Kapitel 12: Professor Gemstone and the red clad stranger. part 2 (12)

During the day, the wood had a fresh air, with the occasional sunray passing through the leaves' cover. Everything was green and brown, with yellow here and there. There was an earthly sent of resin that made his lungs full. Birds sang, and there had been the quiet mutter of Dereck explaining the pros and cons of lighting a fire for the night during an expedition and how to get warm instead.

It was welcoming.

But once came night, the forest adopted an hostile behavior.

Ezera couldn't see what was five feet in front of him. He was walking slowly, alert, feeling the leaves crush under his boots, careful of how the ground hid traps and bumps along the way. The leaves shuffled, and he could also hear the perpetual vibration of crickets. The fresh air had turned frigid.

Thankfully, a few fireflies flew all around him, and he could still discern where he was putting his foot as he treaded ahead. It was amusing, to see them, little lights, floating all around, helping him make out the shadows of the trees as they moved, like miniature butterfliies. Those little things weren't all that common anymore back on Earth. They added a magical atmosphere to his little trip, and made the forest feel more welcoming.

Ezera remembered the last time he had a trip in a forest, at night. He had been with two friends, then. Well... If he could call them friends. His relationships with others had never lasted long in the past. But that time, hiding in a dark forest with urban lights looming in the distance, it had felt like they were connected.

Now he was alone with the fireflies. It was fine, he told himself. This time he had actually taken the fancy coat from the closet, knowing nights were usually cold – unless one of their three suns rose at midnight? He laughed at his bad humour. How mean of him, mocking the physics of their world.

Enough sarcasm. He'd cut the coat a bit, because of how unpractical it was. He'd cut the collar that was too high, its robe that went too low, and the sleeves that were too long. He should get himself a real coat soon, this one had been adequate for a nobleman who'd never go outside in his entire life, and his own jacket was a bit light for the winter to come.

He strove quietly though the light-filled night until he found the tree he had marked during the afternoon. He felt for the small engraving in the trunc before looking around. How was he going to find the hairpin now? One of those kids' abilities could have proven useful in this situation. He didn't know what he would say to Saemi if her item had already been stolen away by some crow!

Alright, he thought, forcing himself to rely on his memories. When Ezera had found him, Ashera's body had been angled toward the other end of the Woods, deeper in its hold, and his back had been facing... No, not Ezera himself, but a direction on the man's left at the time. And Ezera had come from the small clearing. Which meant Ezera should try looking north from the tree.

He climbed the trees and reached for the branches of another, traveling without being in contact with the ground. He jumped from a tree to another, swung to a third, until he went left, then right. He was at it for only twenty minutes before one of the trees he was reaching rung strangely as it supported his weight.

Ezera shook the branches, without much result. He jumped, throwing his weight onto the branch, reaching a precarious balance as he moved closer to the trunc. The hair pin, it seemed, was caught in the leaves of the branches annexe to the first. He crawled to catch that branch between his fists, swinging himself heavily so that the leaves would untangle themselves. It only took three tries before the sound of metal fell down in the carpet of leaves on the ground.

Ezera, victorious, leaped down to the ground and picked it up. It glowed orange thanks to the fireflies' light, and felt pointy in his hand. He would examine it better under the moonlight, later on.

He had another matter to deal with this night. He walked back to the first tree which he hadn't lost sight of thanks to his great experience at navigating places. Then, with only a few seconds of agitation, Ezera strove deeper inside the dark woods. Going east.

The fireflies didn't follow him there and, progressively, their light faded from his path. The crickets eventually ceased humming. An uneasy silence replaced the previous sounds of the sleeping forest.

This part of the forest, it seemed, wasn't sleeping.

When Ezera had comforted Ashera, he hadn't lied once. The boy's brut instincts were some of the sharpest he had even witnessed, at least without training. That would change soon, obviously.

Not just that, but Ming with his sharp senses had clearly felt something strange coming from this part of the Woods. And while Ezera had been enclined to believe Dereck when the knight assured him there was no danger in this forest, this was very obviously not the case. His students would have reacted differently otherwise.

Suddenly, Ezera felt something move in the darkness. It was a fast noise, slipping from one place to another. Not a bird. It didn't sound small either.

Aware of the danger lurking in the shadows, Ezera's hands slipped in the inner pockets he'd cut in his coat, finding a steady grip in the daggers he had hidden there. He unsheathed them slowly, without a sound. His eyes would only be a hindrance if he kept them open, with how little he could actually see. He closed his eyelids gently.

Even though he heard the thing, it didn't make any move toward him. Strange. It seemed quite clear Ezera had stepped into his territory, or the thing wouldn't have reacted. Ezera walked slowly, his arms brushing against tree bark without any sound. He could smell the acrid smell of something rotten, and there was a metallic taste spreading in the still air.

Ezera came to a halt the moment his feet almost slipped against a leave. One that was not dry, but slippery.

Blood? He thought coldly.

He waited.

Soon reached him the awareness of a sound. Something was crawling amidst the leaves on the ground. Far away on his left... Somewhere, in front of him. Was it a snake, looping around him? No, bigger. More threatening. The loop it was preparing was also quite large. The threat was circling.

Ezera knew when it would strike.

Or rather, he knew where it would strike.

It was behind him now. It had slowed. If it was a snake, it was big. Unusually so. The thing hissed, and felt something coming at him, fast and precise and turned to counter it.

Damn, he grinned, overwhelmed by adrenaline. That thing's canine was a big as Ezera's whole body. Its surface was burdening Ezera's arm, slick with saliva. A horrid smell emanated from the warm gap a few inches away from his face, close to where his daggers were trembling under the effort of maintaining that jaw open, buried in the tender flesh between its canine and his lower scales.

Damned be the darkness, he cursed. If that giant snake had scales, Ezera wouldn't make a dent in its armor with his few measle daggers. He had to aim the eye. He couldn't throw his daggers at it, if that was the case.

He felt an object shift quickly in the air behind him. His senses warned him for danger, and he extracted his hands from the thing's jaw's corner quickly enough to draw back on the side. The projectile colluded with the snake's throat, and from his movements- had it been its tail?

"Phew," he huffed, focused.

The tail whipped back to the other side as it howled, as if trying to get rid of a big fly on the other side of his long, tremendously long serpentine body. It screeched, its body moving quickly. It held itself upward to rush down toward Ezera. When it missed, it made a full turn and decimated at least four trees from what Ezera heard. Ezera had climbed up a tree, hyperaware of the thing's moves around him. When its tail swirled around once more, Ezera used the opportunity to fall on it, grasping at its larges and slippery scales.

Feeling the insect grabbing it, the beast yowled and shook its tail in the air. There was a shift indicating his head had whipped to the otherside. Its jaws cut through the air. Ezera expertly jumped from the tail to the raised back of the creature. He climbed quickly with his daggers as leverage. A rumbled agitation almost caused him to go flying, but he instead used the move to propulse himself higher, right on its forehead. He turned around, ready to strike, yet the beast had yet to give up the fight.

The snake hit his head on a tree, making it collapse, then it whipped the other side, trying to get rid of the intruder with violent shudders. Then it was the tail, coming for him. Ezera, destabilized by the creature's trashing, got ready to jump and dodge.

But instead, the beast stopped its movement with a terrible screech. Whatever had distracted him was enough for Ezera, who immediately buried his dagger deep into the thing's brain through his eye socket, shoulder deep into its eyes.

It screamed one last time, Ezera jumped away before it could collapse on the ground.

Above all the chaos, he heard a sharp inhale of air.

That hadn't come from the dying monster.

He opened his eyes in surprise as soon as his feet touched the ground. On the other side of the snake's giant corpse was a man, clad in dark red clothes a sword in his hands swung away from a wound in the snake's rear body. His eyes were wide open, staring at him, shock shaking them.

His eyes, like purple and blue Northern Lights, were glowing.

Swift as lightning, Ezera disappeared from the other's sight.

He fled into the night.