Chapter 26 Ambush

 SL Chapter 26 Ambush

With the onset of tremors, Bora heard screams, grunts, roars, and howls even as she held onto the wooden pedestal with a firm grip to prevent herself from falling to the ground. The tremors lasted for barely a few seconds before calming.

Bora gazed into Iris' eyes. Both could see the solemn light within each other's eyes. After the tremors, the outside world had settled into an eerie silence, with Bora noticing the fact that the faint light that had been reflecting off the other glass cabinets, or refraction through them from the outside had some what diminished, almost vanishing entirely, as if something large was blocking the rays. That only made the silence even more unsettling. She could hear her heart pounding within her chest. Something had happened outside yet, she was scared of even taking a peek outside, scared of what she might find.

Ultimately, Iris was the one who took a peek, one which turned into a drawn out stare that made even Bora gain some courage. And when she too, got a glimpse of the outside through the shattered windows of the small shop, her breath hitched at the sight that greeted her. A sight she would have never expected in a million years!

First of all, the ground, the fairly intact paved blocks that had been allayed onto the road had been utterly destroyed, with growths jutting out of the ground aiming for the skies. Previously intact carriages were now splintered into multiple pieces, while corpses had been skewered outright. The stench of blood was so overpowering that Bora even decided to dull her olfactory senses a little with her spiritual energy.

She stood up from her crouching position, making certain that she was making as little noise as possible, before taking small steps towards the bizarre scenery outside. The faint scent of blood came from the thin blood mist permeating the place outside.

"AHHH!"

That exclamation almost made Bora jump out of her skin, with her head snapping towards the culprit, Bo-ram, who had just walked out the entrance. Her eyes were gazing at a smudge of red on the broad green of a leaf. Just moments after her attention was drawn over, another drop of red made impact with the leaf, having fallen from up above.

She raised her eyes, taking in the thin stem of the tree all the way to its top, which was just three stories tall. Skewered on its tip was a red scaled figure, one she knew as an earth dragon. The shoot hadn't been the one to end its life, instead it had died during the earlier chaos.

"How could trees have sprouted here? This is getting far more bizarre!" Iris whispered as she joined with Bora, exiting the small jewelery shop, involuntarily stepping over its signage that had fallen down infront of the entrance at some unknown point in time.

The small breeze stirred the leaves of the trees, consequently stirring the blood mist within the air, but otherwise the entire place remained eerily silent. The sounds of battle, the roars, the grunts and the cursing, had all vanished, except for maybe the muted ones she could pick up coming from somewhere far away.

"We need to go. Our time is limited." Bora spoke after some seconds of gawking. Then, she took the lead to step through the root system of the trees, which was akin to that of a mangrove forest, heading towards their goal, their destination. The eerie silence was a bit unnerving, but she was certain that she would be able to cope through it.

Just the sound of blood dripping from the strung up bodies was enough to horrify everyone, with Bo-ram in particular having her eyes swiveling within her sockets, and flinching at every minute sound. Her movements were making Bora's heart to pound at an unacceptable rate. The woman was spreading her fear contagion!

"Could you stop jumping at every little thing? We are trying to stay alert!" chastised Bora. Though, something ultimately managed to attract her attention the next moment. It was broken roots.

"It seems like someone, or something passed through in haste." commented Iris.

The broken tree roots looked as if someone had been caught up within them, only managing to detach themselves by hacking at them.

"What are the odds that whoever they were, was a beast?" Bo-ram chimed in. Her eyes roaming the surroundings with caution and fear. The leaves rustled as a breeze from somewhere wove through them, and she flinched at the sounds. Bora shook her head at that before going back to the task at hand.

"There is a high chance that it was a human. And looking at the fact that the sap is still dripping from the roots... It means that we will run into them shortly." Iris stood up from her crouching position after those words.

Bora led the way, following the trail of damage along the way, which was coincidentally in the same direction they were heading. Then, after pushing away some low hanging branches which had been right within their path, they stumbled upon the person. Or you could say his corpse. It was there, with a pool of blood originating from the head having spread around its upper torso. The face faced the soil, making it so that they couldn't see what kind of expression the man had died with. But they were certain that whoever had killed him had attacked from the back. The large crack at the top of his head, which appeared to have been caused by an axe or large claw was very telling.

"Some commoner died. What is the big deal? We need to move on!" said Bo-ram with impatience rife within her voice. Bora noticed that she was looking anywhere but the crime scene. Her hanger-ons had died before, yet she hadn't shown much emotion towards them. Was that because she had been in the heat of battle? Or had it all been an act? Could she also be acting right now? Bora felt that she needed to be cautious of the woman.

"It looks like we will run into the perpetrator. They must have gone on ahead." speculated Iris, her words directed at Bora whose facial expression didn't change for even a fraction.

And with that discovery, they continued on. Though, this time, slower. So far, they had seen very many dead bodies, mostly those of the mutated natives, having been pierced by the branches of the trees. But a dead body on the ground just meant that there was either a native in action, or a fellow human. Both those options didn't sound too good. The Rabid natives were easier to deal with. But the humans were another matter entirely. When her thoughts reached that level, there was a tiny wrinkle that appeared in her facial expression yet it vanished just as fast.

A few minutes after their discovery of the corpse, when they had traveled quite the distance, and the tracks of the murderer hadn't been discovered, a sound, barely below the volume of a whisper, entered Bora's ears. It was creak, a sound only released when something was under immense pressure, or couldn't handle the weight of something.

The strands of hair at the back of her head stood on end a sense of impending crisis enveloped her. She swiveled her head, with her glowing eyes searching above, within the branches for the culprit. And she wasn't the only one. Iris' monkey opened its third eye, while Bo-ram, who hadn't taken the precaution to enhance her vision with her spiritual energy before, was now channeling some of it into her eyes, eliciting the same glow as Bora's.

Bora and the others had stopped in place. The silence of the forest only broken by the occasional drops of blood from the bodies within the canopies. Though she hadn't seen anything yet, her instincts were telling her that something dangerous was stalking them from the shadows.

Then it happened. She didn't know how at first, but only felt her right forearm being sliced through. Reflexively, her gaze turned towards the attacker, one who appeared to have lunged from below, wreathed within darkness that danced like flame. Calm intelligent green eyes, slitted with a dark vertical line gazed back into hers even as it's mouth clamped down on her severed forearm before slinking back into the ground vanishing into the shadows.

Rage took over, coupled with the pain. Bora raised one of her feet and stomped onto the ground with such power that a crater manifested with cracks spreading from her heel. Yet ultimately, she failed to injure the ambusher.

"Bora!!!" shouted out Iris as she took a single step, shrinking the distance in the fraction of a second and protectively planting herself infront of Bora. Her monkey on the other hand leaped from her shoulder, and over Bora herself to stand behind her.

Bora had reacted faster. After her hand had been severed, she had commanded her spiritual energy to travel towards the stump where, with her mental direction, started the process of cell division, ultimately growing new skin over the stump.