Five Little Sacrifices

Chapter 101

Their surrounding were slowly getting darker when they walked in the lily pad forest. Freed was holding Felix' hand and the boy looked around curiously. The ground was now uneven. There were tall stalagmites all around most of them covered in tiny moss trees.

"It feels like we're walking deeper and deeper in some sort of a pond", Rufus said, looking at the bubbles that were silently floating above them. "And it's getting darker."

"It must be night", Freed said. "I'm concerned because we've been walking for quite some time already and we haven't met anyone or seen anything."

"It's like there are no animals either", Toby said. "It's really weird."

"There's something!" Felix suddenly shouted pointing ahead and they all stopped, looking at the direction.

In the darkness, between the thick stalks of lily pads and their flowers there really was something moving. Something long like a snake and on it it had big veil like fins they could barely see. It had a huge head and they could see how the big jaw was slowly moving, showing thin and sharp teeth.

The creature seemingly swam through the air, dodging stalks on its way. Something long rose above it's head and suddenly they saw a flash of greenish light which disappeared only a second later.

"Isn't that an angler fish?" Rufus asked surprised.

"Angler fish? And it's flying... So it must have wings", Toby murmured slowly when thinking about it. "So it's a winged fish. It tastes bad, we can't eat it..."

"It's not a winged fish", Freed assured.

"So we can eat it?"

"I think we shouldn't try our luck", Rufus said slightly amused.

His smile wore off as he looked at the huge fish that was lazily swimming closer, but it didn't seem like it was interested of them.

"In this land, we can't count on the animals being the same as in Earth Land, even if they might look the same. Angler fishes never grow big like that in Earth Land and they usually live in seas so deep humans can't even encounter them normally."

"Not always", Freed said. "We saw some in Elenbora where they were used to pull little ferries. But not even them were as big as that."

"I wish I could've gone to Elenbora as well", Felix sighed.

Once the angler fish swam away and they could only see the occasional flash of light in the distance, they could start moving again. They managed to hardly take more than ten steps when suddenly Toby's shout made them jump.

"Look at that!" the man exclaimed amazed and suddenly dropped down on the ground, looking at something.

"What? What?" Felix asked immediately and he got down looking at whatever Toby was looking. Freed and Rufus looked at each other and they got closer too.

"It's like... That one teeny tiny tree is blossoming and it's glowing", Toby admired.

True, one of the little trees growing on ground really looked like there were thousands of flowers so tiny they could hardly even recognize them being flowers. Freed glanced around and now that he knew what to look, he could notice many other little trees were getting lit as well.

One by one, they blossomed and slowly their surroundings were starting to fill with soft light. The forest wasn't so dark anymore.

"I see, so their flowers only bloom once it's dark outside", the rune mage said. "And since we saw that angler fish, I suppose we can assume that at least this part of the forest will get more lively the darker it gets."