Blood and Tears

"Achuuu!" Seth sneezed as he pulled on his bearskin cloak on top of a large tree leaning on one of his branches.

The moon was high in the sky and the winds threatened to blow Seth off the branch if Seth wasn't careful and loosened his grip.

"Where is...? Now I'm in a freaking natural prison!"

Seth began to tie his torso to the trunk of the tree so as not to fall while he slept, since the top of a tree was the only possible place to rest at night in this forest.

Two months had passed since that meeting with the strange woman in that strange throne room. Seth spent a couple of weeks in the fortress while he planned to escape from the forest.

The first thing he did was hunt the few squirrels he had managed to find without the constant harassment of the golems. Then he prepared himself as much as he could and headed away from the great cliff that was visible several kilometers from the position where he currently was.

No matter how far Seth walked, the forest seemed to go on forever, to the point that if he climbed the biggest tree, all he would see were trees and more trees that stretched on forever.

In addition, winter was at its peak, so the cold was quite unbearable and from time to time at night it began to snow.

But none of this stopped him, Seth continued walking through the forest looking for the exit, eating what little he could find and dodging the night shadows.

With all this in mind, Seth slept cold that night, like many nights.

As time passed, Seth became more and more adapted to the forest environment. As such, the forest itself wasn't dangerous, the shadows were easy to avoid, and if you had a way around the food and water problem, surviving wouldn't be so difficult.

That's why Seth had it relatively easy to make his way through the forest during the day and rest at night avoiding all dangers.

Another two months passed, and Seth was starting to freak out from the lack of anything new. All this time all he could see were trees and more trees, the squirrels in this part of the forest began to dwindle and now all he saw was a few rabbits here and there.

"Get me out of here!" Seth yelled at the sky to vent his frustration.

Seth looked at the direction he was coming from and all he could see were more and more trees, the great cliff no longer visible in the distance.

"Something…something is seriously wrong, a forest can't be that damn hugeee!" Seth continued to yell at the sky even though no one heard him.

After another two months, a total of 8 months had been completed since he had come to this endless forest.

"Th-This...is definitely wrong." Seth gaped, looking off into the forest.

Far in the distance, he could see the great cliff. Seth realized that something was wrong, although there was no technological tool or anything similar to guide him through the forest, Seth knew that he had been walking in the same direction all the time thanks to the sun.

Seth always walked in the direction where the sun set and came from where the sun rose in the morning, so it was impossible for him to have made a mistake and accidentally changed course.

"Dammit!" Leaping from the tree he was in, Seth began to run through the forest towards the great cliff.

It only took him a couple of days to reach the cliff as he ran at full speed, not like before he just walked calmly to save strength that he couldn't easily recover thanks to the little food that was in the forest.

"No, no, no! Where is he?!" Seth began to walk the cliff in search of the fortress, if he managed to find it, it would mean that he had gotten lost and returned to the beginning, but if he couldn't find the fortress, it would mean that the forest was surrounded by a cliff that was impossible to climb for at least two from its sides.

Another week passed, and Seth couldn't find the fortress left or right. He therefore assumed that he had made it to the other side of the forest, and yet there was no escape.

"Shit!" Seth bit his lip so hard that he started to bleed. In a fit of rage, he used that blood to imbue his fist and hit a medium-sized tree all the way through the trunk.

As Seth's fist connected with the tree trunk, a small explosion echoed through the forest. Normally this explosion would have alerted any small rodents to move away from the area or for a predator to approach to investigate the sound. However, the forest was almost completely devoid of any animals.

Seth kept his fist on the trunk as he frowned and looked in a particular direction.

"I swear I heard a scream..."

The moment his fist hit the tree, in addition to the sound of the explosion, he could also hear something like a scream. Which shouldn't be possible in this abandoned forest.

Seth relaxed his fist and stepped away from the tree leaving a dent in his trunk. Looking towards the direction where he had heard the scream, Seth thought about the possibilities that other people were in this forest.

"Another entrance? If so, maybe there is an exit" thinking logically, if someone had entered the forest from a different place than the one where Seth entered. Quite possibly there would be an entrance.

"Okay! Let's go!" Thinking about the possibility of another entrance, Seth's mood visibly improved, and he went to the place of the scream.

Although Seth was walking, in theory he was quite close to his position because it didn't take more than 20 minutes to see signs of something that was not normal in the forest.

Seth approached a tree and with his finger, brushed against its trunk as he examined the strange red stain.

'Dried blood...' Seth was surprised to see blood stuck to the tree, and it wasn't the only tree like that. There were more trees that had blood stains on them, which seemed to be making a path.

Seth began to follow the trail of blood with his guard up and it didn't take long for him to reach the source.

'Grotesque…'

What Seth saw was enough to make his hair stand on end, what appeared to be a man, seemed because now he was unrecognizable, he was lying in some bushes with all his limbs at strange angles and his torso open making everything visible inside.

He only had half of his head left as the other part had mysteriously disappeared and his entrails were scattered all over the place.

Seth was used to seeing blood after two years in the coliseum, constantly fighting fights in which it was not uncommon for blood to be spilled and even lives lost. Yet he never got to the point of…torturing his opponent to leave such a bloody mess.

The body seemed to be quite fresh, so he guessed that no more than a day had passed since the person died. But it couldn't be the one who screamed either.

With that in mind, Seth continued to follow another trail of blood and found 4 other bodies in similar conditions, all butchered and their heads split open. Besides, they all had something in common, none had a heart.

Seth didn't hesitate and fearing he was running into something dangerous, he bit his forearm and let his blood flow without turning it into lightning for now.

Seth saw what seemed to be a cave hidden among several trees, and stopping for a second to observe the surroundings, he entered with his guard up.

The cave wasn't that big, enough for two people to walk shoulder to shoulder together without crashing into the walls, nor did it seem to be that long as Seth soon came to a turn off where the cave continued.

Seth leaned against the wall next to the diversion and strained his ears with lightning bolts to hear what was at the bottom of the cave.

Seth heard someone approaching the diversion, he could clearly hear the heavy breathing and the faster than normal heartbeat of the person approaching.

Seth thought for a second that the person had realized that he was here, however considering his heavy breathing, it seemed that this was not the case. Also, Seth made sure to enter the cave as stealthily as possible, and although it wasn't his forte, at least he could be stealthy enough so that another baptized wouldn't identify him if he wasn't actively looking for him.

When the person was a couple of meters from the deviation where Seth was hiding, he did not hesitate and created a small knife enough to kill someone if it hit a vital part. Although Seth wasn't planning on killing the person, since he needed to ask him a few questions, he wasn't going to relax with the would-be killer of those bodies in the woods either.

Seth tilted his body a little and took a deep breath in silence when the person came out of the diversion and Seth launched himself on him, performing a hold to immobilize him without causing more than a little pain in his joints.

"AAAHHHHHHH!" Seth could only hear a female scream as he imprisoned the person on the floor.

Seth looked at the person below him carefully as if he were examining if they presented a threat, even if a person who didn't fight back effectively after even a couple of seconds was not a major danger to Seth.

The person imprisoned below him was in fact a woman, Seth could tell because the cloak she was wearing had fallen away revealing her head.

The woman had dark blue hair that fell to her waist and her face had a large burn over her eyes and forehead. Otherwise, her body was still covered with a cape.

"Get off me!" Seth heard the woman's groans mingled with fear as she jerked in an attempt to break free of Seth's grasp.

Seth's body had developed enough to be full of muscle in the two years he had been in the coliseum and not even during the months he was in the forest did he stop exercising in order to keep his physique at the same level. maximum. So, the woman would never be able to surpass Seth in strength.

The woman continued to move erratically as she tried to break free of her, while Seth watched silently from above. He also noticed that the woman was trembling, and her voice was beginning to falter as tears began to flow from her white eyes that seemed to be blind from the burn.

Seth got up when he noticed that the woman not only did not represent a danger to him but that she was completely taken by the fear that Seth represented to her.

When he got up and took a few steps away from her, the woman stopped moving but she stayed on the floor while she looked up and saw the person who had attacked her.

The woman looked at the man who was approximately 1.80 meters tall, his long hair and his scarred face. His body was covered by a long layer of fur, and she could only see his bare legs below his knees, the man was barefoot, but he didn't seem to be suffering from touching the hard floor of the cave directly with his feet.

The man's blue eyes met the lifeless white eyes of the blue-haired woman as silence settled over the place.

Seth didn't know what to say and just looked at the woman who began to cry aloud as the tears spilled down her face full of snot.

'That was my fault… right?'