When we arrived in Paladin Woods, a car drove us for an hour in the middle of nowhere without lights covering the road. A silver-haired girl was the one transporting us, but we noticed that lesser and lesser creatures showed up the farther we went.
After driving a while we ended up stopping the car when it reached a bar blocking the way to move further in. In the light from the vehicle, it was a woman with pink hair standing there with something looking like an animal on the ground. We got out of the car and moved towards the lady waiting outside. She handed over the small animal that looked like a big rat, but it looked like it was smiling.
“What are we going to do with a Rat?” I asked the woman.
“It is a Tinka; they can smell out creatures, something like for human dogs, but they don't need something to connect the smell. They smell for whatever creature that is based in the area.”
Berk looked at Zark and me, worried that it would maybe catch the wrong smell and get us into trouble. The animal climbed up on Zarks shoulders and closed its eyes looking like it was sleeping.
“We are so going to die,” Berk commented.
The woman got back to the car where the driver was waiting. They started to reverse the car, and suddenly, it was completely dark. It looked like it was a really bad idea to come here during the night. We walked for a couple of minutes in the dark until a blue mass was everywhere in the woods, shining up the whole area. Berk and I noticed the animal on Zarks shoulder woke up suddenly and was smelling in the air opening its eyes, and had a smiley face looking like it was really happy. Zark stopped with the animal; it pushed his face to the left. I looked to the left, but it was impossible to see anything outside the area with the blue mass that we had on the road. Only the road we were walking on was covered in this blue mass that was shining, so we couldn’t actually see into the woods.
“I need you both to take a couple of steps back; I think the animal is hinting that something is in the darkness of the forest on our left,” Zark said in a low voice.
I backed away really quickly while Berk, the idiot, put his right hand in black flame again; it was like he wanted something to happen. Suddenly, a couple of creatures with light blue eyes came out on the road, and their arm was almost going all the way to the ground. Even if they were a little bit taller than us, it was really strange with arms going all the way down, but they dipped their hands on the blue mass that was around, so their hands got covered in it.
“Eh...guys! You think maybe the blue crap around us that is shining everything up is actually the poison?” I asked out in the air.
Berk just chuckled without any response.
“I think it is,” Zark responded.
The animal jumped from Zarks shoulders and ran behind me for what looked like it was covering itself.
“There are six of them, looking like some shadow apes with long arms that have been dipped in the blue light mass. I will let four of them pass me and let you guys handle it if it becomes too hard for me. They started to rush toward us, with Zark going low with an uppercut against the one in the front and Berk making a huge swing hitting two of them with three of them coming towards me, and the first one swung its arm from upright down towards me, and I backed off in the last second. Quickly bent down when the second one tried with a right hook, and at the same moment when I leaned forward, I lifted my left leg and leaned on the ground with my hands for support and made a 180 degrees kick and hit the creature so it fell around Berk. When I quickly tried to coordinate myself, the third one gave a right hook, hitting me right into the chest with everything going black for a couple of seconds. Surprise that I was on the ground, I noticed I was a couple of meters away suddenly with the animal shaking, and I got up quickly. When the big black was going to swing downwards towards our little pet, I managed to go rapidly down in front of the creature and held up both my arms to protect it, and my knees started to tremble when suddenly a hand went through the chest of the shadow creature with black fire with blue crap squirting everywhere. That damn Berk, talk about not being discreet or trying to keep things simple. It fell on the ground, and the animal ran directly and went up on Zarks shoulder again. Now, I actually knew what it was.
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“Guys! Isn't that a Quokka? The animal that resides in Australia.”
Zark looked confused, and Berk looked more closely at it now with blue splatter all over his suit.
“You are right, pipsqueak! It does look like a Quokka. What the fuck did they bring us, a Quokka that normally lives in warm weather? We are in Sweden...or not really, but it is cold most of the time with summer only for like 2-3 months. How the hell did that animal survive?”
“They call it a Tinka, so it maybe only looks like a Quokka,” Zark commented.
“Can be. Should we call it Quokka as a name? It will be less hassle for us to call it animal or something like that,” I asked the guys.
Both nodded, and the little Quokka pointed forward; it wanted us to move straight on the road. If these creatures or monsters that we have just killed in the beginning, I feel like maybe more dangerous things await us further down the road.
After a while of walking, we ended up in what looked like an abandoned building. All windows were broken and it was covered with blue moss around the building. The Quokka was pointing in the direction of the building, which felt more like a trap. We went up to the entrance and noticed it was really dark inside; there wasn’t any blue poison light inside, and I was really unsure how big the building was exactly.
“It can be a trap!” Zark commented.
“Agree!” I answered.
“Pussies, I mean this task was anyways live or die task. So what if it is a trap? We will either die here or come out alive. Hopefully for me, I will be stronger.” Berk said, with Zark shaking his head.
Berk just walked inside with Zark, trying to make a sound to get his attention to come back, but it was pointless because we lost sight of him. The idiot once again just did whatever he wanted and we had to take the hit if something happened. The Idea popped into my head, and I went to the side and put some of the poison on my clothes, with Zark looking disinterested actually to know what I was doing. I went back to the entrance where Zark was just looking at me, even the Quokka looked a little bit surprised and was not smiling as usual.
“I had an idea. The blue poison is glowing, so that means I have a little bit of light on my body, so it isn’t completely dark inside.”
Zark didn’t want to comment on it, even if it was a little bit of a good idea, but he didn’t have any poison on his clothes from the expression; it didn’t look like he was going to dip his suit in poison crap to go inside.”
“I will wait outside on you guys, check it through, and come back after that and find the other idiot,” Zark told me.
I went inside, and the light was very weak from my clothes; I could see where I was stepping but couldn’t see a couple of meters in front of me. This moment wasn’t probably one of my best to be smart, but the Quokka pointed inside, and we needed to finish this before trying to move on. After walking for a while and not having any vision of the entrance, I ended up in an intersection with three alternatives. A sound was heard from the right side. I knew that Berk probably got in a fight and chose to go to the right. I turned to the left and thought to myself, why the Hell didn’t I bring the Quokka with me?
I checked the first two rooms in the hallway, but in the end, it was just a big room, nothing there and no windows either. A sound came from the wall, and I wanted to check it further with the light from my body, so I closed into where the sound came from, and I backed off quickly when I saw a head sticking out from the wall with probably someone who had died and the whole wall was covered in blood. I started to cough and bent forward, puking a little bit on the floor. Tried to grasp the situation because someone had been killed there. Looked around for clues when suddenly I felt someone here; I stopped moving and glanced to the right, noticing light started to shine behind me with sounds of drops with a low sound like it was saliva. Don't tell me I will fudging die right here.