Silver Eyes Chronicles: The Journey Begins Trilogy: Book One: The Reunion

Chapter Thirteen: The Violen Forest

Naria

When we enter the Violen Forest, I feel the presence of the deepest most intense evil. The trees look sinister and evil. They tower above us, covered with brown dead leaves and bare wooden, skeletal limbs. Those same dead leaves carpet the ground, crunching loudly under our feet. The bushes and shrubs carry next to no leaves and the berries look shriveled. There are hardly any flowers, save for a few and they are wilted.

I can't help but wince when I see those, remembering the sweet-pea tendrils, rose bushes and flowers that used to grace home in Peyene.

I see nor hear any sign of animals, birds or even insects.

The silence is completely penetrating, save for a tell-tale wind that blows every now and again, sending an icy shiver down my spine.

Everything about the forest suggests loneliness and death, considering the dead looking trees, wilted flowers, leafless bushes, shrubs and the more than occasional patches of frost that covers nearly inch of natural space. In fact, no sign of life is even here. It's as if the whole of winter is here and has been for a long time, longer than the typical three months.

It seems that some kind of evil has resided here for more than some amount of time.

I can't suppress a shudder as I walk, my eyes darting back and forth, checking for something, anything out place. I just have a feeling that we are not alone in these woods. A breeze blows, sending leaves flying up and around us. With that gust of wind, I somehow sense otherworldly beings amongst us, but how that is, I do not know.

"You all right?" Ronan asks, softly, making me jump, a startled look on my face. "I'm sorry if I scared you," he says in apology, noticing my alarmed expression, my hand pressed to my breast, trying to calm my abruptly hammering heart.

"No, that's all right," I say, removing my hand. "Ronan? What do you know about specters?"

I'm curious about what Raeyeda warned us about, seeing as I've never heard of such creatures. But at the same time, I am also a bit enraged about her cryptic message of the specters when I last saw her.

Like with the Dark Elves, she was a bit cryptic about them, I think, grimly thinking back to the ambush, leading up to Kirena's and my capture and separation. It would have been nice to be given a fair warning of what these creatures we come across are like and what they are capable of.

Except that you did not exactly ask, did you? a voice of reason reminds me.

No, I think, in grudging agreement. But she could have warned me anyway, nonetheless.

Ronan looks grim as he responds. "Specters are amongst the foulest creatures in Oratheian. They're almost like ghosts, except for one thing."

"Tell me," I say, my voice soft, almost urging.

Ronan responds, a corner of his lips lifting just a fraction, but his dark eyes remain just as grim. "First of all, ghosts can choose to come back, for whatever reason they have. They have a choice to either move on to where they're supposed to go, be it the Heavenly Beyond or some other realm or to stay in Oratheian. But once the choice is made, it can't be undone, or so the stories say."

I don't say anything, but I can't help but wonder what it would take to have someone stay after death. To look after a loved one. Unfinished business. Protection. Fear. Desperation. Anyone who is afraid of death perhaps. Fear of the unknown.

A shiver goes up my spine at the very thought. But it isn't the thought of death that scares me. For some reason, that is the last thing that frightens me and I don't know why.