I helped her stand back again, quickly grabbed the hood from the ground and threw it upon her before staggering away from the furious robot giant as our hearts pounded in our chests as if it'll break our ribs and burst out any moment.
Thankfully, the hood helped us from not being heard or easily found again. But suddenly, a cluster of silver metal spider-like robots with slender but pointy six legs and scarlet-red eyes, all varying in size, also started to come toward us.
We paused in our path. The panic and frenzy in our minds rose even more. "Can-Can they see us?" I asked Galena, who stood beside me, her face pale from fear.
She fished out a pair of brown hiking boots from her bag, "Wear it, quick!" she ordered, shoving them in my arms and taking out another pair of the same sort of boots, wearing them and stepping into the air through the smoke, as if there was some sort of invisible staircase.
I wore them and quickly stepped in the air, right before tiny metal spider robots crawled onto the ground where I was standing a few moments before.
I tried walking and catching Galena's speed as she was running fairly fast. It felt weird and I almost tripped a lot of times but, after some more clumsy steps, I was able to run slightly faster, though still at a slower pace than Galena's.
"What are we going to do next?" I asked her.
She took out something from her bag again. This time a jar full of weird brown slime-like liquid and an eyeglass with a round thin lavender colour frame.
"Use this to see through the smoke and find the vexerbud while I try to get some time for you." She said while handing me the eyeglass.
I wore it and the view become less suffocating than before, enabling me to see through the thick purple smoke. Though the view was not the nicest. The green fire covered the whole forest, taking down many trees at an impressive speed.
I needed to find the vexerbud quickly before it got eaten by the hungry and vicious flames.
She again began looking for something in her bag, "Here use this for defending yourself" She fished out a dagger and handed it to me, its silver blade was so sharp and reflective that it even shone in the darkness of midnight.
Galena dropped the slimy liquids from the jar onto the ground as she where the robotic spiders were. Maybe to slow down the fire or something.
I also went on to do my part of the plan, and began looking for the creature midst the dangerous green flames when out of nowhere-
WHOOSH!
-I felt a strange breeze of air swish behind me.
I held my dagger firmly in front of me and turned around.
The sound came from somewhere around the clump of trees that had not been the victim of the terror of the fire yet. I searched the branches of the trees for any signs of the creature before finding him among the darkness of the lanky branches.
I sprinted towards him, trying to catch him, but instead ended up getting my hair stuck into a tree branch as he flew away to a higher branch.
"Grrr..." the vexerbud made a threatening sound, warning me to stay away.
I untangled my hair and sighed from frustration.
How am I supposed to catch him without him flying away or me getting bumped into another tree branch?
When finally, an idea rang into my mind.
"Sorry, Mr. Tree," I said and broke a leafless branch out of the tree near me and started to tap on the tree's trunk using it.
The vexerbud's eye widened like it did when he saw the bell back at the treehouse. He dashed toward the stick and grabbed it by his mouth, (Little did it know it fell right into my trap) and I grabbed him quickly before it could fly away again.
He once again hissed at me, trying to scare me away with his great fierceness, but all I did was chuckle softly, "Why are you always so rude? I am just trying to save you!" I told him and, hid it under my invisibility hood, before starting my look for Galena, when I stumbled across the treehouse which was now burning in the green flames.
"The mushrooms must have been nicely cooked by now" I joked to myself.
After a while, I found her but...she was not in a very great situation, once again.
Galena was surrounded by the spider robots and her bag was missing from her shoulder and instead, was in the slender hands of the biggest and perhaps the leader of the spider robots.
The spiders were slowly crawling towards her, surrounding her from all directions which meant, her hood had come off. Great.
I couldn't have just stood there and watched her die or something. So, I sneaked near one of the huge spider robots, though smaller than the leader spider robot, and stabbed it with my dagger.
The spider fell to the ground, started to twitch and create electric currents around it, which started to damage all the other spider robots.
Well, it was much easier to solve this problem than I thought.
The robot spider started to fall like dominoes and the chain led to the leader spider robots, getting electrocuted and smoked up as well. The cluster twitched for some more moments before stopping and falling unconscious.
Galena turned her head all around, trying to figure out what just had happened with a baffled expression before a knowing grin spread on her face as she finally calculated all her whats and hows. "Kyrah!" She exclaimed like a little child when they found out its Christmas.
Her eyes glittered with excitement after I took off my hood. She squeaked in happiness and ran towards me and gave me the tightest and warmest hug I ever had.
"Did you find the vexerbud?" She ecstatically asked.
"Yes, it is...". I looked towards my empty hands and the smile disappeared off my cheeks.
"Wait! Where did it go?" I exclaimed.
"You didn't lose it again? Did you?"
I turned around in panic, "Oh god! Not again!" I cursed at my life, as I glimpsed between the lanky tree.
Galena began softly giggling and took something off my back.
"What is it?" I said out of fright and turned to look at her.
She was holding the vexerbud in her hand, gently petting it as it purred peacefully.
"Was it there on my back the whole time?"
"Vexerbuds like sleeping on vertical surfaces, like walls, tree trunks, especially warm surfaces."
"Oh! Ok...That is weird."
It snored innocently, its soft feathers and paws made it appear as if it couldn't even hurt a fly.
Galena took her bag out of the dead and twitched robot spider's hand, and grabbed her invisibility hood that was lying near a tree trunk to find an itsy-bitsy-robot-spider hiding beneath it, but as soon as it saw us, it jumped and crawled away.
"That was probably not a good thing! He might go and say about us to the higher bots. We need to get to the secret entrance before they find us, again!" Galena instructed.
We made our way toward the secret entrance. And to our disappointment, the gate had shrunk a bit too much in size. I ducked and went in first and Galena crawled behind me after fishing out a white crystal from her bag and dropping it onto the grounds of the forest.
"Now what was that?" I asked her after getting out of the cave.
"Wait and watch." She said with a smirk on her face
BOOM!
And suddenly out of nowhere, a huge explosion sound came from inside the cave and pink clouds of smoke that smelled like fresh roses started escaping from the holes between the cave wall's rock.
"Jesus Frickin' Christ! What was that?" I extolled.
"Tech Annihilator Crystal," she began, "It destroys or explodes any electrical, mechanical or anything made by humans or a human into a pleasant pink smoke which smells like a newly blossomed rose. It soon disappears after some minutes and heals nature from any damage the humans have done."
"Then, why didn't you use it to defeat Greg?"
"Well...this only affects places which are 1 km radius from it."
"Why don't you create and use many of those?"
"Err...It's just not that simple,"
"Oh. So, I guess not all inventions are the greatest after all." I thought aloud.
We looked into the dead forest that spread in front of us. Galena started to cough weakly, probably because she wasn't used to the populated air unlike back in the cave. "It's still as dreadful as it was before." She started with a worried and disappointed look, "But now, hopefully, it would change...a lot" She smiled and looked at me.
Feelings of both pride and anxiousness fell over my shoulder from the great responsibility, which once again crossed my mind.
"So...what is the next step?" I asked.
"Which sort of step?"
"Umm...What is the plan next-you know? To save your kingdom?"
She paused, taken aback, "You don't know?"
I scoffed, "How would I know? I just found out about all these a few hours ago."
"You are joking, right?"
"No."
Galena sighed and rubbed her head, "How many more problems are going to come now?"
Suddenly an arrow shot right between the gap between Galena's arm and hooked her bag onto a tree.
We turned our necks towards where the arrow came from like a scalded cat, but there was no one there.
"Who are you? And what are you doing with this vexerbud?" said a stern voice.
I once again turned my head, to find a person pointing their sword at Galena, just a few inches away from the back of her neck.