Dana Ilic and the Shadow Door (Lightwielder Chronicles #1) | ✔️

14 | A Bunch of Hocus Pocus

The landscape before us was like something out of the Lord of the Rings.

We had left Colorado completely and had obviously travelled miles—perhaps thousands of miles—for to our left, spread a tall forest.

Its green trees,  bright, lush grass and shrubbery were bathed in the purest sunlight. A joyful, pristine river gargled past us, gliding among the tree roots. It shone bright blue amid the leafy green.

To our right, the woods found an abrupt end. Only sad dark stumps and ashen, splintered branches now protruded from the burnt ground. The river, as it passed into the charred landscape, turned an ugly, muddy-brown color. A foul, tepid wind blew from that direction. The sky above it was the color of a bruise. Indigo blue clouds loomed overhead, and the more one looked to the right, the darker and darker they got.

"Err." Max swallowed. "Wild guess: Shadow Door is... that way."

I had expected a place like this to be completely silent and eerie. But it was overwhelmingly loud instead.

The murmurs and mutters coming from the wasteland were all too familiar to me. Being unpopular at school, I had walked the hallways alone so many times while the other kids huddled close together, whispering to each other about me.

Just that this sound was bazillion times creepier.

I gulped and nodded, taking a sharp turn right, leaving the sunlight and warmth behind.

Max trailed me. 

The sun's power waned after a few steps, but my eye-lights illuminated the single twisted walkway threading through the sad remains of a former forest. 

I kept my head down and the sighings and mumblings got louder.

The scorched sooty grass, full of warm ashes, burnt the soles of my trainers, and I winced at the pain but kept pressing on. As we approached the door, that warm, arid wind grew even hotter, smelling like the breath of the swamp. Black trees grew in clumps, scattered here and there.

But the scariest part of this final leg of our journey were the shades. To the left and to the right of the winding path that led upwards, shapes lurked between the remains of the forest. 

At first I thought they were mere shadows of the trees, but then they began moving, hissing, and spitting. 

The shades didn't approach us. They shimmered when illuminated by my light but would growl or look away if Max or I came too close.

The higher we got, the louder the snarls became, and the voices turned into angered chatter.

They closed in, up to an arm's length. I didn't dare turn off the eye-lights. 

"What a warm welcome we get," Max muttered.

"Yeah. Tell me about it." My voice faltered. I was too paralysed with my nyctophobia to talk much. My heart fluttered wildly against my ribcage.

"I wonder why they are just stepping aside for us to pass."

"Um, whatever it is, I'm grateful they're not attacking yet. Don't wanna get ripped apart by shadow entities. I have enough of that happening in my dreams, thank you very much."

"Shh." Max placed a palm on my chest, stopping my advance. "You hear that?"

The sound of two distinct voices, arguing, was coming from straight ahead.

"There's someone there," I said. "Let's hide."

To our left, lay a giant gray boulder, and we knelt behind it. I softened the glow of my eye-lights, not wanting us to get discovered by whoever those beings were.