Page 13

Oswald

‘T he Unity Trials have been initiated. Succeed and survive or fail and perish. The First Trial had commenced.’

Bright light shone through my closed eyelids. I didn’t want to open them, but I knew I didn’t have a choice in the matter. I had to find Junie.

I squinted as I cracked them open, blinking rapidly as my eyes adjusted to the intense light. I sent my healing magic there to help ease the way, sighing in relief when I was finally able to open them fully and take in my surroundings.

I was standing in a meadow, the tall green grass waving in the slight breeze and interspersed with white, pink and yellow wildflowers. Enclosing the meadow were tall trees with leaves of a variety of colours, ranging from the typical green and autumnal oranges to unusual pinks, blues, and purples. They looked like flowers themselves, and if it weren’t for the textured bark I could make out on the trunks that were also in strange shades I may have believed them to be so.

‘Oz!’

Hawthorne was calling my name. Tracking the source of his voice I found him picking his way in my direction with Enid trailing behind him like the loyal little puppy she was, though I was glad to see the both of them were okay.

‘Oz,’ another voice, closer and deeper, called to me. The strange sound like rocks grinding clued me in that it was the purple guy from before, and I turned to my right for the confirmation. Sure enough there he stood, dark hair curling around his impressively large, black horns that, with a closer examination under the brighter light of the sun, I realised were actually a deep shade of purple. I bet Junie would have gotten a kick out of his monotonous colouring.

My heart clenched with worry. I’m coming, sis.

‘Who even are you, man?’ I asked him, my anxiety over losing Juniper and whatever was going on here coming out as anger. I didn’t mean to take it out on him. He’d tried to help after all, but I could also tell he wanted to fuck my sister, and since he was a complete strange as well as an entirely separate species, I wasn’t so cool with that.

I was, however, perfectly happy to let him tag along if he continued to make himself useful. I figured the more the merrier when it came to trying to survive this place. What did that disembodied voice say again? Oh, yeah. Fail and perish. No thanks. I chose succeed and survive, thank you very much.

Hawthorne and Enid finally caught up, both of they eyeing up Twilight Sparkle over here with a wariness, though I might have seen a flicker of interest behind Enid’s eyes before she turned her gaze back towards the man she was really after. I could practically see her heart beating through them, begging him to reciprocate her love even though he never would.

Barf.

‘What is this place?’ asked Thorne, taking in our strange new surroundings with a keen yet awed eyes.

‘Apparently, it’s the first trial,’ I replied, picking apart the words I’d heard upon my awakening.

‘Right. But what the fuck are these Unity Trials anyway? Why are we even here? And where are Juniper and the others?’

‘I don’t know, but I intend to find out. Let’s go explore, see if we can find any clues for what we need to do to find our people and get the hell out of here.’

‘Oz,’ Twilight Sparkle called my name again, and his demanding tone had me rounding on him ready to fight. Except he only looked at me with a patient expression, his arm extended as he pointed towards the treeline.

No. Not the treeline. One tree in particular that stood taller than the rest, towering over them all. Its leaves matched every colour of the other trees, its bark also a conglomeration of the colours we’d already seen. If I was correct in my deductions, this single tree had given life to all the others surrounding it. Like a mother.

My instincts screamed at me. Whatever this place was, whatever life forms called it home, I could already tell we were in for a fight of epic proportions just to get out of here alive. What threats came at us, however, I was completely ignorant to. We all were.

Suddenly, I figured it out. The Unity Trials. Five supernatural races, four of which were previously believed to be either myths or long extinct. The new Fae symbol Junie had translated in the tomes.

It was all connected. Fate was leading us. But why?

I looked back at Twilight Sparkle with this new perspective changing everything. He was going to be the key here. We were going to need to work together to survive the coming challenges the Trials threw our way if we were to have a chance of passing and getting out of here alive. That was if we ever got out at all. For all I knew, we were stuck here forever.

Fuck, I hoped not.

Armed with that new knowledge I took a step towards the treeline, only to freeze when a pulse of magic washed over me. It was subtle, more like a gentle breeze than a tsunami of power, but there was something about it that screamed danger!

The grass began to undulate as if caught in the snare of the magic, the movements like choppy waves compared to their previously gentle sway. The leaves on the trees copied the movements, but I could find no pattern in them. The motions were random, starting off slow before they picked up speed, no longer smooth but jerky.

Hawthorne and Enid were already well on their way to those trees, unaware of the danger I felt until Thorne suddenly stopped in his tracks, looked back at me, then his gaze settled uncertainly on the trees. Barney hadn’t left my side, and I was oddly comforted by his steady presence.

A series of cracks preceded the sound of thundering footsteps and shouts heading right for us.

I watched, the icy fear running through my veins freezing me in place as one by one the tops of the trees bent and rose much the same way a person’s head bobbed as they wove through a crowd. The damn trees weren’t trees in any sense I had ever known before, and they were waking up.

Their movements were slow at first, their bark creaking like stiff joints as if they had been stationary for too long and they needed to work out the kinks. Like a domino effect, their roots tore from the earth and they stood at a greater height, the canopy of their leaves shaking like a dog after playing in a muddy puddle, water droplets, twigs and other debris flying off in every direction. I rose my hands to protect my face after a particularly sharp twig scratched a line down my already sliced face, adding to the scars this whole ordeal had undoubtedly given me.

Then, a horde of people raced from the trees, dodging their flailing branches and tripping over the rising roots.

The purple guy who looked like my friend Tinky Winky over here was in the front of the throng, was sprinting right at us. They looked similar enough that I wondered if they were related somehow, but I didn’t stop to ruminate over such a trivial matter.

‘Phenex!’ he shouted in a similarly grinding voice followed by more words in their language I didn’t understand. What I could understand, however, was the panicked insistence in his body language. He was running from something, and if a big dude like him with those massive horns protruding from his skull and long, wicked looking talons poking from his fingers was running, then we’d better start too.

The next moment, a root whipped out from the somewhere behind the treeline and snaked around on of the bodies running, yanking him back into their fold and cutting off his shrill scream in seconds. There was no sound of flesh rendering of bones cracking, so I had no idea if he was dead, alive, or merely unconscious. I wasn’t planning on sticking around to find out.

‘Move!’ I ordered, Thorne and Enid already running back to me. I turned on my heel and ran, then halted when I realised there was nowhere to run to. We were surrounded on all sides by trees, and since they were currently the enemy it wasn’t the best idea to run straight into their wooden clutches.

I inhaled sharply at the realisation that we were trapped. ‘Shit.’

‘What do we do?’ Enid asked, her voice higher in pitch than usual from her fear.

I racked my brain trying to find a way out, but it was Barney that figured it out. He knelt on the ground, ignoring the chaos surrounding us as people ran around and also came to the realisation that they were stuck, and started clawing at the ground.

Hope lit a fuse up my ass and I bent down to join him. ‘We dig,’ I told her, hands already buried in the soil. It was difficult at first since the grass roots were a tangled mess just beneath the surface, but once we were able to tear through those and get to the softer soil things moved a lot faster. It also helped that Purple 1 and Purple 2 were a lot stronger than us, their claws shredding the roots faster than our blunt fingertips and flimsy nails.

When we’d dug what was essentially a shallow grave the trees had started to converge on the group. A few had seen what we were doing and were frantically digging their own holes, but many had been lost, ripped away but roots, vines and branches. When a woman beside us I identified as Fae due to the pointed tips of her ears was next to be taken, our efforts took on a renewed vigour. They were so close, our lives tilting on a precipice but I didn’t dare look up from my task. Not until Barney and Tinky Winky practically threw themselves inside the grave and started scooping the soil back on top of themselves.

Until that moment I’d assumed we were digging to get as deep into the ground as possible. Like a pit rather than a grave. But those two clearly had other ideas. Ones that were less time consuming and likely to save their lives. I followed suit, calling for Thorne and Enid to copy as well, and soon the five of us were burying ourselves alive.

At the last moment when only my face was clear, I called out to the Witches and Warlocks still digging to do the same and hoped they would listen. I also prayed to the gods that the other races caught on. I didn’t know how well this plan would pan out – we were burying ourselves, after all – but I knew there wasn’t really any other way out of this.

And then the world went quiet. All I could hear were our panting breaths sawing in and out of our lungs from both fear and exertion. There was no more cracking from the trees’ movements, nor were there any more screams or sounds of digging.

I tried to calm my heartrate and slow my breathing, afraid the tree creatures would notice the rise and fall beneath the soil. I’d tried to cover my face as much as possible, but I couldn’t bury myself completely for obvious reasons. I didn’t even know if they had eyes to see with, or if they had some other method to sense us, but I wasn’t about to risk it.

There was a scratching sound from nearby and I heard the low, grinding voice of Barney breathing out a single word that I instinctively knew was a curse, and then a whip-like crack slicing through the air. I felt the wind from it as it past right over my nose, and then a loud, panicked scream as Barney was snatched into the air and pulled away from us. I sat up, my body involuntarily moving to pull him back, but he was already hidden by the shadows of the forest. Barney 2 had also risen to make a grab for him but was too late like me. We shared a look, his more dismayed than mine even though I was no less worried for the large purple guy. We may not have really known each other, but he had shown me in a brief time he was genuine and selfless, putting himself in harm’s way for people he didn’t even know, let alone have any reason to trust.

But I had made a mistake by sitting up. I was now visible to the tree creatures, and there was nothing I could do a root snapped out from the shadows and wrapped around my midsection, its force pulling me forward so hard and fast the back of my head smacked against my back, already feeling stiff and achy from the whiplash.

I didn’t bother making a noise. There was no point. Either I was going to die, or the tree creatures were taking me and the others they had captured somewhere else. As prisoners? There was no way to know until it was over, but I’d take captivity over death any day. I couldn’t help Junie if I wasn’t even alive.

All thoughts of Junie, my purple friend, or the other fled from my brain when I was thrown into a dark hole, the roots releasing me as I fell. And fell.

That was when I finally screamed.