We ran, jumping over fallen trees and skidding under low-hanging branches. The trees themselves seemed threatening now, it was as if they were trying to hold us back on our mad flight through the grey forest, reaching out their twigs to scratch our arms and hands and faces. But I felt no pain. All I felt was the danger breathing down my neck, and an implacable terror that tightened my chest even more so than the exhaustion of the run.
When the howling resounded again, it was not just closer than before. It was all around us, and it was drawing closer still. Out of breath and out of ways to run, we came to a halt in a small clearing, and positioned ourselves back to back. The woods seemed darker than before, the shadows between the trees concealed whatever was out there, but something even darker was moving and shifting menacingly among them. My mind was racing, but I was drawing a blank. The situation seemed hopeless.
Over the frantic sound of my own heartbeat, I could hear Cloud mutter under his breath.
"I'm so sorry..."
"We're not gonna die here, are we?" I whispered back. "I mean, considering we're already dead and all that."
"That's not- there is still.... pain...."
His words reminded me of that Old World story about Prometheus. As a punishment for his defiance of the gods, he had been chained to a rock and every day, an eagle would come to devour his liver, only for it to grow back, again and again. The abject horror of the thought left me shuddering.
Something stirred in the dark shadows, and then, the first creature stepped into the dim light of the clearing. Each of its steps had the fluidity and litheness of a cloud of mist being moved by a breeze, and its paws seemed to barely touch the ground it walked upon. Swirling shadows followed in its wake and danced around it like clouds of smoke, but quickly dissipated as it stopped a few meters before me. What remained looked, for all intents and purposes, like a regular wolf. Granted, its eyes were glowing with an eerie red as it bared its fangs with a threatening growl. But that was not what made it so strikingly different from the mutts and mutants I had seen in simulations.
More wolves had stepped out of the woods and we found ourselves surrounded by a pack of half a dozen of the dark, red-eyed creatures. Behind me, I could feel the tension in Cloud's body as he moved closer to me. His hand brushed against mine just for a second, and it was trembling. He was terrified, but all of a sudden, I felt oddly calm.
Now that I could actually see what we were up against, I noticed that their pelts were thick and dark, and they looked well fed. They were definitely lethal, with teeth and fangs that could tear us to shreds. But they didn't look quite desperate enough to go to every length for their next meal.
We still had a chance. The realization overcame me, and adrenaline followed in its wake. The familiar surge of heat that flooded my synapses and filled me with more strength than I ever thought possible. I clenched my hands into fists.
This is just like a simulation. Even better, because there's nothing to lose.
"Hey, Cloud. If this is gonna hurt either way..." I took a step towards the creature. "We might as well try to fight, don't you think?"
"What are you talking about-"
I didn't wait for him to finish before I charged at the animal before me. The wolf itself seemed quite confused too, as it saw me coming at it in a flurry of madness, and stood still like paralyzed, its red eyes fixed on my. As I reached it, for a second I felt like time had come to a standstill, and my heart had stopped beating. Then I brought my fist down on its snout, hard. The wolf howled in pain and jumped back, but from beside me, a second animal came at me with its fangs exposed, ready to bury them in my arm. But I dove out of the way and it jumped straight over me. I scrambled back to my feet but wasn't fast enough to avoid the third one coming at me.
I screamed in pain as the wolf buried its fangs in my arm. Reflexively, I wanted to punch the creature with my free hand, but before my fist made contact, it let go. Shadows rippled before my eye and smoke concealed its motion, and I thought my hand was passing right through it. It simply was too fast. It jumped back and regrouped with the other two, while I was momentarily distracted by my wound – or rather, the absence thereof. My skin felt like it had ben shredded completely, the flesh torn open by the bite of the creature. But when I looked at it, I found it unblemished. Not even my clothes had been torn.
There is still pain...
I raised my head, completely baffled. The three wolves before me seemed to eye me warily, just as I stared back at them in confusion. The air around the one that had bitten me seemed darker, swirling shadows seemed to accompany its movements like dark smoke.
So they could hurt me. But I could also hurt them, even if they moved like shadows and seemed to be able to turn into smoke, or whatever it was that these creatures were doing. And as long as they were scared of being hurt more than me, I was at an advantage.
At my feet, I spotted a branch, and picked it up to use it as a makeshift weapon. It was dry and brittle, but better than nothing. Slowly, I backed away to my former position at the center of the clearing, where Cloud was still standing, completely paralyzed with shock.
"What are you doing?" he breathed. The wolves had begun to circle around us, probably trying to muster their courage for another attack, or their wits to think of something else to do.
"The same that you'll be doing," I replied. I snapped the branch in two halves and handed him one. "Defending myself."
"But I-"
I didn't hear the rest of what he said. The wolves had decided to make a move, and I was ready to meet them. Six shadows bolted at us, and what followed was a mess of claws, fangs and fur, and swirling shadows. I could feel fangs dig into my arms and legs, but the adrenaline dulled the pain, and I knew that I wouldn't bleed out, so I kept going.
From the corner of my eyes, I saw something white move among the swirling clouds of black smoke, and I knew that Cloud had found his fighting spirit too. Once in a while, I heard a yelp of pain from him, but just conversely to the angry growls of the wolves that were turning into desperate whimpering, Cloud's expressions of pain turned into angry growls the longer we fought.
Suddenly, the attacks ceased completely. The shadows drew back and surrounded us again, taking the shape of six wolves once more. The one before me had its red eyes fixed on me, and looked like it was about to try and jump at my throat, but it didn't move.
"What are they doing?" Cloud asked breathlessly.
"They're not really trying to harm us," I said, and lowered my makeshift weapon. "They're... only trying to scare us."
And it's not working any longer.
As if they had understood my words and understood that too, the wolves backed away, then turned around and vanished back into the woods. It was over.
I turned to look at Cloud, who was staring after them with a blank, wide-eyed expression. His clothes were in disarray and his silver hair was disheveled. He was out of breath, but he wasn't bleeding.
"Are you hurt?" I asked nonetheless.
"No, I am not," he replied, slowly. He tore his gaze away from the woods and looked back at me. "You?"
"No."
The wolves had gotten to me repeatedly, and I could still feel the lingering pain of their ghostly fangs digging into my flesh and tearing through my skin. But there was not a drop of blood on my arms or legs. My hand however, I realized, was covered in it. With a scream of surprise, I dropped the branch that I was holding on to and stared at my palm. But the blood wasn't coming from me. Instead, the red stuff was oozing from the piece of wood.
"What the..."
Hell, a voice in my mind finished.
"The wood is... bleeding?"
As I watched the dark red fluid continue to seep from the ends of the branch in disbelief, an ominous wind picked up. The breeze was upon the air for just a few seconds, but it sent the dried leaves in motion and caused the branches of the gnarly trees to scratch against each other, and all the creaking and rustling was like whispers in a foreign tongue.
"I... I've never seen anything like this..." Cloud commented beside me. He bent down to inspect the branch. "But it reminds me of something-"
"Don't."
"What?" He looked up at me with a confused expression.
"I know what you're thinking about," I said. "Don't say it."
I cast a wary look around. The trees seemed more ominous than ever before, I saw shapes on their grey barks that looked like faces, contorted with expressions of immeasurable pain. I had heard of a place like this once, and I was certain he was thinking of the same – after all, it was a story in one of his favorite books. A forest with trees that bleed when you broke their branches. A place in the Seventh Circle of hell in Dante's Inferno. The Woods of the Suicides.
I'm the one who hurts others, I thought again. And I also... so maybe this really is hell. Maybe I deserve to be here.
Cloud put a hand on my shoulder. "Are you really alright?"
I snapped out of my thoughts and shook my head to clear it.
"I'm fine," I lied as I got back up on my feet. "We need to get out of here. Before something worse happens."
"There is no way out. We can only walk and hope to evade danger."
"There is always a way out," I insisted.
He gave me a weary and doubtful look.
"What? Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Well... I'd be inclined to argue about that, but then again, it doesn't strike me as a good idea to argue with someone who willingly picked a fistfight with a pack of wolves," he remarked drily. "And won."
A smile flitted over my face at his words. The adrenaline was still coursing through my body, and I was running at 110% percent. Combat mode. I would have picked a fight with anything in this state. That didn't mean I wasn't fully aware of how insane my actions had been, but he didn't need to know that.
"What, did you expect me to roll over and let them eat us alive?"
"That's.... usually how things go around here."
"Now that's just silly. Why let yourself get eaten when you have choice?"
"I never realized I had one," he muttered.
"There's always a choice, and there's always a way out. And we're going to find it. Come."
I took his hand and dragged him with me, into a completely arbitrary direction. The adrenaline was subsiding, and I wanted to start walking before my confidence wavered too much. I felt watched, not just by the faces I thought I could now see on the trees, but by something else.
There was still something out there, hiding in the shadows, waiting. Something worse than the wolves. And it was still coming for us.