The Faces

"Lots of things, but nothing I suspect you've got on or in you — or at least nothing that I'm willing to try drinking," Alex said dryly. "As long as we make it out, it doesn't matter. If you think about it, I'm actually lucky."

 "Seriously? How?"

"When we make it out of here, my reward is going to be better than yours because the challenge was harder."

Claire stared at him. Then she shook her head. "Yeah. You're off your rocker… but you won't see me complaining. I'm in good shape again thanks to you, so if we've only got two days, we don't have time to waste standing around."

"Agreed." Alex directed his gaze out of the house they'd sheltered in and out over to the mountain beyond the forest of face-barked trees. The storm of crackling purple energy churned on at its peak, uncaring.

That's a fair bit to get through in just two days. Some challenge, huh? 

 A grin pulled across Alex's lips. He'd be damned if he died of something as lame as dehydration in the midst of an apocalypse. The System wasn't going to get rid of him that easily.

"Let's get to it. We have a mountain to climb." 

Before Alex and Claire could think about scaling the mountain, they had to actually get to it. Between them and their best guess at freedom was a forest of trees stuffed chock-full of human faces.

The two of them peered out of the doorway of their temporary shelter and studied the pathways of roots spanning the chasm over to the forest. Luckily, there didn't seem to be any monsters in the immediate area.

"How are you with balance?" Claire asked. "Those roots are big, but they aren't huge."

"The less you talk about it, the less I think I'll worry about it," Alex replied. "Some things are best done without thinking. This is one of them. It's not like we don't walk in straight lines all the time. It's just that now we're going tohave to."

"The roots aren't straight."

"My point remains the same," Alex grumbled. "I say we just sprint. Sneaking isn't going to do us any good when we're in the middle of the open, and the sooner we can get across the better."

Claire nodded. "Yeah. I'm with that. Just be ready for there to be a whole bunch of ugly little shits waiting around on the far side. That forest is way too creepy to be empty."

"Who knows. Maybe they'll be just as creeped out as we are," Alex said with a smirk. "Come on. The coast is clear right now."

They stepped out of the house and took a second to scan the sky to confirm it was clear before making for the chasm. Adrenaline started to pump through Alex's veins. At this point, he was surprised his body had any left to make.

"You realize there's a good chance the forest is alive and will try to kill us, right?" Claire asked.

"There are faces in the trees. If it doesn't, I'm going to be disappointed. That means we just have to be faster than the forest. We can see the whole base of the mountain, and the forest surrounds the entire thing. There's no other way up there. If I'm going to die, I'm going to do it doing something, not just sitting around. Besides, maybe we'll get lucky and the faces will just be decorative."

Neither of them believed that, but there was nothing to be done. They couldn't just stick around and wait until Alex died of dehydration. With him gone, it wasn't like Claire would last much longer on her own. 

Alex broke into a jog, then a sprint. Glint ran in front of him. Alex wasn't so sure running across the wood would actually be safer than walking it, but the less time he spent suspended with nowhere to dodge, the better.

His foot landed on the trunk of the tree and he was off. Fortunately, it had good purchase and the branch was still as wide as two people laying side by side. There was enough room for him to run relatively normally — and that was what he did.

If the trees really were aware, he needed to get to land before they started moving their roots around.

I just hope it doesn't wake the whole forest up. If it does, we're going to be sprinting for quite —

The roots shuddered. Alex's footing slipped.

"Glint! Arm!"

The monster spun, digging one claw into the wood to increase the speed of his turn as he stuck his hand out to ward Alex. He grabbed onto the monster's grey flesh and Glint yanked him up, tossing him onto the branch.

It continued to tremble beneath Alex, but he didn't wait around to see what else would happen. He lurched to his feet and scrambled the rest of the way across the gap before diving onto the ground.

Claire was just a few steps behind him and Glint. She pulled him to his feet, panic in her eyes as loud creaks echoed out from the forest around them.

"The trees!" Claire hissed. "They're—"

Alex grabbed her by the arm and took off. "Stop wasting time talking and run! Are you really surprised? We already covered this!"

She didn't bother wasting words on a response. Their feet slammed into the packed dirt as the trees cracked and groaned. The faces in the bark worked and blinked, low moans picking up like howling wind.

Roots twisted through the ground in their path and rose up before them. Alex ducked and weaved past them, not letting himself slow for long enough to take a proper look at what the forest had to offer.

The faces went from moans to howls, and it quickly became quite apparent why there weren't any other monsters there. They'd been correct. The forest was the monster. There wasn't even any form of identification to reveal what kind of monster it was, but Alex didn't care.

A root whistled past his head and he dropped to the ground, skidding a foot on his knees before launching back to his feet and breaking back into a sprint.

///Author's Note///

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