The Everfree
A horribly bright flash of light had awoken Emrys from the peaceful slumber he was in the middle of, his eyes shooting open as he noticed the ground below him was some distance away. Reaching for his staff, his hope, he realized that it had to of gone missing at some point of time. No! The mage flailed his arms and legs around like a madman as the ground quickly approached him, opening his mouth in an incredibly loud scream that would be heard all across the land.
As he came into contact with the ground, he was blessed to land in a rather bushy bush which broke some of his fall, but also dug through his dark robes and into his skin as he slowly sunk into it like quicksand. 'Ugh...Thank the gods!' He smiled happily upon seeing his aged staff laying across from him, climbing out of the bush to re-equip it.
There was another bush nearby that suddenly caught the mage's eye, 'Did that bush...move'? He took notice that he was in some type of forest, somewhere, while remaining in a staring contest with the bush that recently caught his attention. 'Nah..' Reality loved to prove the young wizard wrong, as a living bundle of wood jumped out of the seemingly innocent bush with a snarl. This is a threat. Battle mode commenced.
Emrys took a step back as the timberwolf starting closing the distance between them, quickly swinging his staff over his head to gain momentum until it come into contact with the beast's muzzle, a sickening crack echoing throughout the dark forest. The animated wolf skidded a couple inches on the ground, its eyes closed as it lay on its side.
The young magician let out a small sigh of relief as he looked down upon the fallen timberwolf and around his surroundings, 'There must be a pact of these bastards somewhere around here...I should leave before they find their dead comrade..' He turned around to search for an exit of some sort around all of the nearly-identical trees, noticing a rather large gap between two bigger trees that seemed to be a dirt path, Emrys made his way over to the spot and started his journey out of the Everfree Forest.
Having forgotten all about the timberwolf he had thought to struck down victoriously, its eyes sparked open with re-animated life glowing brightly. One thought had been embedded permanently into its mind...'Kill the prey..'
'Spooky looking trees? Living, blood-thirsty pieces of wood? ...' His train of thought kept him busy, his eyes roaming over every detail of the forest he could pick up. 'There is definitely something strange going on.. I can feel it in the air.' A small disturbance of leaves behind him caught his undivided attention completely, turning around a moment too late before he was pounced on by a revenge-fueled timberwolf and slammed to the ground.
"Oomph!" The air was forced out of Emrys's lungs from the double impact, sharp claws digging into his chest and drawing a steady amount of blood. Instinctively, before the bloodthirsty wolf could bite his face off, each of his hands gripped the ends of the staff as he crammed it up to the creatures neck.
Grunting, the young magician fought the combination of the timberwolf's brute strength and the combined pain of having claws digging into a raw wound. 'Use your power.. Your true power.' Focusing hard while maintaining a steady strength, magic surged through the veins of the mage to be re-directed into his staff.
It glowed an almost eerie red, a hot flame burning through the creature's neck until its head rolled off onto the ground with a wave of embers. "Get off." Rolling his staff aside, he pushed off the hopefully dead wolf. Standing up, laying before him was the wooden head of a once-animated timberwolf, the hint of a grin spreading across the mage's features. 'Good riddance..' Giving the head a kick, it went off somewhere deep and dark into the forest.
'And to make sure.' He grabbed his staff and brushed off his robes of the ashes, pointing the tip of the staff at the wolf's unmoving body while fueling it with power, a tiny red beam making contact with the corpse and doing absolutely nothing. 'W-what..?' Blood stained his black robes that he has had since the beginning of his training, slowly infecting the entire width of the soft fabric from his multiple puncture wounds. That was a sure bad sign. 'I am loosing my blood too quickly.' He thought.
Emrys was weak, and he knew it. He probably had very little spare time before he completely lost his fight with consciousness, hence, he turned around from the scene and started a full-out sprint to get out of the hell-ridden forest.
His eyes remained glued to the ground as to avoid every obstacle that happened to be blocking his path, swiftly jumping over a root every now and then while changing his position to dodge yet another tree. Pure adrenaline pumped throughout every inch of the magician's body as he ran, surely it was the only thing that was currently keeping him from fainting straight up.
The moment Emrys could feel the light emanating from Princess Luna's beautiful moon, it felt as if the very last of power he had was drained from him along with his andrenaline, stars quickly swarmed his vision. Not the stars you would look up and see in the night sky, but the stars that tell you that you're officially about to be knocked out. One thought had remained in the wizard's mind as he neared the exit of the forest, finally falling to his knees before he could make it to victory. 'Where am I?' He lost the grip on his beloved staff as it fell beside him with a thud, soon joining it afterwards..
