I watched the small group slowly get smaller and smaller, moving towards the shadow on the edge of the horizon. There was something about it that drew my gaze to it, making me not want to look away. But with some effort, I did, and looked back at the road leading into the forest. There seemed to be a hole in reality stuck within the trees, the road leading directly into it. The trees and foliage surrounding it were dense, almost unnaturally so. It was a foreboding sight, to say the least, and something I wasn't particularly inclined to waltz into. I remained seated on my rock, looking down at my feet and hands, mind blank.
I sat there for a while, replaying the events of the day in my head. All the fighting, all the running; all the anxiety, all the stress. I realized that I wasn't even sure if it was still the same day, as my mind had been preoccupied with far more important things than keeping track of time. I was tired, but not especially so. My eyes almost seemed to refuse to close, wanting me to keep staring and thinking.
The previous interaction played through my mind a few times. I continued to find the arrogance the group had displayed humorous, especially considering I felt no threat from them. I was sure that fighting them would be a lost cause, but I refused to believe the difference between us was too great. They had better equipment, something I only noticed in hindsight, but for some reason I felt like they wouldn't be able to use it to its fullest. Then again, my standard of reference was the Mayor, someone who seemed to embody the word "abnormal".
I wondered why I hadn't warned them about the two Anglers, nor told them about the Mayor and his desire to eliminate potential distractions. Perhaps there was a bit of malicious intent behind it, a subconscious desire to see them humiliated, just as they had tried to humiliate me. But the interaction didn't last very long, and they were eager to leave, so I convinced myself that I would've told them had I had more time. There was a part of me that felt bad about it, as any harm that would now come to them could be considered my fault, but it was water under the bridge at this point. Nothing I could do would change the past, so I pushed the matter out of my mind.
At some point, I decided to lay out my weapons before me. The signs of battle were obvious on all of them. The head of the mace was chipped and dented, the handle slightly bent. The sword was ever so slightly twisted, with most of the edge being either chipped or dulled. The gun naturally fared the best, having been barely used. Looking at these things, I began to wonder how I had even made it as far as I had. They looked about to break, like any random beast could prove one too many for them. I sighed, knowing there wasn't anything I could do about it. Of course, if I didn't have to fight, it wouldn't be an issue, but for some reason this possibility didn't seem very likely to me.
I sat there, my eyes moving between my weapons, my hands, the shadow of the town looming in the distance, and the deafeningly silent forest beside me. I was wrought with indecision. I could keep moving forward, putting everything behind me, the state of my weapons becoming a non-issue. I could go back, back into what could very well be my death with my damaged weapons. Neither felt like a good option, so I sat there, clinging to my rock. My eyes continued shifting between the two ends of the road, which only served to worsen my indecision.
Taking a deep breath, I decided to look up. I had refrained from looking at the sky for the past who-knows how long, not wanting to get distracted, but now it didn't matter. Above me, the iridescent sky met with a wall of clouds in what felt like a near perfect line. Looking at this, I finally realized that I was at the very edge of whatever sort of strange influence the beast wave had. Just a few steps into the forest and I would be completely out of it, and it would be fully behind me. This did not help my indecision.
As I stared at the sky, my mind split between the two options, a feeling of anxiety began building in me. I began to worry over something unknown. I looked to the forest once again, and a feeling of fear began to mix in with the anxiety, while looking at the town off in the distance made the anxiety grow worse. The time had come for me to make a decision and I wasn't yet ready. I had no way of knowing what outcome was in store for me on either end of the road.
But thinking of this made me realize that there was some certainty at one end. I could see the town, and I knew a fight awaited me. It would likely be a hard fight, and it could very well be a fight I wouldn't survive, but I would at least go down fighting. It was a respectable ending. The road into the forest, on the other hand, seemed to simply disappear. I had no way of knowing what awaited me within the darkness, nor what I would be walking into on the other side of it. But what I did know was that if I decided to walk that path, I would be abandoning the town, abandoning the Mayor, and abandoning that strange person and the arrogant bunch that dragged him around. I knew, somewhere deep inside me, that this wasn't true, that the preservation of my own life should come first, that our fates were in no way entwined, but for some reason I couldn't shake the feeling of abandonment and my hatred of it.
So I finally made my decision and picked up my weapons, returning them to their places. I took one last look into the gaping maw of the forest before setting off back towards the town. I started off walking, which slowly turned into a jog and then into a run. The anxiety I felt looking at the town, the shadow blanketing the horizon like an ancient monster, hadn't gone away, in fact growing worse the closer I got. But there was a strange feeling mixed in with it, like this was what I was supposed to be doing. No matter how much I didn't want to face this problem, no matter how much I wanted to turn and run the other way, no good would come of it. In one way or another, I had become wrapped up in this thing, and I needed to see it to its conclusion.
For some reason, it felt as though I had made a very important choice. It felt like I was choosing to do something I had never done before, something I had always avoided before this point, but I knew this to not be true. At least, that's what I believed. Thinking of it more, I realized that I wasn't sure if I had ever tackled something like this head-on before. Whenever I was faced with an immense struggle, I felt as though I had always run or shifted the responsibility onto someone else.
Dealing with a small fight was one thing, something I had done before and something I had full confidence in being able to recreate, but not every fight was like that, this one included. It was natural, I think, to feel worried, fearful even, when faced with something you don't know if you'll be able to handle. But it was a good anxiety, something born for a clear reason, and something that would go away once that reason similarly faded. It was a fear that could be easily faced with great difficulty.
At some point in my mad dash towards the town, my mind went blank and all I did was run. There was nothing more I could do to prepare myself. Whatever was going to come would come, and I would face it as it did. I resolved myself to this, and as the town grew larger and larger in my eyes, the anxiety I felt finally began to fade.
I soon found myself just outside the town again, where the dirt road met the cobbled streets. I didn't stop running, soon reentering the place I had only recently left, but now with a newfound resolve, the determination to see this to the end, whatever that may be.