The Unseen Road

Chapter Twenty-Five

"Kylie..."

"Mmmn?"

A rustle. Someone had said her name. But who? The voice was familiar. Her eyebrows twitched; she realized that she must have been sleeping, because her eyes were closed and she felt very comfortable- well, as comfortable as she could have been with a hard surface pressed against her back.

Had she been dreaming? If so, of what? Warmth spilled upon the surface of her skin, her pants were dampened by the soft earth beneath, still moist with dew. She creaked her eyes open, letting consciousness slowly creep its way back into her as she began to separate dream from reality.

Not a moment later, her eyes widened with sudden realization and she jolted upright.

It had all come back to her within a second; she was in the Haunted Wood, on a mission to save Nicolas, who had been willingly abducted by goblins- the thought made her heart ache- and then find Mina. She had discovered that his father had died there and had to tell him even though she had no clue how.

And, to top it all off, with not much time left on the clock, she had fallen asleep when she hadn't intended to.  Desperate to know what time it was, she looked around frantically, praying that it wasn't too late.

Opaque, misty streaks of sunlight radiated through the canopy, generating a humidity that had caused dew to bead up on her arms and forehead. Morning hung heavy in the forest air, trapped beneath the extensive branches and closed off from the rest of the world. In the daylight, the forest almost took on a completely different look- but, somehow, it felt exactly the same. Empty. Lonely. Haunted.

Her chest tightening, Kylie's shoulders slumped. Luckily, it wasn't noon yet- perhaps only nine o' clock in the morning- but she had lost a considerable amount of time during her inadvertent rest. She stood up and paused, thinking helplessly of where she could even start with such a lag. Maybe if she just started—

In the midst of that thought, another rustle sounded, interrupting it. Confused, she drew her eyebrows together and turned around; she had thought that she had separated the sounds from earlier from reality, assuming both- including the whisper of her name- had come from a dream.

The rustling, at least, had been real, because it came again, a sound so slight that it could have easily slipped past Kylie's attention.

Cautiously enticed by the sound, Kylie carefully, quietly, followed its direction. Unable to see where it came from, she fixed her eyes warily ahead with one hand slightly extended as if she were feeling her way through the dark.

In this manner she came upon a bush, entangled within its own branches. Watchful of thorns, she stopped just before the shrub and peered over it.

Her eyes narrowed when they caught movement low to the ground, just below a leaf-littered hill.  And, as soon as she identified what they were, instinct had her ducking to the ground, her heart pounding wildly in her chest.

They were goblins; she had only seen two, but judging from her previous fight with them two were enough to overpower her if she wasn't careful.

"How did they...?" she muttered to herself, the blood that roared in her ears subsiding as she tried to regain her thought. Of all things and places in the forest, the goblins had come to her; and the chances of that should have been astronomically low, because she knew for a fact how large the Haunted Wood was. The only way something like that, an event so serendipitous that it could not be left to chance alone, could have occurred would have been by some sort of miracle— or magic.

With her thought fully recovered, knowing what was at stake, she took a deep breath and slowly rose up just past eye level with the top of the bush to where they couldn't see her- if they hadn't already spotted her before. Staying as calm as she could, she prompted herself to focus on the figures, their pasty skin blending in with well with the dead leaves below them; and, to her surprise, she could also hear their voices carrying down the other side of the hill. Hopeful of finding information on Nicolas, she tuned in as best she could.