Entrance of Turia
The guards were on high alert, waiting for any of the scouts to arrive any time soon. The person in charge of the north entrance was getting anxious. Being the one responsible for anything out of the ordinary, she was starting to think that things may have gone awry.
Every single soldier, guard and mercenary in the city have already been warned about the dangers of leaving the city as of now. They all were subjected to a lot of pressure, being the guards of one of the only two entrances to the city.
The mercenary guild, with the vice-leader of this branch at its center, had been managing everything and sending people to report and gather as much information as possible around the city. Just like the message that has arrived at their north entrance right now.
The man in question arrived running, and only settled in front of her once he was close enough to hear her, trying to catch his breath.
"We have nothing to report, we haven't seen a single monster or human in the last 12 hours since the last of the scouts left. Not even a moving branch or a pebble out of place." The woman in charge of the place tells the sweating man.
The sweat dripping from his forehead doesn't help to disguise his annoying and furious expression.
The people were already tip-toeing around, the last thing they needed was for some of their best trackers and scouts to be lost at the same time on their first outing. There was still about 8 hours till dusk, but they all doubted that anyone would have come by then if they hadn't arrived yet.
The situation was getting worse with every second that passed and they all had no idea of what was unfolding inside the thick forest.
Leo
Finishing my dinner, I got back to cycling my qi. For my plan to work, I needed superb control of it to detect my surroundings, my real surroundings, and not this fake environment that obscures my senses.
It isn't long before night comes and I am forced to practice in the dark. It's not like it matters as I need to figure out how to navigate the forest without my vision, but I am forced to ask Bruma to keep watch in the meantime.
It has been safe and calm till now, but all of that could be part of the same illusion that keeps me from leaving this place.I could be ambushed by that army of skeletons any time soon.
'Movement' I think to myself as I sense the ground shake.
'Are those guys making the move again?'
I hide my presence with a thick coat of qi, and do the same for Bruma, who I hold close to my chest to minimize the area that I need to cover. The barrier of my own energy makes me feel as if I were inside a bubble in the middle of the ocean, and the feeling only grows as the wave of monsters swarm my camping spot and I watch them all stomp everything on their way as they march.
They create a path of broken trees and dead grass, using the large size of most of them to level the whole forest as they go. Leaving no place to hide.
Thankfully, I was hiding on one of the few trees lucky enough to survive the first stampede, but I am sure that they will come back soon enough.
Preventively making my move, I start searching for a new place to hide from the next wave.
Night falls down, and after some hours or exchanging locations, I get caught up again. Each attempt at stomping me from the monsters gets more chaotic and hard to avoid. There are no more places to hide in the nearby area already, everything inside a big radius has been leveled by their march.
One may think that being on a plain would help me to escape the illusion that I am caught in, but far from the truth, it only confuses me more than before. My senses are being deceived and the more I look ahead the more that my head hurts.
After being found, I am forced to yet again run for my life, barely escaping their chase as I repeat the maneuver that I pulled off before, digging below the rubble once more.
Done with this game of cat and mouse, I gather qi on an orb. For a while I manage to hide myself as the amount of energy that I gather increases. Once the orb is filled to the brim, I try to do the same that I did with the necromancer to break the barrier in one last attempt to physically/magically get rid of whatever is keeping me inside.
I walk to what seems to be the edge of what's keeping me here, and instead of continuing and getting sent back to the starting line, I bring forth the orb. It is nowhere near an insane amount, but should be enough to test if I can damage the spell cast around me.
Condensing the energy on a thin and powerful beam of energy, I send it flying in the direction of the city, trying to hit whatever is stopping me from leaving. Unfortunately, it goes in a straight line, passing through the edge of the zone where I am always sent back and beyond.
With no other idea or plan on how to disrupt the damn thing, I keep moving, setting up shelters where I hide inside qi barriers till each wave of monsters hits. Each time having more difficulties to do so.
I train my qi detection area as much as I can in between hordes, slowly getting better at it.
'Looking at the starry sky, it's already been a whole day.' I think while looking at the moon.
It shines brightly, and it looks just the same as it did the moon on Earth, giving me some sense of familiarity in these hard times.
There are a lot more stars in the sky than what I am used to, but that may be related to the way less light pollution there is on this planet.
Losing myself in the darkness of the night for a while and indulging in the calmness it gives me, I can't help but remember how sudden everything was before coming here. Every second roaming, scavenging, fighting… surviving.
I was even forced to leave the moment I found my sister.
'Huh' I sigh as I get back to training.
'I need a lot more information to be able to make it back home, and I need to start by leaving this accursed place. This planet has been related to mana and a lot of different species for thousands of years, if they could discover a way to Earth, why wouldn't I?"
I start to see some hope.
After a few waves of monsters and gods know how many hours, I start to get the hang of it while the sun peeks through the dark, but it wouldn't be till another one of these long days goes by that I can start to make sense of the living things around me somewhat.
Nearly two days in on my scouting mission and here I am.
It's possible for me now to leave this place if I am careful, but I need to wait for the next stampede of the skeletal monsters to go by to try my luck. After nearly 48 hours on my own here, always on alert, and not even eating for more than 24 hours, I need to succeed on my first try.
Tired, hungry and still all dirty and with my clothes torn up from the first fight I had on the first day with the monsters, I await their next attack. I lay in my shelter under the rubble, using what's left of what once were trees to cover me from sight and using qi to hide from everything else.
Time seems to go by slower as I stay put, waiting for their turn to show up, but they finally come, rushing about once more and smashing the already destroyed to an even worse state. I hold up and pray to not get discovered as a couple hundred of them pass through the area.
Only after making sure that they really left do I leave my hideout, looking for the edge of the spell that messes with my senses. I inch my way towards it and once I am close I slow down even more, advancing step by step, and making sure to do a 180 degree on the direction that I am going with my qi before committing, always looking for living beings.
If the goal of the spell is to avoid people getting in and out, or at least avoiding an information leak, it should let the monsters leave the area too. It wouldn't make sense otherwise if they were going to stomp and smash everything to smithereens around the place they want to hide.
With that in mind, I move forward, not getting any readings of trees, animals or anything for that matter. My head starts to hurt, more at least, after the continued stress.
Nonetheless, I push close to the edge and finally get some readings. They are faint, but I can feel some life in front of me, so I move, not stopping with the scans at all, always assuring myself that I was going in the right direction before advancing.
Halfway there, something tells me to turn around. It's like an impulse, a raw feeling or sensation, telling me ever so subtly to change direction. Like someone pulling the string behind me one step at a time. First is a subtle 5º, then comes another one, and another, and another, and in no time I am nearly leaving the perimeter of the spell.
Shaking my head and doing my best to push those subtle suggestions out of my mind, I try again.
'There!' After doing a couple of circles guided by those weird suggestions, I finally caught a big enough reading to clearly set the hints aside and follow a clear path. It could be a rabbit, it could be a mole or it could be an ant, it could even be a weird animal that I have yet to see the size of a mosquito, but the only thing that matters is that it has enough life force to act as a beacon to guide me outside this trap.
Pushing through the last tries of the unknown foe to keep me inside, I get out of range of its trap.
It feels as if I just left a cocoon that is tightly wrapped around me. It acted as a prison, whispering in my ear to not leave. Now that I am outside though, it acts the other way round, it gives an ominous vibe that's telling me to leave and don't get closer. And that's exactly what I was planning to do!
Not wasting time, I break out on a sprint, my destination Turia, where the mercenary guild should be awaiting the news that me and the rest of the scouts should have brought more than 24 hours ago.