A Realm of Shadows (18 page)

Kyra hiked cautiously
through the black wood, crouching beneath the huge thorns, on edge, the gloom
pervasive and the sense of evil oppressive. It was so dark here it felt like night,
the twilight barely able to penetrate the canopy of gnarled branches. Beneath
her feet, the ash soil and gnarled, dead branches made odd crunching noises,
adding to the feeling of death.

Kyra peered into
the thick wood, trying to make sense of this place, unlike any she had ever been.
The trees were entangled with vines, twisting and stretching in every
direction, interlacing the branches, protruding with thorns nearly as large as
she. As she walked, the canopy dropped so low that in some places she nearly
had to duck. The forest seemed too narrow, the branches and thorns creeping
ever closer to the path, scratching her arms.

Kyra heard a
perpetual rattling inside the thicket, the stirring of creatures, and it kept
her on edge. She spotted glowing yellow and red eyes hiding in the blackness,
staring back at her, and she gripped her staff, expecting an attack at any
moment, feeling as if she were walking into the blackest corners of hell.

Kyra hiked and
hiked, her heart pounding, wondering where the path was leading her, when
finally she saw, somewhere up ahead, the faintest glow. Obscured behind the
branches, it was like the glow of a torch, or a fire, so faint, appearing and
disappearing. She felt drawn to it, the first marker she had seen in the gloom.
It encouraged her to keep hiking, to keep following the trail. As she went, her
feet sank into the slimy, soft earth beneath her, made of something like moss, sinking
up to her ankles.

She suddenly
heard a noise and raised her staff and spun to see a black, wraithlike creature
floating in the air. It looked like a ghost, or a demon, all black, with gray
eyes. As it hovered behind her, she jabbed it with her staff, and it made an
awful howling noise before disappearing into the air above her head, winding
its way through the thickets.

Heart pounding, unsettled,
Kyra turned back and continued on her way, winding deeper and deeper into the
wood.  She felt a new feeling beneath her feet, a crunching, and she looked
down to see a trail of bones. She heard a creaking noise, and she looked up at
the trees and was horrified to see, swinging there, the rotting carcasses of
people who had traveled here. Others were impaled on branches, displayed like
trophies. It was like walking through a mausoleum.

Soon, the trail
smoothed out, and Kyra had a sinking feeling. The trail was fresh here,
untouched. It was virgin territory. Clearly, no one else had ever gotten this
far in the wood before. There must, she knew, be a reason.

Kyra proceeded
deeper, heart pounding, until finally she turned a corner and the canopy rose,
opened into a clearing. She was able to stand taller, the gnarled branches now rising
up a good thirty feet, as the forest opened wider here. Up ahead, perhaps a
hundred yards in the distance, she saw the definitive glow of the torch, and
she felt a sense of relief.

As she neared the
end of the trail, a wall of thorns, against flickering torchlight she just
barely made out a figure, perhaps a man, perhaps something else. It stood there,
its back to her, wearing a black hooded cloak, hunched over a flame. Her sense
of apprehension deepened. She could sense the evil even from where she stood.

Kyra stood
there, heart pounding, tightening her grip on her staff. She wondered why the
forest had ended, where she had arrived, and if she would ever get out. The
person before her was definitely some sort of creature; he possessed an intense
spiritual energy, making the hair on her skin rise in warning. She sensed he was
a spiritual master, and one from the dark side. Worst of all, she could sense
he was more powerful than she.

A deep voice cut
through the air.

“Kyra, the great
one, has finally come to my den.”

The voice was
dark and gravelly, sounding more like the voice of a creature than a man,
setting her hairs on end. His back was still to her, only deepening her sense
of apprehension.

Slowly, the
creature turned, and Kyra felt dread as she saw that he had the body of a man,
but the head of a goat, with sharpened hooves for hands. He looked at Kyra and smiled
an evil smile. He was the most grotesque thing she had ever seen, and as he
spoke, her stomach tightened in a knot.

“Your mother is
not here to protect you now, is she?” he asked.

As he spoke, a
long, snake-like tongue slipped out the side of his mouth.

“No. You’re in Marda
now, in the Thicket of Thorns. You’re beyond anyone’s protection. You have come
to a place you should never have come, and you have come uninvited. Did you
really think the Staff of Truth would sit unguarded? Did you truly think you
could just walk in here and steal it from us?”

He laughed, a
grating, ominous sound. Kyra tried to steady her breath, to calm herself, to
focus on the adversary before her.

“I have stood
guard for thousands of years,” he continued, “and have protected it from people
far more powerful than you.
You
,” he said with derision, “a lame girl,
with a few powers you don’t even understand.”

Kyra flinched,
yet forced herself to stay strong, to stand her ground and to speak back
firmly.

“I sense the
weapon lies beyond that wall,” she said, impressed by the strength in her
voice, which did not match her inward fears. “I will give you one warning: you
can move aside now, or I will kill you.”

He laughed, an
awful sound that sank into her soul.

“Brave words for
a terrified girl,” he replied. “I can sense your fear even from here. I can
nearly taste it. You
should
be afraid. You should be
very
afraid.
Have a look at my feet.”

She looked down and
saw, at his feet, a pile of bones, some ancient and some new, and her
apprehension deepened.

“They thought
they were stronger than me, too,” he said. “Your bones shall make a most
delicious snack. Of that, I am sure.”

Listening to
him, Kyra sensed that this was more than just an encounter. This was a test. A
test that she would have to pass by life or by death.

Suddenly the
creature nodded and raised his hooves, and as he did, Kyra heard an awful
screech. From out of the thickets there suddenly flew down four awful creatures,
resembling owls, but with claws twice as long, sharp fangs, and as large as
she.  She felt a wave of panic, and she knew she had to stay strong, to rise
above her fear, above any emotion, if she were to win. This was not a test of
her skills, she realized; it was about her inner strength. Her powers. Her
control over her mind.

Kyra focused on
the creatures before her. The first came at her, swooping down and lowering its
claws for her face, and she swung her staff and cracked it in the nose. It dropped
with a screech to the ground.

Kyra ducked as another
dove for her head, then reached around and cracked that one in its ribs,
sending it skidding across the soil.

The third
attacked Kyra from behind, circling around and scratching her in the back. She
screeched in pain, caught off guard; yet she quickly gathered herself, dropping
to her knees, rolling on the ground, then wheeling around and smashing the
beast across the face. It screeched and fell at her feet.

One final
creature was still circling, and as it lunged for her, screeching, she jumped
to her feet, grabbed her staff, stepped sideways, and jabbed the beast in the
throat. It fell down, dead at her feet.

Kyra was
surprised to hear a screech behind her, and she realized, too late, that a
fifth beast had been unleashed. It came at her before she could react, grabbed
her shirt with its claws, and hoisted her into the air. She swung at it as it
carried her, yet was helpless to reach it.

The beast flew
with her, driving her forward, aiming to smash her into the thicket of thorns.
She saw a huge, sharp thorn about to pierce her chest, and at the last second she
twisted, just missing it, smashing into the wall of vines instead.

She was lucky,
she knew, to miss it, as she dropped onto the floor, aching in every part of
her body. The beast gave her no time to recover; it lunged down and opened its
mouth, ready to finish her off.

Kyra rolled out
of the way at the last second, spun around, and grabbed its slimy, disgusting
scales with two hands. She kept it at bay, wrestling with it, then finally
managed to hurl it into a thorn beside her. It shrieked as she impaled it
through its mouth. It finally hung there, dead.

Kyra, breathing
hard, aching, turned, grabbed her staff, and prepared to face off against the
creature that summoned them.

He stared back,
frowning, clearly surprised.

“Impressive,” he
said. “But you’re still just a girl. And I am the all-powerful Koo.”

Koo pulled his hood
lower, stepped forward, and suddenly there was a ball of fire in his hand. He
threw it at her, and as the fire rushed for her face, she ducked. It barely
missed, setting the woods behind her aflame.

He threw another
ball, and another, and another. She kept dodging, summoning her powers, using
her instincts to be faster than the flames. She was in a place of deep focus, a
place where she was not in complete control of her own body, her own actions.

She managed to
dodge all his fireballs, yet soon she felt the tremendous heat behind her. All
around her, the woods were aflame.

Infuriated he
could not hit her, the beast suddenly hoisted a black staff covered with thorns,
an ominous weapon. He stepped forward and faced her.

Snarling, he
swung for her head, and she raised her staff and blocked it. As she did, the thick
spikes of his staff impaled her staff, and he managed to yank it out of her
hands.

Kyra stood
there, defenseless, appalled, stripped of her staff. He laughed back at her as
he threw her staff down to the floor. He then charged, raising the spiked staff
high and swinging for her throat.

Kyra dodged, feeling
the thorns graze her skin, realizing how close it had come, how fast he was.
With the woods aflame behind her, her time was running out and she had nowhere
left to run.

He lunged at
her, jabbing at her stomach, and she looked down and saw a blade at the end of
it. Before she could dodge, it stabbed her in the stomach.

Kyra gasped, stunned,
the pain blinding. For a moment she couldn’t breathe, and her whole world went
blind.

She sank to her
knees onto the soft forest floor, and he dug the blade deeper and deeper in her
stomach. She felt the tears gush out—tears of pain, tears of failure, tears of
surprise. She had never expected to die here.

Kyra looked up
and saw him grinning, satisfied, jamming the blade in more, turning it in her stomach,
and she knew she was dying, and in an awful way. What an awful place to die,
she thought, here in this place, where no one will ever find me. She would be
just one more set of bones on a pile of bones.

“You see, Kyra,”
Koo growled. “No one has ever defeated me. And no one ever will. You are not
strong enough.
You are not strong enough,
” he insisted.

Something in his
words summoned something in her. She hated being told what she wasn’t capable
of. It spurred a defiance deep within her, a deep desire to prove others wrong.
All her life, as the only girl in a fort filled with men, she had been told she
wasn’t good enough.

Not strong
enough
.

She turned the
words around in her mind. There was no such thing as defeat, she knew, unless
you accepted it. Unless you
chose
to believe, to accept, you were not
strong enough. And she refused to accept it. She could rise above defeat, she
knew. She could be as strong as she wanted to be. As strong as she
believed
herself to be.

Kyra a felt heat
rising within her. It was a heat of rejection. A rejection of death. A
rejection of weakness. She did not deserve to die. For the first time, in her
life, she truly felt that. Who was anybody else to say she deserved to die? She
was entitled to life.

Suddenly, Kyra
felt herself changing, felt the momentum shifting the other way. Instead of
getting weaker, she felt herself getting stronger. Instead of the pain, she
felt herself rising above the pain. She felt herself, amazingly, becoming
stronger.

Pain is only
pain
,
she heard her mind say, a mantra within herself.
And when we lose our fear
of pain, there is nothing anyone can do to harm us. When we don’t fear pain, we
no longer fear anything. If we embrace the pain, stop resisting it, rise above
it, we are all-powerful. Limitless.

Kyra found
herself reaching out and grabbing his staff of thorns. The thorns dimly hurt
her hand as her fingers bled, yet she refused to pay attention. Instead, she squeezed
the staff, and slowly retracted it from her body.

The monster
stared back in disbelief as she extracted the blade, one inch at a time, her
arms shaking. Finally she extracted the entire staff and threw it to the
ground.