The Honor of Light #2 (Waverly Stump and The 7 Realms)

Chapter Seventeen

They do everything for their own satisfaction.

Brijjet's words floated about in Waverly's head as she staggered behind Lord Adunar, who looked maliciously excited with whatever he was thinking.

Waverly's body exploded with pain and her head throbbed like a thousand earthquakes were inside it at once. Her vision reduced to a blur and so even when Adunar stopped walking, she did not realize it and continued to advance. The air was incredibly cold and thin, almost too difficult to breathe in.

"Why, you seem very anxious to meet your next Trial. Peace, you most possibly will not walk out of this one alive." He sneered.

But Waverly was not listening. Extreme hunger and thirst felt like death to her. She could not see clearly or hear clearly, but Adunar was talking about something light that something eats. She staggered and felt a sharp pain strike the nape of her neck. She winced and looked back tiredly.

"She senses you already, hence the pain you feel now. Have a gloomy passage to The Sacred Space." The deity said and disappeared.

Waverly slumped face down to the ground. She still could not make out her environment but a few feet away, she spotted a large unfinished table. It stood directly in front of an abandoned shop filled with pieces of wood. The part of Waverly's brain that still worked told her it was a carpenter's workshop.

She crawled toward the table then went underneath it. As she did, she reached ontop of the table to grab what she saw was a rough, wood streaked blanket. Waverly draped the dusty and prickly material over herself and shut her eyes. She did not know what her next Trial was but she also did not care now. Better for it to kill her in her sleep than for her to fight it in her weakened state. She could not lift a finger even if she tried.

As Waverly drifted into a disturbing sleep she became plagued by an equally disturbing mare.

She was still under the table when she woke but it was noon. She indistinctly recalled it was evening when she had arrived. She crawled out from under the table and found herself to be in a very big forest, much bigger than any one she had been in. And inside the forest, the strangest things were happening.

The trees were moving and they had mean, evil faces - scraggy tree beards that jutted out in a pointy manner, eyes like hollow shells, conk noses and very wide, very empty ugly mouths.

The ground was strewn with tiny living creatures that Waverly could not completely make out. She only saw that some had really small wings, some had too many fingers or toes, others had too many eyes or no eyes at all. A lot of them had strange colors of skin and very awkward ways of walking.

Several other foul creatures that Waverly could not name swarmed the place but none of them seemed to notice her. The air smelled so bad that Waverly was forced to breathe through her mouth.

Waverly wondered if the creatures were having a meeting of some kind. One of them turned to look in her direction and Waverly let out a very sharp shriek. She had seen hundreds of this kind of creature before. It was one of the many dwellers in The Abyss. A Vulturo - vulture man. He was even uglier and more terrifying up close. His arms and legs were human but the rest of him was vulture - an ugly, eld, brown and greyish, deformed, wide-eyed vulture.

Waverly moved backward as the creature advanced with a deathly look about his face. He lunged for Waverly. She screamed and shielded her face but the creature only passed right through her like she was made of smoke. Waverly turned sharply and found the vulture digging into the dead body of a large yellow cat. The cat was rotting and swarmed by noisy flies but the vulture man did not mind. This was probably the best meal he had eaten in a long time.