The Last Dainv-Chapter 45

The Last Dainv-Chapter 45

"Where's Hailey?" Gale asked.
The single question shut everyone up. Even the murmurs stopped. Rachel's eyes darted around the waist height of the convoy. Not with Anna, and not with Annett.
"She was just here," Anna whispered, surprisingly saying that with clarity rather than the hysteria she presented earlier.
Gale dashed into the forest without waiting.
"Gale wait!"
Rachel's voice disappeared quickly as the convoy disappeared from view. Every second could be the difference between life and death. A healthy adult wouldn't even last a couple of seconds against a forest beast, let alone a child.
As he moved further away from the convoy, the tracks of things moving about dwindled. Hailey was about his waist height. With that in mind, he focused the tendrils close to him, swallowing all the information about everything around him.
Small broken twigs littered the ground, snapped off tangling twigs as well. But a small child wouldn't necessarily break off a twig by just running through the underbrush.
The twigs broken apart were too far from each other; evidence of a beast running through here rather than a child. Hailey would be more akin to a small beast, so it was best to look for tracks on the forest floor.
There were twigs on the floor. Some broken, some not. If a beast had gone through here, it would have stepped on multiple twigs, though not necessarily broken them. Their paws were wide and would mostly engulf the small twigs on the floor.
There. Two twigs. Snapped in half on the forest floor. A beast wouldn't be able to cleanly snap off twigs like that with its huge paws. And there were three twigs exactly. Only two of them had snapped off, leaving the third untouched. The distance between the two twigs was about the same size as a child-sized human.
The rest of the track showed itself after. Another snapped twig just by a couple of steps. Same clean snap. Running distance step.
Now Gale knew what to look for and the barely visible footprints showed themselves after learning of the pattern. This had to be Hailey.
He followed the tracks. Vegetation grew more lush around him. Soil more moist. Air becoming more stuffy and humid. The smell of wet leaves and wood. All of it was supposed to be a calming smell to him. But definitely not for an untrained child.
Time stretched on as he slowly followed the trail. The thickening underbrush made it hard to see with just his eyes alone. The void spread its invisible tendrils out. That's when it told him that something felt odd about this place. The forest was much thicker compared to where the original encampment was, as if a different biome. At the edge of his web of tendrils, a faint glimmer that centered the lush forest that now looked more like a jungle.
Gale followed it. Soon enough, he got close to that small glimmer. It was a soft, pulsating light. It whispered to him in an alien language, different from the one in the basement of the stone tower. The whispers felt calming rather than putting him into a trance, beckoning him to follow it.
He followed where it told him to go, digging his nails into his hands as to not let it take control.
Finally, after what felt like hours of searching, Gale emerged into a clearing. In the centre stood a massive tree where a creek ran by at the side of it. It had tendrils of light hanging on its branches mixed in with its leaves that looked like a willow tree. The light and leaves swayed despite the total lack of wind.
And there, at the base of the tree, stood Hailey. Her form was dwarfed by the otherworldly tree. Her face turned up with a blank stare at the tree's glowing branches.
"Hailey!" Gale called out.
The girl turned at the sound of his voice, but before she could respond, tendrils of light shot out from the tree, wrapping around her small body. In the blink of an eye, she was encased in a cocoon of light.
Gale charged forward, bone saber in hand. He struck at the tendrils of light, yet his saber passed through as though he struck at nothing. Again, he struck, and again, nothing happened.
He reached out his hand to touch the light, examining the tendril. It had a physical form, but when he tried to strike his hand at it, his fist simply passed through.
Passed through?
Phased
through? Let's try it.
Drawing his bone sabre once again, he put focused Phase Touch along its edge. He struck once more. As the edge touched the light, it snapped the tendril of light off from its branch up above. The cocoon over Hailey popped like a balloon afterward.
Immediately, Gale grabbed Hailey and carried her against his chest. That was when a small tremor rumbled the ground. The tree branches began to move, swaying more violently in the air. Suddenly, it lashed out at him like whips.
"Hold on tight," Gale told Hailey as she buried her face into his chest.
He turned and ran, dodging the tree's attacks as best he could. A branch caught him across the back, sending a lash of pain through his body, but his legs didn't stop moving.
The forest came alive around them as they fled, literally. Roots burst from the ground, trying to trip them up. Branches reached out, attempting to snare his legs. Rocks rolled into his path, attempting to slow him down. All of them read like a book, and he dodged as his Breath of the Void pushed itself to the limits, feeding him a stream of surrounding information in real time.
The tremor on the ground grew stronger. Pulsating veiny tendrils of light now infected the ground and surrounding vegetation. The trees of the lush forest began to animate. Their vines shot out at him like whips.
Gale dodged most of the vines. One hit him. He winced as he felt his back become wet, and it definitely wasn't from sweat.
Hailey's small hands held onto him tighter, burying her face into Gale's chest even more. Feeling her trembling shoulders made his heart ache. She didn't do anything wrong. Any child would've ran if they saw their mom like she did. Even he felt like running away whenever the rare occasion his mom and dad fought.
"Hailey, you're going to be okay," he said between breaths. "I've got you. You're going to be alright. Don't ever let go, ok?"
Of course, it was hard to even believe what he said. The jungle around him became more and more twisted. It was alive.
A boulder flew at him, big enough that it would've crushed both of them. Dashed to the side to dodge that.
A large branch from a tree whipped at them. Gale slid low to avoid it. At this point, they were just ents. Not the friendly ones.
He wasn't sure if escape was even possible, but he had to keep trying.
Hailey stirred in his arms, lifting her head to look back over his shoulder. "It's following us," she whispered.
Gale didn't need to look. His breath fed him all of that information already. Each passing second and each step, the veins of light gained on him.
Did you know this story is from NovelFire? Read the official version for free and support the author.
They burst through a dense patch of underbrush. His foot caught on an exposed root. Stumbled. Almost losing his balance. In that moment, something wrapped around his ankle.
He looked down. A tendril of light. Same ones from that damned tree. It pulled him, dragging him back to where he was running from.
Taking one hand off of Hailey, Gale drew his bone saber, once again encasing it in Phase Touch, and sliced the tendril. As soon as he had done so, multiple more tendrils reached out for him.
"Hold on!" he said.
With his hand on the saber and the other holding on to Hailey, Gale slashed at each tendril. Each cut popped a tendril, like severing a live wire. The air filled with an acrid smell, making Hailey cough.
They pressed on, alternating between running and fighting off the tree's attacks. He couldn't keep this up forever. Sooner or later, he'd be exhausted. At that point, he would have to make a choice and who knows what would happen to Hailey.
Not yet.
The tree's attacks intensified. Multiple boulders flew from somewhere beyond his physical view. Gale jumped, avoiding all the boulders catapulted at him.
Tendrils shot out from all directions. Gale spun with his saber in the air. More of the same acrid smell clung to the air after popping each one. Hailey's grip tightened even more.
"It's okay," he repeated, even as he narrowly avoided another whipping branch. "We're going to make it."
The entire forest was against him. Gale's senses, usually an advantage, overwhelmed him. A headache formed from the information being fed to him as well as the sheer wrongness of everything in front of him.
"Almost there," he told Hailey, putting on a burst of speed.
They burst through another set of thickets and finally revealed a familiar landscape. Normal familiar forest flora and trees that stood up straight and didn't move, untouched by whatever that damned tree was.
Catching his breath, Gale set Hailey down gently. "Are you okay?" he asked, scanning her up and down for any injuries.
Hailey nodded, still trembling. "I think so."
Gale nodded and then patted her head. Next was to find their way back to the convoy. He pulled Breath of the Void back in to focus, looking for any signs of where he might've come from.
It didn't take him too long. He found a twig cleanly snapped off its branch and flung a couple of meters away. It was his marking when he had run through the forest. And with it, his footprints revealed themselves easily, which should lead back to the convoy.
"This way," he said, taking Hailey's hand. "Stay close."
They moved swiftly through the forest while he maintained a tight monitor on all his surroundings.
Gale sighed. The rest of the tracks fell into place as he saw more and more of the tracks he'd been following earlier and also recognised landmarks he unconsciously placed.
"We're almost there," Gale squeezed her hand gently, giving her a small smile.
She looked up at him and nodded in reply.
As they climbed a small hill, Gale heard voices in the distance. It was Rachel and Ollie calling out to Hailey.
"We're here!" he called out.
The voices fell silent for a moment.
"Gale!!" Rachel shouted louder.
They quickened their pace, pushing through the thickets and brushes, disregarding any path.
They emerged into the clearing, and the convoy came into view. Gale let out another sigh. Kneeling in front of Hailey, he brushed the dirt off of her cheeks and clothes.
"Gale! Hailey! Thank god," Rachel rushed forward as soon as she saw the two.
"Glad to see you in one piece," Ollie approached next.
Gale saw the cuts and dirt on both of their clothes. Rachel had small cuts on her hands, recent ones. Ollie had a slight bruise on his right cheek. Nothing too serious. Probably took care of a smaller beast.
"What were you thinking?" Lennard came in, glaring at Gale. "Running off like that, leaving us vulnerable? We were attacked while you were gone!"
Gale forced himself not to shake his head at this idiot. "I couldn't leave Hailey out there alone," he said.
Lennard crossed his arms. "Hmph. One child isn't worth risking the entire group. We lost valuable time, and some got hurt because of your recklessness."
"Lennard's right. You'd save a child and leave us all here?" a woman said.
"We have our own roles too. We expect to die if we leave where we are. Why is she any different?" an older man said.
"Enough!" Rachel shouted across the clearing. "What's done is done."
But Lennard wasn't finished. He turned his attention to Hailey, his eyes narrowing.
"And you," he growled, "running off like that. You're nothing but a pain in the ass that should've been left to die along with your crazy mother."
Gale clenched his fist. He remembered getting out of the car with mom in front of the orphanage building. Dad didn't even leave the car. Mom took him in and dropped him off just in front of the waiting area. She even said she'd come back.
He waited for a day after that first fight with the kids in the courtyard. Then a week. And then a year.
They never came.
An unwanted child being told to their faces that they should be abandoned? Something snapped inside Gale.
In two quick strides, he closed the distance between himself and Lennard.
"You wanna fucking say that again?!" Gale shouted.
Lennard took a step back, his form seeming to shrink as the boy's anger grew.
Gale continued, "Say it, old man. Say it one more fucking time. See what happens."
Lennard broke off eye contact, stepping back even further. He looked to Rachel. She didn't meet his eyes.
"You!" he shouted at her. "You're not going to do anything about this
thing
?" He pointed at Gale.
Rachel didn't reply. His eyes then moved to the convoy. None of their eyes met his either. Not even the older folks that he hung out with.
The older man stepped back into the convoy, not daring to say any more.
"Hmph," Lennard said before sitting on a rock.
Rachel stepped forward, kneeling down to meet eye to eye. "Hailey, why did you run away? Don't you know how dangerous it is out there?"
Hailey's lips trembled as her eyes signalled she was on the verge of tears. Her gaze lingered on her mother, Anna, who stood in the crowd. Anna's gaze was vacant, staring off into the distance to where the convoy was headed.
"I... I had to get away," Hailey pointed at Anna. "From her."
"From your mom? Why?" Rachel said softly.
"She's not my mom anymore. There's something inside her... something dark. I can feel it. It scares me," Hailey said.
"What do you mean, something dark?" Ollie asked in a whisper.
Hailey shook her head. "I don't know. It's like... she's broken. And the thing that broke her is still there, inside her. I don't want to be near it anymore."
Rachel stood up slowly. "Hailey, I understand you're scared, but running away isn't the answer. Right?"
Hailey stood still, eyes remaining fixed on the ground.
"I know," she mumbled. "I just... Can I just be with someone else?"
Before anyone could respond, a snap of a twig echoed nearby. Gale sensed it was just a small critter. However, at this state, they were all sitting ducks.
"We need to move," Gale said.
"Alright, everyone. We're heading out now. Stay close and stay quiet," Rachel said, then lowered herself again to Hailey's height. "Look at that lady over there."
She pointed at Annett. "You can go with her. How'bout it?"
"Nn," Hailey said.
Rachel ushered her forward to where Annett was.
The group quickly shuffled back into formation. Gale took point with Ollie. Rachel was back at the rear. Annett was in the middle, with Hailey now beside her.
The convoy continued its journey through the more treacherous terrain of Gale's direction. Groans could be heard from the middle-rear of the pack where most of the old folks were. They walked alongside a cliff that went straight down into darkness. The pathing was slightly angled towards the gorge. Rocks fell as convoy members walked by. No impact from the rocks that fell could be heard.
After the gorge was a steep downward slope. There were rocks littered along for footholds. But each step needed to be deliberate as one wrong step could hurl a person down and possibly knock down more people below.
Hours dragged on. It was unlike before. The convoy now moved in near silence, disturbed only by the rare occasion of a whisper or the muffled cry of a child.
"I can see it! The dead forest is just ahead!" Ollie quietly shouted. "It's the last sprint until the exit."
Gale looked at the ground where the dry land met the more moist forest with a clear divide. There were clear tracks on them. Multiple footprints.
"Footprints," Ollie said. "Thought you said this way was better?"
"Didn't say it was going to be safe," Gale said simply. He reached for the dirt on the dead forest ground, rubbing his fingers against it.
The tracks were fresh, probably only a couple of hours old. Some of the fading ones were probably only a day old. It was clear that this area had patrols.
Rachel and Annett came from behind him.
"What's the hold-up?" Annett asked.
"Fresh tracks. Looks like patrols," Gale said.

Chapter 45