Reincarnated into a Snow Griffin-Chapter 86

A chill running down my spine is the first sight that something is wrong, really wrong with that place, soon followed by a strange sensation, the lack of something, an eerie energy, of an image, of smell, a forced void that is completely unnatural yet seems to stare back pass my own eyes.

At first I could not even see it, and yet I could feel its presence, almost like the gaze of a predator staring at your back, a chilling bone sensation that, even though you cannot hear or see it, you know there is there, that there is something out there, lurking in the darkness, waiting to strike, appearing only at the corner of the eye.

That sensation increases as much as the light of the crystal on the collar, and even though nothing noteworthy happens up above I cannot help the jolt of adrenaline from rushing as I approach my destination, the heavy weight on my chest growing stronger, and as much as it dried my throat and put me on alert I keep moving own, clenching and unclenching my stretched out paws in an attempt to ease the agitation.

And when I see the place my suspicious regarding the unnatural qualities of it are confirmed for it is surrounded by an unnatural thick white fog that makes it so that even with my sharp eyes it is hard to tell heads from toes, but I can see some huge black silhouettes outlined in the fog, and some movement too from weirdly shaped figures.

The crystal flares up then, terribly reveling of my position in a strange place, especially with the darkening sky to show off this single odd star, but as I start circling around the place it seems to start malfunctioning, blinking crazy as if unable to pin point the child’s magic anymore.

I tap it with my claw on it, but the blink blink keeps happening, and aware that that was not a good sight but unable to tell just how bad, it actually takes me a few seconds to realize that I was flying lower than before, closer to the fog enough so brush it if I stretched my paws.

And yet the mere thought of it gives me a raged breathing, an animalistic fear taking over as if I was staring death in the eye.

And as far as I knew, I could be doing just that.

My concern increases from my animal senses when I realize that I had not deliberately lowered down to have a better look, but had been pulled down by the strange forces that were at work here.

And their invisible claws had a deadly grip on me.

The moment I notice and start flapping my wings harder it seems that the force notices my resistance too and stops being subtle about it, like a magnet with all its pull and strength, and at that moment I’m all beast, man and owl, as my heart jolts with adrenaline and my huge wings start beating like crazy, despair widening my eyes as, against my best efforts, I keep skinning in, enough so that my limbs are surrounded by it at this point and I can feel its thickness surrounding and pressing like probing hands, finger gripping and pulling me down.

It is a great relief when I break from its grasp and I do not wait around, I fly up high and start moving away, anywhere really, just to get away from that place. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

Only when I cannot feel its presence so strongly anymore do I slow down, heart racing against my chest and small shudders still reminiscing me of the chilling clenching fear I felt.

I blink a couple of times, trying to calm down, only one thought playing in my mind:

What the hell was that?

And did I really want to find out?

The fact is that the crystal had pointed us right there so I guess we would not have much of a choice in the end, and I think I was starting to understand why there was such a high reward for this quest, beyond the payment that was included too, and why the Auction House Owner chose to hire dispensable people for this task.

For I have a feeling that things are about to get extremely more complicated than we anticipated... but we have no choice but to persist forward.

So many years of training, studying, getting stronger while searching for a way to find mother, and now having the chance to save a friend... there is no way such thing as fear would stop me now.

Although I cannot deny such strange presence and strength had shaken me up and made me lose the little bearing I had for a second, and unable to tell directions that well and much less use a bird’s sense since that lion took it from me I have to use my surrounding to get back to the shore, thankfully having payed a lot of attention to where everything is placed beforehand since I have only my memory to guide me back to where I came from, and it is quite easy to get lost flying up in the sky, not only for is a piece of cake to get distracted while enjoying being free in the air, but also because there is nothing to guide up there in the skies beyond the moving clouds.

A bird without a sense of direction, have to say that disgusting lion has quite the dark sense of humor.

Thankfully there is a huge castle with pointy towers at the side to give me my bearings back, so knowing that it had been on my right the way up I simply keep it on my left and somehow find my way back around, finding the end of the island and the beach with ease, but having to fly over the coast much more than I thought I had to get back to the tower, easily drifting from where I should have been with the speed I managed up in the air.

And that’s why, having to move about that much, covering more ground than supposed to on the way back, I end up finding a lake that I had not seen before amidst the woods, hidden by the foliage until I was basically up close to it, a wetland of sorts at most parts, trees growing out of deeper water as its roots stretched out like fingers outside the ground, being pulled out from the soil by the water, and yet they are exactly the same ones on the beach, palm trees and high leaves, showing how prepared these plants are to both environments.

But what truly makes me look over is not only the natural hidden beauty of the place, but the drowning human fighting to survive as the water pulled her in as her fingers disappear into the dark musky water alongside her screams.