The Light of Roria

Chapter Twenty Two

Something had gone terribly wrong. The sensation of wind travel was bad enough, but this was different; feeling like every muscle and limb was being stretched to the max. My shoulders and head were being pulled left, my legs and feet dragged to the right. Opening my eyes, I could see blurred images of what appeared to be trees, sky, asphalt, and underbrush. Each piece was bound together as if wind travel were somehow folding them together, creating a paper fan; each remaining in their own space, but overlapping each other at the same time. Then, the areas separated, the folded sections expanding until it felt like individual pieces of my body lay above the different landscapes. The pain was almost unbearable causing me to cry out and I feared if I was stretched any further I would begin to hear the snaps of my own bones.

Even the distance between myself and everyone else began to grow, and though Elijah tried with all his might to hold on to me, when his fingers finally slipped away, Aasim shouted my name, while I gripped his mane until my knuckles were white.

With a single blink, the scenery was no longer mashed together. I could decipher the sky from the green land below, and I was falling toward the hard ground at a rapid speed.

Screaming, I watched the pine trees begin to appear larger, gravity forcing me toward their high-peaked tops.

Aasim called out my name once again, the sound of his solid wings beating heavily as he rushed toward me.

Swooping below me, Aasim matched the speed of my descent, letting my hands connect to him from an angle first, to prevent my body from an unexpected impact. Securely on his back we barely managed to avoid the branches, the thick pine sideswiping Aasim's shoulder and scraping my arm and side.

Aasim's neigh echoed throughout the forest, trying to regain his position, but the branches now surrounded us and overwhelmed our flight pattern. Swiping another nearby tree, Aasim decreased in speed, while laughter echoed through the trees, and I tried to scan the area to see where it had come from.

Hold on, Addisyn. Dark magic is near. We have to get out of here, I sensed Aasim say as he finally climbed above the trees. Although he was impossibly fast, neither of us anticipated the sudden appearance of the largest being I had ever beheld.

The creature's head was as high as the treetops. With his bare hands, he ripped a tree from its roots and swung it toward us. Despite Aasim's quick actions in dodging the creature's swing, there was no time to avoid the branch entirely. As the creature swept Aasim's legs out from under him, I could no longer hold on. My right side crashed into a tree before I began falling to the ground once again. I was still at least twenty feet in the air and knew I would become seriously injured from the fall.

Through quick thinking and the rush of adrenalin, I allowed divinity to flow through me quicker than it had ever done before, by creating a bow with an arrow attached to a heavy rope. Launching the arrow, it struck a nearby tree, broke the surface, and buried itself deep inside the hard trunk. I gripped the rope with all my might and readied myself for the impact and pain I knew would come once I hit the tree the arrow was attached to.

The giant's scream pierced my ears as I watched him barrel past each tree, knocking them aside like they were merely stacked toy Legos. Sliding down the rope, the burn in my hands were nothing compared to the pain on my side that had taken the impact, practically knocking the wind from my lungs.

When my feet hit the ground, I ran as fast as I could away from the giant while he plummeted a tree toward the ground to squash me like a bug. Hurtling my body out of the way, I barely managed to escape, branches scraping my legs and waiste.

"Aasim! Help!" I cried, shooting an arrow at the giant's feet.

The giant screamed with pain as my arrow planted itself firmly into his ankle. It gave me enough time to hide behind a broken stump as I watched him yank the arrow out of his skin.