The Ros Forest

Leaving the house placed me right in the only forest on the lower level. The Ros Forest. It was a dark, damp, miserable place, and yet it was the only place I could live nowadays. Most animals from the old world had died out, but the ones that survived were pushed into forests like the Ros Forest, and they looked nothing like the Old World depictions of them.

The worst of the beasts were 13 or 14 meters tall with claws the size of a small car. Their bloodlust was unmatched, even by human standards, and each move they made was scarily calculated. They were no longer the simple animals that had existed everywhere in the past.

To live in the Ros Forest, someone had to be one of three things. Insane, strong, or smart. As far as I knew, I was the only person in my neck of the Ros Forest. The last time I'd seen another person living in this space was when I'd watched the previous owner of our house leave it. He was some rich and eccentric old man. The type who laughed in the face of death with an insane glint in their eyes.

In my case, third type applied­, smart enough to avoid all the animals and the natural traps of the forest. Marcie was the second type. She was unnaturally strong, like most people that frequented The Ditch were. If I were to see Marcie facing off against some sort of Ros Forest beast, I'd pray for the beast.

After leaving my room, I looked around for Marcie. I finally spotted her sitting on a thick branch of one of the trees surrounding the clearing my house was in, swinging her legs without a care in the world. I took one step toward her, and her head snapped in my direction, a smile on her face.

"Time to go!" Unlike me, Marcie could afford to be loud when leaving the forest, so she didn't take her time leaving the tree, she jumped from branch to branch before dropping down to the floor, landing as if she hopped off of a stool rather than a branch nearly 20 feet in the air.

She led me through the forest, taking the more scenic route, the large trees having a slight path naturally in their way. The trees within the forest were of vast shapes and sizes, from those with more traditional fan like leaves, to the ones with spikes and needles instead of leaves. Many of them were poisonous as well, and they chose not to give the courtesy of a warning with bright colors.

Smaller animals came into view from time to time, but I wasn't under the impression that I could beat most of them. Each of them had been changed in a major way over the years, in a way that I wouldn't even be able to comprehend. Scientists didn't even have an accurate catalogue of things within the Ros Forest, so what hope did I have to keep track of anything beyond the basics.

"Why are we going to The Ditch today of all days, Marcie?" About halfway through the forest, I spoke out in a hushed voice, the habit of not wanting to attract too much attention within the forest staying even though I was with someone who didn't hold the same sentiment, and likely never would.

Marcie hummed to herself in thought for a moment before offering me an answer. "I would tell you, but that would ruin the fun! I mean, you don't have to know everything all the time, do you?" She had a point, but that didn't mean I had to like being in the dark.

Speaking of the dark, there was barely any light within the forest. It was a veritable twilight zone, with only sparse rays of light illuminating the forest on the brightest of days under the artificial sun of the lower level. He wasn't even sure the real sun that presided over the first floor could penetrate through the tall and dense trees that surrounded the area, seeing as for some reason even flashlights were mostly useless within the forest.

One needed to have either amazing eyesight, or the senses to get through undisturbed. I wasn't sure which one Marcie had, but I was also willing to place my bets on both with how confidently she traversed the deathtrap of the Ros Forest.

About halfway through the forest, we had our first encounter with one of the beasts of the Ros Forest. One of the most common and one of the few extensively documented species within the forest. A Cruentus Bear. These animals, if you could even call them that, were scary things to behold.

Standing at nearly 5 meters tall on average, a Cruentus Bear was identified by their distinctly crimson claws, teeth, and fur patterns. Most of their fur was a dark brown, sometimes charcoal black color, making them hard to see within the dimly lit forest, and despite their size and sheer power, they were proficient ambush hunters. That is if they thought what they were hunting stood a chance.

Clearly, this bear didn't seem to think that about us, seeing as it simply walked out in front of us, crimson teeth on full display. There was no chance at running here, at least for me. A Cruentus Bear's top speed far eclipsed that of a human, by magnitudes at that. The second I moved to flee, it would be on top of me, taking a large bite out of whatever it chose. Marcie, on the other hand, was likely agile enough to escape, whether that was through the trees or some other method. Even these bears couldn't take out the freakish trees that populated the Ros Forest. Not even human technology could do it without resorting to bombing the whole thing.

 From what was known about the creature in front of us, a Cruentus Bear's teeth, claws, and fur patterns all start out as white at birth, but as the bear kills more and more, hunts as much as possible, all white on their body is irreversibly stained.

 This theory was originally thrown out, seeing as no animals in the past had these phenomena, no matter how much they hunted, but something strange was noticed about Cruentus Bears. Every time their appendages got blood on them, it was as if it was sucked into their bodies. A supernatural occurrence far beyond anyone's predictions. Meaning the scariest thing about fighting a Cruentus Bear was that once they scratched you, their claws, teeth, whatever, would suck extra blood from your body, rendering you weak in mere seconds, and dead from blood loss in minutes.

And now, Marcie was staring down this bear with a crazed grin on her face. She'd already pulled her knife out from the sheath on her waist, and despite knowing how freakishly strong Marcie was, I'd never seen her fight, or at least fight anything that wasn't human. All I could do was stand off to the side, knowing that if Marcie had to worry about me as she was fighting the bear that things likely wouldn't end well.

"Marcie, please don't be too cruel."

"Yeah, yeah. Just wait, things will be over before you know it."