The scent of fresh grass along with the itches it brought with it woke me up from my slumber. I got up on my knees so I could take in my surroundings only to clutch my head as a painful headache hammered away at my innocent skull. Eventually when the thumping in my head finally lowered, I took a look at my surroundings and saw that I was in a beautiful meadow. I looked around me and noticed a mountain in the distance. It looked familiar, almost like the same one that contained the dungeons, but before the mountain lay an enormous forest thick with vegetation and so dark I could not peer into it.
I looked around for any more clues of where I was meant to go but everything else other than that was shrouded in a thick mist. At the peak of the mountain, a single purple flare rose up to the sky. 'Get to the top of the mountain and your test ends. This is the Royal path for in the forest, trials await you,' the Queen's voice echoed in my head.
"But why should I have to go through this? I didn't sign up for this," I screamed.
'There is no way out of the situation you are in except to move forward,' she said. This was insane, did they treat everyone who passed through their land the exact same way.
"What if I am not the one you are looking for? What if I only came here by mistake and this is all a misunderstanding?" I yelled yet again at nothing in particular. The queen was nowhere in sight and yet I could hear her voice in my head as clear as day.
"Our magic would never bring an intruder to our land unless they were supposed to be here. Besides, you already proved yourself to me. by going through this test, you will prove to everyone in Serif that you are without a doubt the one we've been looking for," she said.
"Who have you been looking for?" I asked.
"All of that will be revealed within the trial. If you are indeed deemed worthy, you will come out of this trial with all the answers you need," she said.
That being said, I began my short walk to the entrance of the forest. At the very moment when I was about to go into the forest, I found a beast, no this was a monster. One that reminded me of the one and only Cerberus. The only problem was that this three headed beast did not merely have the heads of dogs, they were lions. 'That does not look majestic at all,' I thought. A lion was supposed to be ferocious in its own right while it still had one head. Having three heads came across me as sad and undermining to the king of beasts.
There was not much need to panic as the beast was bound from neck to toe in chains. The chains had been cutting into its fur and had even begun to draw blood from the cuts. That was not what made this situation scary though, the scary bit of the situation was what it had its six eyes on. High above it, someone was unconscious dangling by a rope. It was like he was meant to be a sacrifice to the great beast. One of the heads of the beasts turned to me and began snarling. Saliva oozed out of its mouth like I was also on the menu.
What was I supposed to do about that situation? I tiptoed around the monster keeping my distance while its eyes followed me. the other two heads stayed fixed looking up at the dangling person. I was about to turn and run when I recognised the person who was dangling. It was the boy from earlier. The one who had watched over me as I slept in the dungeon. I knew I couldn't let him go and that whatever sick joke this was supposed to be, I was supposed to save him. At least I knew one thing, I couldn't let him get eaten. I looked for a way to get him from the tree without him falling into range of the beast, but there was none. He had been tied to a week branch that was already bent in a way that showed it was at its limit. And to make matters worse, the tree was too wide and lacked a single foothold upon which I could climb up to get him. It was like there was nothing I could do to help him without involving the lion. The easiest way to get was clear as day, but there was no way it was possible. I could simply climb upon the lion's back if it stood and that would get me close enough to untie him. But the lion could not stand due to all its chains and even if I freed it, there was not going to be a way I wouldn't end up on the menu.
Although the situation would have been different if the lion wasn't in the mood to eat me or kill me at the very least. 'How am I supposed to tame the lion so it can help me get him down,' I thought right before a rapid movement startled me causing me to leap backwards. I looked to my right just in time to see a deer disappear through the trees. The only problem was that I was still going up and backwards. I turned around to brace myself only to collide face first into the trunk of a thick tree. I quickly found my balance and stood on one of the branches.
I took one look at the ground and realised something was off with this place. I was several metres in the air. Looking back at the kid who was dangling by the rope I noticed I could jump to him. Considering the leap I had just made, it was safe to assume I could easily get the kid to get him away from there without actually having to deal with the three-headed lion. I looked back at the lion and decided this was the course of action. In one perfectly calculated jump, I grabbed the kid and even snapped the branch he was dangling on in the process.
The beast began struggling against the chains whilst it roared at me for taking the meal it knew was going to fall into its jaws any time soon. I was happy it was bound in chains, but the more it struggled, the more the chains dug deeper into its hide. This wasn't going to end well for it, but this didn't seem to bother it. The only reason any creature would be that suicidal was if the hunger it felt cut even deeper than the chains that bound it. It must have been starved for a very long time for it to struggle this much. The longer I watched it mutilate itself, the harder it became to watch. I made up my mind and dropped the kid a safe distance from the lion and ran in the direction I saw the deer running in.
Thankfully my hunch was right, my abilities were enhanced and I think I might have imagined it, but it felt like I kept getting even faster the more I pushed myself. Soon enough I had dealt a blow to the deer's side and came rushing back to the lion. It had managed to loosen the chains now, but at the expense of its golden coat which was now stained in blood from the struggle. The lion stopped struggling when it saw me and what I had returned with. "Easy there," I cooed instinctively, carefully placing the deer right beside the closest head and backing away from the creature. The beast looked at me then back at the deer before sniffing as though it was suspecting some impurities. If I had to guess, I would say one deer was not enough for it.
"You're perfectly right. One deer will not do the trick," a deep voice rumbled through my mind. I heard the sudden rustling of leaves that was similar to when I saw the first deer and was upon the poor creature in no time. Soon enough the lion had gobbled up three deer with ease each by a different head. I wonder if removing the chains would help it or just get me killed.
"Why don't you try and find out?" the deep voice went again and this time I recognised it from the lion or one of its heads perhaps the middle one that was currently staring at me intently, "so you can hear me."
"Isn't it normal for you to speak with others?" I asked.
"No, certainly not. Only a royal can hear my voice," the voice went again.
"That doesn't make sense. I'm not a royal," I said.
"And yet you stand before me and show mercy rather than kill me when you almost witnessed me kill one of your own," it said.
"I don't follow," I said.
"A quality that can only be found in a royal. You treat everything equal as long as they deserve it," it said.
"No I still mean I am not a noble," I said.
"What's your name, youngling?" it said.
"Kevin Johnson," I said. The two other heads that had set about licking the wounds on the body of the beast that they could get to stopped and all of them turned to.
"So you know of Jekyll," a different voice now spoke, seemingly the head on the right, "Jekyll Johnson."
In that moment, I realised I had never thought about it clearly, but why the hell would the first Siege be named Johnson. It had always come as a coincidence to me, but now as I stood here beyond this beast I wondered. "Yes, I know of him. What about him?" I asked.
"This is his homeland, he was forced to flee from here eight hundred years ago by a great evil, and we have long awaited his return or the return of a royal just as he was," the beast said.
"What are you trying to say? Okay, I know what you are trying to say, but it's not true. It can't be, there's no proof of it," I tried denying.
"I am speaking to you right now. I have only spoken to three other people in my entire lifetime, the Queen, the Princess and Jekyll himself," the revelation was mind blowing. I got dizzy with vertigo prompting me to take a seat and digest the information I had just been given.