Xerxes

Battle of the dark forest

"Xerxes! To your left!" she cried out, creating a barrage of wind attacks with her cane, holding me for support.

"I can't get a hit on them!" I cried back. "They're too fast!"

They were everywhere. We were surrounded. At this point, I wished my father would swoop in to save us, but we got separated during the attack. Harry, Olly, Trina and Indigo laid on the ground bleeding. I sighed. How shitty could this day get?

How did we get here?

Let's roll it back a bit.

***

We were leaving the broken town to continue our journey. My father had been reading the map, but the pathways to follow weren't clear enough.

"This map doesn't look right," he noted.

"Well, that was the only map the captain had on his ship," the Xaj stated back.

"For fucks sake," he grumbled, rolling up the map and putting it into his pocket. "I guess we would go by instincts then."

We walked on silently, until we came to a sign that said, 'GO D YE'. We stopped and I looked around. A thick forest with dark clouds loomed up ahead of us. Lightning flashed over the clouds, making the forest appear scary. The more I looked at it, the more unpleasant it turned out to be. Turning to the group, only Petra was attentive to what laid ahead of us.

"Finally, we're out of this town," Harry sighed in relief.

"Well, my drinks are all gone," Indigo mumbled, shaking a leather-skin container in our faces.

"Look on the bright side," Trina smiled. "We'd get to visit the legendary ten temples."

Indigo hissed angrily, kicking a stone down the path.

"If we're going to beat time and get to the snowy mountains, we need to go through there," Olly pointed to the creepy forest.

The Xaj frowned as my father looked at her.

"What?" he questioned.

"The dark forest is not a travellers path," she objected.

"Oh, here we go again," he sighed.

"I'm serious."

"It's a shortcut, Petra, we won't stay in there for long," he retorted.

"You don't understand," she reasoned. "Our survival rate would be lower if we follow that path."

My father shook his head in disagreement while she explained.

"Let's not do the shortcuts. Let's follow the mountains and..."

"Who is leading this team?" he asked, raising a brow.

She scowled, "You are."

"Good. Know your place," he finalized, walking towards the dark forest with the rest of the team.

I looked at Petra as she clicked her tongue in annoyance.

"What's in this dark forest anyway?" I asked out of curiosity.

"Something bad," she answered. "And thanks to your father's stubbornness, we're walking right into the mouth of danger."

She began to limp towards the path, leaning onto her stick even more. I looked at the forest and gulped at how frightening it was going to be.

***

We were at the entrance of the forest and the trees were larger than they had seemed to be from the distance. They were around thirty feet tall with vines criss-crossing on the path. At this point, going around the mountains and spending more days walking did not seem like a bad idea.