The Legends of Anigma: Ethiel Archer | ONC 2023

PART XXXIII

"What the-" Ethiel was speechless; his utter shock and fear had choked him.

The sudden change in the forest was drastically dark,  even compared to the path travelled upto that point if not the illusion of paradise.

Trees towered tremendously, vaguely fading into the green luminescent mist. Their dense crowns spread out wildly into thousands of branches. There was something rather strange about the crown but the mist and darkness obscured the details. However, the bobs of dull light hanging from them illuminated enough to get the gist of fright. Those bobs, whatever they were, they weren't hanging freely, that was clear. Something was bearing them...

Great vines entangled and coiled around the crown, and even reached down, thick and black, like prop roots. But they seemed like hair more than anything, silky and dry, nodding creepily in the wind, emerging from the dark shadows amidst the branches. Staring into that darkness, Ethiel couldn't help but uncomfortably feel that darker things – only God knew what – sat in hiding.

His eyes moved by itself, drawn to other horrors. Man-sized, crudely-shaped withered flowers had wildly grown all over the forest as far as the darkness allowed sight. They were uncomely, spewing some thick fume into the air. Then there were also these almost gigantic projections of the ground, mossy and infested with dullish black mushroom patches, abstractly noxious and nauseating in form, monstrous fear incarnates.

But suddenly his perception of the horror seized. He got pulled back.

"Watch out!" Lord Veer thundered.

An ugly hand swung by his face. It was one of the humanoids standing near.

From behind trees and bushes and out of the cloak of shadows emerged a crowd of abominable monstrosities. Myriads of chimeras, all of who were mainly human and partly anything but human and overloaded with sundry limbs, pushed through and climbed over each other restlessly, like a startling and violent tide, staggering towards him and the others. They came closer and surrounded them, screaming and shrieking, all fidgety and impatient, dying to get even closer.

One of them actually came closer suddenly and swung its claws at Ethiel again.

He dodged and it immediately ran back into the crowd.

"They're not afraid?" Ethiel got more alert. "Guess this is what mom was talking about... The pendant, it isn't as effective anymore."

The place was getting congested with chimeras.

"Hmm, so it seems. Nothing to worry." Lord Veer swung his hammer around and cleared a path for them easily, tossing the enemies here and there. "Let us continue. We cannot afford to be this overwhelmed, otherwise we will be done for."

"Yeah." Ethiel gathered his fleeting fortitude.

They went forth bearing the hideosity.

The grotesquerie worsened with the depths. Little by little, all the vexatious and discomposing specifics veiled and hazed in mist got uncloaked by the faint light of Tifa’s staff.

Up close, he realised those flowers actually had mouths, and those horribly twisting  mouths were spewing the fumes; they weren't flowers, they were creatures of the forest.

Some of the vast spaces in between trees had tapestries of trepidation woven with webs: red transparent eggs adhered to the viscous threads, shadows inside swirling into deformed distorting faces that instilled peculiar fear and mocked the beholder's resolve.

Large eyeballs were hovering, glaring each step taken, tethered with a tendril to the thick, sturdy roots that crept out of the ground and lay scrambled on the forest floor.