Unwelcome Guests

The Ancient Woods were alive with color.

Vines thick with silver flowers draped from twisted trees.
Moss blanketed the stones in a living carpet.
Sunlight shattered into a thousand beams through the canopy.

Marsden darted from root to root, punching trees to shake down herbs, laughing every time he knocked loose a nest of angry, squawking birds.

Trey floated lazily above them —
feet sunk into the shadow of his greatsword,
riding it like an upside-down skateboard.
He twisted and spun above the treetops, arms folded across his chest, a shit-eating grin plastered to his face.

Dean hovered higher still, silent, calm, his hands behind his back as he glided like a silver-winged ghost.

Ray walked on foot, arms full of potion ingredients, smiling faintly at the sight of them.

For a moment, they were just brothers again.
For a moment, the world wasn't broken.

"Catch this, Ray!" Marsden called, hurling a fat, spiky fruit toward him.

Ray caught it clumsily, almost dropping everything he held.

Trey swooped down low, laughing.

"Jesus, Ray, even the trees are beating you up now?"

Dean chuckled —
a real, honest sound —
and Marsden let out a whoop, bounding after another flash of color deeper into the woods.

Ray couldn't help but smile wider.

This was what he fought for.

Not the Republic.
Not the Kingdom.
This.

His family.

And then the world went silent.
No birds.
No bugs.
No wind.
Just a suffocating, dead silence.

Marsden froze mid-step.
Trey halted in mid-air, his sword's shadow curling tighter under his boots.
Ray’s stomach twisted.

He knew this feeling.
Something was wrong.
Terribly, impossibly wrong.

Marsden whipped his head to the left, fists crackling with sudden, wild lightning.

A thunderclap exploded as he slammed his fist through a massive oak tree, shattering it in one blow. As if he was trying to hit something.

He spun back toward the group, eyes wide, frantic —
the first time Ray had ever seen fear on his little brother’s face in this game.

"What the fuck is that?!" Marsden roared.

Something landed between them with the weight of a crashing star.

The ground heaved.

Trey barely managed to teleport backward, sword hissing through shadows.

The Druid.

It stood eight feet tall, twisted and monstrous.

Feathered wings like a hawk’s, but warped, ending in razor-sharp talons instead of feathers.
Its body was a patchwork of animal parts —
goat legs flexing with unnatural strength,
gorilla arms bulging with muscle,
a twisted elephant’s trunk writhing from its chest.

And around its neck —

a Green-Eyed Totem, glowing faintly. Hanging from a metal chain.

The Druid struck without warning.

A wing lashed out —
crack —
catching Trey mid-air and hurling the one-ton tank into a tree with a splintering crash.

Ray’s eyes blazed blue — time slowed.

He reached out —
tried to track the Druid’s movements —
but it was too fast.

Even frozen in time, it blurred.

Dean screamed — a sound Ray had never heard from him before —
and launched from the sky like a missile, twin blades of wind bursting into existence in his hands.

Marsden, face twisted in rage, rocketed toward the Druid’s side, fists sparking with enough electricity to light the whole forest on fire.

It didn’t matter.

The Druid was all the hatred of these woods manifested into flesh. Hatred for all the players that came into this world and slaughtered every creature without remorse.

The beast's trunk lashed out —
snagging Dean mid-flight and slamming him into the ground with a sickening crunch.

Marsden's uppercut was caught mid-swing by one of the Druid's gorilla arms —
the other grabbed Marsden’s waist and dug its claws into his side.

The Druid ran, goat legs pounding the earth,
dragging Marsden like a ragdoll toward a massive oak.

Ray screamed.

"NO!"

He tried to reach —
tried to slow the world further —
but he couldn’t.

The magic buckled. Ray's nose began to bleed.
The Druid was too fast, too wild, too powerful.

Ray spun to heal Trey —
but Trey was gone.

For a heart-stopping second Ray thought he was dead —
but then Trey erupted from the shadow of a fallen tree, greatsword already swinging.

The Druid saw it coming.

It shifted —
shrinking, twisting, morphing —
into a tiny mouse,
the blade whooshing harmlessly overhead.

Marsden fell free, coughing blood into the dirt.

And then the woods became a warzone

Dean unleashed gusts of slicing wind.
Marsden flashed through the trees like a living bolt of thunder.
Trey darted through shadows, slashing, binding, attacking from every angle.

And Ray...
Ray watched.
Frozen.
Helpless.

Every time he tried to act —
to freeze the Druid,
to slow it,
to heal —
the battle shifted too fast for him to track.

He couldn’t keep up.

Not with the Druid.
Not even with his brothers.

The feeling hit him all at once —
a cold, hollow ache splitting his chest wide open.

They had been holding back all this time.

Training slower.
Taking hits they could’ve dodged.

All for him.
For the brother who couldn’t keep up.
The brother who still thought he mattered.

A crack of thunder — Marsden crashing into a boulder.
A roar — Dean colliding mid-air with the Druid, the force shaking the earth.
A shriek — Trey torn from a shadow, his armor splitting open.

Ray stood there.
Utterly fucking useless.

Suddenly —
Dean blurred into existence beside Ray, grabbing him by the collar and yanking him backwards out of the wood line.

Dean’s face was bloodied, eyes fierce.

"Stay out of it!" Dean barked, voice cracking.
"You'll get in the way!"

Ray stumbled, falling hard onto his knees.

He watched —
powerless —
as his brother fly back into the fight without him.

Screaming.
Bleeding.

The boy who was supposed to protect them...
the boy who carried them through hell on Earth...
was now nothing but dead weight.

Ray pressed his forehead into the mossy ground, teeth clenched so hard he thought they might shatter.

He had never felt smaller.
Never felt so weak.

And somewhere deep in the woods,
the Druid shrieked —
a sound of pure, violent madness —
as the battle raged on without him.