Anna and the others were long gone now and I remained standing in front of cave waiting for the wraiths to come out and greet me.
Ever since I had been given this mark my body and soul has felt cold like there was no life flowing through me.
It was only when I hugged my sister that I felt warm again but that quickly faded. Now after my fight with that wraith O felt that warmth again, it faded after I killed it but there were plenty more wraiths to help warm me up.
One by one the rocks that trapped the wraiths disappeared as they dug themselves out.
After they finally removed the last of the rubble on their way they exited the cave one by one all wiring until the last one came out.
There were about twenty of them and they all looked confused as they stared at me. They seemed to be able to sense the mark and were wondering what I was doing here when I already had the mark.
They looked around checking their surroundings only finding the remains of one of them that had rushed ahead of the others eager to start the hunt.
Getting tired of waiting for one of them to make a move a rushed towards the one on the far left and grabbed it by its legs before swinging towards the next one in line.
That sent it flying while the one I grabbed lost its upper body leaving me with only its legs. That sudden attack spurred the rest into action waking them out of there stupor.
I used the legs to help keep the rest of the wraiths at a distance hitting them left and right in face. At first glance it seemed like I was winning but the small cuts that were staring to show up on my body said differently,
Not wanting to further ruin my new clothes I took them off and threw them to the side creating an opening for a wraith to tackle me.
I caught and held its neck under my arm before breaking it. Holding its limp body I started spinning like a helicopter using the dead wraiths body as the blades.
The wraiths seemed like they had weak joints based off of easy it was for their arms and legs to break off.
Proving my theory the wraith that I was using as the blades for my helicopter attack now was missing its arms until the rest of its body went flying separating from its legs.
Getting bored of just popping of their limbs I started bashing in their skulls. The first one was hard to open up as I couldn't focus completely having to deal with the other wraiths and dodge their attacks.
I found the trick to cracking their skulls open by using another wraiths skull. It became a series of me finding other wraiths and grabbing them by their faces and smashing them into other wraiths heads.
The wraiths just kept coming one by one ignoring the death of the other wraiths only focused on eliminating me.
As I held the last of them with my fingers digging into its skull like a bowling ball that cold feeling came back.
Fighting all of these wraiths was fun and exciting but quickly became repetitive and boring.
In the beginning they were scary to fight but now they were just repeating the same moves. They all just kept aiming for the vital making their moves predictable and boring.
I was feeling warmed up when I started fighting them but towards the end that same cold feeling came back.
With all the wraiths dead I was left there standing alone amongst the dead bodies. With no one left fight I grabbed my clothes and started walking back to the camp to meet up with Anna and the others.
They were relieved to see me but that slowly changed to fear when they could see the blood on me.
It wasn't just blood that covered me but bits of bone and flesh that acted like gum in my hair.
Not wanting to go any further with me looking like I had just come off a hurry movie set Ann sat me down and started cleaning me.
We sat there in silence as she picked out the pieces of bones and flesh out of my hair, Lloyd and Arild were off getting more water to wash me with.
"Why did you do that?" Anna questioned me about my decision to stay and fight all the wraiths by myself.
I opened my mouth to respond to her but failed to voice my reason because I didn't know why I chose to stay and fight.
While I enjoyed a good fight the fight with the wraiths was less like a fight and more like a butchering. Never mind how I was able to overpower those things why did it feel like so much fun.
When they were putting up a fight and challenging me I felt so thrilled like I had just gotten off a rollercoaster and wanted to get right back on.
And just like a rollercoaster I started to get tired of it as I kept repeating the same thing hopping for something different to happen.
Then there was the cold, I felt so heated up fighting the wraiths like I was back in one of my matches. Then like one of my matches after it was done all I was left with was an empty cage and no one to fight me.
"Because it was fun" I muttered out as I finally answered Anna's question. Even thinking about that fight now my body started heating up aching for the next fight.
As I tangled with this storm of emotions I was feeling Anna kept looking at me with concern.
How could she not, the likelihood of me dying back there to the wraiths was very high and were it not for this mysterious strength that leveled the planting field against them then I would have definitely died.
Lloyd and Arild shortly returned with the water allowing Anna to finish up cleaning me.
After I was all cleaned up we settled in for the night and went to sleep so we could finally head deeper into the forest after all the side quests.
I was the first to wake up the next morning so I started by making a fire and cooked breakfast for everyone.
My mind was preoccupied with only thoughts of my fight with the wraiths and the excitement I felt yesterday.
I kept thinking about the fight because right now I wasn't feeling much of anything. I wasn't angry, tired, happy, or sad. If anything I was now just plagued by a sense of boredom.
Not wanting to sit around and wait anymore I woke up the others and rushed them to finish eating quickly so we could get this show on the road.
Now we were back at the barrier where the loop started, we looked around expecting something to be different but found nothing.
We stared at Arild skeptically thinking that he lied and tricked us once again. But even after we walked through the barrier and kept walking we didn't loop back to the starting point.
Now semi sure that the pseudo marks were working we continued on through the forest.
When we first set off before we realized we needed pseudo marks we were tense but still able to hold a conversation to ease the tension.
Now everyone was quiet, I tried talking to Lloyd and Anna but they only gave me simple response not really engaging in a conversation with me.
That left only Arild to talk to but I was still angry with him for keeping such vital information from us.
If he had just told us everything at the start before we set off then we could have saved so much trouble but Arild had decided that such information was unnecessary.
With the group now shrouded in an uneasy silence we kept trekking through the forest. I expected there to be some differences between the inner circle compared to the outer circle but the only noticeable difference was that the trees were older here in the inner circle.
That made me question how old the first was but since I was still angry with Arild I was left to ponder the answer on my own.
This uncomfortable air persisted for the next three days as we passed barrier after barrier. You could tell that we were passsing barriers because each one we passed the tress got older and older.
It wasn't a subtle change but a sharp and sudden one. They would visibly jump up from age as we passed the barriers.
We kept passing the barriers expecting to see someone from Arilds village at some point but nothing but more trees came into our view as we kept going.
Arild was starting to lose it as he kept his head on a swivel looking everywhere for a sign of his village. He tried to find a landmark that would be familiar to him but to no avail.
Eventually he broke of from us and started searching the forest for his village desperate to see his family again.
All he found was a village that seemed as if it had been swallowed by the forest.