To hell and back

The Dark Forest is not a welcoming place

Cali

I promised myself before that I would never feel like this again. I promised myself that I would never suffer like I did when I was a child. I promised myself to never be the weaker one, to be the strongest...

And I didn't.

For years, I had not felt any cold, hunger or gotten sick. It was great. I was free from all the bodily needs of a pathetic human.

But now I am back here, and I can not be angry at anyone else other than myself.

Violently shaking was making it hard to walk, so I stumbled every other step. I am pretty sure that my legs and palms were covered in scratches, but it was hard to tell due to the fact that I was covered in mud. My whole body was burning and freezing at the same time, it was a wonderful sensation that was accompanied by a headache, nausea and dizziness. I was not sure if this was due to the dark forest and the magic that is floating around here, magic that was leaving my body bit by, or just that I was getting sick.

This hellish little hike started out quite well. I still had some of my magic, so the first day of the whole trip was fine. Sure, I was nowhere near the usual power newels, not that it would help me here much, but I at least felt a lot better. In general, it was not the best idea for me to leave so soon, but I could not risk waiting any longer, because if anyone knew that I no longer had my powers, they would come after me or, even worse, I would change my mind. So I was stuck in the dark forest in the mist of the transformation back to a human, which was good in a way, as it made me invisible to the forest and no one attacked me. But I still had to suffer through all the changes my body was facing in the middle of the unforgiving dark forest.

The only good thing was that only a small portion of my trip was left, only a few more hours until I reached the exit, or at least I think so, it's hard to tell the time here.

To make it all worse, my lungs started to burn from the lack of oxygen. It was the fog that was slowly chocking me out, making it almost impossible for me to move even at a decent pace. This was becoming harder and harder with each step than I ever expected it to. Not that I thought that this would be easy in any way whatsoever. There is a reason why no one ever leaves the dark kingdom. It’s not that they do not want to leave it. For a fact, I know that most, if not all, of the non-magic users want to leave this place more than anything, but they just can’t. It was almost physically impossible to leave this place, for anyone. The dark forest is a live magical being that is meant to guard the territory of the dark kingdom, by keeping everyone out as well as keeping everyone in.

The only reason I made it this far was because of the little bits of magic that I had at the very beginning and I had more knowledge about it just because I had been a witch for the last twenty years.

But I’m not surprised about how many wanted to leave this place. If I was in their place, I would want to leave and now that I am in their place I am doing that. The dark kingdom is not a place where anyone, but magic users, can live a somewhat happy life. It's a place where your value is equal to how much power you have. So, simple humans have no value and are doomed to be nothing more than slaves, treated worse than animals with no way to fight back.

It's a dream of every human there to make it out of here, but the only chance they have to leave is by paying someone to get smuggled out, but rarely does anyone have enough to pay people off like that.

My lungs were burning as I reached the top of a small hill, and it felt as if my body was going to give up on me. My knees were buckling as I slipped again on the wet leaves landing on my ass. Tears of frustration started to roll down my cheeks as I hit the ground with my fist in frustration. Just a week ago, this would have caused an explosion or an earthquake, but now nothing. The pain of falling was not as bad as the hit on my pride. I couldn’t even make it over a freaking hill without falling down on my ass. How will I even make out of here like this? And then what? How will I survive like this useless creature?

The cold dampness in the air only added to the shivers and what I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and cry.

Which is hilarious because it has been years since I cried last time.

As more tears were rolling down my cheeks, I fell back onto the cold wet leaves defeated and gave into the need to try to get warm by curling into myself.

I was also so tired… I don’t think that I have ever been this tired. Maybe I should take a little nap...

“NO.”

Sharply I sat up and slapped my cheeks, letting the sting of pain pull me out of the haze of exhaustion, cold, dampness that this freakin' fog was putting me under. I did not go this far just to give up. With the last bit of energy, I crawled to my feet.

“Okay, Cal, you can do this. You made this far.”

Sure, talking to myself out loud made me feel a bit crazy, but desperate times call for desperate measures. And by any magic user's standards, being sane is overrated.

Taking a deep breath, I forced myself to start moving, before I froze to death or got sick and died before making out of this place.

Oh, stars, it has been years since I had to worry about stuff like that.

Shit, how will I even survive this? How will I find the family that Luis set me up with without my magic?

“Stop, one step at a time.”

I reminded myself gently as I started walking again.

With each step, walking got harder and harder, not to mention the fact that for almost half of the trip I had nothing to eat. Bodily needs are so annoying to take care of.

As I made it through the last bit of the forest at a pace that is beyond embarrassingly slow, I saw the edge of the woods and light coming from the other side... well it was either the edge or I was saying, but I do not care right now, I was so done with this place.

This whole trip took me embarrassingly long. I never expected this to be so difficult.

When I finally stepped out of the forest, I saw the wall where the light kingdom had surrounded itself to protect themselves from magic users and all the bullshit of the dark kingdom.

Well, it was not just a wall that they used to protect themselves, but also an enchantment preventing all and any magic users from stepping through the border, except for the person that cast it.

Fun little spell, it was actually quite simple, all magic users used it to protect their homes. But I guess the simplicity of it was what made it work so well.

Exhausted, I reached the wall and leaned against it a bit while looking around. Even still standing on this side of the wall, I could feel how much warmer it is on this other side. I gave myself a moment to rest, but I knew that I had to move fast before I got spotted.

Now that I’m here, I just need to find the passage that Luis talked about. He said that it had to be somewhere around here.

Sure, I could go through the main gate with the other humans that made it through the dark forest on their own. It really happened, but it did. The king of the light kingdom has granted access to everyone that wants to pass through and change their lives. The King of the light kingdom was a legend and almost a god to all non-magic users in the dark kingdom. Everyone knew of his kindness and heroic actions.

He was a fairytale sort of man, almost a saint. Saving kittens from a tree, feeding the poor and all that sickeningly nice things that I never understood.

In my opinion, he sounds a bit too good to be true, I was sure he had a dark side or something bad about him... maybe he was ugly or disgusting in some way, but what do I know.

I finally spotted the place that Luis described. He said it would be a rose bush and that I would have to walk through it. It was the only pathway that I could pass through without being spotted.

The only thing he forgot to mention was that I would have to crawl through the damn thing. It was the size a kid could only walk though.

“s**t Luis, I will kick your ass for this.”

As much as I hated the idea of crawling through the damned rose bush, but there was no other way out. Feeling humiliated, tired, wet and hungry, I crawled through the bush, feeling sharp thorns tearing my skin.

“I will hex you the next time I see you, Luis.”

Which will probably be never, but I did not want to think of that right now or the fact that I would not be able to hex even if I wanted to… and I really wanted to hex, Luis right now. Nothing too bad, just some genitalia warts or a rash on his ass.

After what felt like forever, I finally made it to the other side.

Slowly, I climbed to my feet, dusting off my closets that were covered in dirt and rose buds from the bush, when I heard someone walking.

“Miss? Are you okay?”

Confused and shocked, I jumped a bit and looked up at the direction the voice was coming from. I saw a man walking in my direction. He was walking with the sun behind him, so I had a hard time making out how he looked. It also did not help that I spent the last five days walking through the dark forest. That was called the dark forest for a reason; there was not a lick of sunlight there. It never passes through the thick tree foliage and the fog that never left that place.

It made my vision blurry as heck.

“Miss?”

Oh, s**t. Everything started getting blurry as I stumbled.

Before I could tumble down, I felt hands wrap around my middle.