The Clockwork Princess

A Nasty Little Trick

With as much rest as they could afford to recuperate and tend their wounds — which was very little — Amara pulled herself back to her tired feet. She had managed to put together a salve from some nearby plants and had slathered it onto her weeping shoulder, which she had wrapped up securely in bandages — getting through quite a large portion of her supply before the dawn of the second day.

She stretched her good arm up over her head and rolled her bad one to keep it used to moving, only to grimace at its sting. "Well, come on," she sighed and addressed her faithful companion, "We can't sit around here any longer."

With a cautious gaze, she once again took in their surroundings and upon deciding it safe enough to continue their travels, set forth further into the forest. The air still felt tight and charged with an ominous energy, and the shadows of the towering trees seemed to dance with unseen spirits.

Her eyes had just about adjusted to the mist that had enveloped them. Either that or somehow the mist had thinned since they first stepped into it. The path ahead of them twisted and turned, leading them through a maze of ancient trees, their twisted branches reaching out like dark, rotten skeletal fingers.

Although she wanted to believe she was strong and brave and all those other things her parents had told her time and time again that she was, a part of her was loathe to admit that she was afraid — that maybe she wasn't cut out for what else lay ahead of them.

Nought but a few wolves had already drained her much of her strength — and blood — and now she couldn't help but wonder what else she would have to face in these godforsaken woods.

The wolves were fiercer than any she had encountered before — their glowing yellow eyes anything but natural — and the more she thought about it, the more concerned she was that there had been no sign of them since they fled back into the mist. Not even a trail to track. It was as though they had never been there to begin with. Their blood was gone and her sword as clean as it had been before she ventured out of town. If she didn't know any better, she'd have said they were part of the mist itself. Mist, however, doesn't bite back.

The further they walked, the more on edge Amara became. Her hand now rested at all times on the hilt of her sword — gripping it almost too tightly in fear of losing it when she needed it most. Her blunt nails picked endlessly at the leather wrapping around the handle, almost causing it to fray.

It seemed as though the very forest was responding to their presence, filling her with self-doubt. The further they walked, the worse it became. This gnawing pit in her stomach, the tight feeling in her chest.

But minutes turned into hours and still, they had not seen or heard a peep. Nothing more had tried to hurt them or warn them or ward them off. It was almost as though the forest was inviting them in — allowing them to stumble deeper into its depths.

"Wait..." Amara paused and pulled Shadowmere to a halt, her instincts taking over as they often did when something was not quite right.

She peered around, scanning for anything out of place, but was surprised to find nothing. Nothing at all was out of place. Not in the trees or on the ground, nor even on the large rock to her side. Nothing at all, and that was precisely the problem.

Frustration crept into the creases across Amara's face as she realised the predicament that they were in. Her hand remained on the hilt of her sword, but the forest seemed to mock her attempts to navigate its labyrinthine twists.

"We're going in circles. Everything here is the same as it was only a few minutes ago," she announced, her voice tinged in disbelief. She moved from object to object, inspecting each with growing frustration. "This tree with this stupid curled branch! This bush with its stupid poison berries and this stone with its — augh — stoniness! It's all the same!"