“You think that’s the sage?” Aja pointed at a black haired woman sitting on the other side of the clearing.

Elem wasn’t sure. He didn’t want to jump to conclusions but the woman didn’t match his expectation of what a sage would look like. For one, she seemed far too young to have already retired.

“I don't know but who else could it be?” he wondered out loud, unsure why anyone other than a hermit would be hanging out in a place like the Wayward Woods by themselves.

As they hunched behind a collection of ferns, Elem felt uncomfortable staring at the woman. She was facing them with her back, gently brushing her shiny black hair without a care in the world. By the looks of it, she wasn’t aware of their presence. When Elem noticed that the woman wasn't wearing any clothes, he blushed; they were clearly invading her privacy.

“Only one way to find out,” Aja proposed.

She didn’t wait for her friend’s response and approached the naked woman. Elem’s face flushed further into a deep crimson, however his embarrassment was no match for his burning curiosity and he followed Aja onto the clearing.

“Excuse me!” Aja called out. “We are looking for a master summoner!”

The woman kept brushing through her hair without pause. She either hadn’t heard Aja or didn’t care.

“Excuse me!” Aja tried again when they were closer. Again, her words did not elicit a reaction.

Standing so close to the mysterious woman, Elem noticed how much hair she actually had. The strands fell down her entire back, puddling around her thighs like a black pool of water.

“Can you hear us? Elem asked.

This time, the woman responded. She quietly laid down her comb and shifted her head towards Elem and Aja. However as she turned, something bizarre happened. The woman twisted her body through a strange unnatural motion that looked as if she was breaking her own back.

“Ke…ke…ke…ke…ke…” she spluttered, staring at them with dead, pale eyes.

Her mouth was covered with blood, her absurdly long tongue slithering from her mouth like a snake.

Elem shuddered, he tried to shout but his body was immobilized by shock and terror. When she moved, he involuntarily stumbled back.

Enormous leathery wings appeared from behind the woman’s hair and as they flapped, the upper part of her body rose up. Then, in a motion that was equally bizarre as it was terrifying, she ripped her own torso from her lower body, producing a harrowing, scratching sound. The woman’s entails flung from her separated body like dark red frills, releasing a terrible rotten smell into the air.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

“Ruuun!” Aja called as she dived back.

The shriek snapped Elem out of his fright-induced paralysis and he followed her back to the other side of the clearing.

Technically, his body was still recovering from the duel with the Ultra Gym instructor but his legs moved faster than they’d ever had before.

“Crap crap crap!” he cursed as they ran, hearing the swooping sound of wings right behind him.

There wasn’t enough time to thoroughly hypothesize but it was clear that that thing wasn’t a sage. Elem speculated that it had to be a ghost or some kind of demon. The myths had to be true; the woods were surely haunted.

As they ran back to the path they had come from, Elem could hear the being’s wings rapidly close in on them. Whatever the creature was, they were not going to outrun it and if they wanted to make it out alive, they had to come up with something quickly.

Elem looked around, noting a pocket of trees that grew denser than the rest of the forest. He jerked Aja to the side; if they were lucky, the winged creature wouldn’t be able to follow them through a more narrow path.

Aja immediately understood the gesture and together they dove between the trees. Elem blew out a relieved breath of air when he heard a loud thud slamming against the tree-wall a few seconds later.

“Let’s get out of here,” he shouted.

The maneuver had won them some time but they wouldn’t be safe until they’d leave the woods all together.

They ran for what felt like an eternity until their path hit a dead end in the shape of a massive mossy rockface.

“Chimera Piss! What was that thing?” Aja asked, folding over from exhaustion.

“That was insane,” Elem replied. “I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”

He sighed, the forest was far bigger than he could have ever imagined. Elem stared up the rockface; the ridge was so large that he didn’t see a way around it. They would probably have to climb it.

“Let’s make sure we’re out of this place,” he said, nudging at the obstruction. “Before that monster catches up on us.”

“Not so fast!” said a strange voice as a big bellied man emerged from behind a large oak tree.

“Look at that! Seems like the boss drove us some new clients,” said another man, jumping from a cluster of bushes.

Elem and Aja exchanged a dumbfounded look. What on earth was going on now?

“Who are you?” Aja asked.

“We are the people who decide whether you ever get out of this place,” said the man who’d come from the bushes. He was shorter than the other man but his yellow-stained grin was twice as mean. “If you pay up, that is.”

Aja sighed, she seemed more annoyed than startled. “Are you trying to rob us?”

“Trying?” the man laughed. “Just give us everything you have and we’ll call it a service fee, okay?”

“Forget it.” Elem spit on the ground. He was training to be a Summoner legend, there was no way he’d let himself be intimidated by some low level thugs.

“The way they ran from the boss’ Manananggal, you’d think they’d be easier targets,” the large man grumbled, his tone slightly disappointed.

Elem fluttered his eyes. A Manananggal? So that winged demon was a Summon? Had they simply walked into some robbers’ trap? He swallowed a chuckle, this changed everything.

“Enough talk,” Aja said, dropping into her battle stance. “Let’s kick these thugs to the other side of the forest.”