Chapter XXVI: Half to Death

2K 66 21
                                    

The howling wind bit at Arabella as she trekked through the snowy woods in search for Laurance. He had become flustered at Aphmau's comment about Travis and fled off. In Arabella's opinion, he overreacted.

Overreacting would be murdering everyone in the vicinity when the love of your life was about to marry a stranger. Oh, wait. Moving on...

"It's so cold," thought Arabella aloud, shivering as she ventured through the forest. She should've worn the warm clothes that Aphmau had given her which were originally a gift from the Enki Warrior Tribe. However, she had been too preoccupied at the moment to put them on, so now she had to deal with the cold.

Time seemed to have slowed down. Arabella had been walking through what seemed like an identical array of trees and snow for the longest time yet she wasn't getting anywhere. It was taking very long. Too long.

Eventually, Arabella stopped in her path. "Laurance, where are you?" she called out. Of course, there was no answer. She didn't expect one either. "Ugh, damn it."

She continued walking, occasionally calling out Laurance's name, until she reached a clearing in the middle of the forest. Arabella cautiously walked in and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw a familiar figure. With his back turned to Arabella, Laurance was standing at the edge of the clearing idly.

"There you are," said Arabella. "Come on, we need to get back to Travis and Aphmau."

Laurance didn't seem to hear her, or he pretended not to.

"Laurance?" Arabella rolled her eyes. "Honestly, I know we're not on the best of terms right now, but this is about Aphmau and getting back to Phoenix Drop."

Laurance still didn't do anything.

Arabella decided to take a step forward. "How stubborn are you? You're going to catch hypothermia if you just stand there."

No response.

Something strange was going on. Arabella could tell. Cautiously, she approached the figure. "Laurance?" she asked quietly.

At that moment, Laurance finally responded by turning around to face her. As much as he looked like himself, his pale eyes had glazed over. As soon as he unsheathed his sword, Arabella understood what was going on.

That was not Laurance.

Arabella turned on her heel and ran for her life from the imp. She ran back across her previous trail of footprints in the snow, and everything around her turned into a blur. She ran fast enough to make her legs feel like lead, but she didn't dare stop. An identical set of footsteps were chasing her and she didn't want to meet its gaze.

It was a trick. It was one of the Demon Warlock's mischievous imps that Travis had talked about. Arabella had never thought they were that dangerous, but she was obviously proven wrong as this one was trying to murder her.

Arabella's legs were numbing themselves, but they still kept running. Arabella herself was becoming numb from the cold. She didn't even know if she was going the right way. She was becoming tired, but the imp definitely wasn't. Eventually, she would collapse and get killed.

She glanced back for one second to see that the imp that had taken Laurance's form would not stop at catching her.

Turning away, she kept running when she saw a large tree that had fallen over in the distance. It was easy to jump over, and Arabella prepared herself to cross the obstacle. However, as it came nearer and nearer, her legs had a mind of their own and wouldn't budge even after she urged herself to jump.

Arabella inevitably tripped over it.

Great.

She turned around, and for a split second, she saw the imp again, but it wasn't Laurance. Familiar green eyes stared daggers at her.

Caspian?

"But you were dead!" Arabella shouted, getting up and running again. "I killed you years ago!"

As soon as she got up, the imp slashed its sword across Arabella's arm, causing her to scream in agony. However, she continued to run, ignoring the trail of blood.

Considering she was wincing at every step, the imp often gained on her long enough to leave a few scars still bleeding, and ignoring the pain was getting more difficult by the second. She was covered in cuts and bruises fresh with blood.

At one point, the imp created a large cut on her left leg and Arabella fell head-first into the freezing snow. Unfortunately, the snow was only covering sharp rocks, and her head was spewing out enormous amounts of red liquid. Anyone within the radius of a mile could've probably heard her shrieking in pain.

Still, Arabella continued to crawl away. The imp slammed down onto her already-damaged leg with the blunt side of its sword with great force.

An unearthly crack was heard.

Arabella had barely enough energy to keep going on and wanted to collapse in defeat. The pain was too much to bear, and she wanted it to be over with a final blow as soon as possible.

The logical part of her urged her to keep moving forward because she had almost reached the exit of the forest.

Thankfully, that was the part of herself that Arabella listened to.

The imp stabbed sharply into Arabella's side, but Arabella crawled away with every ounce of her energy left.

She had actually made it out of the forest and was only a few metres away from Travis's hideout. For some reason, the imp, upon noticing the area, turned around and fled back into forest.

Out of the corner of Arabella's eye, she noticed a few familiar figures that seemed to be running towards her.

"Arabella?" called out Laurance, noticing the horrid condition she was in and running to her. "Arabella!"

But she had already fainted.

~•~

A/N: HAPPY NEW YEAR! Yes, I've been procrastinating way too much on writing this scene and chapter. Welp, sorry, but here's your chapter now! I have many new plans and this story is about to start drifting away from the canon-ness of MCD. For example, a character that isn't dead in MCD will die. You can make your guesses on who that is, muahaha.

Anyway, I might be trying to catch up soon, so like, yeah. Bye?

--(Gr)ace



SHADOW KNIGHT'S REVENGE: A Minecraft Diaries Fan-FictionWhere stories live. Discover now