Chương 98: 98- The roots of Yggdrasil
As the bark spread across her face, Astrid opened her mouth and let out a scream that was so loud, the entire forest heard it. Then the bark covered her mouth as well.
——-
Afton and Nicolas heard a shriek come from within the forest. They jumped up, "Astrid is in trouble!" They said together. If she ever made a sound, it was to release all of the sound she had stolen and she never did this.
They rushed in the direction of the shrieking, which had become muffled and then eventually stopped.
"Where do we go now?" Nicholas exclaimed, turning in circles. All directions looked the same. He couldn't even tell where he had come from.
"Hey!" Afton exclaimed, "That's Klaus' ax!"
The ax lay next to a fallen tree and their brother was nowhere to be found.
"This forest is more menacing than I thought," Nicolas said. "How could Klaus disappear too?"
Afton picked up the ax and pointed it to the trees in front of them. "I think Astrid's scream came from that direction."
"What about Klaus?"
"Whatever Astrid is up against, I'm guessing he went there too, maybe he just dropped this in the rush."
Nicholas nodded and jumped over the fallen tree that had been next to the ax. It was wrapped in roots and didn't appear to be the one he had been cutting. He looked at it a moment wondering how Klaus had been gone for so long and not gathered any wood. A tree next to it only had one shallow gash in it meaning he had never even cut down one tree.
"Nicholas! Let's go!" She said rushed.
He turned his attention back to Afton and ran after her.
——-
In the forest, Ériu was prying at the tree bark with her fingers and crashing into it, trying to break the casing from off of Astrid.
Every time she managed to break some of it off, it would quickly cover her back up. She focused on Astrid's face. She broke the casing off just long enough for her to get a breath and then it would close again. She was sweating now though and couldn't continue like this forever.
"Help me!" Ériu yelled at the forest, hoping someone would be able to hear her.
Nicholas and Afton had no idea how to find Astrid, when suddenly they heard Ériu's cry for help.
"Over there!" Afton yelled and went to the right after the voice, "Ériu where are you?!" She yelled back.
"Over here! Help me!" She screamed."
When they got there, she was in the middle of prying at the bark again.
"What are you doing?" Nicholas asked, "where is Astrid?"
Ériu managed to break off the bark again and the angels were able to see Astrid's tired face gasping for air.
"She's in the tree!" Nicholas yelled and came over to help break it off of his sister.
"Wait! Watch out!" Ériu cried as she pushed him away and vanished into mist just as the roots lashed at them. "The beast here, it doesn't want you breaking the trees! It attacks every time I break it!"
Nicholas was breathing hard and withdrew his sword, holding it in two hands, he slashed at the vines. "What should we do?" He said worried, then he turned his eyes to look Astrid's tree. "We have to get her out of there, she can't breathe in there!"
Ériu exhaustedly pried the bark off of Astrid's face again and she gulped down a breath quickly. Her eyes were closed tightly because she knew what would come next. The bark closed again over her face.
Nicholas was busy fighting the roots as they came at him. "Afton! You have to help Ériu! I'll fight the roots off!"
Afton had been in a terrified daze and she snapped out of it. She withdrew Klaus' ax and began chopping at the tree. It healed back up. And Nicholas defended her from the roots' attacks.
"We have to disconnect it from the ground!" She said. Ériu allowed for Astrid to take a breath and then transformed, her foot emerging from the mist, and a great goats hoof kicked the tree hard. It fell over and cracked a bit. Afton chopped at the bark, shallowly cutting it down the middle and then pryed at it.
She was super strong.
The tree split and Ériu yanked Astrid's body out of the trunk. She was exhausted and gasped for air. She fell to the ground and lay there limp.
"We have to get out of here!" Nicholas exclaimed, still chopping at roots with his sword.
"Where is Klaus?" Ériu asked looking around.
Nicholas' face when white. "He never came back with firewood!" Then he began running the direction of the camp.
Ériu ran after him and Afton untangled his sword from a root that had been trying to yank it from his hands. She pulled it out and quickly ran after the other three.
They reached the spot the ax had been abandoned on the ground and searched for clues of where Klaus had gone.
Nicholas caught up to them. "It's that one!" He said pointing at the fallen log he had examined earlier. It was laying on its side.
Afton chopped at the trunk of the log until she was able to pry it open as well. Klaus was inside. She shook him. "Klaus! Klaus! We're here!!!!" He wasn't breathing at all. She felt for his heartbeat but there wasn't one. "Come on Klaus! You are stronger than all of us combined!" She began doing CPR on him trying to get his heart going. She breathed into his mouth. His chest raised slightly and fell again. She returned to doing compressions of his chest.
After a while of trying this, he continued to not respond. She had sweat running down her face now. "Klaus! Klaus! Klaus!" She screamed and pumped his chest harder. Throwing her whole body into the motion.
Nicholas knelt down next to her and put his hand on her shoulder. "Afton, it's been 10 minutes." Then he thought about how it had been a long time that Klaus had been missing and added, "It has to have been hours now."
She shoved him away from her and kept compressing his chest. Tears blinded her eyes a bit and dripped on his face as his chest rose and fell again. She was pinching his nose with her fingers and putting the air into his lungs. She removed her lips from his, returning to compressions again.
"He.
isn't.
ash.
yet."
Ériu didn't say anything. It was hopeless, but Afton didn't want to hear her say it. She knew how it felt.
For another hour, Afton beat at Klaus' chest until she passed out. Then they carried her and Astrid to camp. Astrid sat there still saying nothing and shaking a bit. Nicholas had put a blanked around her. She held a cup of hot water in her hands and stared into the fire.
They had used the bark of the tree Klaus was trapped in to make a fire. That way the beast wouldn't notice their presence anymore. It seemed to only really care if they disturbed the wood.
Ériu cooked the two birds and they ate in silence.
"In the morning, I'm taking Klaus back to my mom." Afton said after a while.
She didn't look at anyone, she too was staring at the fire. "I know that she wants to save Sirius, but we don't know him and I really don't think it's right to lose more people. We don't even really know if we can save Sirius. We probably can't even save Klaus." Tears filled her eyes. She sobbed for a while and then retired to the tent.
Nicholas extinguished the fire and lifted Astrid up and put her into the tent as well. They had brought Klaus' body with them so that no creatures would end up eating it or anything. That and somehow if Klaus made it home without turning to dust his mother could save him.
Ériu thought about how now she would be having to part with them in order to continue on in search of Sirius and Lachlan. And she wondered, would she see these siblings of his again or would Klaus run out of time like his brother?
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