Sekali, "The Sister City"
Chapter 62
The trek into the Mistshadow Forest was a battle in and of itself. The mushrooms became intensely thick and the three found themselves picking through them sprouting up from the lush, green, mossy bed of the forest. The variety and colors of the mushrooms captivated their eyes, and they often stopped to admire them. They had never seen anything like them before. Their colors ranged from white to dark-greens and browns. There were even small purple ones growing upon the larger ones, these were plentiful and very pleasing to look upon . . . almost entertaining, so vast were the arrays and colors, shapes and sizes of the spectacle of the mushrooms.
As they moved deeper into the forest, it became impossible not to step on them, or to cut them away. The air about them seemed to close in on them, yet it was not stifling or unpleasant in the least.
The trees grew thicker, and as the travelers delved deep into this mysterious region, the quiet became more intense. It was this unnatural silence that began to wind Sekali up inside, like a cloth being twisted by strong hands to remove the unwanted water from it. He felt he was the invader here; that he did not belong. The feeling of being wrong prevailed in his mind to the point that he stopped and turned to his companions.
“Uther, Finyat, are we doing the right thing in this, our mission? I have been thinking on the matter, and it seems we have set ourselves into other peoples lives and wars, and in so doing we have not proved one side or the other in all this. We’ve only taken Mabuhi’s side of the conflict. What if she is wrong, or that we are bewitched by the sweet lies of a master enchantress?”
Finyat stopped and looked up at Sekali as though he were insane, and glanced over at Uther who growled at Sekali suspiciously.
“Elves!” That was all he said before moving on. He did not speak to Sekali for a long while after that.
Finyat followed Uther, shrugging back at Sekali. “He’s stubborn this way, see? You’ll just have to follow Uther if you don’t want to get lost, you know.” Finyat jogged up beside Uther.
Sekali hesitated only for a moment before shaking his head and following after the two, though he did not approve of this at all. He would have words with the both of them later . . . when Uther cooled down. He noticed the darkening of Uther’s eyes as he was expressing his concerns to them. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe Uther and Finyat were allied spies of the Veleighen. He would have to watch them closely from here on out.
Simply put, they were not to be trusted. They had brought him here, into this dark, forbidding, forest to leave him, lost and easy prey for unnaturally large insects. He hadn’t been brought up in the Wastelands to be forced through trials, such as Uther and Finyat could not comprehend, just to fall within a soft Living World. They would pay for their traitorous as soon as he knew he was through this place.
So onward they picked their way deeper and deeper into Mistshadow Forest, Uther stubbornly leading the company into the unknown, Finyat following him, and Sekali suspiciously stalking up behind them, intent on their every move; vengeance and suspicion hatching like spiders in his mind. Finyat began to look back at Sekali now and again, quickening his pace nervously, and whispering to Uther, who growled at Finyat to shut his Shallant mouth.
It went like this until nightfall, when just before the light of day vanished completely from the woods, and the three had lit torches to find their way more easily, they came upon a scene so incredible, Finyat reached up and bit the palm of his hand to stifle an escaping gasp. Uther stopped, his eyes going wide in disbelief and horror as Sekali cursed aloud, drawing his blade.
Before them a hideous scene lay in the form of a man in full chain armor and a man in full plated armor; both had run each other through with their weapons and had perished, caught up into the density of the branches from a tree. Both, it seemed, had killed the other, and both had many open and deep wounds and slashes. Each were yet fully geared, till wearing their backpacks. They were both elfin; that much was certain, and had not been dead for more than one moon, no longer. The stench of decay hung heavily in the stagnant air, yet there were no flies.
Stunned, the three stood there beholding the macabre scene. Sekali shook with silent rage as he stood behind his two companions. A sinister feeling of betrayal began to germinate rapidly from within Sekali, and he forcefully gritted his teeth, hissing. Uther and Finyat had brought him here to murder him!
“So, you have brought me here to do this to me as well, have you? Traitorous spiders!”
Sekali threatened them with a motion of his blade, to which Uther and Finyat backed a pace and looked quickly at each other, much alarmed by this sudden change of events.
Finyat drew his two short swords and threw them to the ground before Sekali and held up his hands, kneeling on the soft moss. “I surrender, Sekali, please don’t kill me!”
As Finyat had knelt, he kicked Uther secretly as he held his hands high. Uther looked as though he was about to charge Sekali, but followed Finyat’s lead, slowly kneeling and throwing his axe down, raising his hands and holding them behind his neck, hands securing the hilt of a hidden dagger at the back of his neck neatly tucked away inside his armor. He waited, following Finyat’s lead. Sekali snatched up their weapons.
“Down on your faces traitors! I knew all along you were in league with that sorceress! It was all a trick!” Sekali screamed at them both as a white froth began to form at the corners of his mouth. Within the space of no more than ten breaths, Sekali collapsed as if dead.
Finyat regained his feet, walked over to Sekali, quickly gripped him by the collar at the base of his neck and dragged him away from the weapons. When he let go of Sekali, he shook his head, a look of horror crossing his face. It was as if he attempted to shake off some terrible dream he had the night before; a nightmare that still plagued his waking thought. He could not help but glance at the horrific sight of the two elves locked together in death. Shuddering, Finyat looked over at Uther, who was watching him nervously.
“Uther don’t touch my weapons. We will wait one hour until the poison wears off my swords. Then we must gather him up and get through this accursed forest.”
Uther shrugged and nodded as he stood. “Did you see his face, Finyat? He was going to kill us.”
Finyat winked at him, “No he wasn’t . . . and no, he won’t. Let’s get out of this place. I can keep him sedated for a year if I have to. Uther, we need to leave this place, soon.”
Uther shook his head, as if trying to shake buzzing insects from his ears. “Yes, of course, just tell me when I can pick up my axe.”
Finyat nodded and forced a smile Uther’s way, to which Uther grunted.
After an hour, Finyat walked over to the weapons and poured water on them, washing them clean of the poison residue, should there be any. With their weapons retrieved, they picked up Sekali and moved on, ignorant of what they were leaving behind, and from the danger they had narrowly escaped.
On they traveled for two days as they continued cutting their way out of the mushrooms. Sekali was kept sedated by Finyat until the third day of travel when they came out of the forest, suddenly breaking into a strange grassland.
During camp on the first night, Finyat tied Sekali up securely, and stopped administering his poison to him. It took a few hours, but finally Sekali groggily opened his eyes . . . and panicked.