Conlaren exploration and fight

19. Conlaren exploration and fight.  

“Are you all right Melissa?” Alice puts a hand on my shoulder as she asks that.”

“Yeah, lets go get the one responsible for this.”

“Do not be so hasty Melissa.” Luna says from behind me.

“The enemy is unknown, and this place is perfect for a surprise attack.” The grand mage continues.

“But if we do not hurry there will be more victims.”

“And if we hurry we might be the victims.” Martin adds to the conversation.

“It is another thing to fight the odds and come do this suicide mission than to do it recklessly.” Luna says convincingly.

“All right, you are right, sorry. How are we going to do this?”

“The forest is big, and the trees make it hard to see others, so it is going to be hard to find anyone here, but we cannot really separate either because we do not know the enemy and getting surprised attacked when we are separated would be fatal.” Luna explains.

“The tree´s leaves also deny the possibility of me flying and finding anyone.”

“Do we have any choice than to go as a group then?” I ask.

“I can go alone in one way while the rest of you go in another direction. I can probably handle things by myself anyways and if things get dangerous I can fly away too.”

I want to say that it is too dangerous, but do I really have the right to do that? I just nod, and the grand mage goes to the left side of the forest alone. I feel uncomfortable when I see the grand mage walking away from us.

“What kind of formation should we search the forest in?” Asks Martin.

“Martin and Marie, you go in the front, I will go behind Martin and Alice goes behind Marie and Melissa is behind us.” Luna informs quickly.

We get into the formation and start walking to the right side of the forest, I glance at left but cannot see the grand mage. I look back to see everyone walking in front of me in the formation looking around focused.

I start looking around too, being distracted now is dangerous. We walk deeper into the forest past tree after tree, it is eerily quiet here and I notice that the tree trunks are getting greyer the deeper we go into the forest.  

Suddenly we stop, and I look ahead to see that there are a lot of trees right next to each other and they have completely grey trunks.

“Let’s circle around it to see if it is like that all around it and decide what to do after.” Luna says, and we start going around it from the right.

After twenty trees we see that there is one tree missing, we walk toward it and I can see Martin and Marie look away quickly after looking inside. Luna keeps looking inside and Alice doesn’t look that way because she is keeping watch.

I walk closer to see and when I can see I see that there are a lot of half owl people corpses on the ground inside. The whole place is filled with blood and in the middle of the place there is a huge tree stump and on top of it lie many dead half owl people.

Luna walks inside and puts a hand on one of the corpses.

“These ones were killed before the one we found was killed so the killer shouldn’t be in this area.”

“Isn’t the grand mage in danger then?” I ask.

“We cannot be sure. The forest is big, and we do not know where the half owl people live. They could live further up this way or somewhere between our paths. Well it is unlikely that they live further up this way or even if they did they would be probably dead already. I think we should head more to the left but keep walking ahead. This way we have a higher chance to find someone and we will be close to the grand mage.”

I want to argue to go straight to the grand mage but what Luna says is reasonable. She did say that she will be all right and if I went running after her now it would make her decision pointless.

“Yes, let’s do it.” I say, and the others nod, and we start walking again.

The tree trunks we pass by on the way are getting less grey again, I wonder if that place was the middle of the forest or the reason for the grey tree trunks.

We walk for some time before we hear the first sound in the forest that doesn’t come from us.

“How did you get here? There should have been people stopping you from entering the forest? Did you kill them?”

“No, we came to stop the person who did kill them.” Martin answers the voice.

“Why would I believe that you just happened to be near this forest when there was another person coming here to kill our kind?”

“The same thing is happening everywhere else, we wanted to help those who we could.” I say to the voice.

“Right, you would risk your lives to help another race out without getting anything out of it? There is no way I would believe you.”

“Letting the enemy gather up forces and going after us with full force will not be good for us. Now when they are separated we should take care of the ones we can.” Luna explains.

“Enough of your lies, we have you surrounded, if you drop your weapons we will kill you painlessly.”

“Wait! We are not lying, is there any way I could prove it to you.”

“Drop your weapon and shield and walk here alone.”

“All right.”

I drop my sword and shield and walk toward them.

“Don’t do it Melissa.” Luna says angrily.

I ignore what they say and walk alone toward the voice. A half owl man comes from behind a tree with a small sword.

“Get on your knees and look down.”

I get on my knees and look on the ground, I notice that my hands are shaking. I stare at the ground and notice that the there is a grey line on the grass that is on the ground too.

I can hear the others shouting my name, I smile weakly and resign myself to death.

There is a sudden female scream in the distance and I to the side, I notice that there is a sword next to my neck and that the person wielding it is looking the other way too.

The person takes the sword from my neck and starts running toward the sound. I sigh out of relieve, get up from the ground and run for my shield and sword.

“We will talk about this after this is over.” Says Luna angrily.

I nod, and we start running toward the sound too. We quickly arrive to the scene where we can see the grand mage fighting a half owl person that has two small red sickle swords.

There is a half owl female on the ground looking terrified, when she notices us and the half owl person running towards her she tells the half owl person that the one with red sickles tried to kill her.

I feel thankful as now we do not have to persuade him that the half owl person is the one killing their kind and not the dragonnier person. They would have never believed us.

The other half owl people also come down from the trees all around the one with the red sickle swords, they charge toward him without waiting for us.

I try to scream to not go but they don’t stop and they all get slaughtered in a blink of an eye.

A tear falls down my cheek and I grip my shield and sword as hard as I can, I keep myself from running at the half owl man and go with the formation.

“This guy is stronger than me, I will need you to protect me while I cast my spells.”

The grand mage runs between us and the half owl person runs after her.

Martin blocks the first sickle sword with his shield and tries to swing at the half owl person, but he kicks Martins right hand and the sword flies out of his hand.

He is about to strike Martin with his left hands sickle sword when Marie tries to stab him on the neck.

He uses his left hand to hit the spear and it flies off Marie’s hands, at that time there is a fireball flying toward his face and he uses his right hands sword to block it.

Alice swings her battle hammer down on him when he is blocking the fireball and he lifts his left arms sickle sword to intercept the strike. He stops it with no effort and is about to strike her with his right hands sword.

When Martin tries to kick him in his private part area, he stops his strike and uses his right leg to stomp down on Martins leg. He screams, and his foot is being squashed under the half owl mans foot.

The half owl man is about to slice Martins foot off when I intercept his strike with my shield, the force of the hit is greater than I have felt before this and I fall on my knee. I immediately try to get up, but my leg is numb and wont move.

I see that Marie has gotten her spear back, but she is still far away, the half owl man uses his left hands sword to quickly rise the blade from the battle hammer to turn it around and pull the battle hammer from Alice’s hand.

He lifts his right hands sword from my shield and is about to swing at Alice when a black dagger flies at his neck, he dodges it easily but at that time I move my shield and stab his leg with my sword.

It pierces his leg and he screams while bleeding, he takes his foot off from on top of Martins and pulls his leg free from my blade. He swings from left with his right hand and I quickly defend with my shield.

The force knocks away my shield and I see him already striking with his left hand too. A fireball and a dagger flies at him but he deflects the fireball with his left-hand sword and the dagger with his right-hand sword.

I try to swing at him with my sword, but he kicks it away and steps on my right hand, I can feel my bones breaking and I scream but I see that he is already about to bring down his other foot on my neck.

More fireballs and daggers fly at him and Martin tries to protect me with his shield from behind me, but he deflects them all and kicks away Martins shield.

“Ready!” I hear the grand mage scream.

And instantly from the ground two hands appear and grab hold of the half owl mans legs, then two more hands appear and grab his arms, then two more to grab his legs even firmer, then two more to grab his arms firmer.

The earthen hands keep coming until he is covered in them, but he still is moving slowly despite the constriction.

“How is he still moving?” Asks the grand mage in disbelieve.

I can hear Luna running this way from behind me and I can see Marie running with her spear from behind the half owl person. Luna stabs him from the front with her spear and Marie pierces him from the behind as he breaks free from the earthen hands.

He gasps and blood stars flowing from his mouth and his wounds. He falls on his knees and as he goes down he whispers.

“How, I forsake everything to gain this power.”

Marie stabs the half owl person in the neck to make sure he is dead I collapse on top of Martin with relieve. I start healing my hand and Martins leg at the same time while laying there.

Chapter eighteen. Chapter twenty.