CHAPTER 2
Rose felt as if she had been running for an eternity even though only a few minutes had transpired. She had no more stamina to keep herself running. Only now, in her exhaustion, for the first time since her escape did she take a deep breath. But it was eerily quiet. Rose was sure that the bandits who were after her, where shouting and getting increasingly closer with every step, but now she could hear nothing but silence. When Rose looked back and did not see her pursuers, she became relieved for just a moment, thinking she had escaped the danger.
It was only now when she realised how dark it was, how towering the trees felt, looming over covering the sky itself, only letting in small droplets of light.
‘Where am I? why is it so dark? I could have sworn it was merely midday, perhaps one or two in the afternoon.’
The relief she felt earlier vanished as quickly as it came when she realised where she was currently was standing. ‘The Shadow Valley?!’ she exclaimed in her mind becoming aware that the danger had not dissipated in the slightest but on the contrary increased because of her daring escape.
She started turning around looking for a way out of the forest, but it only caused her to become more disoriented and panic-stricken.
“Oh no, oh no… what should I do? Which is the way out?” she said aloud, almost shouting. But she was alone, and the shout quickly faded away forever to be unanswered. The tears that she had bravely tried to hide from before where now returning in full force as she could not hold back the fear, anxiety and all other emotions that had been building up from before.
“Sniff, sniff… what should I do?... Mother why did I leave?” Rose was crying, crying because of everything that had happened. Crying for leaving home, crying from the bandits before and crying because she could now never prove herself to her family, prove to everyone that she would become a great magician.
It needs to be stated that everyone feared the Shadow Valley, especially the children from the villages close to it, growing up hearing terrifying stories. Stories that spoke of monsters hiding in the shadows…waiting for a lost child they could eat, stories that spoke of the trees themselves leaving the forest to catch those who ventured near, and stories of a demon at the centre of the forest, in deepest part of the valley, a demon so dreadful that the gods themselves wouldn’t dare descend and face it.
Rose was only a young girl, these stories were still firmly attached to her psyche, causing her despair to continue for more than half an hour…
With no more tears to cry, Rose simply looked down on the ground, with vacant eyes that had lost all hope. But she suddenly saw something in the distance, in the corner of her eyes, there was a light blue glimmer, that she could only perceive with her best efforts. What this blue light was, was not something Rose understood until later, or that the reason for her seeing it was caused by the small change in her previously emerald green eyes.
Rose quickly decided to run towards the odd blue moving light. She did not care what it could be if it meant she would no longer be trapped in the darkness of the forest. She ran faster then she had done before when she was running away from the bandits, she didn’t even fall or trip despite the multitude of roots laying on the ground creating the unsteady path to run on. She ran and ran, hoping to get closer to the blue light, that seemed so out of place in this dark and quiet terrifying forest.
*
The fighting between the bandits did not continue for very long, these newcomers were stronger, more coordinated and they even had a priest standing behind them chanting healing magic when needed.
The middle-aged bandit leader that Rose had come across was lying on the ground, still breathing but with a big wound in his stomach that prevented any chance of survival.
“I don’t understand” was all he could say, lying there with his comrades already sent to the beyond. The reason for his confusion was simple, the opponents were simply too strong... they were not bandits. He knew that he was only still breathing because the newcomers wanted him to. “I don’t care who you are or what you want, just kill me” the man said, his voice becoming slightly weaker every moment.
Suddenly his eyes widened as he realised that one of the newcomer was in fact not a newcomer at all, but his trustworthy scout, that had previously warned him about the newcomers.
“Where is the girl?” the scout commanded
“Why di-d, cough cough, you betray us?” the man with great difficulty asked.
“Betray you? No, I was never an ally to begin with. Why would I stoop so low and become a mere bandit!” the scout said with disgust in his eyes. “Now tell me where the girl is!”
One of the other newcomers approached and spoke to the scout, “Hey, Felix what’s happening? Why haven’t you killed the man yet?”
This newcomer was, contrary to the tall, slim scout named Felix, a big burly dwarf, holding a great double-bladed axe, as if it was weightless.
“The reason I decided to expedite our mission was because they captured a girl. I couldn’t just stand and watch, but now I don’t know where she is. They took her to their hideout.” Felix said with narrowed eyes that bore into the bandit leader’s skull, as if to try to acquire the information by sheer will and the power of his glare.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
“That’s not good” said the dwarf with apparent concern in his voice, “Hey Sonya, get over here, we need your help.”
“What is it Anders? Are you guys alright?” said the priest as she was walking towards the dwarf called Anders.
“No, we’re fine, but there was a girl taken to the bandits’ hideout and we need your help in extracting the location.” Anders said with a grim expression on his face, albeit covered mostly by his thick black beard.
“Hmm, alright. Give me some space so I can use my power, the bandit doesn’t have much longer to live” Sonya said, preparing her cane while Felix and Anders stepped aside.
“Tell me, where did you take the girl?” Sonya said while a strange but strong power fused into her words.
“Sh-she was taken by two of my men to the hideout” The bandit answered, not realising that he no longer had any control over his own thoughts.
“And where is the hideout?” Sonya questioned.
“Just half a kilometre west of here, along the path over there” the man spoke whilst pointing to the place where Rose had been taken of the road.
“Thank you, I hope you spend your next life as an upstanding citizen of Icarus.” Sonya said whilst letting her magic dissipate and allowing the middle-aged bandit leader to finally perish.
“Okay guys you heard what he said, lets quickly go get the girl and be done with this awful quest. I want to get rid of these awful clothes and drink some mead at the guild before tomorrow evening!” Anders exclaimed to his allies, altogether 5 strong adventures, tasked with clearing out the bandits on the Chains road.
These adventures are known together as the famous A-ranked party called “Draupnir”, and they had gotten this request from the Guild master herself, to clear the Chains road before anymore travellers would come in harms way. The Icarus kingdom had put up with the bandits for long enough and had finally decided to quickly exterminate them with brute force. Draupnir had been forced to don common armour so that the bandits wouldn’t realise that they had finally been targeted. This was also done so that the scout Felix could easily infiltrate the bandit groups, stopping the bandits from succeeding in their nefarious business, all the while the rest of Draupnir prepared for battle.
Unfortunately, Rose had (unsurprisingly) no knowledge of this, and was therefore convinced when the bandit leader told her more bandits where approaching, leading to the desperate escape that was completely unnecessary. Felix himself, did not think the frail girl could amount to any struggle, which caused him to start the attack earlier than planned. His good intentions leading to Roses escape, was not something Felix expected, and he was now anxious to find the hideout and save the terrified girl.
“Follow me” Felix said, as he quickly moved towards the hideout. The group consisting of Anders, Sonya, Felix and two others moved without hesitation as they were all worried for the girl, but suddenly on of the unnamed two stopped and looked at a tree with a fresh-looking burn mark. “Everyone stop, there was a battle here” a tall woman, even slimmer than Felix, said, causing the party to halt.
“We don’t have time for this, Elena!” exclaimed Felix, being worried for the girl.
The tall woman replied calmly to Felix. “Yeah, but this burn mark is clearly new, and I can sense slight residue of magic being used here. The girl must be a novice magician and tried to escape from the bandits. No one else has been in this area for weeks besides her and the bandits, and we know none of them possessed magic.”
“The girl did not try to escape, she succeeded.” An identical tall woman continued, standing beside Elena.
“Where did she go Elisa?” Anders asked.
“… Towards the Shadow Valley” Elisa replied, causing the entire party to become afraid for the worst.
The entire party ran, with a speed incomparable to when Rose or the bandits ran, and they quickly got to edge of the forest before stopping.’
“Shit” Felix loudly shouted.
“Why did she have to go in there?” Anders said with grief and sorrow in his eyes.
“We can enter a short distance into the forest without getting lost” one of the twins Elena or Elisa said, both having deep frowns showing the discomfort from being near this place.
“Elena and Elisa, you two will enter, but keep within eyesight of us. We can’t afford to actually enter the forest.” Anders commanded.
The twins entered and speedily searched the edge of the forest. For someone unacquainted it would seem strange to search the edge of a forest when Rose and the bandits clearly just ran straight into the it, but the Shadow Valley has the odd but dangerous feature of confusing the mind of those who enter it. When people were investigating the forest ages ago, there had been multiple sightings of those who entered still being at the edge of the forest for days, with no way of escaping despite being perhaps only a few metres from leaving the dreadful forest.
It did not take long for Elena and Elisa to return, both holding a man each, Rose would recognise them as the bandits chasing her. Neither Elena or Elisa saw any sign of Rose.
“Let’s wake these bastards up and see If they know anything of use.” Felix growled, clearly furious that they only found the ones responsible for this mess and not the victim they wanted to save.
…
…
“Wake up!” someone shouted.
“Uhg…what happened?” said the bandit with the burnt shoulder.
“You entered the forest, why?” Sonya asked, not using magic this time but simply taking advantage of the man grogginess from waking up.
“W- we were chasing that girl… that girl… that bitch who fired a fireball at me!” the man said, becoming angrier the more his mind cleared.
“And did you see the girl after entering the forest?” Sonya asked while keeping a straight face not showing the disgust she felt from hearing the man talk.
“Uhm, no … it was strange, we saw her enter… but as soon as we ourselves entered there was nothing. Only dark trees everywhere we looked. We couldn’t even find our way back to get the boss.” The man spoke, easily illustrating why the Shadow Valley was so dangerous to enter.
“Oh, that a shame. Let me help you meet your boss!” Felix said, interrupting anything Sonya was going to say, and then quickly cut the mans throat ending his life.
“We could have gotten more out of him.” Sonya said disapprovingly.
Felix didn’t respond other than clenching his left hand, holding the guilt inside.
The other bandit showed no signs of waking up, so Anders decided to kill him too, essentially finishing the original quest they were working on, removing the bandits from the Chain road.
“Don’t blame yourself Felix, there was no way of knowing that it would turn out this way. Now let’s leave, there is nothing we can do for her since she entered the forest.” Anders said.
The group was silent for a while before Felix finally answered with a heavy sigh: “Yeah, you’re right. Let’s go home.”
And so, the adventures left Shadow Valley and started the journey back towards the capitol, unaware that the girl they failed to save was moving deeper and deeper towards the centre of the Shadow Valley, a place no human has gone before.