Xerxes by Micheal Achonye

Battle of the dark forest

"Xerxes! To your left!" warned the mage, creating a barrage of wind attacks with her cane, holding me for support.

"I can't get a hit on them!" I cried back. "They're too fast!"

They were everywhere and we were surrounded. At this point, I wished my father would swoop in to save us, but we got separated during the attack. Harry, Olly, Trina and Indigo laid on the ground bleeding causing me to sigh in frustration.

How had we gotten here? 

Let's roll it back.

***

After the heated fight I had had with the dark god, we were finally leaving the broken town to commence on our journey. My father had been reading the map, however, the more he tried to understand the pathways to follow the more confused he got. 

"This map doesn't look right," he noted.

"Well, that was the only map the captain had on his ship," the Xaj stated back.

"For fuck sake," he grumbled, rolling up the map before putting it into his pocket. "I guess we would go by instincts then." 

We walked on silently until we came to a large sign which read, 'GO D YE'. Mephistopheles stopped the group, pulling out the map once again to glance through it, giving me the opportunity to look around.

A thick forest with dark clouds loomed ahead of us, lightning flashing over the clouds, making the forest appear haunted. The more I looked at it, the more unpleasant it turned out to be. Making a silent prayer to whatever god was listening, I turned to the group to see Petra staring deeply into the forest. She just like me was the only other person paying attention to what laid ahead.

"Finally, we're out of this town," Harry sighed in relief.

"Well, my drinks are all gone," Indigo mumbled, shaking a leather-skin container in our faces.

"Look on the bright side," Trina smiled. "We'd get to visit the legendary ten temples. How cool is that?" 

Indigo hissed angrily, kicking a stone down the path.

"If we're going to beat time and get to the snowy mountains, we need to go through there," Olly pointed to the creepy forest. 

"And how would you know this?" Mephistopheles asked the young warrior.

"Because there's a white cloud over a portion on your map and that is the forest infront of us," replied Olly, pointing to an image on the map before falling onto the ground in exhaustion.

The Xaj frowned as my father looked at her.

"What?" he questioned.

"The dark forest is not a travellers path," she objected.

"Oh, here we go again," he sighed.

"I'm serious."

"It's a shortcut, Petra, we won't stay in there for long," he retorted.

"You don't understand," she reasoned. "Our survival rate would be lower if we follow that path."

My father shook his head in disagreement while she explained.

"Let's not do the shortcuts. Let's follow the mountains and..."

"Who is leading this team?" he asked, raising a brow.

She scowled, "You are."

"And who is the god of darkness again?" he went on stashing the map into his pocket.

"You are," she mumbled.

"Good. Know your place," he finalized, walking towards the dark forest with the rest of the team behind him.

I looked at Petra as she clicked her tongue in annoyance.

"What's in this dark forest anyway?" I asked out of curiosity.

"Something bad," she answered. "And thanks to your father's stubbornness, we're walking right into the mouth of danger."

She started to limp towards the path with difficulty leaning onto her stick even more. I looked at the forest with the crazy visions forming in my head which made me gulp at how frightening it was going to be. 

***

We were at the entrance of the forest and the trees were larger than they had seemed to be from the distance. They were around thirty feet tall with vines criss-crossing on the path. At this point, going around the mountains and spending more days walking did not seem like a bad idea.

"It's not too late to turn back, Roman," she advised. "You might have been to some bad places, but this is different."

He ignored her words pointing to the forest frowning, "Let's keep moving."

Petra nodded her head, "I warned you," before following him into the forest.

I was glad to go through this path with people. It was frightening being in such a place alone. It had a cursed aura hanging over it causing me to wonder if we were going to make it out without any incident. I walked into the forest with nervousness looking around for anything suspicious. 

"No matter what you do, do not answer to your name," Petra announced in front. "Do not hesitate to attack any creature that comes close to you."

The howls and eerie sounds got louder the deeper we got into the forest. I looked back to see a heavy fog close up our paths with a tree move in our direction.

"Did you see that?" I asked in fear with a scared Trina turning to me.

"Let's focus on getting out of here alive," she stated with a shaky voice.

We walked on in silence for awhile with my guard still up, ready to fight anything that came my way. I didn't care what it was, I was ready.

Something jumped within the trees taking my attention until I bumped into Trina. Petra's hand was up signaling us to stop moving as my father got into a battle stance. Everyone got their weapons out, ready for the unknown. 

We stayed in a circle, staring intently at the trees expecting the worst, but nothing came.

"It's too silent," Harry whispered. "Very silent." 

"Maybe it decided to leave us alone," Indigo breathed out.

"What in your drunk mind would make you think up such rubbish," Harry replied angrily.

"The both of you, shut it!" Petra snapped, as a tree branch broke off, falling in front of me with a thud.

Almost immediately, a gluey liquid dropped on my shoulder causing me to look up. Staring back at me was a creature so ugly it would forever remain the most hideous creature I had ever seen in my entire life. It had a large face resembling that of a baboon, with eight eyes, six legs, a scorpion tail and two sets of wings on its back. I was too transfixed to move, as more liquid slob from it's fanged mouth dropped on my shoulder.

"By the gods!" I heard Trina exclaim, with more baboon-like creatures climbing out of their hiding places.

Their numbers increased with me wondering how we were going to take on these creatures. 

"On the count of three, we back out slowly without spooking any of the creatures," Petra whispered. "One, two..."

"Come at me you little assholes!" my father screamed his arms glowing red with fire. 

What was he going to do, I thought to myself. I had never seen him this way before. His eyes had a dim glow as well. 

"Roman..." Petra blurted out. "What are you doing?"

He smiled evilly, his arms bursting with flames, "Letting lose." 

The creatures had started to hoot and growl violently, when one of them jumped into the air the others following suit, as they dived in towards us.

"Yahhhhhhh," I heard my father scream before creating a cloud of fire pushing it to the creatures.

"Run!" Petra exclaimed, grabbing my arm and heading for cover.

The creatures rained fire bullets down on us, with my father's flames acting as a shield, protecting us from their attacks. The heat from the flames made it impossible for the demons to get through, at least, that was what I thought, until one of them flew in, heading for me.

"Lookout!" Olly let out, pushing me to the ground before slashing the demon with his sword. 

I laid on the ground, petrified at what would have happened if it had gotten me.

"If you want to live, you're going to have to fight these creatures, not hide from em," he said with a scowl on his face, after regaining his composure.

I was horrified at the thought of losing to these demons. They were not going to give me a medal prize for losing, they were going to have me for dinner.

I got up with a strange feeling of power flowing through me. In the distance, my father propelled himself around, with a stream of fire pushing out of his feet. Harry, Indigo and Trina made their way to us, the creatures prowling slowly in our direction. I was not going to go down like this. As usual, something in me longed for the violence, and strangely, I liked it too. I wanted to let lose and do more than what my father was doing. I wanted to fly and fight and destroy things without any bars or holds. I wanted to fight alongside the dark god as well.

Walking to the front of the group with the creatures running towards us, I put out my hands feeling a rush of power flow through me as blue flames poured out viciously, burning the trees and demons alike. I stopped the stream of fire and looked at my palms in shock which surprisingly was okay.

"Wow," Harry said, impressed by what I had done. "Now, how about you do that again, because right now, I think you pissed the big one off."

More demons came out of hiding, howling and beating the ground in anger as a huge demon flew down growling and hooting even louder than the little ones with intentions of murdering us. 

There was no need to run, we were surrounded. The only way out would be to fight for our lives and it was not going to be easy.

I raised my fist into the air, letting out a battle cry, before leading the team into a bloody battle.