CHAPTER 142: AWAY FROM THE DANGER

They froze for a split second, breath caught, as that wet scuttling echoed all around them, as if the very trees had begun to breathe.

"We can’t avoid it," Maggie ground out between her teeth, already staring at a thinning gap in the woods ahead. "We need to head straight for that open ridge and run."

Élisa nodded once. Wordlessly she lowered her spear, focused her sigil: a green vibration rippled through the air, grazing the trunks, scrambling the senses of anything trying to track them. A fragile psychic veil, but enough to sow confusion in creatures attuned to the mind.

Dylan gripped his sword in front of him, knuckles white. "If we meet anything, we dodge the fight unless we really have no choice."

He stepped forward, eyes scanning the shadows. Maggie followed, stepping softly on the leaves, ready to strike... or to dart back the other way if needed. Élisa slipped between two trunks, almost ghostlike, her mental shield swallowing the sound of their steps.

Ahead, a sharp crack rang out—a chitinous limb striking bark. Three creeping forms slid into view, wary. The beasts stopped, sniffed the air... and saw Dylan.

He didn’t try to scare them. He sidestepped, and his blade sliced the air silently, cutting a dead branch that crashed to the ground with a thunderous crack. The noise echoed like a gunshot through the forest.

The creatures lunged... straight into the bramble trap Maggie had set in a few swift motions: three claws snagged on the thorny thicket. A guttural snarl. They backed away, tearing free one smacked paw at a time, bloodied claws clawing at the vines.

Élisa didn’t wait for them to recover. She swept her spear across the gap, opening a path. "This way!"

They burst out, running in a broken line. The monstrous shapes pursued, but Élisa’s psychic illusion veered them eastward. Their confused screeches faded as the trio bounded over and under roots, putting ground between each footfall.

The slope suddenly rose, a bank blanketed in tall ferns. They climbed it in silence, panting, until they reached the open crest. Before them, the forest ended, giving way to a clearing bathed in harsh light.

Maggie paused, back against a mossy boulder, halberd raised. "We shook the main pack—for now."

Dylan rested a hand on her shoulder. "We keep going straight, as long as this ridge’s under our feet. No pointless detours."

Élisa lowered her spear, her sigil still faintly pulsing. "The next ambushes will be out there, beyond. But at least we’ve bought ourselves some ground..."

They exchanged a determined look, then, without another word, set off single file toward the southeast—resolved to flee rather than fight, at least until the cursed woods left them no choice.

——

The wind struck their faces as they topped the open crest—a sharp, bracing gust that stung compared to the fetid air of the dying woods. They halted for a moment, not to catch their breath but in pure astonishment.

Before them, the monstrous forest still stretched, but its grip was loosening. The slope fell away in a series of rocky foothills, lightly wooded, dotted with patches of short grass and weathered gray stones. And, far to the southwest, where the land seemed to flatten and the sky turned a paler, almost milky hue... the mountains ended.

"The plains..." Élisa murmured, as if daring to believe it. Her sigil flickered weakly, spent from constant effort, yet her eyes shone with a new light. "Or at least... the edge of this damned range."

Maggie spat a glob of black sap from her lips. "Finally, a view that doesn’t make me want to puke." She pointed her halberd toward the distance. "The line’s straight, like you said, Dylan. That way. No detours. We run for that light."

Dylan didn’t answer right away. His gaze—usually fixed on immediate threats—scanned the horizon with fresh intensity. Not naive relief, no. More like a soldier spotting the objective at last. "Fewer trees, fewer hiding spots for them," he noted. "But also less cover for us. If something spots us from above..."

"...We run faster," Maggie cut in with a grim grin. "And Élisa scrambles our tracks. We have no choice, Dylan. Staying here is digging our graves."

Élisa nodded, already focusing. She raised a tired but steady hand. A subtler vibration emanated this time—not a shield, not an obvious illusion, but a haze of mental static to blur their presence, to make them uninteresting to lingering psychic predators. "It won’t stop a direct attack... but it should make us fade into the background. Come on. Move."

They plunged onto the rocky slope. The change was stark. Underfoot, firm, dry earth replaced the treacherous sponginess of the swampy woods. The air, though still tinged with the rotten forest’s scent, felt comparatively fresh. They quickened their pace, almost sprinting, using the open ground to widen their lead.

Maggie led, weapon at the ready but rarely needed. She scanned the few scraggly trees and rocky fissures, but the lurking threat seemed to have thinned out. Dylan brought up the rear, Jian unsheathed, eyes constantly sweeping the heights. Élisa ran at the center, burning through her strength to sustain the shroud, a thin streak of dried blood glinting at her nostril, which she wiped away with a distracted flick of her wrist.

The run was exhausting, but in a different way. Less a desperate struggle against a living enemy, more an endurance race against their own fatigue and against time itself. Every step brought them closer to that pale horizon line, to the promise of clean air.

Suddenly—a piercing cry ripped through the relative calm—above, not ahead. A dark, winged shape, like a plucked vulture with membranous wings and disproportionate talons, dove from a rocky spire. It had cut through Élisa’s veil, drawn perhaps by their fast movement across the open terrain.

"DUCK!" Dylan bellowed.

They threw themselves behind a low outcrop just as talons slashed the air where Maggie had stood a heartbeat before. The creature pulled up, graceful and sinister, for a second dive.

"No time!" Maggie snarled, scrambling to her feet. "We dodge the fight—Élisa!"

Instead of weaving a mental trap, Élisa focused on the very rock behind them. With a groan of shifting stone, a chunk of the cliff face gave way, crashing in a cloud of dust right below the bird’s dive path. The beast flapped frantically to avoid the debris, losing height and speed.

"NOW—RUN!" Maggie roared.

They bolted like arrows, forsaking even caution for pure velocity. Disoriented, the creature took precious seconds to right itself. It swooped again—but they were already streaking downhill toward a field of scattered boulders.

"There! Between the rocks!" Dylan pointed to a natural corridor.

They dove in, weaving between gray monoliths. The creature’s wings scraped the stone overhead in a frustrated screech. Too broad to follow them through the maze, it circled angrily before lifting into the sky in search of easier prey.

The trio didn’t slow. They emerged on the far side of the rocks, still running toward the horizon. The view opened even further: that pale line was sharper, wider now. The first true green—grass, not monstrous ferns—spread out before them, and the distant blue of an unsullied sky.

They finally slowed beside a clear, bubbling stream cascading over mossy stones. The silence around them was no longer fear—it was exhausted disbelief. Maggie leaned heavily on her halberd, chest heaving, a fierce, weary smile on her face. Dylan let his Jian clatter into its sheath almost automatically, hands trembling from nerve exhaustion. Élisa slid down against a boulder, closing her eyes, her sigil extinguished at last, replaced by a pallid calm.

"We did it," breathed Maggie, eyes fixed on that liberating horizon. "We crawled out of that nightmare’s belly."

Dylan rose slowly, joints creaking like an old, poorly maintained mechanism. He picked up the empty plastic bottle at his feet, rolled it in his hand for a moment—a battered shell, silent witness to their flight—and without a word, he approached the stream.

The clear current slipped between mossy stones, humming a melody far too gentle for a world of claws and fangs. Dylan knelt, plunged the bottle into the water. Bubbles escaped in a quiet murmur, almost a sigh.

He stayed there for a moment, fingers still gripping the bottle, eyes fixed on the water’s flow.

"Think it’s drinkable?" Maggie asked behind him, voice low, almost instinctive.

Dylan shrugged. "We’ll find out. If I’m dead in ten minutes, you’ll have your answer."

He capped the bottle, took a swig, then half-grimaced—not because the water tasted bad, but because it was cold, clear, real. After all they’d been through, it felt almost suspicious.

He handed it to Élisa. She opened one tired eye, took the bottle without a word. Her hands trembled slightly, but she drank in turn, with the cautious slowness of someone afraid the dream might shatter.

Maggie sat cross-legged against a warm rock and finally set her weapon on the ground—free, for the first time, of the fear she might have to snatch it back at any second. She looked at each of them in turn, then spoke, voice still rough:

"We actually made it... I swear, when we’re out there, I’m eating a real meal. With cutlery. And a tablecloth. Hell, even a damn cloth napkin."

Dylan offered a rare, brief smile.

"And you’re going to sit up like a lady?"

"I’m more likely to put my feet on the table," she shot back.

They exchanged a knowing look, as if hundreds of words had passed between them.

Élisa wiped her brow with the back of her sleeve, then murmured:

"We shouldn’t linger. We’re still at the mountain’s foot. And... this kind of calm here never lasts."

Dylan nodded. He stood fully upright, gazing westward—toward the hills, toward the nightmare’s end, perhaps. The horizon had never looked so wide. Or so dangerous.

"Then let’s move," he said.

But his voice lacked its former tension.

It was the voice of a man who, for the first time in days, felt he could walk toward something... instead of merely running away.