In Between

Chapter Two: The Dark Forest

Draven drove the Dalhart's carriage; it was one of the newer models that moved without needing horses to pull it. Kieran had never thought to find out how it worked, but obviously Draven knew, because he was steering it with the wheel and taking them farther and farther away from the house, the town, and everything else.

The Dark Forest grew along the entire southern edge of the Inbetween, covering a vast amount of land that went unused due to the many superstitions surrounding it. It wasn't anything like the Farmer's Forest where kids could go to play and the villagers planted crops, flowers, and herbs, nor did it have harmless little creatures who made their homes in the treetops and chased each other around the meadows.

The Dark Forest was dark. It was darker than the rest of the Inbetween which was always dark except during the day when the surroundings would lighten marginally. There was nothing of note if you looked upwards or any way around; it was dark during the night and grey during the day—plain and simple. Some of the elder, highly respectable Warriors liked to tell stories about places where the daytime was filled with a vast, boundless light and even the nighttime had numerous light sources in the sky called stars. If Kieran was being honest with himself, he didn't quite believe them.

He did believe the stories about the Dark Forest, though—he believed in them completely. Many villagers had entered that accursed place either to hunt for food, to explore, or oftentimes merely on a dare. Very few had ever returned. Kieran didn't want to think about the different rumors he'd heard passed down from the survivors. There was one thing that all of the stories had in common and it scared him; the creatures living in the Dark Forest were said to be able to blend into the darkness as if they were made of darkness themselves. There were whispers that the creatures were evil souls who still maintained physical bodies that could reach out and pull you into the shadows with them.

Kieran couldn't help but shake his head as if to dislodge those frightening thoughts. I've got to stop thinking about it, he told himself, especially now that I'm willingly entering the damned place. He didn't want to imagine the shadow ghosts who were rumored to suck out your soul, or the townspeople who'd become victims of this and were cursed to forever wander about the forest, raving mad—mad enough to attack anyone else who ventured in. He didn't want to scare himself into backing out.

Draven, on the other hand, didn't appear to be scared in the least. It had always seemed as if he didn't know the meaning of the word fear, or if he did, than he knew how to make it go away. Kieran admired him for that quality among others.

The carriage slowed to a halt a short distance from the edge of the forest. Draven hopped onto the ground, cursing when his left foot sank into an unfortunate puddle of mud. "Pass me the rifle," Draven said, holding out a hand for it.

"No, I-I think I want to hold on to it."

"Alright, I don't mind...if you can use it."
"I'm sure I could if you showed me how...plus, I can hit things with it," Kieran explained, and Draven shot him a significantly serious look. "Yeah, maybe you should take it," he decided, figuring that if either of them had any luck at shooting something, it was obviously Draven.

"Good idea. Now follow me, the clones gave me very specific directions," Draven said, loading the rifle in a series of well-practiced motions and scanning the tree line with his gaze focused over the gun's barrel. "This way, see that?"

Kieran followed his line of sight to a section between two trees where the plants on the ground had obviously been trodden on. "That must be Mel's," he remarked, gesturing to a tree that had something tied around its lowest branch. It was one of her black belts, covered in decorative silver spikes that managed to reflect the minimal amount of light that permeated the Inbetween during the day.