The Next to be Taken

Chapter Twenty-Five

"Ladies first." Kent snickered.

Dash rolled his eyes, smiling. Then shoved him forward so he tumbled in first.
Dash followed behind him, going into the spinning portal.

I stood, walking up to the gateway. I looked up at it, it put off cool air, blowing my hair back.
I am not use to it yet, I have not learned to control myself through it yet. How am I going to do this? I groaned, I really am so stupid sometimes..

I shuffled closer to it, unsure if I should try it or not. I would guess Dash and Kent would not be far from the portal. Kent is a fast reactor, If I get thrown, maybe I can yell to get their attention. At that point, I won't care if I get caught. It's not worth it to cause my early demise.

I shuffled slightly closer when I realized it was beginning to close, I came this far, just do it.
I took off my hat, unbuckling the back of it to clip it onto my belt loop. So I hopefully wouldn't lose it. I got sucked into the spinning thing of colors.
Being thrown about, I tried to control myself. Balance my weight in the center so I don't get thrown even more. I saw that I was approaching the end, I put my arms by sides and kept my legs straight. A few times my arms left my sides when I started to sway a little too much.

I got to the end, being thrown out. Not as high as I have been thrown, but where I could touch the tip of a tree.
I hit everything on the way down, my mind ran slow when I realized what was happening. I was hitting each tree branch one by one. Falling down a tree. I went through about four until I got to the middle of the tree.

I gripped onto the branch to hold myself up, my feet dangling off of it. My feet slipped off of it every time I tried to get a better grip. I groaned in discomfort from the uncomfortable pain that erupted in my middle that took most of the blow.
I was definitely going to have a lot of bruises after words. I finally pulled myself on top of it, sitting up. Leaves fell onto my head from crashing into the previous branches, I could still see Dash and Kent, heading into the woods. I grabbed the branch once again and began to climb down, getting myself to the ground. I dropped and landed onto my feet, pulling twigs and leaves out of my hair and trying to better part my hair as well.

Welp, that could have been worse. I unclipped my hat, placing it back on my head. I walked around the tree, walking in the direction I saw them go. But I could not see them anywhere.
Where are they? I traveled farther and farther into the woods, hoping I could at least catch sight of them. I got about half way through when I started to worry.

I don't know where they are at and this Forrest is really easy to get lost in. I could get lost or not be able to go back with them... I breathed, still sounds weird hearing myself saying I want to go back with them..

I continued on down a straight path, hoping if something did happen, I could turn around and walk straight out. I tried to take as less turns as possible to avoid getting lost. I was at that point that I wanted to call out for them and hope that they could hear me. I would assume they could unless if I wondered too far from them.

The Forrest was dark, it was fairly hard to see much. The clouds covered the moon, not giving me much light. Before I could even think of calling their names, I felt a sudden gust of warm air.

"A little far out, aren't you?" A low voice rumbled from behind me.

Oh no.. Don't tell me.. I slowly turned around, still not seeing much, except for some shapes or figures. But some figures, I was not sure if it was him or the trees.

"Um, I guess. But I know where I am." I called out.

"Do you now?" The voice now sounded like he was behind me.

I spun quickly around to try to face him, not wanting to have my back to this stranger.
But at the sudden realization that my sense of direction was now thrown off from spinning around too much. "U-uh.." I looked around to try to find a landscape mark that could point me back into the right direction.

"It's not safe to be out here like this by yourself you know. This is where the monsters lurk." He mentioned.

I turned my hands into fists, turning back to face where I had heard the voice coming from. "I'm not some little girl. I can handle myself, I'm not scared." I shot back. Seeing movements of shadows around the trees, I looked at each one, trying to spot this person.

The clouds above moved away from the bright moon, giving me the much needed light to see. It illuminated most of my surroundings, but of course there were still some dark places. I stared the shadow down, wanting to see who was I talking to.

"Oh," He started, I could see something moving closer to the edge of the dark shadows which he hid in. "You should be scared." He came into the light, instead of seeing a person, it was a giant. Which I kind of expected. His eyes looked me up and down, his lips parted to say another word, showing off sharper teeth. "Little girl." He mockingly called me.

This is the cannibal that Dash and Kent are looking for, I hope they are not too far away. If they have been doing this for a while, then I would expect hunting these guys down shouldn't take too long for them. I backed away, feeling my heart pound against my chest. All alarms went off in my body to tell me to run, but my legs stayed frozen. Except being able to shuffle away inch by inch.

"What's the matter?" He grinned sinisterly, laying on his stomach in front of me.

"I-I need to go, it's late and my friends are going to worry." I tried to hide any nervousness in my voice, turning around to walk away as casual and calm as possible.

"No, the night is still young. And I was really enjoying our little chat." He pinched the bottom of my sweater so I wouldn't go anywhere. I turned back to him, pulling it away. He let go but kept his hand a little too uncomfortably close to me, laying on the ground.

"Yeah but I really do need to go." I took a step back.

"Oh, you're not going anywhere." He said blankly.

Hearing a slight ruffle of the grass, I looked behind myself to the ground to see his hand creeping up on me from behind. He quickly grabbed me with a tight and uncomfortable grip. I yelped out, then yelled "Dash!" Before he covered my mouth with his thumb.

"Shut that pretty little mouth of yours, we don't need to be drawing attention to ourselves. At least I don't need it."

I bit his thumb as hard as I could, causing him to yell in response. A little amount of blood showed itself. His glare turned to me, his grip on me tightening to the point it was getting painful. "Why you little-"

"Hey, pick on someone your own size."