Wake Up

A rattling whine interrupted Sakura’s slumber, the unsteady wheeze seeping into her ears and pulling her from their comfortable depths. Rolling towards the sound, she forced her heavy lids open, meeting crimson.

“What do I do?” Zero asked quietly, looking at the woman nervously and desperate for an answer. He laid there holding Ivy against him and rubbing her back as her breath came out in short, ragged bursts.

The foreign emotion on his face made the woman feel weak, but she swallowed her own nerves as quickly as they came. “How long has she been like this?” She crawled over to them and placed her hands on the girl’s face. She was cool, no fever.

“Not long. It just woke me up and I was about to wake you.”

Ivy turned and looked at the fox with a small smile. “I’m okay,” she said softly. “Maybe it was bad pheasant? I didn’t cook it long enough?”

“Let’s get you outside.” Sakura rolled away and pushed the tent open as Zero followed behind her with Ivy.

The girl pulled away from him once they were outside and slowly made it to standing on her own. “I’m fine. Let’s just go. We’re not far from the next town.” She put her hand on the tent and mumbled, turning it to the pink ribbon that she attempted to tie around her neck. Zero carefully slipped it from her fingers and did it for her, receiving a weak smile as thanks.

“Well, good morning!” Ren came up with an upbeat grin that instantly dropped after one look at the girl. Bending down in front of her, he cupped her cheeks in his hands, and ran his fingers down her neck. “There’s no fever, no swelling. What’s wrong, Little One? You look awful.”

“It’s probably just food poisoning,” she reasoned. “I’ll be fine once we get moving.”

“Come on then.” Sakura hooked the girl’s arm through hers. “We’ll see if there’s someone who can help when we get to town.”

“I don’t think I’ll need it,” Ivy insisted, her voice tired and lacking all its normal cheer.

They moved slowly, giving Ivy the time she needed. Other than for the woman walking with her, the girl refused Ren’s offers of help, insisting that she would bounce back quickly. But as time went on, her steps got slower and covered less distance.

“How about we just fly to town?” the angel tried for the umpteenth time. “Zero and Sakura will catch up.”

“No.” She shook her head, trying to brush the unsettling feeling in her gut away. “It’s fine. We’ll be there soon.”

Zero followed along silently, watching as the girl struggled and argued against receiving more assistance than she was already getting. There seemed to be no convincing her of other options, and the more she rejected them, the more a familiar nagging began to grow in the boy’s chest. One he felt relatively often with Ren.

Frustration.

And although the choices weren’t many, there were still some to choose from.

It only took a few quick strides for the devil to overtake the two women and crouch down before them. “Come on. Get on.” It was a command with no room for argument.

Ivy attempted to protest but it fell on deaf ears as Sakura deposited her feeble body onto the boy’s back and he continued down the path with her meekly insisting she could walk on her own.

“I don’t care,” Zero finally stated.

Ivy laid her head against his shoulder, too exhausted to do much else and well aware of just how stubborn the boy could be once he made up his mind. At least the road and their destination was clear this time.

The minutes seemed to drag on and on, the trees getting thicker the further they traveled. Ren stopped, closely looking at one of them with his brow drawn.

“What are you doing?” Sakura asked as she and Zero started to pass him.

The man pulled out the hunting knife from his belt and sliced into the tree, the gash deep in its knotty trunk. “I’ve seen this tree. I know it.”

“What are you saying?” She looked at him while he continued beside her as if he had finally lost it and was speaking nonsense. “That we’ve been walking in circles?”

Ren shook his head, thinking. “We’re not going in circles. I don’t think we’re really going anywhere.”

“I’m cold.” Ivy’s voice a low whimper, her eyes closed and grip around Zero’s neck slack.

“What are you talking about?” The fox pulled her ribbon from her boot, turning it to a cloak to wrap around the girl who had fallen asleep. “We’re obviously going somewhere. The trees are getting thicker. They should start thinning out soon and we’ll be out of here.”

“It’s not right. There’s something wrong with this place.” The angel briskly continued forward but came to an abrupt stop only thirty meters ahead.

Sakura called out to him but he didn’t respond. His hand reached up, running along the tree.

Along the mark he had made.

“We’re stuck. We’re not going anywhere.”

The other three made it to the man and looked at the tree with the same gash he had just made farther back.

“What is this bullshit?” the fox exclaimed. “How do we get out of this? We have to get Ivy out of here!”

“Just give me a minute.” He rubbed his face with the palms of his hands. “Let me think. I know this place. I just can’t get it.”

The woman’s own dread was beginning to build.“You’ve been here before?”

“No. But I know I’ve heard of it.” Ren wracked his brain but the recollection eluded him the same as it did the night before. It was right there, teetering on the cusp of remembrance and forgotten. Like something just out of reach, he couldn’t quite grasp it.

Sakura froze, the sound of something dragging along the ground behind her catching her attention. She turned towards the noise, the churning of dirt and crinkling of dried leaves, and was completely unimpressed by the pathetic sight. “The fuck is this thing?”

The pest reminded Sakura of the salamanders that her and Ren used to catch by the river outside of Hollis. It was larger though, the body rounder and about a meter long while the tail was even longer but thinner in comparison. Its skin was like wet indigo, and it looked like its eyelids had been fused together, leaving it blind. Its four legs had six toes that curled into the soil and scooped it out, sprinkling it along with every sluggishly exaggerated step.

“Nibblers.” The word spilled from Ren’s mouth, the several years old memory finally resurfacing. He’d only heard it in passing in The Kingdom, but a small squad of angels had lost their way in a colorful forest and all but one had been bitten by the pests. Their bodies swelled and ballooned to the point they were immobile and the survivor had left them behind. When they were found, each one had been completely drained, their insides liquefied by the poison and consumed by the Nibblers, and not a single one of the creatures could be found.

The pest lifted its head, opened its mouth, exposing dripping needle like teeth and emitted a high pitched hiss.

“Oh, fuck you!” Sakura’s boot collided under the creature’s lower jaw, imploding its head and sending the mangled remains into a tree where the body was further splattered into oblivion, leaving only a gelatinous goo dripping down the trunk.

“There’s more!” The angel warned in a hurry, swiftly moving to Ivy. He removed the ribbon from her neck and wrapped it around her arms, locking them together around Zero. “They’re extremely poisonous. If you get bit you’ll die!” He unsheathed his sword as the boy followed his lead with one katana.

Sakura snorted at the overreaction of the two men. “A little much, don’t you think? Poisonous or not, they’re like jelly.”

“Quit fucking around!” Ren yelled at her. “If there’s one there’s more!”

There was a soggy ‘plop’ beside Zero and he looked down at the pest squirming on its back, its short legs kicking out wildly. He experimentally poked the blade of his katana into its belly, and the skin bloomed like a flower away from the puncture, leaving a puddle of goo behind. The boy looked up into the branches above him. “They fall from the trees,” he observed calmly just as another fell.

And another.

And another.

Suddenly, it was raining nibblers, their ear piercing shrills erupting as they plummeted to the ground from the blue and purple leaves above.

Sakura pulled her glaive, joining Ren and Zero in terminating the pests as they fell. As they killed one, two more would fall until the ground was crawling in them, their hissing and snapping becoming more and more immeasurable. The demon crouched, sweeping her right leg out and around, her right arm following as the glaive propelled her around, slicing through the creatures. Zero avoided the attack but Ren realized too late, nearly getting caught by the blade.

“How about a warning?!” he snapped, recovering quickly enough avoid a nibbler to his face.

“How about you pay attention!” She repeated the movement which he was prepared for this time around.

Exterminating the nibblers was simple; they were slow, unintelligent, and blind. The slightest jab had them popping like a balloon. But it was like trying to avoid raindrops in a down pour. They never seemed to stop falling. Combating the creatures was arduous and time consuming. Retreating wasn’t an option with them being trapped in a no more than a hundred meter stretch. Thousands of them had fallen before the onslaught came to an end. Like the rain, the dropping of nibblers slowed to a sprinkle before the air was clear once more.

Sakura breathed heavily, her hands sitting high at the tip of the glaive’s handle as she pushed her head against the cool metal. “How are we going to get out of here?”

Zero sheathed his katanas and untied the ribbon from Ivy’s arms. Knelling to the goo soak ground, he carefully removed the girl from his back and brought her before him as Ren joined in observing the girl.

“Let me see her.”

The boy leaned her body up as the man’s fingers prodded at her neck. “She’s breathing but she hasn’t moved,” he informed the angel.

Ren nodded as he moved on to peeling apart Ivy’s closed lids and checking her eyes. “Her pulse is too fast, pupils are like pinpoints. There’s no way this is food poisoning.”

“What’s wrong with her?” Sakura looked up at them, barely maintaining any sense of composure. “We have to…”

A wet drip landed on the demon’s hand, and she turned to it just as a nibbler, no bigger than a lemon, sunk its tiny teeth into her flesh. It was like time had slowed as she grasped the pest with her other hand and squeezed it, its small body exploding as her glaive hit the ground. She stared at the bite, feeling as though it were so far away, and then up at the two men whose eyes were wide and panicked.

“No,” Ren breathed, the cracks forming within him, preparing to shatter. All the years that had been taken, and all the ones spent searching, and now that she was finally here…

Life just wasn’t fair.

And Sakura laughed. A slow exhalation of air that swelled and built more and more hysterical, growing into a thunderous boom as her head fell back and she faced the branches above, their colorful leaves so inconspicuous now. What a pretty way to taunt her. Remind her of another one of her many mistakes.

“No! No! No!” the angel screamed, as if the words would stop what he knew was to come. He ripped the ribbon from Zero’s hands and appeared before the fox almost instantly. Snatching a dagger from her thigh holster, he sliced her flesh to the bone from the top of her wrist to elbow, her blood spilling indigo near the bite. He tied the ribbon above the gash and tore the bracelet from his wrist, rolling it up her arm and onto the tourniquet. Ren scooped Sakura into his arms, his wings pounded down, and they burst into the sky.

Zero watched the angel shoot past the branches and into the unobstructed air. Moving forward had gotten them nowhere.

But if they went up?

Looking down at the sleeping girl in his arms, he held her tighter, and leapt to the tops of the trees. The boy followed the pair, his feet barely touching the upmost branches as he glided along, trying to keep up.

A gentle yawn slipped from Ivy’s lips as her eyes fluttered open, sleepy but clear. “Good morning,” she murmured, her voice sweet. “I had such a strange dream, Zero.”

“We have to hurry,” he stated, only glancing at the girl for a moment before locking back onto the angel getting further and further ahead.

“You’re okay,” Ren pleaded desperately as the woman in his arms continued howling uncontrollably. “You’re okay, you’re okay,” he repeated over and over, a spell he couldn’t break.

Sakura’s laughter faded away. Her eyes lost in the blue of the sky.

Endless.

Forever.

“Don’t!” the angel demanded. “Don’t you fucking dare!”

So much blue. Her eyes so heavy.

“Stop! Open your eyes! Open your fucking eyes, Sakura!”

Blue. She missed them so much.

She sighed, “I’m so sorry Raz.”