Enigma Of The Woods

CHAPTER 5: A PERPLEXED CAMP

JETT'S POV

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!’, I screamed as I sat up straight on my bed. My heart was pounding excessively and I was drenched in sweat. My body was extremely hot and was naked on my bed. I hope I still had my virginity intact. My arm and legs were back and there was no hole in my abdomen either. I didn’t understand. I couldn’t make heads or tails out of it. Want I just in the woods facing that beast? The Neo Enigma. But more than that I had a huge headache, my head fleet like it'd explode ’t any second and I had a boiling fever.

I went to the bathroom to take a quick shower. As I took the shower I was still trying to make sense of what had happened. I couldn’t. I looked hopelessly at the diadem around my neck for any clues but nothing. I got out and luckily the fever was gone but then I was extremely hungry and I had no food at home. I needed to go shopping. As I was stepped out I saw it was yet another sunny day.

‘Ouch!!’. The sun burnt mu skin. What the fuck?! Since when? I put my hand under the sunlight over and over again and each time it burnt me. I was perplexed. I put on my hoodie with a pair of gloves and rushed to the convenience store close by. On my way back I ran into Ravi.

He said, 'Thank goodness! You made it out alive!’, as he embraced me. I felt weird, like squeezing him like an orange, till all the juices come out.

‘So, did you find anything?’.

‘Well… I’m not really sure I was there but the next thing I knew I was back at my place’, I scratched my left arm.

‘Oh! Okay, I get it. You chickened out but you’re ashamed to admit it’, he said with a smile. ‘Don’t worry, it’s nothing to be ashamed about. At least now you’ve got some sense so don’t go back there’. He walked away.

Fuck off. I didn’t chicken out. He was right about something though; I wasn’t going back there. I know what happened wasn’t a dream but even if it was, that was a good enough warning not to go there ever again.

‘What did you say happened?’, a creature with a coarse voice asked. ‘What happened to Paralogos?’

Paralogos was the Neo Enigma I had encountered.

‘We don’t know, Lord Perifronisi’, one of the lesser beast replied.

Perifronisi was a higher ranking Neo Enigma. His name in an ancient language that existed before the virus meant “Scorn”. He had four arms. The first pair were smaller and were joined at the wrist across his chest. They had no hands. The second pair were bigger and behind the smaller ones. They had huge claws. He had horns that were curved inwards and over his head. On his chest was a golden glowing crest. It was two triangles superimposed and upside down to one another. He also had a razor like grin but his seemed even more sinister.

He approached the scene and in the midst of the human parts and corpses that lay there, there was the shredded corpse of his comrade, Paralogos. His horns were broken. His teeth smashed, only a few were left and they were loosely held in place. His grin was washed off his face. His head was connected to his body by thin elastic strands of muscles. His chest was ripped apart and the inside was very clearly visible. His lower body was gone, all that was there was a blood trail leading outside the woods.

‘This can only be the work of one of our kind’, Perifronisi pointed out.

‘I agree’, Anisychía replied. He was of a higher rank like Perifronisi. ‘ I agree but why would anyone of our kind’ attack the other?’

‘I don’t know… Druantia’, he called looking at the tree to his right.

Like a mirage, a beautiful female cane from the tree. She was glowing white and had a crown of leaves around her head. She wore a transparent silk cloth made of various layers. She was sensationally beautiful. Her eyes shun like the sun. Her lips were pink, soft and tender. She had various ornaments around her neck, wrists and ankles. And a diadem on her forehead. As she emerged from the tree various tiny glowing lights followed her along.

‘Yes, my dear one’, she responded as she swung around him, placing her arms around his neck.

‘You’re the guardian of the woods’, he paused. ‘Tell me what happened’.

‘It was a human child’.

‘What?!!’, he and Anisychía exclaimed simultaneously. Unbelievable, a human child; capable of this monstrous scene. ‘ Don’t tell me lies. Just admit you weren’t keeping watch’, Perifronisi remarked out if disbelief.

‘I’m neither like your kind not like the feeble humans. I need never sleep nor rest. I’m always active’.

‘Then how?!’.

‘He had entered here before with his friends but not all of them left alive, one of the lessers killed some of his friends…’, lessers was her way of referring to the lower ranking Neo Enigma. ‘But he still had hope to escape from this town. He returned yesterday and was in the verge of death when something awakened in him and he came out victorious’, she concludes with a mischievous smile.

‘Preposterous!!!’. Perifronisi was enraged and unsettled. If a human was really capable of this and they were more of them then their days were numbered.

‘But it seems like the human is still not aware of his abilities, he can’t even remember what happened’, Druantia added to lighten his load.

‘Tell me his name!’.

‘That I can’t do. I am the guardian of the woods not your subordinate. I’m not on any side’

‘So you’ll help him if need be?’. His anger rising he clenched his fist. She didn’t flinch despite seeing this. ‘Where is he?’, Anisychía butted in.

‘I took him home’. She began returning to her abode. ‘One last bit of information…’, she paused as they looked at her with full attention. ‘I don’t believe he is what he appears to be’.

‘What do you me-‘, the impetuous Perifronisi asked. She had unfortunately left before he could finish his question. ‘This can’t be! I thought we killed the half abomination three years ago?!’.

‘What do we do?’, Anisychía asked .

‘This is our town. We rule this world’, he said trying to boost is overloaded ego. ‘We go out in search of him tomorrow evening’.

‘Yes, sir’, he responded while bowing to the furious Perifronisi that was storming out angry.