"After I pressed the button, I panicked," Szedra confessed, her voice laced with anxiety. "I had no clue how to deactivate it, and I feared it would get you guys killed. I pressed it again within seconds, hoping it would stop." A sense of relief washed over her as she relived that pivotal moment.
Tess nodded in acknowledgment. "I heard the alarm, and it did make me stop," she confirmed, recalling the urgency that gripped her in that instant.
"It worked," Lanse exclaimed, his gaze lifting from the intense scrutiny of the ground.
Zack chimed in, sharing his experience. "It wasn't the sound that made me stop, but the vibration," he revealed. "The alarm seemed low, perhaps they didn't hear it."
A surge of anger curled the corner of Lanse's mouth. "It doesn't matter anymore; they already knew we were there. I was stupid to believe they were gone."
Zino's hand instinctively rose to cover her mouth, her eyes widening. "I had to cover my mouth and nose to prevent any sound from coming out ," she confessed, her voice muffled. "That's when I noticed the surroundings getting darker."
Zack recalled the eerie phenomenon. "Black fog swirled around like miniature tornadoes," he described, his disbelief palpable. "If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it."
Tess, too, remembered witnessing the unsettling scene through the leaves. "When the smoke faded, the other two were now there," she recounted, her voice tinged with a shiver of unease.
"No, three," Zack interjected, correcting her. "There was also the one with bandages wrapped around it. It felt like a never-ending nightmare, growing more terrifying with each passing moment."
Tess turned to Szedra for confirmation. "That new one, the bandaged figure, emerged from the hooded one's back, right?" she asked, seeking clarification.
"You're correct," Szedra affirmed, confirming Tess's observation. "It's the same entity that devoured Zino's sword."
Lanse's mind raced ahead, piecing together their grim reality. "He wanted us to wander to the forest in hope and play with our heads, as he slaughtered us one by one," he concluded, his tone laced with a mix of anger and resignation.
Zack shook his head, still shaken by the memory. "When I heard that voice again, I found myself stranded in the middle of a branch, unable to take my next leap. I froze from the shock."
Tess added, her voice filled with a mix of fear and determination. "I was too afraid to even blink. My heart beat slowly even though I was in a panic. It was as if it too knew my life depended on being silent."
"We were back at square one, but in an even worse predicament," Lanse noted, the weight of their circumstances sinking in. "With the leaves and countless branches, we wouldn't be able to see them coming."
"Yeah," Tess agreed, a touch of exasperation in her voice. "Whose brilliant idea was it to traverse through the branches anyway?"
Lanse failed to grasp her point, for even if they had chosen to travel on the ground, they would have found themselves in the same perilous situation. The harsh reality was that their chances of survival seemed bleak.
The events that unfolded next played out like a haunting reel in their minds, each moment etched with fear and uncertainty.
"We know you're all here," thundered a chorus of deep voices, their synchronized tones reverberating through the air.
The slender figure, now separate from himself, still he referred to himself as 'we.' How many entities inhabited that being? Tess couldn't fathom. The regenerated hand hinted at his immortality, impervious to pain—a trait she envied, reminiscent of the Sybervirians. At least he didn't seem intent on devouring them alive, which offered a slight reprieve.
However, the one shrouded in bandages, with a skeletal frame, appeared truly alien. It was the entity that had emerged from the hooded figure's back, and its presence sent shivers down Tess's spine.
The tips of its long, razor-sharp arms grazed the ground, its sinister grin stretching wide alongside piercing green eyes. Unlike the others, this one seemed capable of eating them alive, evoking an instinctive fear.
The sound of faint tears resonated as Tess's spiked boots tore into the branch beneath her feet, widening her eyes in terror. The strain caused the branch to splinter closer to its breaking point, the echoing crackle filling the air.
Lanse's notion was confirmed by the next words that escaped their enemy's lips. "Don't worry, we'll make this quick. We know you're in excruciating pain, and death is your only escape. Who wants to go first?" His sinister proposition hung heavily in the air, freezing their hearts with dread.
"Is that when it happened?" Zack's voice trembled with uncertainty.
Szedra shrugged, her gaze cast downward. "I pressed my fingers into my ears until blood dripped down my hands. I didn't hear anything."
Tess, momentarily diverting her mind from the disturbing image, pondered what unfolded next. A strange blankness occupied her thoughts. She looked up, hoping the others would fill in the gaps and trigger her memory.
To her surprise, all four of them had their eyes fixed on her, their stares as eerie as before.
"That's when you died," Lanse exclaimed, his eyes wide with disbelief.
"She fell," Zack interjected, attempting to correct him.
Zino straightened her back, assuming an upright position. "No, she was attacked."
Their words washed over Tess like a surreal wave, watching them converse as if she were no longer present.
"Is that what happened?" Zack mused, his hand resting under his chin. "It all happened so quickly; I couldn't see."
"Regardless of the specifics, you should have been dead," Lanse declared, his voice tinged with accusation.
Those words pierced Tess like a dagger, causing her to blink twice before locking eyes with Lanse. He had uttered them callously, as if launching a personal attack. He continued describing the events with an unsettling detachment, as if his words held no weight or consequence.
"There was a sound like a bark breaking. It's like the sound after chopping a tree halfway through with an ax and then pushing it to continue breaking on its own. That slow snapping of each fiber until it fell. Then I heard something hit the ground."
Lanse's words painted a vivid picture in Tess's mind, speaking with much narrative as if from the fictional saga he always read.
"Blood cascaded from the side of your head, forming a crimson pool on the vibrant green grass," Lanse recounted, his voice tinged with a haunting tone.
Tess instinctively covered her mouth with a trembling hand. Was he describing her? When did this horrifying event take place?
"Your pale eyes remained wide open, fixed on something. The absence of movement confirmed your lifeless state."
Tess's hand moved to graze her neck, a sudden irritation causing her skin to prickle and a wave of weakness to wash over her. Lanse pressed on, propelled by the terror etched on Tess's face. "The impact sounded like a fall from a twenty-foot height. Blood sprayed, objects shattered—"
"Me, dead?" Tess uttered, her voice laced with disbelief.
The others stared at her, their expressions mirroring her incredulity, for she stood alive and conversed with them in that very moment. Their memories corroborated the event, indicating that something was amiss and in need of explanation.
Tess blinked, and in her mind's eye, two fiery eyes appeared beneath the hood's darkness. Through them, she glimpsed a blazing furnace, where the anguished cries of countless souls resounded. Darkness engulfed her senses, only to be punctuated by flickering light seeping through the green leaves.
Suddenly, the bandaged entity's head materialized before her, its elongated, spiked arms swiftly moving from an 'X' formation, poised to strike her down. Red splatters stained its bandages, and the world tilted, tilting until the ground rushed up to meet her face, plunging her into oblivion.
Gasping for breath, Tess snapped back to reality, her eyes fluttering open to reveal her teammates and the sterile confines of the infirmary. Her hand instinctively reached for her itchy neck, while her rapid breathing and furrowed brow betrayed her distress.
"Without you, teleportation was impossible," Lanse asserted. His hands clenched into fists, pounding against his thighs in a furious display. "Those damn telecoms! The moment I snatched that fragment, I could have gotten the hell out of there. What kind of flipping, imbecile, moron designs a teleportation device that can't be used when you most need it? Regrouping to teleport? A load of bullcrap!"
As his fury subsided, Lanse took deep breaths, the veins at the sides of his neck bulging against his skin. The team remained silent, stunned by the intensity of his anger. It was a side of him they had never witnessed before.
"That moment was when the slaughter started," he concluded, his voice heavy with the weight of the memory.