Chapter 34: The Green and Dark woods

Somewhere inside the anims, Team 7, Ravik, Velora, Zerik and Syra, came under a gray sky. They were groggy, vision blurred; flies buzzed over dirt and broken wood. Before they could gather themselves, a pair of rough hands hauled them to their feet and shoved them into a waiting carriage.

They didn’t have time to think. The world slurred past in splinters of color and coughing breaths. A voice barked orders. “Keep them down. Don’t let them see where we go.”

Ravik blinked hard, trying to clear his head. “Where are we?” he asked.

The man driving the wagon spat. “Slavers’ trade. Your lot is property now.” He laughed, but a second man, taller, with a thin, sullen face, stepped forward and said nothing. His eyes flicked over the four as if assessing a score.

Zerik squinted at him, recognition rising like bile. “You… you’re the one who put us in this.” His voice wavered. “Why would you do that? Why hand us over to demons?”

The silent man’s jaw tightened. “I didn’t want this,” he said at last. “He paid me. For years I worked for him. Now he wants a thousand humans, crucified, he said, so his family can live in peace.” His voice was low and hollow. “He came from the Demon King’s 46th general. They call his team Seven.” He swallowed. “There are demons in those lands. Worse than bandits.”

Syra stared at a dead body in the road, the kind of scene that had become, to her, too familiar. Cruelty and rot everywhere she went. She felt anger prick her like a thorn. “Where are we?” she asked the man. “This place… it stinks of dark energy.”

The driver snorted. “Green Woods.” He spat again and looked up toward the tree line. “We’re not far from Ulbon. Green Woods here, Dark Woods there, it’s all the same to me.” He shrugged, as if words meant nothing.

Velora turned to Syra. “How old are you, anyway?” she asked the boyish tone of the question belying a protective concern.

“Fifteen,” Syra lied without thinking. She flinched inward as if the lie itself hurt. Velora’s curious look met hers, confused by the sudden falsehood.

Ravik tried to break the tension with something small. “Rock, paper, scissors?” he suggested, but no one answered at first. Then Syra shrugged and played. Ravik threw paper; Syra threw rock.

“Rock and paper stand for friendship,” she muttered, more to herself than anyone. She moved the scissors next, and Ravik made paper. “This” she said, a bitter laugh in her voice, “this stands for murder.” Then she made scissors again, Ravik rock. “This stands for revenge,” Ravik said, then yawned. “Whatever. I’m going to sleep.”

Far from the wagon’s rattle, an old man walked into a small village and asked a child a strange question. “Is there a woman here around a hundred years old?” The boy pointed toward a rock where an old woman sat every day, waiting.

The man entered a shabby home and found a frail body in a bed. “Mother, I’m home,” he said quietly.

“My son… you’ve retired,” she whispered. Her eyes shone with sorrow. “Forgive me for slapping you that day, the day you went to help the country.” The son shook his head. “It never hurt,” he said. They clung to a few moments together, and then the old woman was gone. He tried to call a doctor; no one came.

The grief made something in him go flat and hard. He stood, hand on the table as if to steady himself, and swore into the empty room that he would tear this country apart, and make it pay for the ones it had taken.

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