Lost in the Crossroads

Sixteen - Witch Hour I (Alexandra)

Alexandra hated working in the dark. She was used to the well-lit rooms and hallway of the hospital. Even walking in their apartment at night she tended to lit all lights to move about, much to Abel’s annoyance.

There was one time when she lit all the lights in their apartment, except of course the lights in their individual rooms, and found Abel jolting out of her sprawling position on the couch, still dressed in her military clothing and boots, obviously just got home with a gun pointed at her. She shrieked in fright that night, almost waking up everyone present in their apartment. Then they started a long argument about dirt on the carpet and all of the lights on in their apartment.

Apparently the soldier thought it was stupid, STUPID!, to lit all lights in their apartment in order to get into the kitchen. She knew Abel’s vocabulary tend to lower down in immature levels whenever she’s half-asleep but she still took offence.

She scoffed at the memory, squinting her eyes as she followed after Geneva. It was one of their longest arguments in her numerous lists and they may have stooped too low for their own good that the others screeched at them to shut it.

God knows how Geneva walked over this grassy plane without tripping over a rock with their poorly lit lamp. She already tripped twice! Alex grumbled lightly, fighting the urge to search through the darkness for a stupid switch. This whole moving in the dark unnerved her.

“There they are.” Geneva whispered, crouching low and blowing out the fire in their lamp for the sake of inconspicuousness’.

Alex felt her eyebrow twitched at the lack of light. She bit her lip and let her eyes slowly adjust in it. The best she could make out were shadows but there was no mistaking those hunch figures inside the cages a good distance away. The Night Elves have eerie eyes that seemed to glow in the dark. With that alone, they were easy to distinguish from humans.

“Horses are there.” She pointed out. There was no mistaking those four-legged bodies in the dark.

“Do you know how to tie them on the carts?” Geneva asked, her head swiveling left and right.

“No.” Alex answered with a grimace. “Abel might.”

“Yeah.” Geneva agreed. “But there’s a lot of them. It will take too much time.”

They only managed to confirm thirteen Elven corpses in the burning carcasses due to their pointed ears and counted forty-six buildings in Kael’s village. Assuming that there were three people per building, that means a hundred people were captured or more. A lot survived, that was a blessing but extracting them from the camp proved to be difficult.

“We got to pick the locks, then.” She answered.

Geneva nodded and slowly stood up, waving for her to follow and gave a signal about the two guards they needed to take out before reaching the captured Night Elves.

Alex squinted her eyes hard and silently as possible followed the silhouette of Geneva’s slim body in the moon-lit dark. The two knights were unassuming as they easily slid behind them and knock them out with a quick hit on the back of their heads.

They weren’t even wearing their helmets. God, sales ladies were much a sharper bunch and probably hard to deal with. Huffing in bewilderment, Alex straightened and looked around for any possible onlookers. Her body seized up when she was greeted by a dozen pairs of silver eyes watching them.

Oh.

The path of silver.

“Good evening.” It was the first thing that came from her mind and the Night Elves was not impressed, staring blankly at her.

Alex feet shifted on the grassy plain as she mentally bashed her head in a wall. She was worse than Abel in her half-asleep state with her insensitiveness. What the hell is good in the evening when you’re stuck in a cage in a cart wearing only a shirt—tunic, whatever—?

Geneva snorted, finding amusement from her small blunder in their situation. Her friend was once again crouched low, scattering the fire kindling in order to extinguish it. “It’s already morning.”

“You speak our language.” One pair narrowed significantly in the dark.

“Uhh…Is that a problem?” Alex grunted, tugging particularly hard on the knot she was working on her victim. She doesn’t know where Geneva got the rope but she was grateful for it. She doesn’t want to shoot and stab someone unconscious for the sake of security.

“Fluently.” Another enunciated.

Of course, she was fluent in English. It was the universal language. Alex couldn’t help but rolled her eyes and scanned their surroundings.

She couldn’t make out the shadows of the guards on patrol.

Did Abel dispose of them already? That woman surely worked efficiently and quietly. She didn’t even hear a single scream. Utterly terrifying, her friend was.

“Who cares about that? We got important things to do right now than talk.” Geneva scoffed dismissively.

“You are no bandit.” One stated that Alex couldn’t help but turn around and faced the owner of the voice. It has the tone that demands attention and also feminine. “Nor a knight. With your actions, you are certainly not involved with these wretched men. Who are you and what business do you have with my brethren?” The Elf’s voice was soft yet firm.

Alex tilted her head lightly with her brow furrowed. Her senses might be a little dull compared to her friends but she could still hear that there was something different with the woman’s words. It was clear that the Elf was wary and suspicious of them but for Alex ears, she was like singing those words.

She shot Geneva a perplexed look who mirrored it and shrugged that could only mean, let Abel explained this weirdness once were done.

“Kael sent us to help.” Alex answered, following Geneva’s form in the dark as they approached one cart in order to free the prisoners.

“Kael? How did he?”

“Was he not captured like us?”

“How is he and his brother?”

All the Elven questions and weird singing words were ignored when she noticed Geneva stepping onto something. They both stop their movements and the Elves their questions when whatever Geneva accidentally stepped onto glowed in the dark before blinking out of existence.

Geneva slowly turned her head on her. “What the f**k was that?” Alex doesn’t really need a flashlight to point on her friend’s face to guessed that Geneva was on the verged of panicking just like she was. “What the f**k did I just stepped onto?”

Alex didn’t manage to answer for there was a sudden rumble in the air. She mentally hoped that Abel could hear it wherever she was with her sharp hearing and goddamn instincts as rocks started rolling and tumbling out nowhere in their vicinity.

Their situation was not looking good.

Geneva and her were onto side by side in an instant, guns wildly pointing at the rock despite the common sense that bullets probably wouldn't work on it. The rocks slotted carefully and effectively together with large pops that resembled the sound of bones popping together as they finally formed a large man shaped in front of them. There was no eerie glowing eyes or ear wrenching roar from the creature but it was intimidating as it is, looming over their smaller forms.

“Holy Mother of God.” Alex whimpered as the rock-man towered over them. This was no Kristoff’s love experts’ trolls.

“Lex, get back!” Geneva positioned in front of her, shoving her back with trembling hands.

“What are you going to do with it?! It’s made of rocks, Gen! You can’t—!” Her sentence was cut off with a shocked gasp when Geneva disappeared in front of her with a massive hit from the rock-hard arm of their impossible opponent.

Her mouth opened but no sound came out as her head whipped to the side to follow friend’s trajectory. Geneva’s body hit one of the cage with a large ‘thunk’ before she landed hard on the ground, unmoving.

Alex realized that she couldn’t breathe, the air was stuck in her throat.

The rock-man took a step towards her, she didn’t move. She couldn’t. Her legs won’t move. Her hands were trembling. Behind her she could vaguely hear the screams of the Elves for her to move but she couldn’t! Something cold and harsh was gripping her whole body to stop all of its functions, except for its shameless trembling.

Alex knew she was going to die right there and then when the man made of out rock raised its massive arm once again. There was no way she's going to survived that hit. Her body was not that sturdy.

A gunshot rang in the air jolting her out of the bone chilling horror that her opponent produced.

Alex yelped as the rock-man crumbled into dust before her. Utterly terrified and slightly confused, her knees gave up on her.

Holy Mother of God! She coughed, panic still burning in her chest and turning her breathing ragged.

A gunshot?

Who could it be? She stared blankly at her hands, still holding her useless gun.

It sounded that it came from the campsite. Her head tilted, eyes widening in realization.

The gunshot could only mean Abel was on her way. Relief crashed through her hard she swore it hurt.

A whimpered escaped her lips, embarrassment and guilt welling up inside her as hurriedly moved towards Geneva’s limp body, slipping twice on the dark terrain and cursing at her inability to moved faster.

She never thought this would happen. Everything had gone smoothly! What was that thing?!

"Holy mother of God." Alex murmured, still shaking.

There was blood. Geneva’s head was bleeding. She doesn't like it when her friends bleed. Panic was slowly but surely building up inside her body like ice traveling in her veins. She swallowed it all down, bitter, cold and writhing and alive in her tight throat, she swallowed it and ignored the way her stomach roiled and tried to rebel. With trembling hands, she gently lay Geneva’s body for assessment. Alex pulled out the small flashlight in her pocket, lit it and tucked it inside her mouth so she could use both of her hands. Her gun was laid on the ground.

She ignored the gasp of the Elves around her from the strange light and the shouts of bandits and knights alike that woken with a start.

She got a patient to take care of.

Geneva was markedly pale under the light of her flashlight, her eyes closed and body motionless. The only thing that was stopping Alex from going hysterical was the rise and fall of her friend’s chest.

Unconscious but alive. She could deal with that.

As she removed the bandanna tacky with blood, she found a small gash on the back of her friend’s head. Not very good. Head wounds bleed a lot. Alex swallowed the lump that got stuck in her throat, her fingers twitching as she assessed all the damaged had been done on her friend.

The next thing she found was the broken right arm, Geneva must have used it as a shield instinctively but no more extensive injuries were visible on her person. No more broken ribs or bones. Alex doesn’t know what to feel with that. Geneva was hit by an arm made out of rocks, the scratches are understandable but there should be more than that.

She saw how her friend practically flew in the air and smack into one of the cages. There should be more than that!

Alex bit her lip. What if there was busted organ inside her friend due to the impact? Internal bleeding?

Holy Mother of God. They don’t have the equipment for a surgery.

She was half-way through panicking when she felt Abel before actually seeing her. The temperature dropped significantly and the atmosphere prickled with tension. Alex heard the Elves murmuring and shifting in their cages in wariness but for her, Abel’s prickly presence was like a bubble of security that calmed her frazzled nerves. Breathing had became normal once again.

“You guys good?” Abel asked, casually taking the flashlight out of her mouth. The coppery scent of blood wafted in the air with Abel’s close proximity. Alex frowned, questions at the tip of her tongue before deciding that she doesn’t want to know why Abel’s hands were splattered with blood. Oh, wait, she already knew.

“I’m fine. Geneva though…” she trailed off, hands working on Geneva’s head to stop the bleeding.

“Concussion and broken arm. You fixed more than that.” Abel said, trying to be reassuring in her own calm way which Alex appreciated. “Who did this?”

“That pile of rocks over there.” She snarled, almost tearing her own bandanna to use it as temporary bandage on her friend's broken arm.

“A golem.” Abel said, her voice was still like stagnant water. “It’s master was probably the one I shot, surprised me when he ran out of the tent. You triggered something?”

Alex nodded, the tension in the air getting heavier from the way Abel frowned at Geneva’s bloodied head.

Her hands twitched when a series of siren echoed loud and clear in the woods, it sounded like from the movie ‘Purge’, foreboding. There were shocked and terrified shouts from all parties who doesn’t know what it means, even the Elves. It was part of their plan, a gunshot was their signal for the others to start moving in the woods, but she still couldn’t stop shivering. It was an eerie sound.

“Witch hour is starting.” Abel said. “Just right on time.”

“YOU WHO HAVE THOUGHT YOURSELVES AS RIGHTEOUS!” Voices boomed from the forest.

Alex wasn’t aware that her speaker can be that loud and the combined voices of her friends can be that scary with proper use but they served their purpose, striking fear in the hearts of their enemy who have foolishly thought they could trespass in the Cursed East without repercussions.

“You truly think you could escape our eyes? Our cursed? Our wrath? This is our lands, foolish humans! Hypocrites and liars such as yourselves are destined to be forsaken in these lands! Come! Come! Come with us!”

Frightened cries and angry yells filled the enemy camp, raging in massive panic of confusion and terror. She was honestly impressed with the way their plan used the terrain’s advantage. The Forsaken Forest of the Cursed East.

“Come! Come!”

“Run, humans! Run!”

“You will be forsaken!”

“Burn them! Burn them!”

“No blood! No bone! No ash!”

The words keep repeating and mixing for a few seconds before it stopped then a manic laugh followed, echoing loud and clear from the dark woods.

If Alex didn’t know that was her friends’ voices echoing from the dark forest and the scare tactic was their plan, she will be scared witless too. It was hard to pinpoint where the voices were coming from, it was all over the place.

“It’s amazing.” Alex’s head snapped back to her patient, finding blue eyes blinking slowly into consciousness. “How Kara perfectly pulled off that evil laugh.” Geneva slurred, a wry smile stretching on her lips.

Alex smiled softly her friend and valiantly fought the urged to throw something at her. Her friends always made her worry. It was never good for her health.“It’s Kara we're talking about.”

Someone was yelling commands in the camp in order to regain some semblance of order. She noticed Abel straightened from her crouching position and then there was a couple of explosions in the camp, tents burning and crackling with fire, alongside the deafening screams of bandits and knights alike.

“Burn, wretch! Burn!” The combined voices of their friends drowned out the terrified screams of the people around them.

“Flour has magical properties.” Abel said, her face serene and clearly very pleased.