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so busy these days ppl and big cuzin just had baby yesterday so yay! but otherwise gomennasai gomennasai gomennasai *bows over and over*

Chapter 12: The Mountain Pass

We could only assume the other teams left right after us. Honestly, I didn’t care. We had to win. I was now carrying our camping gear, my stuff, sword, and bow. Ashley had her stuff, my arrows, and her jewelry.

The paths that we walked were rocky, with some forestation on both sides of us. As we walked, I took time to look through the bestiary. It had more than just animals and demons! It had lists and lists of plants that were edible, medicinal, and harmful. I really had to give John props for thinking to buy this for us!

But focusing on the wildlife, I found there were mountain lions, and goats as for animals. Demon wise, there were vampyres, 2 recorded behemoths, and 1 recorded tribe of humanoids. “I was looking at the map while you sleeping and it looks like if we move fast, we can get this mountain in about a week and a half!” Ashley told me.

“Good! The sooner, the better!” I answered flipping through the pages. I read about the different demons, though in school we studied them constantly. I’d killed plenty of small vampyres and a few demon nests built to close to the village but I’d never faced a behemoth or a humanoid.

To explain a little about each one, vampyres are pretty self-explanatory. They survive on blood, and if there’s enough, they’re not picky on what it came from. Behemoths are the big and vicious creatures. They are very indiscriminant about what they eat and will attack you just because they are at least aware that they have that power. Besides that fact, they have relatively small brains, unlike humanoids. Humanoids, the most evolved of all demons species. They are similar to what Earth calls “cavemen” in its early times. They hunt with crudely made, yet effective weapons and live in large groups with a basic (though at this point still indecipherable) language.

I really hope we don’t run into the humanoids! They are especially hard to get rid of. The trees by now sloped up with the natural rock walls that at their highest, we about 35 feet high. The knocking of rocks down the walls made us slow our pace, our hearts beginning to race. We stayed silent and treaded lightly and cautiously.

I looked up at the left wall only to see a family of mountain goats was staring down at us. Ashley let out a held breath, relieved. She smiled up at them and waved seeing, a few of them only babies still. We quickened our pace now, but not five paces away, the goats began to bleat loudly and repeatedly.

“Something’s wrong here,” Ashley said. “They’re warning us, I know it!” she added with a frown now covering her face.

I pulled my bow from around me and said, “Stay on guard. Give me my arrows too.” Once I had them, she took the tent from me, and we were set to walking. We came up to a curve in the path and as we traversed it, three mountain lions, came right across our path! They seemed as if they were running at us, but scrambled up a steep wall, completely ignoring the two of us. It scared us both, and I lowered the bow and arrow which I had noticed I had already had ready to shoot. That was a good thing. It’s what I’d been taught. I prevented Ashley from screaming even a little bit as well.

We began to walk close to the right wall, coming to another curve. This curve was much longer, and wider than the last. Then on the left wall, we came upon something. “It’s a cave!” I discovered. The cave entrance was at least a good 20 yards wide and now 50 feet high.

It looked crudely dug out, so it was reasonable to say it was not man-made. From there, I began to narrow down my options about life in the cave as well as what may have dug this out. Humanoids? No, too quiet. And on the off chance they weren’t home, there would have been evidence of them a long time ago. A group of vampyres? Quite possible. They hate fire, and I have Ashley! We positioned ourselves behind one of the many large rocks and peeked over its top to see the cave.

“Shoot a fireball inside it!” I pointed.

“Hell no! That’ll just piss whatever’s in there off!” she declined. She made a valid point. But I’m coming home with stories to tell! After another a minute of arguing, she went ahead and took aim, shooting a fireball into the wall on the inside of the cave.

“Nice shot!” I congratulated. “C’mon.” We backtracked about a hundred feet and left our thing s behind another rock. Once we were done, we’d go back and get it. I restrung the arrow and we stealthily approached the cave. From the entrance, there came a very light, warmish breeze.

Ashley laid a shaky hand on my shoulder

“Let’s go! There’s nothing there!” she said impatiently.

I hesitated for a moment before she began to tug at my arm and finally, I gave in. “Let’s go. You’re probably right; it’s empty in there,” I said disappointedly. I took one last look at the black, ashy mark left by the fireball. Little, did we know that our assumption of life in the cave was wrong. Dead wrong!