4 Princes

XXIX

Rook
Rook, baby, wake up son.

I jolted up and immediately cried out and grabbed my shoulder. My face scrunched up and my fingers grazed... smooth skin?

I looked over at my shoulder where Phillip had almost chopped my arm off at, to see sticky black skin. What was this?

I dipped my fingers in it and it came off, revealing no scar, no wound, and no blood. I wiped it off onto my palm and onto the dead grass that I was sitting on.

I looked around me, trying to figure out where I was. Black trees sprouted from tar, covered in black vines and darkly colored snakes. Something crowed in the distance, but it sounded more like a woman's scream.

The grass below me was a dead color of yellow, mimicking a sickly fungus. I felt like I was sinking into the ground, like everything around me was meant to kill me or keep me alive long enough to torture me.

Bones scattered the ground like haunted flowers.

Dead animals were left out like finished plates.

Cores of apples were rotting away.

I felt like I was being watched, watched by hooded figures and deadly ghosts. "Hello!?" I called out, but it was all for not. Who was going to be out here? I was kidding myself if I said I didn't know where I was. The Grand Forest.

Unsurprisingly nobody answered.

I stood up and brushed myself off. I had to get a grip on things. I couldn't be scared, I had to get to Elaina. I didn't know where she was, I didn't know where I was, but both problems were solvable.

I took a step forward and grey smoke poured into my vision from a spore on the ground. I tried to back away from it, but every step I took led to other damage.

I coughed and wiped my mouth. When I looked at the skin on my hand it was covered in blood. Blood from my mouth.

I tried to take a breath and while I did indeed get air, I also got a deep smoke that burned and dried my throat out. I couldn't breathe in for very long before I collapsed onto my knees and rolled onto my side, my eyes gasping.

"Help..." I sputtered.

"Rook, what are you doing? Why are you fighting to get back to me?"

I looked up and through bloody tears, saw Elaina standing in front of me. I reached my arm out and set my hand on her shoe. "Help, me," I gargled out.

I had never wanted to see the sun so badly, instead of the gloomy clouds that hung over the forest in the damnation of demons and ghouls.

"Don't you see, I don't want you. I never did. I'll always lie to you."

I didn't want to listen to her. "I don't... care." Somehow me crying helped. The tears poured down my face and into my mouth, giving me a needed liquid to clear my throat. "I want you. Lie to me, hurt me, I don't care,"

She laughed then, threw her head back, and watched the clouds with eyes that were a tad too dark to be the real Elaina's. But she looked just like her otherwise, had the same voice, the same spectacular blonde hair. "You're worse than Erik."

Her face morphed and suddenly Erik was standing before me, his dark black hair mixing with the shadows. This wasn't them, I knew that, but I couldn't convince myself that I was right.

The toxins in the air. That's all this was.

Why was I here?

Who brought me here?