How many days has it been since my escape? I don't know.. I don't know anything anymore. The only thing I do know is that I'll be done for if that thing catches me.
I had lost the count of days after a certain point. Keeping track of day and night isn't a difficult thing, but reality started to twist after a certain point. The duration of daytime shrunk as nighttime got painfully longer with every damn cycle. Before I knew it, I found myself stuck in a never ending night, drenched in a never ending rain and stuck in a never ending maze of tall, tightly packed trees.
My escape plan went flawless for the first few days. Sure, it wasn't perfect. Replenishing my resources felt troublesome as it ate away most of my time, it frustrated me because I wanted to get out of this accursed place as soon as possible. All of this mess started happening only after I saw that thing.
When I first saw that thing, I knew it was no good news. So I ran away from it. It didn't care to chase me, it just sat there, hugging its knees like a sad little kid. But it came after me that night. I dismissed it as my own mind playing tricks on me. But then I saw it again the next night. Then I saw more of it the day after that. And again. And again. And again.
Time distorted. The forest distorted.
No. Nothing distorted– everything was the same. This whole damn world was distorted to begin with.
I lost track of how long I had been hiding behind that one tree. But that thing never gave up searching for me. All the time I was behind that tree, I was still able to hear it groaning and walking around. I couldn't move, water had covered the ground till my ankle- it would make noise. I couldn't run- that place was so dense with trees, there was no space to run.
I peeked around the corner, I couldn't see anything- it was pitch black. The black figure that stood at the other end of the empty space in front of me was no longer there. But then, It started making noises again. It came from right where I was looking at. I took cover again, it was enough now that too much pressure had built in my chest. Hiding any longer will only make things worse. I might die if I try to escape, but doing nothing is guaranteed death– so I had to do something.
But then I heard a sound coming from the other side of the empty space behind me. It was not a cry, not a screech, not a whisper, but something in between. It was getting closer. I peeked around the corner, again. Nothing was there.
But the sound only got closer and louder. There was no time to think, I had to run. And just as I was about to scram, I saw something.
The water ahead of me reacted as if something was sprinting straight toward me from the other side. I caught a glimpse of it rushing towards me from the other side of the water, whatever existed on the other side wasn't running. It wasn't crawling. It was doing both at once—its legs jerking forward while its legs slapped the ground, dragging the rest of it along., like it couldn't decide what kind of body it was meant to have.
My spine pulled me back before my legs could react. I fled, knowing that I can't outrun that thing. I still ran, zig-zagging between the tightly packed trees, however, the water dragged my legs down while the thing behind me got close enough that I could smell it– rotting flesh that has never seen light.
It was as if the forest had already decided which one of us belonged here.
After a certain point, I heard a loud splash. I was tempted to turn back and see what it was, knowing that it could cost me my entire life, but then something hit my back, and latched onto me before I could turn my head around.
The impact caused me to topple face first.
When I got back up in a hurry, I could feel it was still on my back. As light as a feather, it was hanging on my back, its rotting skinless hands around my neck, and its decomposing mutilated legs, tight around my waist. The creature was covered with a mixture of blood and mud, dried to a point where it looked like a skinned and mutilated ape's corpse that was left out in the open for years.
My mind was in turmoil and my body froze– or rather, I gave up, thinking that it was the end of me and that the ghoul-like creature was going to dig into my neck, or was it going to be my skull?
I just stood there for a while, visualizing my own death. Then a thought struck me: what did the creature look like? I was still scared to death, but if I'm going to die anyway, I might as well take a look at its face.
When I turned around, the Instincts that went numb after knowing that I'm going to die started kicking more actively than ever. I had never seen anything more disgusting, gruesome and terrifying in all my lives. I had lost my will to fight against it, but now that I had a look at its face, a new, different kind of fear washed over me, and so did my desire for worldly goods.
I couldn't bear to look at it even for a full second. I breathlessly tried to undo its grip on me but it wouldn't budge. Surprisingly, the creature didn't do anything so far. It didn't even make any noise. So I started to draw some zaryûn energy from my environment. Strengthening magic might be the only way out of this mess. I won't be able to do crap while my body is in that ragged condition.
Zaryûn energy is not like mana from fantasy stories. The amount of zaryûn one can hold in his body itself is not sufficient to pull off any magic. No living thing is capable of generating zaryûn energy within its body, it is something that is drawn from nature. The energy that one absorbs is used to draw zaryûn runes and those runes execute the magic when activated.
This world is truly grounded to a point where I sometimes think even breathing may have a penalty or a side effect. Zaryûn can't be absorbed whenever, it will only be accepted by the body when one is calm. Staying still is another important thing while absorbing zaryûn. To make things more grounded, the zaryûn that you absorbed can't be within your body forever. It will leave your body through breath, sweat, hair growth and excretion if you hold the energy in for more than two days. And of course, the effect of the magic will be limited the further you move from nature.
Now was the right time to absorb zaryûn energy. It took me approximately ten minutes to replenish zaryûn energy, all while the ghoul-like creature hung on my back, not moving one bit.
I had already planned various things to try out if strengthening magic was not enough to shake it off. What I was planning to do next, or even those plans after that might not work for sure, but it was worth trying.