The Forbidden Forest

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Ssmalass looked at Derek lying on the ground.

"He'ss alive. Maybe we sshould let him sstay out for awhile. We could put him on the boat and then move from here."

Turning to Nicolas, "Well, Rainette and I injured the thing but you killed it."

 

"We are almost through the forest," Nicolas said trying to get his mind off of what he had heard. "I see some plains ahead" Nicolas looked at the seemingly endless plains and wondered how much food they'd need to get across. "Anybody have some food?"

 

"Derek-friend always has some food," Rainette said. "And there are usually smaller things running or flying about that we can eat."

 

Ssmalass stares out of the forest at the plains.

"I have never been on the plainss. It looks very empty. There iss no place to hide." He looks worried. "I am not big for a naga but I am big enough to stand out on thiss plain."

He pulls his head back into the cover of the forest and lashes his tail sending leaves and branches whirling through the air.

 

After some searching in the dirt, Rainette found a cluster of chubby grubs. He popped a few in his mouth, then offered the rest to anyone who was hungry. Ssmalass looked at them curiously. Spider was still behind a tree making body noises. Derek-friend was still lying unconscious on the ground. The boy Nicolas had been staring for a long time at the body of the giant spider still visible through the trees. All the others were no where to be seen. Maybe they were looking for food too.

A large raindrop fell next to Rainette and started burning the grass.

"What's this? Rain doesn't burn!" Rainette said. He looked up into the sky and saw more burning rain falling. Following their arcs, he found that they were springing off of the body of the dead giant spider, like fleas leaving a dead rat. The ground around them was rapidly becoming a sea of flames. Smoke already was rising from the forest around the spider.

"Run! All of you!" Nicolas yelled at them. "I'll see how long I can contain it. Don't worry about me, this is what I was trained for."

Nicolas approached the source of the burning rain, stretching out his arms as he did so. A blue force bubble extended from him, and caught all of the fire inside it. Rainette watched in awe as Nicolas' clothes burnt off of him. Then his skin turned charcoal black, but then split off to reveal a glowing white body of a boy, shrouded in flame and an aura of screams. Finally he disappeared into the smoke.

From the flames and smoke a booming voice came, it was Nicolas, not as a boy, but as a king. "Go now! I will rejoin you later if I can, when it is time. I can't hold it much longer!"

Rainette ran into the plains. Before he'd gotten too far, he heard an enormous explosion and felt a heat wave pick him up and throw him several yards to the ground.

When he woke up, who knows how long later, the whole Forest was ablaze. Black smoke covered the sky. The sun tried to poke through it, but did not succeed. The fire was rapidly approaching him over the grassy plains.

Was he alone? He had forgotten Derek-friend there on the edge of the forest. But then, he wouldn't have been able to carry Derek, he was much too heavy. Maybe Ssmalass, who was bigger and stronger, had done it. Or that weird Spider who wasn't a spider. Or one of the other people whose names he couldn't remember.

"CROAK-CROAK!" Rainette belted out a few warning croaks, loud enough to carry over the roar of the flames. "Derek-friend! Ssmalass! Spider! Anyone! Are you there? It's me, Rainette!"

 

"What! You is wanting Spider to be running with Spider's pants down! You are strange one indeed ... good thing Spider finished y- OUCH! What hit Spider! Who wants Spider's fist of justice and Seige Weapon SPLATTING in their mouth?"

As Spider then turns around, still semi naked with a raised fist to see what hit him, he then gawks at what he sees

"Well fribee ... why didn't you say something to Spider before hmm? Spider could have been told about OTHER people already having created the MGoD 1! Must make a new model"

At this, some of the flaming rain splatters on one of his buttocks

"AIEEEEEEEEEEEE!! MUST RUN!"

And whilst still semi naked, Spider scoops up his lower clothes and begins to run away

"AIEEEEEEEEEEE!! ZHENTARI- ... THAYANS! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!"

 

Ssmalass tried tograb up Derek but his body melts into the ground. He dives into the river and swims down a little way. A big boom sounded and the water around him rolled an heaved making it impossible to swim.

He heaved himself onto the shore and looked around. The forest was in flames and he couldn't see anyone. Then he heard Rainette. Carrying Derek he headed towards the sound of Rainette's voice.

"Rainette, I'm here but Derek is gone. Keep calling I can't sssee anything with all thiss sssmoke."

Ssmalass smashed through bushes and small trees on his way towards Rainette.

[ December 19, 2005, 21:56: Message edited by: Nakia ]

 

Derek's body smouldered and melted, and his soul went into the ground, ready to be reincarnated as something else.

---------------

Baella (bay-lah) fluttered around the head of the grippli, and wondered who he was. She also wondered where she was, and why her home had been destroyed. She didn't really care, she was a loner anyway. How is this grippli going to react when he sees a pixie? Oh well.

She flew up to his ear, "HEELLLLLLOOOO???!! IS ANYONE IN HERE???" It sounded like a squeak to him, but he made out the words. "I'm Baella! I'm a pixie! Who are you!?"

 

Rainette's hearing diaphrams picked up the faint buzz of wings beating, and instinctively, he got ready to shoot out his tongue and catch the flying meal. Something whizzed by his eyes, and he turned his head to align his tongue with the thing, but it was too fast, though he thought he saw people like legs and a body attached to the wings, which gave him a pause. It was usually not a good idea to eat winged things that looked like people, they often did bad things to one's stomach. Then he heard the thing talking to him, then he heard Ssmalass calling to him and Spider yelling.

"Yes, I'm in here," Rainette said in a normal voice to the flitty thing next to his head. "Excuse me a moment." He hopped up fifteen feet or so in the air, and at the apogee of his arc let out two more loud, "CROAK! CROAK!" When he landed he called, "Ssmalass! I'm here! I'm here!" Then he focused his eyes on the flitty thing. It was very colorful, and very small.

"Hello, Baella. I'm Rainette. Don't think I've seen you in the forest before. Unless it was you who I tried to eat once down by the pool with the big black rock last summer. If that was you, I'm sorry. I've since learned not to eat you little winged people. You just look so much like nice juicy bugs though, sometimes I react before I think. Where is Smalass?"

Rainette took two more large hops, then landed in a huge trail of slime, at least fifteen feet wide. It was coming from somewhere in the plain, and was heading towards the sea. His legs and lower body were covered in it. It quickly started to sting, then itch, then burn. He tried his best to wipe off the slime with his hands, but they started to hurt too.

"Ooww! This slime hurts me! Get it off! Get it off!" He started rolling around in the grass, trying to get the sticky slime off of his body.

 

Baella gasped and conjured a small rain cloud to help get the slime off of Rainette. She fluttered towards him and helped scrub some slime off.

 

Rainette let the rain wash over him, with wads of grass he scraped the rest of the slime off. His skin still stung a little, but he thought he would be okay.

"Thank you, Baella. That was a lucky little rain storm. I've never seen mud or slime that burns like that." Rainette said.

Just then, Ssmalass arrived. "Ssmalass, this is Baella. Don't try to eat her, even though she looks very tasty. She helped me. And don't go in that slime there, it burns you," he said, pointing to the wide slime trail.

"Hello, Baella, I'm Ssmalass. Don't worry, I like larger prey anyway, and winged things are usually too difficult for me to catch." Ssmalass approached the slime trail and carefully put a small portion of his little finger in it. "Oooh, I see what you mean. I wouldn't want to get much of my body in that." He appraised the distance across it. "I believe you could easily jump over that, Rainette. And Baella could obviously fly over it. I can leap a little ways, but not that far. We should go around it. Should we go that way, towards the sea? Or the other way, into the plains?"

 

"Manerna ner-NA ma na!! Yeah joobly oogly mackernacker SQUEET!!? w00t? what is this?!"

The crazy old man stopped his singing tromp through the forest, the large bunny ears hat on his head swaying from momentum. He turned and saw most of the forest he had lived in for most of his life on fire, but he really didn't seem to care. He turned to his cat,

"So my little bunny friend, what do you think we should do? The abode is probably toast by now."

"hiss! meow!" roared the little cat. It knew it was foolish of the Bunny Man to go on a crazy chase for a butterfly he had seen. "meow, growl owl meow." He replied more calmly than previously.

"Oh, yeah, we've been in this forest way too long. We should probably head. At least I still have my bow heheh. I think there is a beach somewhere around here, and I think we have traveled all the way to the edge of our home. Maybe there is a, erm, what do you call it, a BEACH nearby. Lets go fishing!"

The cat sighed audibly and licked it's paw, but followed its friend faithfully to the edge of the forest.

 

Meanwhile in the distance, the familiar semi naked figure of Spider can be seen running from one end to the other

"AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!! It follows Spider! It follows Spider!"

At this point he disapears behind some bushes.

...

He then remerges from the bushes to run to the other end

"AIEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! It still follows Spider! Spider isn't happy! Help Spider! AIEEEEEEE!!!"

Strangely enough, despite all this running, Spider's little Arabic red hat (can't think as to what they're called) still remains on his head

 

Rainette heard some yelling and hopped up high to look around. Through the smoke he saw Spider, now mostly dressed, and farther on, heading towards the sea, he saw a familar sight. All of his family knew about Silly Rabbit, his uncle had made sure of that. Long before his brood had hatched, his uncle had fought with Silly Rabbit, before he had become Silly or dressed like a rabbit, when he had another name. He used to protect the forest creatures. It had been he who slew the green dragon, with Rainette's uncle's help, and that of many other braver forest dwellers, when the dragon had woken up from a centuries long nap and decided it was time to consume tons of fresh food. Or at least so his uncle told him. But since Rainette wore the scales of the dragon as a breast plate and back plate and helmet, and carried a tooth of it as a dagger, he was inclined to believe his uncle. Though it was hard to imagine Silly Rabbit as anything other than Silly, or protecting the forest creatures. The way it went now, the forest creatures more often protected him from himself, or from the creatures who did not remember his years of long service to the forest and just saw a fresh pile of easy food. Once, Rainette had lead two giant spiders on a wild chase to get them away from Silly Rabbit who was trying to take a bath in a pile of dry leaves.

"Look, Baella, it's Silly Rabbit. Do you know him? We'd better go help him before he drowns himself, or thinks this slime trail is a nice mud bath and burns his skin off. Spider is over there too. Ssmalass, you go get Spider and I and Baella will go get Silly Rabbit. We'll meet by that jumm-jumm bush over there."

Rainette hopped off and was soon near Silly Rabbit, who was still heading towards the sea, talking about fishing to his cat. Rainette had never actually talked to Silly Rabbit before, it was said that it was a risky thing to do, since one never knew what his reaction was going to be. It might be a better idea to try and talk to his cat. Rainette waited for the cat to get a little bit ahead of Silly Rabbit and got its attention.

"Hey, cat, can you get Silly Rabbit to come with us? I think it would be safer for him to do so. Out here, there won't be forest creatures who will be nice to him." The cat looked at Rainette, but Rainette couldn't tell if it understood him.

 

Baella fluttered to the cat, surprised it didn't try to kill her, and whispered in its ear. It meowed in response that it understood the grippli.

 

The bunny man made his way joyously towards the sea, he couldn't remember the last time he was there, as he couldn't remember many things.

He watched his cat as it made off behind him, but he didn't pay attention, still talking to himself, his bunny ears upright on his head. Beginning to skip towards the sea now, he broke out into a whimsical song, suddenly hearing his faithful animal companion coming up behind him.

"Meow?! Meow meeeoww!" She shouted.

"What!?" The old man turnd around and saw a strange creature in the distance, his old but keen eyes making her out to be some sort of nonhuman creature.

"Its a fish!! come my faithful cat, let us go catch it!" With that the old man pulled a small net--not big enough to capture the person he saw in the distance with, and started running toward her.

 

Ssmalass headed towards Spider calling to him. "Ssspider, Ssspider come with me . We are to meet Rainette by the jumm=jumm bush over there." He pointed to the bush.

"Ssspider, come with me and I can help you with whatever is chassing you. Come thisss way, SSpider. Quickly and I will help you."

Spider seemed to hesitate and look at him so Ssmalass keep moving towards him and calling to him.

 

Rainette saw the net, and knew it was too small to catch him, even though he wasn't that big. He hopped out into plain sight of Silly Rabbit.

"Silly Rabbit, I am Rainette, a grippli. I am not a fish. Don't try to catch me. I am your friend. Some other forest creatures and I are going to go away, seeing that the forest is no more. Will you come with us, please."

Rainette was ready to hop away, just in case Silly Rabbit did try to catch him.

 

"Ssspider, pleassse come with me. Let'sss meet Rainette." Spider disappears behind a bush.

"Ssspider, don't play gamess. We have to meet Rainette. Where are you?"

Ssmalass is getting agitated partly because he has never been out in an open space like this one. It seems to stretch forever and he feels very exposed. He tries to keep his body close to the ground but there is no way he completely disguise himself.

 

"Spider will only come out if you can promise Spider that the Zhentarim or the Thayans havn't beaten me to producing the MGoD Mk I! Balls of fire rained on poor Spider! It was exactly what Spider was thinking! Except Spider is never target! Spider is always test driver!"

The bush which Spider is hiding behind seems to quake in fear. Moments pass and the shivering bush finally stops ... shivering. The top half of Spider's head can be seen, especially with his little red hat on

"Where are you? Who are you? Are you enemies or friends of Spider?"