CHAPTER 478: PASTA WILL NEVER BE THE SAME

Kellen was on high alert as he kept following the sounds of the screams. The path he was on did begin to curve in that direction, and Kellen cursed under his breath softly as he kept moving.

He had to stab a few more vines, his second hand just covered in sap, and when the screams stopped, an awful feeling filled his gut.

That wasn’t...that was never good.

Kellen tried to hear if he could pick up on anything else around him, like footsteps, other voices, anything, but he couldn’t. He slowed down carefully, his eyes scanning the area for markers. He was still on the path, but he was now more cautious. Careful.

He felt like now that the forest was quiet, eerily so, that it had to have been a monster. He hoped it was a monster, and when he came into another clearing, he came to a halt just in the tree line.

There was a creature there, the first creature he’d seen. Everything else so far had been plant life. They had been monsters of course, but they hadn’t had limbs in any way similar to an animal or a human.

This wasn’t the case here.

It...It had six limbs. They weren’t quite arms, more like vines wound about each other, creating a mass of moving, twisting, writhing vines pretending to be an arm. It was upright, walking on branches. They didn’t look sturdy, and as Kellen watched, he wanted to throw up. It was walking, but it looked...wrong, disgusting. He would have rather faced undead given how gross this was.

It didn’t have a head. It had six upper limbs, two twig legs, and a torso. No head. It was also wearing leaves, covering up its body like it was wearing clothes.

Kellen felt in his gut that if he had followed the voice of Rhys that he had heard, it would probably have led him to something like this. There was a chance that Kellen would have fallen for this shitty disguise, but here he was.

Having to face an unknown monster of unknown strength because they were in a clearing, and Kellen needed to get through it. He could see the mark he’d been following this whole time on a tree on the other side of the clearing, and fuck it, he was glad he had two guns and a knife hand.

Kellen took his time, waiting, praying that the creature would move on so he didn’t have to actually fight it. That was the thing about being a Field Guide. Don’t fight when you can avoid it.

Kellen was hoping that he was going to be able to do that.

All of his hopes were shattered when it started that wretched screaming again. Kellen winced, his head throbbing as the scream practically took him down to his knees. It was so piercing, so damn awful that Kellen felt his eyes water.

He sniffed, softly, exhaling through the pain as the creature paced angrily. At least, he thought it was angrily. He wasn’t quite sure.

Kellen kept watching its movement, trying to predict its movements. He had to have stood there for about 15-20 minutes just watching it before he made a move.

He was shooting the creature, and maybe to most it would look like he didn’t plan it out, but he did. The first two shots were warning shots.

Into the chest.

If it was behaving like a human or some weird amalgamation of one, maybe it had a heart like a human did too. Obviously, he was wrong, as the screech it had been making before morphed into something so horrible that Kellen almost wished his eardrums would burst so he didn’t have to hear it anymore.

He didn’t come out of his hiding spot, continuing to fire at the creature as its arms elongated, turning into long, fucked up twisting limbs that made Kellen want to gag.

Kellen probably wouldn’t be able to eat pasta after this for a while. At least not anything with long noodles.

The creature stumbled towards where the shots were coming from, slamming their vine limbs down and crushing a tree next to Kellen. Alarming, but Kellen could move quickly at the very least.

Kellen kept firing, that awful screech filling the air as it screamed. From where? Kellen didn’t know. It didn’t have a damn head.

Given how violent it was, how aggressive it was, and the force of its swings, Kellen would guess it was probably a B Class monster if and when it was identified. The creature swung again, this time going across the clearing and Kellen ducked, dodging it as he chopped off the top of several trees. Kellen shot at it again, enraging it more.

Kellen attempted to shoot off one of its limbs, firing several shots into one of the arms and watched as several of the vines fell off, shriveling up and twitching on the ground. It was a horrible thing to witness. He had left the vines behind, not watching this process before, but now he didn’t have a choice. He had to witness it.

The creature toppled over, unbalanced on its twig legs and Kellen could see the fury in the way it lashed about, basically throwing a tantrum.

Kellen took that as his time to dart across the clearing, only paying enough attention to the creature to make sure that he could get away safely.

He moved quickly down the path, as safely as he could while the forest kept tabs on him as he moved.

He could feel it. The whispers, the way that the forest spoke to itself. He was fairly certain it was all in his damn mind, but it was true at the same time. All forests were like this. They spoke to each other, this one was just more alive then the others.

Fuck. If only Kellen could climb up one of the trees without worry that the tree would eat him, he would have moved to survey the whole area. He hadn’t paid attention to the powers that the Espers who were in the gate had. That was something he normally paid attention to, but he had slipped up. He was kicking himself as he continued to follow the markers.

After a while, he could feel the tension in the forest shift, and the screaming started up again, but in the distance. Whatever that fucked up monster had been, it had lost his scent, and was no back to trying to lure someone else. He hoped everyone else was far enough away to avoid it.

~

Night fell, and Kellen was trying not to be disheartened. He hadn’t found anyone today. Not a single soul. He kept following these damn markers, kept making sure he was going in the right direction, but he felt like he was going in circles.

Nothing looked the same, of course, but he kept noticing patterns. Clearings. He kept going through fucking clearings. What kind of forest like this had that many clearings? They were supposed to be rare, uncommon, and yet they kept finding them. Was it because it was a gate? Were they where certain monsters slept?

What was up with them?

Kellen was just getting frustrated, tired, and honestly? He was getting a little hopeless himself. Not that he couldn’t get out of this damn hell, but that he wasn’t going to find anyone else.

That no one was going to find anyone else.

It was a sick churning in his gut. He had been so sure that he was going to get out of the gate alive. He had thought it also meant that the people he wanted to get out of the gate were also going to get out alive, but that wouldn’t mean anything if he couldn’t find them in the first place.

Kellen settled down just on the edge of the clearing, setting up a fire to protect himself and warm himself as he settled down to eat a few of his rations, drink some water, and try not to work himself up into a panic.

He was lonely.

There, he’d admit it. He was lonely without someone with him in a gate.

He’d had someone at his side for the last 3 years he’d been going into gates, and this was the first time he’d been solo in a long, long time. Even his ’last’ gate had been a trip that they had both taken on. Brent wouldn’t have let him do it alone. It was a super wealthy client, and was supposed to be a simple sight seeing trip.

Yeah right.

If he hadn’t had Brent with him, they might have lost the client to a pack of ravenous mutated wolves. Thankfully, they didn’t, and got paid extra for hazard pay.

Brent had been so pleased that had been Kellen’s last hurrah, last trip, and yet here he was. Alone, without his best friend, without his sister, working towards a goal that no one else had been able to complete. Unable to speak to anyone, let them know he was safe.

God, Rhys had already been asleep for two solid days, going into three. Kellen felt like such a damn asshole for being so insistent, but now that he was here? It was a hard truth to swallow. Yes, he was lonely, yes he wished he had someone else with him in here, someone to talk to, but he also...he knew he needed to get out for Rhys.

It was a pulse beneath his skin, a reminder. Even if the worst case scenario happened, Rhys was still there. Still waiting.

Kellen’s hand was nearly white from how hard he was clenching it, his fist aching. Time to rest before another long day of tracking.

3 people found, 9 more to go.