Both Lynn and Erin continued shouting out to their friends, repeatedly, with less than satisfactory results.
“This isn’t it. The area where we were had a lot more trees,” Lynn observed, a noticeable tension in her voice.
“Well, then let’s turn back,” Erin replied, matter-of-factly. It mystified her as to how they could possibly have gotten far away from the campsite.
“I wish it were that simple. Don’t forget, there are cliffs not too far off from the camp. If we keep walking, we will have to go really slow. I don’t want to step off the edge of a hundred and fifty foot drop, and I don’t think that you do either.”
Erin certainly had no argument to that.
The fog seemed to be thinning somewhat off to the right, as Erin could make out the outlines of trees a little farther away than before. Elsewhere, it was as dense as ever.
Lynn had evidently taken notice of the variance as well.
“Wait a second, Erin. Maybe we should go in this direction. It looks like the fog’s not as thick that way,” Lynn suggested. “At least it will be a little safer for us in this area, being able to see a little farther ahead.”
“I’m with you on that,” Erin agreed, relieved that they would have a few strides warning before coming to the edge of a lethal drop-off.
They took a few steps to the right. Erin reached out and felt the texture of one of the trees as they passed by it. She drew a little stability from the solidity of the trunk.
Gradually it became easier and easier to see farther into the trees ahead. The two women were finally able to concentrate more on the ground under them, than what was coming up immediately in front of them. Even so, Erin’s sense of caution did not lessen.
As they continued forward, keeping a careful watch on the ground, Erin had no more doubts that their visibility was steadily increasing. Strangely, the illumination in the area was increasing as well.
“Full moon should be helping out, but this much?” Erin asked Lynn, taken aback by the rising ambience.
“I don’t have an explanation for it,” Lynn responded. “But you are right, it is getting much brighter around here.”
They took a few more steps, when both Erin and Lynn came to a stop. Erin saw that the fog was visibly receding around them. Looking over at Lynn’s bewildered expression, she knew that her friend was as struck with the bizarre phenomenon as she was.
With great apprehension, Erin stood with Lynn as they waited to see what the fog’s dispersal would reveal. Hoping for a landmark, a sign of their campsite, or even a member of their group, she scanned the growing periphery with great scrutiny.
The amount of light continued to expand, until the last layers of fog started breaking up to reveal a blue-green sky spread far and wide above them. Forested hills rose up all around them, as they found themselves at the base of an incline that led towards a long ridgeline.
After the initial shock of the sight of daylight and unfamiliar terrain subsided, Erin looked to Lynn to see if her friend was as stunned as she was.
“Where are we? That’s not normal. Something’s wrong with my eyes,” Erin said, looking at the teal hue of the sky, panic surging. “Something is wrong with me.”
“Then something is wrong with me too,” Lynn replied in a voice just above a whisper, her lips barely mouthing the words.
“Then what is it?” Erin asked Lynn after a few more uncomfortable moments had passed.
It was not what she had wanted to hear from Lynn. Erin had hoped that the problems rested with her alone, and that Lynn did not see what she was seeing. Whatever was affecting Erin’s vision was also altering Lynn’s.
“We’ve gotta find the others,” Erin went on, before Lynn answered. “Something’s gone wrong with us, Lynn.”
“So that’s how we walked all the way to the bottom of a hill, moved into another entirely different area, and found ourselves here? Is that right, Erin? And we’ve suddenly gone from night to broad daylight in less than half an hour? And how come everything but the sky is the right color, if something’s wrong with our eyes?” Lynn queried.
Her barrage of words stung Erin. She wished with all her heart that they were experiencing some shared hallucination, but knew better.
Erin frowned as she looked over at Lynn. “Then how do you explain this?”
“You think I know?” Lynn countered sharply.
“We got lost in the fog, and lost sense of time,” Erin said.
“For how many hours? And that explains the sky color?” Lynn shot back.
Erin glared at Lynn, unable to come up with a verbal response but not about to concede anything either. A heavy tension weighed the air between them down, as they continued to glower at each other.
They were given little time to resume their argument, as a loud, piercing screech shattered the still air. A broad, dark shadow swept across the ground, passing swiftly over their position and bringing their eyes hastily upwards.
“My god! What the hell is that?” Erin cried out, looking skyward, where she beheld the sight of a horrific-looking creature that was flying just above the tops of the trees. Its fierce, reptilian visage gazed down hungrily upon them, as it circled over their position.
The body of the fearsome creature was well over ten feet in length. Its extended jaws, opening with each ensuing outcry, revealed an arsenal of whetted teeth, arrayed into the unmistakable maw of a very formidable carnivore.
“Run! Just run!” Lynn yelled, giving Erin a hard shove to urge her onward.
Erin broke out of her momentary trance, lurching into a full run, needing little inspiration to hasten her strides. In an instant, both of the women were running as fast as they could across the forest ground. Lynn, with a slight lead, angled towards the rounded base of a nearby hill.
Behind them, the creature glided low just over the uppermost tree branches, relentlessly tracking the young women. The beast skimmed above the trees, its keen eyes searching carefully.
When it reached a larger break in the forest canopy, its wings tucked in suddenly, and it swooped downward with deadly grace and force as it leveled out beneath the trees.
The creature’s wings folded close to its body whenever it passed by the trees in its path, spreading wide in the gaps between the trees, and snapping down in the open spaces, giving bursts to its pursuing flight. The beast closed fast upon the two desperate women running before it.
Legs straining to the limits, Erin and Lynn reached the bend at the base of the hill. Dodging trees, and adroitly leaping over another fallen tree trunk, the two women looked frantically about for escape.
“To the right!” Lynn shouted quickly, breaking sharply to her right, running towards a wide creek.
The creek had cut a deep embankment, as its waters coursed steadily along their meandering route. Erin realized Lynn’s desperate notion at once.
Glancing back, Lynn checked to see that Erin was still close behind her. Erin was following right on her heels.
Erin looked over her own shoulder and stifled a scream as she saw that the huge predator was deftly flying just a few feet above the ground, gliding rapidly just a short distance behind.
It was closing on them far too fast.
“Down! And stay on this side of the bank!” Lynn yelled as they reached the lip of the bank.
In a flurry of motion that was a mixture of falling, twisting, and slipping, Lynn dropped and rotated to press herself against the near side of the bank. Erin tumbled in awkwardly behind her, almost falling out from the bank in the process. Swiftly, Lynn reached out and grabbed Erin’s shirt, pulling her in tightly. Mud and water was spattered all over them.
A second later, the creature shrieked in rage. It hurtled by just overhead, streaking across the surface of the creek as its prey evaded its imminent grasp.
“It will probably turn around! Let’s go!” Lynn said, anxiously watching the winged nightmare.
Once the beast came back from the other direction, their position would be
abruptly turned from a means of refuge to one of vulnerability.
The cry of the monstrous creature suddenly changed pitches, as the sound of a great, sonorous roaring intermingled with it. The forest was filled with the deep-toned eruption, the furious cacophony shaking the air. Erin knew at once that the roar had not come from the flying entity.
The shrill shrieks of the flying monstrosity and the horrible roaring of the other denizen of the forest escalated, with both creatures now well beyond Erin’s line of sight.
Erin was not about to wait to see what the cause of the tumult was, or what had become of the flying creature. Most certainly, she did not wish to see the source of the deafening roar.
Neither did Lynn evidently, who was already up and on the move, dragging Erin into step behind her and urging her to hurry. They dashed down along the edge of the creek, their frenzied steps throwing up splashes of water with each impact. Erin was pumping her legs as quickly as she could, several times almost stumbling and falling in her unrelenting haste.
Far behind them came anther loud, high-pitched cry from the winged creature. It carried a noticeably different tone. Unlike the cries that it had made before, this one sounded like a cry of tremendous agony.
It was followed a moment later by another thunderous roar. The piercing cry of the winged entity was then abruptly cut off, the roar ebbed, and the forest fell into silence once more.
The cessation of the chaotic dissonance did not lesson the frightful panic that Erin felt racing through her veins.
Erin and Lynn continued their urgent sprint, putting plenty of distance between themselves and the area where the creatures were. Only when her lungs were about to burst, and her leg muscles felt gelatinous from being pushed to their utmost limits, did they finally reduce their speed down to a jog and begin to reclaim their breath.
“What is going on…?” Erin asked between heavy gasps for air.
Inwardly, she cursed her life of sedate activity. Exhausted and winded, she knew that she was going to pay a very steep price for her prolonged lack of regular physical exercise.
Calling up all her willpower, she trudged onward, keeping by Lynn’s side.
“I have… no idea,” Lynn replied, between her own heaving gulps of breath.
Though in better physical shape than Erin, Lynn was still far from prepared for the ordeal that they found themselves in.
“Then, what do we do?” Erin asked, her voice despondent.
She looked to Lynn, as she took a few protracted breaths. Her heart continued to pound rapidly in her chest, strained by exertion and fear.
Lynn slowed down further, turning aside towards a spot where they could easily scramble up the bank. Before answering Erin, she dug into the incline, using her hands to help propel her upwards.
When she stood at the top, she turned around and looked down to where Erin had come to a stop at the base of the embankment.
“For now, we just keep going,” Lynn said.
Leaning over and reaching out, she took Erin’s hand and helped her up to the top of the bank. Standing at Lynn’s side, Erin cast a distressed glance back down the creek. Fortunately, there was no sight or sound of any pursuit.
A wave of dizziness then came over Erin as she stood still, sweat beading and beginning to trickle down her warming face. The young woman then hunched over, her hands braced upon her knees. She felt a light wave of nausea. It was all that she could do to remain relaxed, and avoid the eruption of violent heaves.
“Breath slow,” Lynn advised, placing a hand on her friend’s back.
Erin closed her eyes and drew in a long inhalation, letting it out slowly. She repeated the process a couple more times.
“We keep going, but to where?” Erin asked between breaths, teetering on the edge of vomiting.
“I don’t know,” Lynn replied simply, after a long pause.
Erin glanced over at her friend, who had straightened up, placed hands on her hips, and was now looking around them.
The forest was quiescent, and the only sound in Erin’s ears was that of leaves rustling in soft breezes. Whether it was paranoia, or just keen perception, Erin felt a prickly sensation along the nape of her neck. She sensed that they were being watched.
“Do you feel it?” Erin whispered curtly. “Like someone… or something… is watching us.”
Lynn nodded quietly, her eyes wide as her gaze darted about.
“We’d better get something to hit back with,” Lynn said at last, her eyes lowering as took a couple of steps away from the bank. She then warned, “We aren’t going to be able to run much more.”
Making her way over to a tree with low branches, she put both her arms out, wrapping her fingers around on a strong-looking branch. With a forceful, backward pull that engaged her body weight, Lynn snapped the branch off the tree.
Quickly, she set about stripping all of the extraneous shoots from the main branch.
“For you,” Lynn announced to Erin, handing her the makeshift staff. “It won’t be brittle, at least.”
Lynn walked back over and repeated the process on a similarly stout-looking branch attached to a nearby tree.
“And for me,” Lynn remarked as she bared the branch.
The branch felt solid enough in Erin’s hands, and she knew that it could deliver a crunching impact. At the very least, Erin knew that they now possessed usable walking staves.
Erin set one end of the branch in the ground and straightened up, feeling another wave of dizziness and nausea pass over her. She leaned some of her weight upon the staff that she now held, closing her eyes and taking another couple of long, careful breaths.
Erin plodded over to where Lynn stood, her legs heavy and drained. As their eyes met, Erin could see a reflection of the fear that she was still wrestling with.
“Just relax yourself Erin, as much as you can,” urged Lynn, glancing downward.
Erin followed her friend’s gaze, and noticed the whitened knuckles of her own right hand where she tightly gripped the wood staff.
Erin nodded slowly to Lynn, willing herself to relax her grip a little. “I’ll try… but I don’t know the first thing about what we’re gonna do.”
“And neither do I,” Lynn replied. “We’re both scared, just about out of our minds. We have to hope that this will all explain itself soon, and that we can somehow get out of here.”
“Not very comforting,” Erin said morosely. “And what if we can’t?”
Lynn shook her head. “Don’t think about that, Erin.”
Erin looked downward, unable to meet her friend’s eyes. She feared that Lynn would somehow be able to see inside her, as she slid further towards a state of sheer hopelessness.
They were completely lost, in the midst of an area that had already demonstrated that it held creatures of an inexplicable and terrifying nature within it. Erin did not have the first idea as to their whereabouts, and their lives had been threatened less than five minutes after becoming aware of their strange predicament.
“Come on, Erin, let’s at least get moving,” Lynn said. Branch in hand, her friend started off, following a path that ran atop the embankment, proceeding along the border of the creek.
Glancing down at the water, Erin saw that Lynn was heading upstream.
“Hey, wait up,” Erin said, jogging hastily to catch up to her friend. “Why go this way? We don’t know where we are, so we can’t know where we are heading.”
Lynn looked Erin in the eye as she continued her purposeful strides. “No… we don’t know what is happening. But if the creature that put a stop to our pursuit is territorial, I want to keep moving away from it. As a matter of fact…”
Lynn’s words trailed off as she turned aside, maneuvering back down the embankment and into the creek’s bed.
“Let’s keep our wits a little, and not leave any scent for anything to follow,” Lynn stated.
Erin scrambled down the embankment, stepping into the water and feeling the cold chill as it soaked i
nto her shoes. That was the least of her worries as she strolled alongside Lynn, continuing their arduous trek upstream.
After just a few moments, Lynn seemed engrossed in studying the rocks of the creek bed. Seeing a few that rose out of the water, she moved over towards one in particular, laying the end of her branch-staff upon the rock’s edge.
She looked to Erin. “We can obscure our scents, and we can improve our weapons.”
Lynn began to scrape the end of her crude staff against the rock edge, and Erin quickly realized what her friend was doing. Seeing another similar rock, she got started on the improvements to her own.
MERSHAD
Mershad and Erika continued walking at a comfortable pace, having already traveled for what certainly had to be several miles by then. Mershad had never walked so far in one single jaunt.
The scenery around them remained fairly constant. There was only a little fluctuation in elevation, as they wended their way around the bases of the encompassing hills. The plants, trees, and even animals remained largely familiar as well.
Yet twice more, they came upon more of the odd, tree-dwelling creatures that they had encountered shortly after their arrival within the strange locale. As before, there were no indications of threat from the unusual creatures, but the sightings reminded Mershad to not lapse in his focus.
“I believe that this forest could go on forever,” Mershad remarked ruefully.
Though they had not pushed themselves overly hard, his legs were feeling entirely leaden. He was beginning to brace himself a little more with each step upon the stout branch that Erika had procured for him.
“I wish I was in your condition,” he said through a tired grin.
“Need a break?” Erika asked him, looking at Mershad with care and concern. Her condition appeared to be holding strong. Her breath still came easy, and she was yet limber of step. She had since found herself another branch that she had deemed more suitable for her height, and was carrying it loosely at her side.
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