A taste of nature, a window to the unknown

Lyra suddenly stopped, extending her arm to her side, indicating to me to do the same. She knelt a bit and pointed towards something in the tree. It was a mushroom, growing in the bark. Big, white and round.

She looked at me, making sure that I was paying attention to her, and then stomped on it thoroughly.

She resumed walking after that. I guess that’s her way of saying those are venomous.

Certainly, I know most of the things in the forest are. The scouts have a wild berry and mushroom identification manual, but unfortunately, I did not bring it with me to the expedition. Even so, the flora around the zone is surprisingly familiar. I expected the trees to be otherworldly, full of indescriptable things like that shadow monster from the veil, but not at all.

The mushrooms. bushes, trees, even the berries that we sometimes stopped to pick were pretty similar to the ones on earth. Well, at the very least the ones that Lyra does pick, as she’s the only one grabbing stuff before passing it all back to me to put in the backpack.

Did she bring me simply to carry her stuff? Certainly, I didn’t expect her to start parroting flora and fauna facts now, but I feel that something is wrong about all of this. As if she was trying to purposefully avoid explaining anything like Howard said she would. She could at least try, couldn’t she?

“Hey, how about that one?” I said, pointing to a hole in a tree that had a quite inconspicuous, mushroom sprouting from a hole in the bark.

Lyra turned around and she already looked annoyed before I had said a single word. She looked at the mushroom, and then looked back at me like I was a moron. This time, she kept walking forward, not even bothering to stomp it like the ones from before.

I guess she doesn’t need to call me an idiot when her actions express it so eloquently.

As I decided to abandon any communication effort, what felt like hours passed by. The lack of sunlight or any true marker for time made it really hard to discern. People around here seemed to track time in something called cycles, which they track simply by looking how bright everything is.

Personally, I can’t really notice the difference, except when it is very dark or very bright outside.

After a long while walking Lyra stopped me again. This time, she didn’t point to anything. She simply looked back at me and put her finger on her lips, the universal sign for silence.

As we stopped, I felt as if every sound of the forest had intensified. The myriad of sounds of every bug in the area made me feel a very strange sensation, but also something else. A low, rustling sound, from somewhere to our right. Too low, but noticeable enough for us to stop and listen to it.

Lyra grabbed her spear in her hand, and ignoring me, started walking to the right. I thought about following her, but I decided against it. If I took a bad step, I could alert whatever animal she was now hunting. So out of consideration, certainly not indecision, I froze and stayed completely still, looking in front of me as if simply moving my head could alert the prey of our presence.

I looked in front of me, standing still, seeing how Lyra started taking slow steps towards my right. When she did, I noticed something in front of me, deep in the forest, that was just now hidden from view by her body. It was a figure, looking at me in the distance. Initially I thought it was an animal, but as I saw it walking towards me, I could distinguish it a bit better.

It was a person, now I’m sure of it.

He, or she, was covered by a cloak of pure black, vantablack even. It was like they had taken a piece of the veil and covered themselves with it. Their steps were completely soundless, making his approach towards me like a phantom that ignored the trees around him.

When I snapped out of it I shrieked, unsure of how to break the news to Lyra when she didn’t even speak my same language. While I decided how to do so, the person approaching me also instructed me to stay silent, putting their finger in front of their mouth. Right after, they pointed towards Lyra and shook their head, as if saying no. After that, they pointed to a place in the opposite direction she had gone, pointed at me, him, and finally closed his fist near his mouth before opening it towards me.

“You and I will talk there later”, is what they said, I think.

I turned towards Lyra, absolutely freaked out, but then she gave me another reason to freak out too.

“Run!” She screamed, in perfect, clear as day English, as she grabbed the spear and threw it with her full strength towards something I could not see. The wind whistled when she did, the sound of the spear piercing the air sounded like a bullet flying to the air, and moved with a similar speed to one.

The spear failed to hit its target, instead hitting a tree that broke in half under the strength of her throw. At its left I managed to see some kind of figure before an enormous blob of darkness suddenly expanded and started moving towards us.

Lyra didn’t need to tell me to run again, as I bolted as well as I could in the opposite direction of the growing veil. She took something from her pouch and jumped into the darkness, while I dodged and weaved between the trees as fast as I could, trying to get away from there.

I didn’t have to run that long, as soon I reached a clearing. A pond that had a series of protective light stones embedded in the ground that stopped the veil from reaching me as I jumped to the safety provided by the light.

The darkness kept moving, spreading around the barrier, until soon enough, even the light of the sky had been blot out. All the noises from the forest disappeared, as once again, an overwhelming sense of solitude engulfed me.

I was in the pond, in a space only a few meters wide, enveloped by pure darkness in whole directions.

And I had no idea how to get out of there.