Chap 6: Tense in the forest
2013 Words
Galen felt like his hands were being burnt due to the pain. But the survival instinct urged him to keep stand up and fight against the enemies in front of him. He held the torch tightly, swung to any of them trying to approach him.
What shall I do? Galen cursed. The wolves were surrounding both Galen and Frank and left them to where to escape. As a Faerin - a forest spirit, but Frank could be hurt by any physical impact as well. So he trembled and hid behind Galen.
“Ga… Galen…” Frank couldn’t speak properly due to being terrified “We need to get out here…”
“Hehehe you think you can escape from us, little one?”
One of the wolves used aura energy and responded Frank, which startled both Galen and him. They never knew those wolves also understood human language.
“Give me that Faerin, sister.” Another one of them said “You can have that boy.”
“In your dream!”
Galen shouted, he would never let himself be cornered like this. If he wanted to become the king of Tredia, nothing should be impossible to him.
With the injured hand, Galen showed the torched forward with the eventual belief: He could win them!
“Finish them!”
“Galen!! RUN!!!!”
As the leader wolf’s command, Galen was shocked when seeing them splitting into two groups, one would assault him directly and most of them were medium – big size wolves. The rest of them having the smallest body shape would jump to the nearby trees and going to ambush Galen from above.
Galen watched them swiftly moving and jumped from a branch of the tree to another one. This is not good! He thought, the only way was to run away until he could find anywhere to counter their attack.
One of the wolves jumped at Galen directly in front. With his single swing, Bang! Galen hit to the wolf’s head with the torch that knocked it back and fell on the grass. Taking this rare chance, Galen rushed forward and ran as fast as possible.
Frank also flew and followed him, he tried to open the escape path for Galen while panicking when seeing the wolves with more than twenty individuals were chasing behind them.
Luckily, the forest wasn’t thick and Galen could easily fasten his peed to escape from them. Ignoring the forward bushes, Galen used his own body to break them apart. He jumped down, then climbed up throughout the forest. In front of him, it was a maze of infinity darkness. The more Galen ran, the more he could feel the despair slowly eating his heart.
“Hurry, Galen!!”
“It’s easier to say than done!!” Galen heavily breathed and replied Frank. In his head, there was also a question “But why are those wolves right at our camp?? Don’t tell me we have been lost back to Tredia territory??!!!”
“Oh my god!!”
Thinking about it, Frank panicked. In this such emergency situation, it would be worse if Galen could be noticed by Tredia Patrols and they would capture him. Now the current matter was they had only one of two options: Being killed by Tredia, or being eaten by the wolves.
Suddenly, one of the wolves rapidly cut Galen’s escaping path and jumped on him.
“Ahh!!!”
“Oh no! Galen!!”
Galen couldn’t handle the weight of the wolf trying to grab him and they both rolled on the ground. By that sudden impact, the torch slipped from Galen’s hand and fell to the ground.
In the middle of the darkness, Galen could feel the aggressive fur with the sticky smell of the wolf right up above him. It squeezed him down, Galen even didn’t want to lose. “Hah!!” He screamed, by using his best lifted the wolf up and threw it away to another away.
Galen had to find back the torch to chase it away. Where is it?!
Behind him, the wolf earlier was trying to attack him one more time. At this such right time, Frank already slapped it a powerful hit that the wolf got flinched for few seconds.
“Don’t touch my Galen!”
It was Frank! He was holding Galen’s torch and fought back the wolf.
“Frank!” Galen smiled when seeing Frank saved his life.
“Here, your torch Galen! Next time be careful, you just scared me off!!” Frank gave Galen the weapon and didn’t forget to scold him “Hurry up, before the other wolves coming…”
But Galen and Frank could feel the desperate coming to near as they could hear the voice of that wolf commander: “Too late, my preys. Now it’s our party time!”
The wolves rushed to Galen at the same time. Galen stepped backward, swung the torch as strongest as possible with the hope that he could finish one of them.
Bang! He hit successfully one of them. But the more he fought back, the more aggressive the wolves were. They believed that it was their time to be serious to kill the prey now, so they howled a long sound then ran to Galen.
The big-sized wolves also joined the fight. Due to lack of strength, Galen just could defend himself by casting “Barrier!” and protect himself from the intense jump of them, which was trying to crush him down with their legs and their scary jaws. Galen got shivered when he saw their scary tooth under the light of the torch trying to bite him. Without the protection barrier, he was sure that they could cut his arm just by a single bite.
Galen bit his lips. To win them, he had to overcome the fear! Just a second his mentality going down, he would make the wrong decision and could not survive this night!
Galen could not let this battle lasting longer anymore since his hands were slowly bleeding. Not only the wolves, both Frank and he would be doomed if the dragon could smell the blood from afar and arrive to this place!
Galen’s breath became unstable due to exhausting aura energy. Eventually, under the pressured attack of the wolves, he had to give the last choice.
“Frank! Leave me here and run!”
“What?! Galen, no! I cannot leave you here!!” Frank yelled in Galen’s coat.
“Please…”
But, Galen had been his best friend. How can it be easy to leave Galen to sacrifice for him…
Frank looked at Galen with teary eyes. But if he didn’t act immediately, both Galen and he would die. Frank didn’t really what to do so he panicked and just hid in Galen’s coat.
“Galen, you are my best friend. If you die, I’ll die with you too.”
“Don’t be stupid, Frank! Hurry up and fly away… Before…”
Crash!! The wolf commander jumped up above and grabbed Galen down. At this moment, Galen’s barrier was broken due to its extremely powerful power… “Ahh!” Galen’s aura energy burst out from his body by the wolf commander. At this split of second, he felt like the time had been stopped, both his heartbeat and consciousness slowly got shut down and he fell into the coma due to the side effect of aura exhaustion.
“Useless! What were you doing?! He is just a boy!” The wolf commander threw to the other an angered glance and blamed them with her aura voice. “Twenty of you and couldn’t finish him??”
“Sister, his barrier was so strong that need more of us to break it.” A wolf stood forward and helped other wolves explaining, she was one of the wolf deputies, “As expect from our commander, you can finish him with just a blow of crush down.”
The other wolves agreed with what their deputy said. They stared at Galen, who was stepped by the wolf commander. Despite they really enjoy eating him, but since the commander had the biggest contribution so they had to watch her eating until her next command, allow them to eat too.
“Tomorrow, I’ll train you properly.” The wolf commander said “Now, this is our dinner!”
“Horay!”
“Please! Don’t, stop!!” Frank flew to the wolf commander and begged her “Galen is my friend, please don’t kill him! He didn’t do anything to you right??”
“Harming us or not, he is human.” The wolf commander roared “Just because of humans, they hunted everything in the forest, pushed us - the wolves losing most of the food resources. Not only chasing humans, but the dragons also attacked us too and we have to live here. You think because of who, we have to suffer like today?? I think you are aware of it too since your family has turned into Dark Faerins, right?!”
“I know!” Frank looked at the wolf commander with eventual eyes “But not all humans are bad!!”
“Lock that noisy Faerin for me!”
Swiftly, Frank realized since when he had been in the jaw of a wolf. Now he could do anything, other than seeing Galen being killed by them!
“Someone… Please save Galen!!” Frank screamed…
Just right at the moment where the wolf commander showed her jaw to bite Galen’s neck and finish his life, there was an unexpected event that happened.
Galen’s body shined bright, sparkled golden ray-like sunlight, and dazzled the eyes of the wolves. Then, a second later, they all suddenly got knocked back by an invisible extreme force, pushed them backward, and sent them flying. Some fainted immediately as they got hit by the trees. Some still strong enough to stand up, they surrounded Galen, looked at him with cautious eyes. Something not right happened to him!
After that, the ground around the wolves shook, caused an earthquake.
“This is… No, it can’t be! Everyone! Run now!!”
But it was too late. The giant vines pierced through the ground and grew up to the air. As if having its own intelligence, those vines violently attacked the wolves.
“Sister, help us!!” They wrapped the victims and squeezed them to death.
“Damn it… Retreat!!”
The other wolves panicky retreated as they saw the vines trying to chase them to kill them, leaving Galen alone in the middle of the wrath of nature. Miraculously, those giant vines didn’t attack him and they were trying to protect him. During this whole moment, Frank dropped his mouth while witnessing this beautiful scenery:
Galen’s sparkling body was embraced by the vines and heal his injuries, from his bleeding head to his hands. The place where he was lying grew a field of grasses, and the greenery spread around him like in a fairy tale.
Frank felt like he had seen this scene somewhere before, but he couldn’t remember…
***
As the vines returned to the underground and Galen had been completely healed, Frank heard the roar of the dragon just above him. “Damn!! They found Galen?!!” Frank panicky thought.
He didn’t have enough time to hide Galen away, because it was already too late, the dragon flew down and landed right in front of Galen and Frank. Frank believed… both Galen and he had been done for…
However, Frank became as hard as stone, not because the dragon was approaching him. He couldn’t see the dragon anymore. Replace by that monster, was the image of a pretty girl with a simple white dress. Her long pink hair smoothly covered her dragon ears with a pair of eyes with different colors: One blue and one red.
Her barefoot gently stepped on the ground and came close to Galen and Frank and said in surprise.
“Oh my…
…is he the one I have been looking for?”
- Writer
