The Sleeping Girl

Chapter Twenty Two

The walk to the woods feels startlingly familiar. Yet despite it all, so much has happened here over the last few days. It feels like so long ago that I was woken up from my own slumber. Practically another lifetime. I suppose in essence, 'twas.

Our whole division of society is here to see Chloe off. It's the biggest thing they've all ever seen, or ever will, after all. Amanda and Dan walk in the front, with Chloe and myself following at a distance, and everybody else picking up the rear. Chloe is going to go to sleep in the same glade that I woke up in. Who knows how long she will say there, who knows how long it may be before we are forced to move, but she'll stay there for now. Just like I did.

We walk in silence. I'm super tuned in to the ebb and flow, and hum of nature. Ever since yesterday when I unleashed my full potential in killing Ebony, I've been hyper aware of all the magic in the area. Even more so than when I first woke up, which was significantly more than before I went to sleep. To me now, it seems insane to think of what life is without this connection, although most of my awake life was spent like that. Still though, it's now just a part of me, and to live without it, 'tis unthinkable. I know nobody alive can understand that, yet I'm consoled that in the future, Chloe will be just so. I guess five hundred years is enough to chance a lot of things.

I'm zoned out for a bit when I realize that Amanda and Dan have suddenly stopped. I hear Amanda give a sharp intake of breath, before she reaches for her own bag, the contents of which are similar to mine. That can't be good. We shouldn't have need for weapons. This should be easy, over.

"Oh no," murmurs Dan. "I thought you killed her. I thought it was over."

"What?" I demand, sharply. "What is it? Why are we stopped?"

"Come," says Amanda, simply, motioning to a space between two trees where she and Dan are peering. "Look."

Cautiously, I walk over to her. Peering around the trees, I'm not sure what I expect, but it's sure not this. My heart just about stops. 

Just at the edge of the horizon, across a small stretch of forest is the glade where I woke up in, the place where Chloe will go to sleep, our destination. We're practically there, considering especially how far we've already been walking in the forest, and all we've accomplished in the past week. It's so close. So close, yet so far away.

Because between us and there, is the largest gathering of dark creatures I have ever seen. Dark sprites, werewolves, vampires, faeries, witches; every single dark creature imaginable. Every one that I've ever fought, and many, many more. They're all facing off at us, in a large clump. 

Their auras are insane. Just them being there fills the air with a dark ashy cloud reserved for my eyes alone. It floats towards me, spilling around and tainting everything dark. I nearly gag at all the darkness around; with this many of them 'tis nearly unbearable. 

"Ebony had spies or something," says Amanda. "Somebody tipped them off that Chloe was here. Her death didn't actually stop anything; judging by this it only made it worse.This is it. The final showdown. I guess it really isn't over until it's over."

"Yeah," I say, slowly. "Maybe we can just... sneak past?"

Amanda has opened her mouth to respond when I feel a wizz of air rushing past me. I gasp and cry out on reflex upon realizing how dangerously close something has just come to looping my arm off, a mere hair's width from myself. Shocked, I turn past the way it came and see a dart of dark energy in the tree closest to me, imbedded deep within the trunk. It's slowly dissolving, but spreading out as it does. And while the form of the dart itself is becoming less tangible, the darkness spreading is certainly doing the opposite. I can only watch, transfixed, as the tree slowly goes from a deep, healthy brown color, to an ashy dark grey, not unlike the color of Ebony's unglamourous flesh. The once vibrant wood now appears rotten, and dangerous.