This was all thanks to Yuan.
Her words inspired Liya in more ways than any of them could ever understand. All her life, Aaliyah has only been told she could do nothing and would die being nothing. The nuns had never been nice with their words, nor their actions to her, and gradually their ways had gotten stuck inside her head and Aaliyah had believed all they had said.
'If you throw your clothes on the floor and leave it there, no matter how beautiful it is, I'm gonna take it as a rag and start stepping on it. But even if it is the most hideous cloth ever and you fold it up and keep it nicely, I would think it is very precious and beautiful,'
That was the most beautiful statement she'd ever heard, and for the very first time, Aaliyah had started to believe more in herself and her heart.
And that had unlocked something within her. Nothing really surprised her anymore after she had defeated the nightwalker, so it wasn't so mind-blowing that she was standing her ground and fighting against the undead.
She had snatched up one of their swords to defend herself against their attacks. Her eyes could catch their Inhumane movements, but she didn't know how to use a sword and that had been her only downfall. There were several deep cuts all over her body, especially her arms and back.
She was dripping with blood...and was exhausted.
But, she kept moving. Something told her she would soon find herself out of this forest, and that pushed her thoroughly to exert herself and her abilities even more.
And even though she kept breaking them, they just kept coming. If only she could get a second of rest, but there was no opening.
Another slice on her back, and she gritted her teeth to keep from screaming from pain just another sword came down on her, but she parred with her own and flung her leg at the undead, kicking it hard on the ribs.
Their bones were incredibly hard, and every kick sent a growing pain up her legs, weakening her whole foot.
If there was someone watching from a distance, he probably wouldn't be able to see anything due to how fast they were all moving.
Aaliyah fought back with everything she could pour out, hitting them back just as fast and just as hard. She had no plans of getting herself killed here!
It took a long while, a lot of battle screams and broken bones before she was able to defeat every one of them. She stood in the middle of piles of bones scattered around her, a few forming a small hill.
Then, she fell on her knees and the sword slipped from her grasp.
When she tried to look around again, blurry vision met her sight and she coughed out what she was very sure had to be blood.
She was weak to the very brim and collapsed to the ground staring at the sky again.
She was incredibly thirsty. She felt like all the water in her body had been exhausted completely. Weakness had never been this bad for her. She was so weak she couldn't even feel the pain coming from every part of her, including her face where a deep cut sat on her cheeks.
Her throat was so itchy and dry. She couldn't even find the strength to move her tongue and scratch it.
Goodness, what was the meaning of all this?
If this was actually a nightmare, she hoped to awaken from it soon.
The cold hit her once again, and she shivered. It didn't help that her eyes were beginning to close again, but she couldn't afford for that to happen right now. The cold sipped into her foot, and she managed to move her toes and felt the emptiness and the leaves she had used to cover them up.
She felt jittery. She felt alone... just lying in the middle of bones.
Aaliyah could not keep her eyes open for very long. A little...rest wouldn't kill her, right?
Light trembles of the earth had her instantly opening her eyes, and she sat up to see the pile of bones moving on their own. Gripping the sword again, she stood up and stared all around her as the bones rushed forward and started to form what looked like a gigantic undead.
The sword she hoped would help ended her wriggling out of her grasp and flew up to form part of the giant skeleton that had just finished forming, with its large sockets staring directly at her.
"Now I've seen everything," Aaliyah mouthed to herself in a daze, her jaw almost touching the ground.
The screeching of its ginormous set of teeth brought notorious pain to her ear, and she pressed her palms over them before they started to bleed. Her head felt as if it had plummeted down the earth as the sound traveled up them, and every nerve in her body was stuck from the nerve-wracking noise, making her shudder and fall.
The noise refused to stop, worsening the torture that had agonized body had to go through.
She didn't see when it raised a leg until she felt like a mountain had crashed into her, sending her body flying through till she collided her small back with a tree, yelping from the torturous pang that filled her back, right before the tree snapped from where she had collided into it and fell to the other side.
The screeching had finally stopped, with Aaliyah's ears bleeding profusely as she coughed out more blood.
From her periphery, she could see the monster coming for her just a few feet away and would probably cover the distance in a second if it was as fast as the little ones.
There was nothing left to do but to get up and fight.
She had survived the two fights... Would she be so lucky in the third? Only one way to find out.
Holding up her fists, she braced herself for whatever was to come. Who knows? Maybe she can punch hard. Oh, who the hell was she kidding? Her wishful thinking was getting too much.
Just as she predicted, the monster was as fast as the little ones. No, even faster.
She only felt the rush of wind on her face, lips slightly parted as the horror of what was about to happen shook her from head to toe.
She was gonna die.
At that moment, something incredibly horrifying happened. Something that could turn out to be the death of her, or what would help with her escape from the beasts that reigned in the forest.
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