Shades of Grey
Chapter 57: The Terrors of the Forest

LOCATION UNKNOWN— DECEMBER 1843

I walked forward through the maze of misshapen tree roots and thorny arborvitae lit only by minimal bits of moonlight when I was buffeted with a sudden cold wind. My limbs snapped together tightly to conserve warmth and I closed my eyes instinctively when a twig in the immediate vicinity suddenly snapped, sending a brief chill of anxiety up my locked spine.

My eyes shot open and wildly I looked around, searching for whatever lurked in the shadows. As I tried to see, I heard a low cagey chuckle sound from behind me. I turned around sharply, trying to catch a glimpse of my tormentor but instead I tripped over a knot in one of the tree trunks I stood upon and fell down into a particularly large mess of intertwined roots.

I tried to untangle myself but the more I struggled, the tighter the roots seemed to grip my flailing limbs. Then I heard other more distinctive cries. I stopped moving and listened to the familiar shrieks in the air. The malicious, jubilant ululations drew closer until I could see the noisemakers dancing spitefully around my rooted cage.

Goblins.

“Grey Echo: trapped in the middlie of the Seretura!”

“IT’S GOT HER BY THE FEETSIES!”

Their cackles rose in volume along with the height of their horrible leaping. I smiled to myself.

“Is that the best you’ve got? Verbal assault?!”

I laughed, which seemed to irritate the Goblins. The vigour and height of their jumps seemed to decrease rapidly.

“Why does she laughs at us?” muttered one Goblin.

“Perhapsies she thinks we isn’t real,” reasoned another.

“That is being silliness. Of course we be real, it is she that be not real!” laughed a third. This sent the group into gales of laughter once more and this time they produced fruit to throw through the gaps of the tightly wound root cage and onto my trapped person.

I did not move: I could not move; the roots were clamped around me so tightly. I could only close my eyes and wait until they had emptied their stores of fruit when several ugly cracks began to rip the forest air as though a great Olympian hand was rapidly snapping the trees in half. The Goblins froze and stared off towards my left, their horrible yellow eyes widening with a mixture of admiration and fear.

I looked to my left and saw that a row of upturned roots was sharply snapping back into the ground with a force that would have shattered a thick boulder — and I was trapped right in its wake.

The Goblins did not acknowledge me. They merely stared at the snapping roots for a split second before bounding away into the thick of the dark forest.

In a panic, I worked to untangle myself when a hissing sound then cut through the sharp thuds of the snapping roots. I looked up and saw that hundreds of snakes were slithering in between the open spaces into my earthen cage. I set my jaw and worked harder to wriggle myself out of the enclosure, all the while sustaining painful snakebites to my face and hands. I heard the snapping roots draw closer and just as the branches above me were the next to snap downwards, I yanked my badly cut arms from their rootish restraints and swung out of the cage, landing on a bit of grass next to the path of the snapping roots just as my root prison flattened itself into the ground.

After taking a moment to regain my fractured composure, I stood once more when I suddenly heard the rustling behind me again.

I turned around quickly, failing again to discern the cause of the noise when a second rustling sounded followed by low, malevolent laughter. A pang of fear briefly clenched my lungs but I swallowed it. This was ridiculous: I had seen far too much to be afraid of anything now. I stood strongly and unsuccessfully searched for the source of the laughter through the thick darkness.

“Show yourself!” I called, picking up a large branch nearby to use as a defensive weapon.

“Vei muri în noaptea aceasta!”

My breath caught briefly in my throat as the Romanian whisper floated back into my ears.

“You do not frighten me!” I shouted strongly. “I will not fall! Now SHOW YOURSELF!”

I stood very still for several moments, listening, when a sudden break in the darkness ahead caught my attention. A hole in the canopy of the forest let in a small bit of moonlight and illuminated in the darkness was Loria Thoreau. I dropped my branch in shock.

“Loria!” I cried, my defensive exterior melting.

My euphoria overwhelmed my sense of reason. I knew full well that she was dead and that this was probably a trap, but I ran to her just the same. I leapt over the huge tree roots and finally got close enough to touch her. Just as I did, however, she faded into a wisp of smoke.

“NO!” I cried in fury. I dumbly waved my hands through the darkness, as if the real Loria were just out of my reach. “Let me see her!” sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ (ꜰind)ɴʘvel.nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

“You can’t.”

I turned around suddenly at the unexpected answer and screamed in surprise as Scepta stood in another ray of bright moonlight. I walked toward her but I had learnt my lesson and did not touch her.

“Why? What is this?” I asked.

“A game,” she responded, looking at me with a wicked sort of hunger that was strange and foreign on the normally tranquil face of Scepta. “A game that you must play if you wish to uncover the sword.”

I sighed and rubbed my head. I was growing tired of playing games and solving riddles. All I wanted was to find Forma and leave this horrid place.

“What must I do?” I asked in a small, reluctant voice.

Scepta smiled and suddenly the branches in the tree canopy began to jerk in different directions, creating more breaks in the canopy and letting in more rays of moonlight, all of which illuminated someone from my past: Liam, Ryder, Bertha, Lord Camden, Lady Saryah, Lord Rasna, my parents: all were present and clothed in light gray cloaks that mirrored the moonlight.

“Find the one who is real,” Scepta responded cryptically.

I turned back to Scepta, but just as I did, she walked into the darkness and out of my sight.

“Wait!” I protested. “Come back! How am I supposed to—?”

The cloaked phantoms then began to fly between each bit of moonlight, increasing their speed until I could make out nothing but a large, gray blur moving in all directions around me and shouting various verbal slurs in my direction.

“You’re a failure, Grey!”

“…not living up to your expectations!”

“We all died for you!”

“And how are you honouring us? By wasting your time with pointless vendettas!”

The figures flew steadily faster around me — as did the insults — but my resolve was stronger. This was getting gradually more frustrating by the minute.

Angered by the increasingly difficult games Natara was clearly playing, I bit my lips in determination and ran forward, leaping over the malformed roots as best I could in an attempt to find the ‘real one’. However time and time again, I fell through the phantoms. Again and again, they became smokey wisps until I thought of no one I had not seen.

I stopped for a moment to assess a better attack plan, when I noticed a solitary cloaked figure crouching on a branch several yards away from me. I stood soundlessly, surmising that this had to be the phantom I was searching for, for I had eliminated everyone else.

I moved silently from root to root, slowly getting closer to the crouched figure until I stood on a root right behind them. I crouched and reached for the cloak, expecting them to vanish into thin air as the others had done, but instead I gripped solid cotton cloth. My lungs clenched in elation as the figure turned around.

“Father?!”

My father turned around to look at me but my horror was too great for me to feel any sort of connection. His skin and eyes were slate gray, both of which were nearly obstructed by the dark circles surrounding them. His fingernails had grown long and to an unspeakable degree of decay. Thick warts ran up his dry, cracked skin and his lips were chapped beyond comprehension, creating a disturbing visage of death.

“Father, what happened to you?” I asked in horror.

“I…don’t know…” he responded in a shaky, wheezing voice. He was then seized by a fit of dark heaving coughs.

“What is this place?” I inquired when he had recovered himself.

“Terror…that’s all it is: pure terror…” he replied, looking at me for the first time. A smile then spread across his pale, chapped lips.

“Oh, Grey… such a brave Hunter you’ve become…your mother would be so proud…” she brought his fingers gently to my face as if to make sure I were really present. When he did not fade at his touch, I quickly gripped his hand, eager to interact with him and verify that he was indeed ‘the real one’. I cried out ecstatically to an unseen Scepta when he remained.

“I’ve found the real one!”

My father’s wheezing breaths then became unexpectedly louder and more raucous. I turned sharply back to him, gasping and falling back on the root as I saw that the murderous Vanguard I had been searching for, the one who wanted me dead — Evan — had clamped his horrid, ugly fangs down on my father’s neck. My horror caught in my chest as I remembered the parlour I had seen when infected with the Letum: the night Evan had killed him in this very same fashion…

“Get away from him!” I shouted.

In one movement, I leapt from my branch and managed to get my hands around Evan’s cool, steely throat. Once I had, however, both he and my father faded into smoke while I continued to fly through the air, headed straight for a thick oak tree. I curled myself into a ball to brace my body for impact when the bark of the tree suddenly opened up like a great mouth and swallowed me.

I hit the opposite end of the inside of the trunk and began falling down a long, dark chute until I flew out of the end into a well-lit underground battle arena.

The spectators were made up of all manner of forest nymphs; but the identity of my opponent, who stood at the opposite end of the arena, caused me more horror and dread than I had yet to feel since leaving school.

Forma, in all her power and glory, stood strongly at the other end of the arena, wielding her cutlass with the command and precision she had spent ten years attaining.

“I WILL NOT FIGHT HER!” I exclaimed, standing slowly.

“You must.”

The voice was deep and it throttled my organs with each syllable.

“I CANNOT!”

“You must or you will not be able to leave.”

Forma sneered at me with such malice and chicanery that I nearly thought I was looking at Natara herself. I stole a glance at the raucous crowd of nymphs and ran my fingers through my hair in irritation.

“DAMN YOU NATARA!”

I lifted my head and then took a closer look at Forma’s unflinching figure, around her hip hung a large, beautiful Longsword: the sword that the dancing sirens had sent me after.

“May I at least have a weapon?” I asked flatly.

A long branch then extended from the side of the bark with a small shortsword in its grasp. I took it reluctantly.

“Thank you,” I said adroitly to no one.

Forma then uttered a powerful and eerie battle cry as she leapt through the air, flying over me gracefully with her amber wings and then diving straight for me, her sword aimed right at my heart.

I leapt to the side just as Forma made a great sweeping arc upwards to avoid contact with the ground. The nymphs cheered in delight as she flew over them and landed smoothly on the ground, swinging her cutlass with ease.

“Forma, please!” I begged, slowly countering her strong steps as she began walking towards me.

“It’s what you deserve,” she hissed in a dark voice, the stoic malice in her eyes burning into me with every syllable.

In a split second she lunged for me, bringing her cutlass down over my head. I easily blocked it with my sword but my victory was transitory as Forma forced me to my knees, looming over me with her outstretched wings and shrieking like a banshee.

“Vei muri în noaptea aceasta!” she whispered with frightening malevolence.

I gasped at her presumptuous utterance of the phrase that had haunted my nightmares since Commencement, which unfortunately left me vulnerable to her next attack.

Forma brusquely brought her foot into my gut and sent me flying backwards across the dirt floor. The crowd of nymphs cheered once more as Forma flew over to me and kicked me repeatedly in the side, rejoicing in the loud cracks of several snapping ribs.

Just as Forma was about to bring her foot across my jaw, I recovered a minimal amount of my strength and grabbed her ankle just before it made contact with my face. Caught off guard and off balance, Forma was left to wobble in place. I stood solidly, keeping a firm grip on her ankle.

“You will listen to me,” I said, wheezing through the soreness of my rib cage as I tried to breathe.

“Not anymore,” Forma sneered back.

I roughly turned her foot to the right, which sent her flying a few yards away and left me precious moments to quell the rising nausea that had formed from the pain of my broken bones.

Forma then saw her next opportunity to strike and ran towards me, kicking me strongly in the sternum with the ball of her foot. As I fell, she spun gracefully around and brought her cutlass across my chest leaving a long, deep laceration behind. I cried out as she then left a deeper gash in my abdomen.

“Have you had enough yet, Grey?”

Forma kicked me in the jaw, dislodging two of my teeth. I expectorated both of them along with a long stream of blood. The crowd rejoiced in raucous laughter.

“Do you wish to surrender, yet?!”

I cried out again as Forma kicked me in the ribs. She then knelt over me and dealt several swift blows directly to my face until my right eye swelled completely shut.

“Well? HAVE YOU?!” she shouted once more, preparing for one more swing.

I easily blocked her hand just as she was about to strike, staring at her with resolution.

“I will never surrender.”

I touched the Longsword on her hip but instead of the cold solid metal I had expected to feel, it broke upon my touch and faded into smoke. The same thing happened to Forma and the rest of the crowd steadily until finally, I was alone in the arena.

The walls of the arena suddenly began to tremble, agitating the wounds Forma had dealt me. I was then sharply thrust back up the chute and outwards onto a refreshingly cool grassy plain, once again in the dark of the forest.

I didn’t move for several moments, surmising how much pain I was in and whether or not I had the strength to continue with these ridiculous games.

I moved my arm and readied to push myself up when I saw something out of the corner of my eye dangling on one of the tree branches. I turned slowly and saw the brilliant Longsword hanging in the animate darkness of the forest on a tree bough several feet away from me.

I slowly stood, ignoring the throbbing bouts of soreness that ran over me with every movement, and reached for the sword. Just as I nearly felt it between my fingers, the branch moved sharply to the right and I tripped over a large root, landing clumsily on my stomach and sending new waves of painful nausea through my body.

A low, rumbling bout of laughter at my mishap rang through the forest, vibrating the ground with every chuckle.

I stood, even slower this time and stared at the tree, which slowly started to take on the characteristics of a face and began to move with life. I wasn’t as shocked as I had expected to be. Then again, at this point, it seemed as though nothing would surprise me…just another tree with a discernable face…

“You are too hasty, young one,” the tree said as its laughter died away. “Did you really think you could ascertain the sword so easily?”

“Tell me what I must do,” I said stoutly. I was tired and in pain, I had no patience for patronising parlances.

“You must answer a riddle: a riddle I have asked to many a traveller before but never received the correct answer. If you answer correctly, you must then ask me a riddle that I cannot answer before I will relinquish the sword. If you answer wrong, I will keep the sword, thus preventing you from continuing on in your quest to search for your Fairy.”

My mind flew back to the evil in Forma’s eyes. I took several steadying breaths as I tried to convince myself that it had not been the real Forma, that it had been a trick of Natara’s. I then turned to the tree.

“Alright. Ask.”

The tree smiled.

“A strange thing hangs by a man’s thigh, hidden by a garment. It has a hole

in its head. It is stiff and strong and its firm bearing reaps a reward. When the man hitches his clothing high above his knee, he wants the head of that hanging thing to poke the old hole (of fitting length) it has often filled before.”

I fell to my knees and attempted to think through the immense waves of pain still flowing through me, trying to determine the answer.

“Hangs by a man’s thigh…it could be a sword or some sort of weapon…but weapons have no holes in their heads…how can its firm bearing reap a reward? Reward in battle? No…a sword has no hole ‘of fitting length’ is has filled before…filled before…what could that be?”

The tree chuckled and it began to move the sword away from me.

“You are running out of time, Hunter!”

“No please! I’ve got it! The answer is a key!”

The tree stopped moving, staring at me with shock similar to what the Sphinx must have felt when Oedipus answered her previously unanswerable riddle.

“No one…no one has ever answered correctly…”

I exhaled triumphantly.

“Very well…” stuttered the tree, taken aback by my success. “Ask your riddle.”

I took a steadying breath and thought back to the most difficult question that I could think of, smiling when I did.

“What is a question with no answer?”

The tree furrowed its brow in concentration, thinking hard.

“It’s been so long since I’ve had to answer a riddle…” it murmured to itself.

“Well, if you can’t do it…” I offered, reaching for the sword.

“Just wait a minute, hasty little youngling! I am just as smart as the day I was planted! Just give me a moment…”

The tree moved its branches, mentally going through possible answers. I smiled as I realised that I had won and it was only a matter of time before the tree gave up.

“Time is running out,” I taunted.

“Now just you wait!” stalled the tree. “I nearly have it figured out! A question with no answer: a conundrum…a philosophical quandary…an ordinary quandary…a mystery…”

“All incorrect. Those can all be solved.”

“What? That’s impossible! There are no more synonyms for an answerless question!”

“No, there’s not.”

The tree’s expression faded and twisted into a hideous frown of rage. I held out my hand, awaiting the sword and the tree reluctantly relinquished it.

“You mean you didn’t know either?!” the tree cried angrily.

“Nobody knows. It has no answer,” I said, sliding the sword into two straps along my leg.

“That’s cheating! How am I supposed to answer if the riddle has no answer?!” the tree accused.

“You never said the riddle had to have an answer: merely that it had to be a riddle that you could not solve.”

The tree furrowed its brow, analysing its wording as I turned, limping back toward the bridge that would lead me across the lake to the dancing women while ignoring the waves of pain that shot over my body like paralysing shackles.

Before long, I had traversed through the entire maze of upturned roots and arrived back at the bridge where my adrenaline began to take over and I broke into a weak run, trying desperately to cross the bridge and get as far away from the forest as possible. However, after several moments, I noticed that I made no progress — the bridge seemed to be getting longer.

“Hey!” I called to the dancing women. “What have you done to the bridge?!”

They did not turn to me, indeed it seemed as though they had not heard me at all. They continued to dance as I continued to run across the bridge that seemed to only grow longer…

“NO!” I cried, trying to run in spite of my broken leg and twisted ankle. It was no use and suddenly, the elongating bridge began to crumble into the murky swamp below. I tried to get a running start and leap over the falling bit of bridge, but the wood fell away faster than I could traverse it and I tumbled into the swampy water.

For a moment, I merely floated in the thick muck. When I got up the courage to open my eyes, I saw that the murky water was lit with the cloaked phantoms I had seen before in the moonlit woods. For a moment I felt relief, but it quickly turned to panic as the kind faces I remembered from my past turned to maliciously twisted masks with horrible Mephistophelean grins. Their eyes began to yellow and sink into their ghostly faces the closer they got to me, as if I was the cause of their death.

I then remembered overhearing the conversation between Lord Daryn and the Avian-Centaur… they had come for me. I recalled Loria’s last words: I was the only one left, because the Centaurs had wanted me and they had not found me…

As the realization dawned on me, the phantoms clamped their ghostly, skeletal hands around me, preventing me from swimming to the top of the swamp for a breath. Instead, they began to pull me downwards into the dark depths below as my lungs burned for air and the fear of death became all the more real.

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