Chapter 7 -Journey through the fell forest

After watching the advance guard scouts and their reinforcements from the main army disappear into the forests shadows, it took the main army another two hours to reach the beginnings of the forest.

The trees were enormous. Kai was suprised. They stood at heights of hundreds of meters, and the smallest of them could have easily been the tallest trees in the world.

There was a trail cut through the forest by earth mages, and fire mages. The air mages were used to keep guard throughout the three formations to battle against air enemies.

Kai thought that it was a waste in a way, because the air mages could have greatly increased the fire mages flames. Oxygen and fire are good partners.

On either side of their 24 beast wide column were the line of advance guard and their reinforcements. Kai watched as they fought against large ants, bees, and loads of other insects. Many times larger than their earth comparisons. Numerous of them sent shivers of distaste down Kai's neck.

They were killed quickly by waves of arrow fire, earth attacks, flame attacks, and with lines of spear wielding fighters as the line.

They would switch out every 2-6 minutes, the front line backing up, and the warriors behind them stepping forwards. Kai watched as an ant bit a soldier in his leg, tearing out a large chunk of flesh, and causing the soldier to collapse. Numerous ants surged forwards in the break in the line, jumping onto the fallen soldier and biting down. Their mandibles easily sliced through even armored flesh, and in seconds the soldiers bloody wailing were cut off suddenly and permanently.

Grim faced warriors pushed forwards, spears stabbing accurately into the feasting ants, and pushing forwards over both ant and man corpse.

In another section a large venomous looking snake dodged a soldiers spear strike easily, curled itself up and struck him in the chest, withdrawing its mouth quickly.

The soldier dropped his spear, falling down to his knees. His comrades behind him grabbed him and pulled him backwards, one of them taking his place, and managing to strike a blow into the snakes head, going through its neck and out of the other side, with the serpents head hitting the ground and rolling towards the soldier.

Thinking it was a death blow, the soldier looked past the writhing snake body for the next enemy. A second later he was struck by the snakes head on his ankle, who could snap and bite, and kill even hours after decapitation.

The soldier was also pulled backwards, while another soldier in the line stepped forwards, spearing the head and throwing it deep into the forest with a nervous jerk of his spear. An impressive display of strength.

As the column continued its march forwards, ever deeper into the abyss, the light piercing through the trees was very little, and it seemed as black as night.

Kai watched the two soldiers bitten by the venomous snake earlier start having seizures, and Kai watched from many meters away, as their bodies locked up, killing them by not being able to breathe.

Kai saw a thousand other horrors. Dozens of humans were killed. He saw someone who stepped on a pinecone, and caused its pollen spores to burst. It was… horrible. Not just the soldier, but a cylindrical area about 3 square meters burst with green pollen, and seconds later roots began exploding in the air, and the soldiers were grasping their chests or throats, where the same thing was happening on their insides.

General Haixo watched it rather impassionately, and when he noticed the pollen infected individuals, he raised his right hand, and a yellow hot fire erupted from his hand, moving forwards 50 meters and colliding with the pollen and the 5 pollen infected soldiers. They screamed for a few moments as they burned, and then began turning into blackened burnt and wet corpses.

Kai noticed that the generals flames weren't hot enough to incinerate the soldiers to ash instantly. His flames were too weak.

Kai didn't offer to help the soldiers. There were thousands more in the main army who hadn't even engaged in battle.

The generals flames died down. He looked at Kai, his face as calm as before entering the forest. "Did you have a question, Prince Kai?"

Kai adjusted himself on Blizzards saddle pad, and said "will it be like this for the entire journey through the forest? How long will it take to leave it behind."

The general thought Kai might be afraid of the forest, but wasn't sure. He looked around at both sides of the battling warriors, and said "it will be like this, and much worse. There are mighty monsters deeper within the forest, who keep the weaker ones such as these out of their territory. Don't worry though.

My army is strong, and it has more than enough power to kill or scare off all but the most strong enemies in the realm. If we encounter one of those, the only hope of the army will be to flee, although they are exceptionally rare, and very territorial, so if you can escape that territory they won't usually chase you.

The journey through the forest will take us 2 months. We can march about 10 miles per day, and it is 600 miles to the other side of the forest."

Kai whistled in respect and wonder, and said "wow, and how wide is the forest?"

The general said "it goes to our left for 1500 miles, ending only at the shore of the Northern ocean, which is frozen over for most of the year, and covered in deadly winds and waves the rest of the year.

To our right it extends 800 miles, to the feet of a great mountain chain. It forms a wall that has kept your black elf peoples lands safe from being invaded by my people, the rekanshians. The mountain chain is over 3,000 miles long, and around 1,000 miles thick, with mountain after mountain, of various sizes.

The researchers in my homeland have been trying to discover why that region has mountain chains, and these mighty earth rumbling events that can destroy roads easily, or homes."

Kai nodded and said "hmm. I have heard of the giants, but I thought my mother was telling me tall tales. Is there also dragons in some of the mountains?"

The general laughed and said "dragons in the giants mountain chain? Hmm. There are myths, legends, and rumors of dragons in the giant mountains, but no one I know of has ever seen them and lived to tell the tale.

Dragons are rumored to be the strongest air magicians besides Magi. There's even some outlandish myths that there's a city of dragons somewhere in the realm of giants, all of whom are Magi, and shapeshifters."

Kai quickly responded. "Are the giants the enemies of human kind, or are the two of you Allies, neutral, or what?"

Haixo laughed at Kai's insatiable curiosity. "They are my peoples Enemies, Allies and are sometimes Neutral, depending on their mood, the circumstance, and what you can bring to them. Most Giants treat humans like we are disposable, and a fair few of them have acquired a taste for man flesh. As to how they think of your dark elf kind, I have no clue. I would guess it would be the same but who can say. Maybe you will meet a giant one day, and if you survive the meeting you can ask them to be Allie's with you."

Kai chuckled as well, until looking at the sides of the battlefield again. His grin faded quickly then. A man dying viciously really takes the fun out of life, Kai thought.

Kai had no further desire to continue asking questions for now, and the general got quite busy ordering the battle. He dispatched a squad of guards over Kai, and said to Kai himself, "please don't go too close to the edges of the battle, it is dangerous even for the experienced, who survived the journey through here in the first place. "

Kai said "I will stay in the middle."

The general nodded, and then quickly rushed off on his giant horse.

Kai looked down at blizzard, rubbing her shoulder. She looked back at him and lifted her eyebrow in curiosity. "What is it Kai?"

Kai smiled and said "I just wanted to see how you are doing?"

She said "oh. Well, I miss the pack. But I am glad to be with you, even though these humans stink like they haven't bathed themselves in months."

Kai grinned and said "they probably haven't. They were too focused on surviving the terror forest, and then a brief moment of rest before they prepared to battle our tribe if I hadn't come over peacefully."

Blizzard said "that's true, but they still stink."She wrinkled her nose up in a sign of disgust, before blowing hard out of her nose.

Kai said ruefully "I'm sure that I will stink soon enough as well."

Blizzard looked at Kai with her blue eyes that matched his own, and said "no, I don't think you shall. You can use your powers to make a shower and use soap for yourself, and I demand you do so."

Kai grinned and said "ah, well since you command it blizzy I shall do so."

Blizzard looked at him dully and said in a slightly dull angry voice.. "blizzy? Is that your attempt at a nickname for me?"

Kai looked proud of himself, patting blizzys back comfortingly, and said "yeah, it's cool right?"

Blizzard said "uh.. that's a no Kai. My name is Blizzard!"

"Yeah I know, but when I wanna shorten it Blizzy is purrfect."

Blizzard swatted at his left foot lazily, her claws out.

Kai lifted his leg out of the way deftly, and Blizzy said "oh wow you are really playing with death then huh?"

Kai said "oh well.. I guess so.. Iv already died once after all."

Blizzy said "wait really? You are a reincarnated?"

Kai said "yeah. Are you? Or how do you know of them."

Blizzard said "I am not a reincarnated. They are very rare, but my great great grandfather on my moms side was one."

Kai said "oh wow. That's interesting."

The guards around Kai talked to each other, and Kai heard one of them say

"he is a reincarnated being as well as a magi? What the hell, what are the chances of that?!"

A brown haired woman to the questioning soldiers left looked over at Kai, and said "how the hell am I supposed to know you doofus. Do I look like a prophet to you?!"

"No.. I don't think so."the same questioning soldier said.

The woman sighed in exasperation.

Kai grinned a bit, hiding it by placing his hand over his mouth.

. . .

The army continued moving forward, eating up the miles. They came to a circular clearing that the soldiers had just finished clearing out of new tree seedlings, monster nests, and so forth.

In the center of the circular camp was a well. Kai looked at it with interest, as his people hadn't built or needed wells. His people could make leather, fairly advanced recurve bow and arrows, stone spears and daggers, mostly using obsidian.

As the army filled in around the circle, soldiers put up tents, dug 2 deep ditches around the camp, and did various other camp making tasks, like grinding up grains to make bread, slaughtering the lamed animals and butchering their meats, drawing water from the well and distributing it throughout the camp, etc. Kai watched as various workers seemed to do dedicated tasks. Roadways between tents were at a precise distance.

Kai thought these humans camp making abilities were suprisingly similar to the Roman way of making a camp. The earth from the ditches was used to make a steep wall, with four gateways, even though there were only two pathways through the forest. Back towards my home, or continuing away from it towards the Rakanshian homeland.

Kai got off of blizzard, and took her saddle blanket off, and began brushing her body with a tiger fur brush from his people. One of the very few items he had on him when he was hostaged.

He spent a good while working on brushing blizzard down. Afterwards, he lifted her legs up, looking at each of her paws. He used his magic, creating a good oil, that he rubbed on each of her paws, and will help keep them from cracking.

After doing so, blizzard laid in front of the entrance to Kai's tent, with several of his permanent guards on either side of her.

Kai was inside his tent, and was about to ask a soldier to bring him water, when he saw general Haixo coming towards Kai's tent. Usually he didn't bother him once camp had been made, so Kai was quite curious. He left his tent, crouching down to pet blizzards ears.

General Haixo said "Kai. I know you are

Our hostage, and I understand if your answer is no. Or you don't know how. But, well, the well here has ran dry, with only 1/4 of our army supplied with water.

If we don't make more of it then many of our people will die. But well.. our water mages can't actually make water, just control water that is there already, and we also only have a few of them. Our earth man can dig new holes but our water mages sense that it is dry around this area. Can you help us?"

Kai said "I won't do it for free, but I will trade my magic for things I want."

The general said "I see.that seems fair. What is it that you would like, excluding the obvious like letting you go, which I can't do."

Kai said "it's nothing so grand. I would like a pair of pants, a shirt, cloak, along with nice leather sandals that fit me well enough."

haixo struggled not to smile, as he wanted to give them to Kai for free and would have ended up insisting upon it. This was a great alternative.

Haixo said "ah. Well, I can manage that much. You have a deal."

Kai then left his tent, going to the camps center with Blizzy, his guards, and Haixo.

At the well were several dozen soldiers who had come to the well to collect water. There was a soldier trying to lower a basket down and raise out water, with that having no effect at all.

Kai got to the well, and looked down it. With his black elf night vision, he could see the water was a large diameter well, and went down about 100 meters. Quite impressive. The groundwater had been lost by the outside of the circles trees siphoning the well water away.

Kai activated his magic, and created a layer of clay in the subsurface areas of the well, so that its water wouldn't leak out again. Then Kai began to create new quarks and electrons, forming moles of hydrogen, and then compressing one mole of oxygen and two of hydrogen, to the right pressure that they began combustion, with Kai turning the exothermic reaction into increased energy for more and more reactions of larger and larger moles of hydrogen and oxygen, converting them into water.

Every 210.04 moles of water was a gallon. Multiplying the amount he created continually, there was soon many gallons of water flowing into the empty well. Soon it was like a gushing river, with thousands of gallons of water flowing out of Kai's hands into the large well.

Less than a minute later Kai's magic was at 10 remaining, and he stopped after adding in small amounts of potassium and other nutrients for a good tasting water.

He stopped in case there was a need for him to save himself from one of those super strong monsters the general had talked about. Anyways, there was more than enough water now. Kai pulled his arms back from the well, and looked up. Dozens of soldiers surrounding the well stared either at the now full well in shock, or else at Kai in even bigger shock.

"What the hell? How did you create water from your hands? That's impossible!" Yelled a blue robed water mage woman.

General Haixo looked at the woman who'd spoken, and said clearly with annoyance. "It's not impossible, as we all just witnessed it happen."

"It's probably a mirage. I saw a man in the southlands who could create the illusion of many things on the horizon."

Kai laughed at the superstitious soldiers, and grabbed the water pail. He lowered it by its rope into the well, and pulled it back up full. Switching his hands from the rope to the bucket, Kai started taking a long drink, and when he was satisfied lifted it above his head and poured the water over his head. It was a hot summers day even in the shade of the forest, and the cold waters were shockingly cold but cooled him off instantly while cleaning some of his travel dirt off.

Kai put the bucket back down into the well, and raised it again, pouring it into a bowl on the ground that was meant for people's mounts to drink from.

The water landed in the bowl with a splash, filling it up swiftly. Blizzard came close to it, and lowered her head down, sniffing the bowl for a moment, before she began lapping at the water with her tongue.

General Haixo said "see? He has shown us he didn't do anything to the water, by drinking from it himself, and having his tigress drink from it."

He then took the empty pail from me gently, and lowered it down for his own drink for himself and his mount.

Then more people began to go to the well, using multiple buckets.

Soon the soldiers were exclaiming that this water was the best tasting water they had ever drunk. Kai grinned internally, because it was probably the first time these folks had had truely clean pure water.

Kai sighed once he made it back to his tent, and sat down. His magic was already recovering quite fast. Kai sat in the meditation position, and began to play the days battles through his head, imagining what he would do to fight against the enemies, how he would reorganize the fighting force if it was his command.

Kai could admit to himself freely that these Rakanshi were quite capable.

Yet.. even so. They didn't seem to care much about losing relatively high numbers of people. Indeed, Haixo had shown no grief over the dead, and had ordered any who were too wounded to be slain or left behind, leaving the choice to the stricken soldiers unless they were too wounded to give their consent, in which case Haixo ended their lives.

Kai thought that the ones who had chosen to live a while longer fools, as they would surely be overrun and eaten once the rear guard had moved onwards, following after the army.