Chapter 25 Center of the Fog.
This time Dhira decided to try something different. The moment he entered the mist-covered forest, he began smashing down trees along his path. One after another crashed to the ground beneath his wooden mace. If the forest wanted to confuse him, then he would leave a trail impossible to miss.
The broken trunks lay across the muddy ground like giant arrows pointing the way he had come. Soon the familiar murky water creatures appeared again. They rushed him from the fog, screaming in those distorted voices. Dhira defeated them quickly and continued forward.
After some time, he spotted one of the fallen trees. A small smile appeared on his face. It worked. Now he knew which direction he had come from. Avoiding that path, he carefully chose another route and walked forward in a straight line. Several minutes later he stepped out of the fog.
And found himself standing in front of Thor's statue….again.
The ruined marketplace stretched around him. The moss-covered buildings stood silently beneath the night sky. Near the fire pit, Dia and Aatreya were eating as if nothing unusual had happened. Dia looked up. "Back already?"
Dhira stared at the statue for several seconds before turning around and walking back into the forest without answering. This time he noticed something strange. The trees he had broken earlier were standing again. Tall. Whole. Untouched. Not even a mark remained on their bark. Dhira stopped and placed a hand against one of them. It felt completely normal. As though it had never been struck at all. The forest was becoming more mysterious with every attempt.
Over the next several hours he tried method after method. He dragged his wooden mace through the mud, carving a deep line behind him to create a trail. Somehow the trail vanished and he still ended up beside Thor's statue. He tried moving in a perfect straight line. He tried circling around landmarks. He tried ignoring the water creatures altogether.
He even attempted following one after defeating the others, hoping it might lead him deeper into the forest. Instead it simply attacked him, shattered apart, and left him standing in the same place yet again.
Each failure chipped away at his patience. The night grew darker. The fog grew thicker. And the statue kept appearing. Eventually Dhira returned once more and simply sat down near Thor's wooden statue. He rested his elbows on his knees and closed his eyes. For the first time that day he stopped trying to force a solution.
A few moments later he heard footsteps. Opening one eye, he found Dia standing beside him holding out a wooden cup. "What is it?" he asked.
"Water." Dhira looked at the cup and gave a tired chuckle.
"I've had enough water today." Images of muddy water creatures flashed through his mind. Dia rolled her eyes.
"Fair enough."
A little later she managed to drag him toward the fire pit. The three sat around the crackling flames. The ruined settlement was quiet except for distant insects and the occasional creak of old wood. Dhira ate slowly while staring into the fire, idly rolling a small pebble between his fingers.
"The forest is filled with magic," he finally said.
"I can't find a way through." Dia paused midway through her meal.
"How?"
"Every path leads back here. Doesn't matter what I do. Marks disappear. Trails change. Directions stop making sense."
She thought for a moment. "Did you try climbing above it?"
"I can't fly," Dhira replied dryly.
"And there isn't a tree tall enough to see over the fog."
"What about- " She began listing idea after idea. Following the stars. Using rope. Marking stones. Tracking the water. Following the wind. Dhira shook his head after nearly every suggestion.
"Tried it."
"Tried that too."
"Didn't work."
"That one failed as well." Eventually Dia ran out of ideas. The silence returned. "Maybe we should try again tomorrow," she muttered.
Dhira did not argue.
The fire slowly burned lower. One by one they prepared to rest. Dia disappeared into one of the abandoned wooden houses. Dhira remained near the fire for a while before finally lying down. Aatreya stood nearby, staring into the darkness beyond the settlement, as though watching something none of them could see. Above them, the ancient forest stood silent beneath the moonlight.
The next day Dhira tried again. And failed again. The forest swallowed him, confused him, and after hours of wandering he found himself standing once more before Thor's statue in the ruined marketplace. At this point he was genuinely frustrated. Every attempt ended the same way. Every path somehow curved back to the beginning. Yet with each failure he began noticing small details he had ignored before.
The forest was leaving clues. Tiny ones. Strange ones. But clues nonetheless. During one of his trips he found strange Norse runes carved into the bark of trees. Not one or two, but dozens. Every tree carried a different symbol. Some were fresh. Others were so old moss had begun growing over them. Dhira copied them all as best as he could and returned to the settlement. Sitting beside the fire, he drew the symbols on the ground one by one while Dia watched, her fingers idly tapping the edge of her knee.
"You can read these?" he asked.
"A little," she replied. "Not much Aatreya gave me a book recently." She crouched beside the drawings, brushing dirt aside with a stick while studying them. Some she recognized immediately. Others took longer. Several made no sense by themselves. The sun slowly moved across the sky while she worked through them, combining symbols and rearranging possible meanings.
Finally she leaned back. "I think I got it." Dhira looked up. "What does it say?"
Dia frowned. "It either says a man drank too much and turned into a duck…" Dhira stared at her.
"…or," she continued, "don't follow the river when it flows backwards." That sounded slightly more useful.
Before either could say anything, Aatreya spoke from where he sat nearby.
"It is an old Norse saying." Both turned toward him.
"It has many meanings. The most common one is simple."
"What?" "Do not dwell on the past." Silence followed. Dhira looked at the symbols again but found no answer there. Aatreya simply said,
"Try again."
This time Dhira entered the forest with a calmer mind. No anger. No frustration. No rushing this time. The murky water creatures appeared as usual. They screamed and charged through the mist. Dhira met them with controlled movements. Every swing was measured. Every step deliberate. One by one they shattered into muddy water.
When the last one fell, he stood still. Nothing happened. The fog remained. The forest remained. He sighed and continued walking. A few minutes later his foot suddenly sank into the muddy ground. This had happened before. Normally he would have ignored it. Instead he paused. The mud reached almost to his ankle. He pulled his leg free and shook off the excess dirt. As he did, something caught his eye.
The water. The muddy water around his feet was moving. Not naturally. Not downhill. It was flowing in a specific direction. Dhira crouched.
His eyes narrowed. The remains of the destroyed water creatures were doing the same thing. Thin streams of murky water were slowly crawling across the forest floor. Flowing backwards. The old saying echoed in his head. Don't follow the river when it flows backwards.
Dhira stared at the moving water. Then smiled.
"Which means I absolutely should." He reached down and scooped some of the murky water into his hand. The liquid writhed like a living thing. It pushed against his fingers, desperately trying to continue in the same direction. Dhira followed it.
The further he walked, the stranger the forest became. The familiar trees disappeared. Twisted branches arched overhead like skeleton fingers. Uneven wooden structures emerged from the fog, half swallowed by roots and moss. More Norse runes appeared on stones, tree trunks, and broken pillars hidden beneath centuries of growth. The mist thickened. Somehow even thicker than before.
Visibility shrank to only a few steps to one step. The water in his hand suddenly became violent. It twisted and thrashed. Dhira released it. The murky liquid shot forward like an arrow.
All around him other streams of muddy water began doing the same, racing through the forest toward a single destination.
Dhira followed. The ground sloped downward. The air grew colder. The sound of dripping water echoed somewhere ahead. Then he stepped through the fog and found himself somewhere he had never reached before. He stopped. He Looked ahead. And gave a low whistle.
The had fog thinned slightly, enough for Dhira to finally make out what lay ahead. All around the area, streams of murky water were flowing toward a single point. They rose from the ground and twisted through the air like living serpents, joining together into a massive floating current above the center of the clearing. The thing constantly shifted shape, forming irregular patterns and silhouettes that vanished before his eyes could properly focus on them. Even with the fog reduced, the sight remained distorted and unclear.
Dhira slowly circled the area, keeping his wooden mace resting on his hand, one hand idly adjusting his grip. As he moved, he discovered the source beneath the floating water. It was a pond. Not particularly large, but every drop of corrupted water in the forest seemed to be gathering above it. Water continuously poured into the hovering mass from all directions without ever overflowing.
Continuing around the edge, Dhira noticed something else. Stone monoliths. Twenty-four of them. They stood evenly spaced around the pond, forming a perfect circle. Each pillar was covered in weathering and moss, but every one carried a different Norse rune carved into its surface. Dhira stopped only long enough to count them. Then he shrugged.
"Well, that's suspicious."
Without wasting another second, he swung his wooden mace. The first monolith shattered. A sharp, piercing shriek erupted from inside the stone. The sound was unnatural, somewhere between a scream and a whistle. The surrounding fog receded slightly. At the same moment several murky water creatures burst from the ground and rushed toward him. Dhira swatted them aside almost absentmindedly and smashed the second pillar. Another shriek echoed across the clearing. More fog disappeared.
By the time he destroyed the fourth monolith, he noticed something troubling. The first one was rebuilding itself. Cracked stones crawled back together. Broken fragments dragged themselves across the ground as though pulled by invisible strings.
Dhira frowned. "So that's how you want to play." He immediately abandoned any thought of fighting the creatures. Speed became the priority.
Gripping the wooden mace tightly, he sprinted around the perimeter of the pond. Water creatures emerged by the dozens. Some lunged from the mud. Others dropped from branches overhead. They clawed at him, blocked his path, and tried to drag him down. Dhira ignored almost all of them. He crashed through their attacks, shoulder-checking some aside and smashing through others only when necessary. Every few seconds another monolith exploded beneath his strikes.
One. Two. Three. The shrill screams became louder with each destruction. The fog rapidly collapsed inward. Visibility increased. The floating mass of water above the pond began thrashing violently. Behind him, previously destroyed monoliths struggled to repair themselves, but Dhira was moving too fast. He ran the entire circle, destroying pillar after pillar before the earlier ones could fully recover.
The water creatures multiplied desperately. Soon there were so many they formed a moving wall around the pond. Dhira lowered his shoulder and charged straight through them. The final monolith stood ahead. He tightened his grip. Stepped forward. And brought the wooden mace down with all his strength.
The last pillar shattered. For a heartbeat, silence fell. Then every shriek from every monolith combined into a single deafening scream. A massive shockwave erupted from the center of the pond. The ground trembled. The floating water exploded outward. The fog was blown away like dust before a storm. The countless water creatures froze where they stood and dissolved into ordinary water.
For the first time since entering the forest, Dhira could finally see the entire clearing clearly. And what stood in the middle of the pond made him stop in his tracks.
.