Kayde takes a look at the map and starts rotating it around, creating a swirl of green as he looks up from it and then back down at it while doing so.
“I have no clue where we are on this,” he admits to the others, looking back up at the mass of trees before them.
“Looks like we will just have to randomly stumble onto one of the two landmarks and orient ourselves from there,” Xander suggests, trying to come up with their best option.
“Well, the fountain is in the very center. If we keep heading straight inland we should run into it,” Gwendolyn points out, glancing at the map while Kayde spins it.
“Alright, I guess we are heading straight in,” Kayde comments as they take their first steps into the dark forest looming before them.
The trees grow so thickly that every grouping of trees looks like the last, casting doubt that they are making any progress into their minds. Drakthar halts the others as he hears a rustling to the left.
“What?” Kayde asks, not noticing what is going on.
“Be quiet, something is there,” Drakthar whispers pointing towards the sound with one hand and grasping his axe with the other.
A large pack of wolves silently emerges from the surrounding trees. Their vicious growls reverberate all around them, creating what seems like an echo chamber. Drakthar gets ready to pull his axe from his back, preparing to cut down every single one of the starved wolves.
Kayde notices what Drakthar is about to do and calls out in order to stop him, knowing it will only make the situation worse, “Drakthar wait. Let me try something first”.
Drakthar slowly removes his hand from his axe, waiting to see what Kayde will do.
Kayde reaches out in front of him and kneels. He slowly approaches one of the wolves in the front that, curiously, isn’t snarling like the others. He gets in close enough to touch the wolf’s grey coat but waits with his hand outstretched.
The wolf senses Kayde’s good-natured spirit and rubs his head against his hand, slowly enjoys the slight scratch from Kayde behind his ears. He backs off and licks his hand a couple of times before jumping into Kayde’s arms.
He snuggles the wolf, bringing a smile to his face as he feels the warmth from the animal in his arms, “Hey buddy. You’re a nice guy aren’t you?”
The other wolves see this one cuddling with Kayde and back off, trusting that wolf’s judgment of the intruders who walked into their home. They dissipate back into the forest as if they were never there.
“Now what should I name you?” Kayde looks into the wolf’s golden eyes.
“Hold on, you’re not making that thing your pet are you?” Xander asks in disbelief.
“Yeah he is really cute,” Kayde continues to pet his head.
“What part of him is cute? His sharp teeth that can rip out our throats in our sleep, or maybe the menacing growl he was laying down on us like, I don’t know… five seconds ago?” Xander lists sarcastically, trying to convince Kayde this is a bad idea.
“Those are certainly both contributing factors… you know what, I think I’ll name him Fore,” Kayde holds Fore up smiling at him, the wolf smiles back wagging his tail while he hangs in the air.
They continue towards the center of the forest, now accompanied by Fore. He walks along beside Kayde with a cheery look on his long face. Fore’s cheery expression soon begins to fade away as Kayde loses sight of him to the thick fog the group unwittingly wandered into. It is so thick that they cannot even see their own hand if they hold it out in front of them. They hear Fore start to howl in trepidation and they stop in their tracks.
Kayde reaches down to reassure him.
He finds Fore and picks him up, holding him in his arms, “It’s going to be okay buddy, I’ll carry you from here”.
“We should probably keep talking so that we don’t lose each other in the fog,” Xander suggests, not wanting silence to be the reason they get separated.
As they walk through the thick blinding fog, they hear eerie noises ranging from chirps to the rustling of leaves and snapping of twigs, causing a sense of unease to wash over them. This prompts Gwendolyn to grab the arm of the person next to her, who she assumes is Xander.
She is surprised upon feeling it, it’s not like she grabs onto Xander’s arms all the time when they walk, but still, it feels bigger than she remembers, “Xander I didn’t know your training made your muscles that much larger”.
“It hasn’t, that’s my arm,” Drakthar responds flatly, slightly perturbed by the woman clinging to his arm.
Gwendolyn immediately lets it go and apologizes, “Oh… I’m sorry, my mistake”.
As they continue further Fore starts to whimper, scared by the ominous sounds and the inability to see them.
Kayde runs his fingers through his fur, “Don’t worry we’ll leave the fog soon”. He sees some trees behind the haze, realizing the fog has started to thin out. He looks to either side of him, noticing that, other than Fore, Drakthar is the only one with him.
“Hold on where are Xander and Gwendolyn?” Kayde asks, concerned that his friends are not there now that the fog is gone. Drakthar shrugs, not having noticed them disappear.
“Fuck, XANDER! GWENDOLYN!” Kayde starts to yell back into the fog. Drakthar starts calling out for them as well as Fore howls along with their screams.
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They hear nothing in response.
“We should wait until the fog clears and then go back in to find them, if we go back in there now we could also end up lost,” Drakthar suggests calmly, finding a comfortable place to sit down up against a tree.
“Sure, sounds fine to me,” Kayde agrees, putting Fore down.
Back in the fog, Xander and Gwendolyn find themselves in a rather precarious situation. They are caught together in a net, a trap that triggered when they tripped a wire along two trees.
“Great we can’t see anything, and now this,” Xander complains, the ropes digging into his skin as he remains blinded by the opaque gloom surrounding them.
“Can’t you just warp us out of here?” Gwendolyn asks, trying to think of a way out.
Xander sighs, having already tried that, “I wish, but I have to see something for us to switch with, and I can’t see anything because of the heavy fog”.
“Great,” Gwendolyn relaxes her body resigning herself to being stuck in this net.
“It could be worse, I could be stuck up here with Drakthar,” Xander tries to lighten the mood. Gwendolyn giggles, imagining what Drakthar and Xander stuck up in a net together would look like.
Xander tries to move to a more comfortable position so he is facing Gwendolyn.
Even though she can’t see it, she feels him moving around and asks, “What are you trying to do?”
“Trying to turn around,” Xander explains as the pressure from the small net makes him flatten out so his back is facing Gwendolyn.
“Well, it looks like you ended up doing the opposite of what you wanted,” Gwendolyn comments, feeling the hair on the back of his head brushing up against her face.
Xander just sighs, “yeah”. After a few moments in this position, he feels something really soft against his back. He starts to blush uncontrollably as he realizes what it is, luckily for him Gwendolyn can’t see it.
“So do we have a plan to get down from here?” Gwendolyn asks, trying to find another way aside from using Xander’s abilities. Xander does not hear her because his focus is still on what is pressing up against his back.
“Hey, are you okay?” Gwendolyn gets a little concerned after he doesn’t answer.
He snaps back to reality, “Yeah, I am fine”.
“So what is our plan,” Gwendolyn reiterates.
“We have a couple of options. I could try to reach my sword and cut us out or we could try pushing against each other in order to snap the net,” Xander starts to think.
“Try your sword first,” Gwendolyn decides, thinking that will be easiest. Xander strains to reach down to his hip where his sword usually is, moving his hand to the other side of the net. He feels only his belt, the sword not there.
“Damn, it must have fallen out when we were pulled up here,” Xander realizes after he finds nothing at his hip.
“Let’s try pushing against each other then,” Gwendolyn moves on to the other option. They both start pushing against each other, using all of their might. The sharp, almost wire-like, rope digs deeper and deeper into their skin.
“Xander, I can’t,” Gwendolyn exclaims, no longer able to bear the pain as the rope begins cutting through the skin and drawing blood. She relaxes her body and the tension on her side of the net is gone.
Xander gives up as well, “Looks like that isn’t going to work either, we will just need to wait until the fog clears so I can warp us out”.
They sit up in the net for what seems like an eternity before Gwendolyn comments, “Alright, I’m uncomfortable and bored”.
“Yeah,” Xander agrees but thinks to himself that maybe he is just bored.
Suddenly, he feels something soft and wet on his neck. He realizes Gwendolyn has started kissing him.
It starts to feel ticklish, making it slowly more and more unbearable, “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but that is very ticklish, I am dying here”.
Gwendolyn pulls away only to say, “oh really,” before returning her mouth to his neck, enjoying the idea of making him squirm.
“Seriously I’m really ticklish, I’m actually crying right now,” Xander cries out.
He can only hear an almost playfully sadistic giggle, “You are going to have to fight through it, this is quelling my boredom”.
Xander starts to struggle in order to get away from Gwendolyn’s mouth.
She isn’t having any of it, especially after his shoulder hits her teeth, “Stop moving! How can I kiss you if you’re moving?” She half-jokingly orders.
Xander screams out, “This is definitely the most interesting form of torture I’ve ever encountered”.
“I’m hurt that you don’t want to accept my affection,” Gwendolyn purrs, pretending she is sad but continues to mess with him.
Xander has now actually had enough of this, he starts to move around again trying to change his position. Finally, he turns himself around completely, coming face to face with the source of his torment.
Gwendolyn looks directly into his eyes and softly whispers, “hey”.
Xander brings a hand to her chin, directing her face towards his. This time he feels Gwendolyn’s lips where he wants them.
They stay like this, lips intertwined, for what seems like only a few moments, but is actually a couple of hours before they hear a bark from below them. They snap out of their passionate daydream to realize the fog has cleared completely and Kayde, Drakthar, and Fore are standing on the ground glaring at the two of them with annoyed looks on their faces.
Before Xander can warp them out, they hear a gunshot. Kayde shot the rope holding the net they are caught in. They collide with the ground, the net opening up around them.
“Seriously! You two have been up a tree making out while we were worried about you for hours?” Kayde asks, infuriated by their priorities.
“We tried to get out for about the first half-hour,” Xander explains, trying to make it seem not as bad as it is.
Gwendolyn tries to stand up, but she crumbles back to the ground, all of her limbs asleep from her time in the net.
“I guess we are going to have to just lay here for a while,” Xander observes Gwendolyn falling back down.
They wait for about a half-hour before they can stand again. Once they are ready to head out, they continue on towards the heart of the forest. Somehow the trees are thicker than before, something they had not thought possible. After an hour of walking, they exit the trees, finding themselves in an area littered with debris from what looks to be pillars and columns from a stone building that used to stand in the clearing.
“There has to be something around here, people don’t make extravagant buildings for nothing,” Kayde points out, believing them to be in the right place.
“Why don’t we fan out to cover more ground?” Gwendolyn suggests, seeing the treeline around the clearing isn’t that far away on the opposite side.
“Call out if you find anything,” Kayde adds before walking off with Fore in a direction towards some of the larger chunks of rubble.
They all go their separate ways trying to find something among the ruined building’s remains. After a minute of searching, Xander stumbles upon a stone path. He follows it, finding an archway covered in vines guarding an entrance to a cave.
“Guys, I think I found something over here,” He calls out to alert the others. He sees a figure start to emerge from the cave, but it is not Drakthar, Kayde, Gwendolyn, or even Fore. Instead, he sees a woman with dark hair and tanned skin in full armor striding toward him.
“Hello, companion of Drakthar Borro’vaga,” Kali greets him, a menacing smile on her face.
“Oh, hey,” Xander timidly waves back at her.