wanted to just lay down and sleep but I heard a crack of static from my badge and stopped to listen.
"-bzzt- -an you hear me? Dusk? Are you there? -bzzt-" I hear Sparky's voice say from my badge.
"Yes!" I shout back into my badge. "I can hear you, Sparky! Can you hear me?"
"-bzzt- Dusk? Dusk! Oh thank Arceus! -bzzt-" I hear Eva's voice say this time. "-bzzt- Where are you? We couldn't find you after we entered the Twilight Forest Mystery Dungeon. Are you alright? -bzzt-"
"Hold up, slow down Eva," I tell her. "I'm fine for right now, but I'm really lost. Is there something I can use to navigate to you guys?"
"-bzzt- Um...not really Dusk," Sparky tells me. "-bzzt- What floor are you on right now? -bzzt-"
"Floor?" I ask.
"-bzzt- Right, my bad. -bzzt-" Eva says. "-bzzt- I forgot to tell you about Mystery Dungeons. Mystery Dungeons are places that have multiple floors, like a building, and their layout changes randomly every time you enter it. To exit a Mystery Dungeon you have to go either up or down floors, depending on the type of dungeon, until you get to the final room, which usually has the exit already open. -bzzt-"
"Okay, so how do I tell what floor I'm on now?" I ask.
"-bzzt- For the Twilight Forest you have to progress upwards, and it will almost always start at the first floor. So, for each set of stairs you go up, you progress by one floor. -bzzt-" Sparky informs me. "-bzzt- How many sets of stairs have you gone up, if any? -bzzt-"
"Just one," I tell him.
"-bzzt- Perfect. If you're on the second floor, like I think you are, then you can meet us at the stairs on the second floor that lead to the third. -bzzt-," Eva tells me. "-bzzt- We'll wait for you there. Just wander around, marking passages and rooms you've been to as you go and you'll eventually find the room the stairs are in. -bzzt-"
"Um, okay," I tell them. "I'll wait for you there if I get there first."
I started off in the direction I was headed before, making sure to put an 'X' in the floor of the room to mark that I had been there, and followed the path in front of me. I continued to wander, marking where I've been as I went, and eventually got to the room with the stairs. I look around for Sparky and Eva and see them standing at the foot of the stairs, chatting about something.
Eva notices me first and waves at me with a paw, motioning me over to them.
"Dusk! Over here!" I quickly walk over to them and she hugs me. "I'm so glad you're ok."
Sparky gives me a look of contempt and says "She was so worried that she cried when we couldn't find you, you know."
"You said you wouldn't tell him," Eva said, kicking dirt at his feet. I began to giggle, then burst into full laughter. Eva let me go and gave me a dirty look. "Not you too Dusk."
"No, no," I say, calming down. "I'm just really happy you were concerned about me. I honestly don't know what to really say about that." It got quiet for a moment as I saw Eva blush until I asked, "So, what do we do now?"
"Well, the only way out of the Twilight Forest is to make it to the seventh floor and pass through the gate at the end," Sparky tells me. "We ought to be able to get there in half an hour if you think you can keep up a fast walking pace Dusk."
"Yeah, I should be able to do that," I replied. "But how do I keep myself from getting separated from you guys on every floor?"
"Oh, right," Eva said. "That's also my bad. We need to link our badges in person in order to be seen as a group by the Mystery Dungeons." She took off her badge and touched it to mine. All three of our badges lit up for a moment, then faded back to normal and Eva put hers back on. "Okay, now we're seen as a group."
I was about to ask her how exactly that works, but I heard a rustling from one of the passages behind me and turned around. Armaldo came stumbling out of the hallway covered in branches and vines. She looked up and saw us, raising her arms aggressively when she tripped and fell on her face. We used this opportunity for the three of us to run up the stairs and enter the third floor together.
We continued to progress through the dungeon without any more incidents until the fifth floor, where we briefly ran into Kabutops, but managed to slip by him without him noticing us and get up the stairs to the sixth floor. As we got to the stairs to the seventh floor Sparky stopped.
"What's wrong?" I asked him.
"Well, you know how I said to exit the dungeon we need to go through the gate on the seventh floor?" he replied. "That's not the whole truth."
"What do you mean?" I say, puzzled.
"Well, because we were followed by Kabutops and his crew we may or may not have pissed off the Dungeon's Guardian," he tells me. "The Twilight Forest's Guardian is not known for taking kindly to those who bring trouble to his domain. We need to be ready to face him directly, or defeat Kabutops, because he may have forcibly closed the gate."
"Well if that happens then we'll just need to ask him to open it for us, right?" I ask.
"Seeing as I've never met him, I don't know, but we should be prepared to fight either way," he answered.
"Well," I say, "there's no point in being down about it. Whatever happens, I'm with you both, all the way."
"That's sweet of you to say Dusk," Eva says giggling and putting a paw on my head, ruffling the big tuft on top. "Let's go then. No point in staying here when the exit is right there." Eva led the way up the stairs as Sparky and I followed closely behind.
We exited into a large room with a stone gate on the other side. Looking around the quiet room, no one else was here that I could see. I began to lead the way to the gate when about halfway the floor and trees began to shake, causing Sparky, Eva and I to fall to the ground.
" 'YOU DEFILE SACRED GROUNDS WITH THE PRESENCE OF THE FORSAKEN YOU BROUGHT TO THIS PLACE!' " I hear a voice in my head shout. " 'WHAT SAY YOU IN YOUR DEFENSE?' "
"We didn't have a choice!" I shout back at the voice. "It's either run into your forest or die. It's not our fault they followed us in!"
" 'UNACCEPTABLE!' " the voice shouts. " 'UNLESS YOU ELIMINATE THE FORSAKEN YOU HAVE BROUGHT HERE YOU SHALL NOT LEAVE!' "
The ground settled down and the trees stopped shaking, allowing us to get up. I shook my body to get rid of all the leaves and sticks that had fallen on top of me during that exchange. I looked back at Eva and Sparky to see if they were okay, seeing them do the same as myself. I was about to help Sparky and Eva brush off the last few items from their fur only to look past them and see Kabutops, Armaldo and Archeops standing where we had entered the room.
"I don't know how we all got here," Kabutops says from afar, looking around the room, then focusing on me. "I do know one thing though. It's the end of the line for you little Zorua. Your journey ends here, just like the rest of your 'Chosen' kind."
"Looks like we don't have a choice but to fight here Dusk," Sparky says as he and Eva took up defensive stances next to me, ready to fight.
"Remember," Eva whispers to me. "We're with you all the way, whatever happens."
"Thanks," I say. I've never really fought before now, but I've always had the option to avoid it until now. 'I guess it's trial by fire, huh?' I thought.
Kabutops, Archeops and Armaldo all came charging at us, and Sparky countered by firing a lightning bolt at Archeops. The Thundershock hit, knocking him to the ground face-first. Eva launched an attack on Armaldo, sending some glowing stars at high velocity towards her. The Swift attack hit true, slowing our enemy down enough to have her trip on a vine creeping across the ground. I focused on Kabutops, who was in front of me, and charged at him, not knowing how to use any moves on command by myself.
He swung his arms down at me, right, then left, and I dodged both by a hair and countered by taking a swipe at his legs with mine. My legs connected and I simply bounced off, doing no damage, leaping backwards to put some space between myself and Kabutops. I see Eva and Sparky teaming up on Archeops in the background, Sparky blasting him with electricity and Eva pouncing on him from the sides to disorientate him. Focusing on the 'mon in front of me I ran between his legs and kicked them from behind in an attempt to get him to focus on me while Eva and Sparky dealt with the other two.
It worked and he chased me around the room, hacking and slashing at me every opportunity he had. While I was busy dodging and running from Kabutops, Sparky and Eva managed to knock Archeops out, while Armaldo was struggling where she had fallen, somehow getting wrapped up in every vine on the forest floor. I watched out of the corner of my eyes as they both moved to finish off Armaldo, and I led Kabutops away from them.
Things were looking up, we had a chance of winning...until Kabutops noticed what I was doing and shifted his attention to dealing with Sparky and Eva, who were almost done dealing with Armaldo. I tackled him from behind as he started moving towards my friends, knocking him to the ground face-first. I went to pounce on him while he was down and he quickly rolled over, throwing me a solid ten feet with the flat part of his blade-arms. I landed on the ground hard, winded, but not really injured. Getting up I saw that Kabutops was now engaging Sparky and Eva, who had managed to knock Armaldo out as well.
I began to run over to help them when Kabutops launched Sparky directly into me at lightning speed with a swipe of his right arm. We collided, rolling a few feet behind where I was. I got up, coughing the dirt I had just inhaled out of my mouth and looked over to check on Sparky, only to see him out cold. I was about to try to shake him awake forcibly when his body glowed brightly for a moment, and when the light was gone Sparky was standing there, scratched and fur ruffled, but definitely awake.
"Are you ok?" I asked him, unsure of what just happened.
"Yeah, I'm fine," he replied. "Just ended up using a Reviver Seed. We only have two left, so we better not faint too many more time-"
I watched as Eva flew between us and skidded to a stop about ten feet away, knocked out. I turned to face Kabutops and put myself between him and Eva as Sparky went over to give her a Reviver Seed. Kabutops didn't look injured at all as he turned to face me, and I began to question if we could even hurt such a monster.
'I need to do something. If nothing else all I need to do is stall him long enough for Eva or Sparky to come up with a plan' I thought to myself, trying to stay positive. He began to charge at me and I charged back. 'Fast, I just have to go fast. Faster than Kabutops, faster than the wind...'
The ground began to blur as I gained a burst of energy, going faster than I had ever gone before as I bolted towards Kabutops. I slammed my body into his, wincing in pain as I knocked him on his back, and leapt past him. I turned to face him again and slammed into him again as he was getting up, making him fall face-first into the dirt, and ran off. As I turned and began to run at him again he turned to me, clearly pissed off, and swiped to the right with his arm.
"Auuuugh!" I cried out in pain as his arm connected with my chest, not cutting deeply due to the angle, and sent me flying. I hit the ground on my back hard, the breath knocked out of my lungs instantly, and almost passed out from the pain as I slid across the dirt and grass. I tried to get up as soon as I stopped moving, but almost passed out from pain as I agitated my wound. I lay on my side, looking over my shoulder as Sparky and Eva started to attack Kabutops.
I looked down at myself and saw some blood on the ground where I lay. 'Well, shit, that's not good.' I think to myself, trying to figure out what to do. I grab some nearby leaves and press them to my chest, applying moderate pressure, in an attempt to stop the bleeding. I can hear Sparky and Eva clashing with Kabutops behind me, and I feel a sense of urgency to get up and back into the fray.
Not long later the blood feels like it's not running anymore on my chest, so I let go of the leaves on my chest and get up, turning to face Kabutops with Eva and Sparky. My chest still hurts quite a lot, but now the pain from my cut is more of a stinging pain than a piercing one. I see that Kabutops is getting a little tired now. He's moving slower than before, getting sloppier with his attacks, and finally looking a little beat up.
I was about to run to help when Kabutops dropped a smoke bomb out of nowhere, concealing him and my friends from my vision. There was a flash from inside the smoke, and when it disappeared I saw Sparky and Eva standing there, tired and confused, with Kabutops nowhere in sight. We all looked around, but Kabutops, Archeops and Armaldo were nowhere to be seen, having disappeared into seemingly nowhere. I cautiously made my way over to my tired friends, staying alert for our enemies when I heard the voice from before again.
" 'Well, well, well...' " the voice said. " 'It looks like you chased the Forsaken off. I guess I can let you leave now, as long as you promise not to ever bring any Forsaken back again.' "
"Well, I doubt we're ever coming back anyway," Eva retorted, getting her breath under control as she began to visibly relax.
" 'Good,' " the voice replied. " 'I hope you don't. Either way, the Gate is open, and since you all were here for a bit, you'll all exit about three days after you entered, so you shouldn't be chased by the Forsaken back here right away.' "
"Three days?!" Sparky exclaimed. "How long have we been in this Mystery Dungeon?"
" 'Hmm, about two hours,' " the voice replied. " 'But rules are rules, and you better leave before I close the Gate again and trap you in here for longer.' "
Eva looked angry and like she was about to say something when Sparky put a paw on her shoulder and shook his head. "We're all hurt and exhausted right now, so it's probably best if we don't waste anymore time and just leave," he tells her. "Let's just be grateful we made it out alive and go."
Eva sighed and nodded, and the three of us walked over to the gate, which now had a portal that showed the road we were on earlier. It was late afternoon on the other side as we passed through it, and it quickly closed behind us as soon as we were out, leaving the fog covered Twilight Forest behind us.
"Well, shit," Sparky said, breathing a sigh of relief. "I almost didn't think we were going to make it out of there alive."
"I'm just glad we did," I said. "Which side of the Twilight Forest are we on?"
"We're on the side we entered on," Eva answered. "I just hope we didn't miss too much while we were gone."
We all looked at each other, nodding, and set off down the road back to the Guild of Miracles, wounded and exhausted, but alive and kicking. The sun continued to set in the late evening sky as we walked in silence towards the Guild, which left me plenty of time to think to myself.
'I have so many questions about so many things,' I thought. 'I just hope I can get some answers without almost dying.'