Bound to temptations

Despite the death of one of their closest friends, no one cried. They held in their tears and gulped it down. If they cry now, they'll break.

After a while, Anne stood up and stared at Kai and bowed her head. "I'm sorry for my actions earlier. I was out of my mind, it seems." She apologised wholeheartedly. 

Kai nodded and smiled. "All is forgiven." 

"Your arrow.." Zane murmured from the side. He held a single broken arrow in one hand while his other arm bled. 

"I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me." Anne calmly said, tucking out her shirt and ripping the bottom half. She tied the fabric around the injury carefully. "After we get out.. I'll buy some healing potions for you. So please forgive me."

"Alright..don't do it again, okay?" Zane moved his arm around to see whether his movements would be restricted. It doesn't seem like it.

Ophelia hugged both of them and mustered a smile. "We'll come back for Gerald's body after we kill the snake." 

"Alright." The both of them replied in unison. 

Anne looked at Gerald and she leaned down. She stared a little longer before putting her hands out and shutting his eyelids. 

Kai didn't care about what the others were doing. He was concentrating on the fact that the light was slowly dimming. And an exit had opened where the words used to be. 

He looked back and saw Zane staring straight at him. Feeling uncomfortable, he smiled.

"Where did your sword and dagger go?" Zane asked, looking around on the ground. 

"I burnt the sword. The dagger is on my belt." Kai answered. 

Zane nodded and looked ahead. "We should probably get going." He called out to his friends behind him.

Ophelia was all ready. She clutched her wand tightly as she walked front and beside Zane. She felt safer around him.

Putting away her bow, Anne walked behind the two in silence. Not taking her eyes off the body until they went through the exit.

The large exit now had shrunken into a small hallway. This caused a lot of trouble. Sometimes, there wasn't even a gap to go through. They pushed through the walls and made their way out.

But what felt worst was the revolting smell that was coming off of the walls. The walls didn't feel like bark at all, it was compressible and slimy yet firm.

They all had different varying textures. 

"What..the hell is this?" Ophelia complained, she felt something cold landed on her hand. She did as her  conscience told her to and smelled it. It was like iron.

"Argh!" Ophelia fellt her wrist being tied by something thin. It was a momentary pain that disappeared in less than a minute. She didn't make a big deal out of it.

Kai avoided the walls the whole time. He was disgusted the moment he felt it the first time. It was even worse when he realised he was front and needed to break an opening in the weird material.

They finally made it out of the tunnel of hell and landed themselves in another portion of the willow forest. It felt less ominous this time, like something had cleared up. 

"Is everyone alright?" Anne asked, coming out from the tunnel next. She looked back and wanted to gey a better look at it since there was some light coming in but all she saw was a hole through the trunk of the tree.

"Yeah." Zane replied, looking around while closing the distance between Kai and him. The kid seemed like he would bolt any moment now, fidgeting and making the most sudden movements.

"This looks like a real forest..unlike the first." Ophelia stated, looking up and was glad to see a small fragment of the sky through a small gap between the overgrown leaves.

"Are we getting further away or closer..?" Anne asked, sounding disappointed about the natural state of things around her. 

"Perhaps closer. It's a snake after all. It likes natural habitats too.." Zane replied. "Are you guys..hungry?" 

"Abit. Should we walk a bit further and on the way kill some animals if there are any?" Anne suggested.

"Let's do that." Zane agreed and slowed down his pace and walked beside Ophelia.

Anne was the one walking in front as she got ready her bow by her side. She was a great hunter. Her eyes work well with her other senses, being able to pinpoint everything. She was a remarkable archer.

Kai walked behind and traced words on his hands with his finger. Trying hard to decipher what it meant, he knew a few of the syllabus he just needed to piece them and make some sense of them.

He got startled by a sound of a bird squeaking. He looked in the direction of the sound and saw a brown object falling down as it landed into a bush where Zane was on standby.

Multiple birds were shot down and collected after. Everyone marched onwards through the woods until they felt the temperature slowly dipped.

"It's probably nighttime right now." Anne said, looking up and catching a glimpse of the blue starry sky.

"I'll start cooking. We'll rest here for tonight, okay?" Zane asked, smiling at Ophelia as he let go of her hand and carried the dead birds to a nearby tree.

Without his sword, he made a swipe action with his hands in midair and the tree trunk snapped into half smoothly. Leaving behind a piece of wood suitable for siting. He did this 3 more times and sat down.

Zane used his wind magic and gathered up all the trunks. "Burn the wood for me please, Ophelia." He looked at the red hair lady standing in front of him. He felt his heart pounding faster before he looked away.

The fire blazed up and warmed the atmosphere around them. Everyone settled down on the wood seats. Zane dexterity with cooking was excellent.

Looking at the empty patch of ground without grass behind him, he turned around with his back to the campfire.

"Hmm? What are you looking at?" Ophelia asked, taking a stick and poking the meat.

"Just looking. In case my uncle is around here wandering. I thought I'd see him a while ago.." Kai murmured, using his shoe to trace. He frowned and thought deeply. Maybe he should've worked harder when he was still taking lessons. 

Zane peeked at what Kai was doing and chuckled. "I used to like drawing on dirt when I was younger. There was this type of soil that retained its shape for centuries and my people would put it in galleries." He said, looking a bit saddened.

Noticing the change in pitch, Kai looked back and stared at Zane. He could feel something was off. The guy was all happy talking about his childhood and all of a sudden he had this switch. 

Ophelia looked odd too, staring into space. She wasn't budging one inch.

Meanwhile, Anne was checking and cleaning all her arrows and dabbing some sort of liquid on the metal tips.

Kai brushed it off as nothing. He didn't care anyway. As long as he managed to get the antidote within 5 days, all this hassle of acting would be over.

'Full of temptations..' Kai thought, deciphering the word from earlier in his mind. There were still 3 sentences or more but it took him so long to form one phrase.

How long would it take him to understand the full passage of the reciting they did to summon Gerald like that?

"Zane, what did the words on the wall mean?" Kai asked, turning around and smiling.

Zane froze and his hand started shaking slightly, the meat of the bird became overcooked as he forgot to turn it. "It was just a passage from a bible from.." his voice trailed off.

"From?" Kai moved in closer while watching everything Zane did. 

Zane legs shook along with his heavy breathing. He fidgeted around with his mask strings. "My village. It was in a whole different language so I don't know what it meant exactly. I just know how to say it and a summary of it.."

"And what is it?"

"It is.."

A sharp click sound snapped. Grabbing the attention of everyone. But the one who was most shocked was the source of the sound.

Ophelia. Her arms were hung up high as if tied by something. She took each step awkwardly as if she was bound. Her expression was full of horror.