Chaos Bender

The White Forest

I woke up with a start, heavy breathing, cold sweat. The first thing I looked at was my hands and willed sparks. I had never been so glad to see purple in my life. After I started to calm down I turned my head around and saw the RV was empty. What's more is that we stopped moving completely, it was silent, except for the noisy chirping and buzzing of insects. I slowly got up, my head hurting from the recent dream I had. It was just a dream, I kept telling myself. But what if it was something more, was I truly capable of such power, such destruction, such cold heartedness ? In the dream I killed three people, maybe more, like it was nothing. Plus the way I treated Alex was horrible. I shook my pounding head and went outside.

It was just a dream.

It was night outside, the stars were fully visible in the vast sky. Another full moon, lightly illuminating the grass with dark blue. To think the night before we were walking towards the city New Salem, now on a similar night we must be miles away. The RV was facing a forest dead ahead of it, and the back pointed to a grassy plain that I assumed we came from. Not a road in sight.

"Hey sleeping beauty. You fully rested now ?" Crow seemed to have appeared out of no where, which gave me a shock. He let out a small laugh.

"Not cool ! Anyways where'd you get this RV, and where are we ?!" I yelled. The questions didn't seem to faze him all that much, but I did see Alex and Nix emerge from the other side of the RV. Those two always seem to gravitate towards each other.

"Details, you're supposed to leave them to me remember ? Just follow my lead and we'll get to where we're supposed to be." He said as if he dismissed me. All that blind following was driving me crazy.

"Onward into the forest team. And keep it down, we don't want to wake any of the... Residence." Crow said before marching off. The way he said residence was ominous, but Nix just shrugged and followed his lead. Alex and I followed after her into the dark forest. Although it's fall, the trees here didn't shed any leaves, just dried pine that still made a little noise as we walked. We all kept close to each other, silently following Crow.

We walked for what felt like hours, with each step I took I felt more and more frustrated. My feet ached and I had no idea where we were going. The fact that Crow seemed to know everything and refused to say anything about the situation only frustrated me further. I walked faster until I caught up to him.

"Crow ! Where are we going ?" I screamed, that surprised him. He turned around so fast I thought he'd do a seven-twenty.

"Shut up," he said in a hushed voice, "I told you, you'll see when we get there." That didn't make me soften my tone though.

"Why don't you tell me now ? And what's with all the secrecy ? How am I supposed to trust you of you don't trust us ! Crow isn't even your real name is it ? I'm not moving until you tell me exactly what's going on !"

Crows face twisted in anger, he was about to say something, but the soft sound of flapping stopped him. He listened intently.

"What's that ?" I asked nervously.

"That would be why I told you to keep your mouth shut. If it makes you feel better I've been following bird migrations all this time, I know where I'm going. As for where we are I call it the white forest."

"Why, all the trees are green here ?" The flapping noise continued to get louder and louder.

"That's not why I call it that !" He ended up yelling over the flapping.

" I call it that because it's-"

The flapping sound surrounded us. The trees shook rapidly. Flashed of white were visible between the pines.