In the end, the groups arrangement went as follows; Kayin, Ewa and Azikiwe will track the missing horses, while Gamba, Ike and I will go for the monkeys―Since finding the monkeys means finding my compass… Hopefully.
I shiver when I think of them.
Their dark beady malicious eyes, their horrid sharp teeth hidden under unnaturally large mouths. The most disturbing thing about them still is how similar they are to humans, their body shape, their facial expressions―and in some ways their cunning too―They are like a vile imitation of us.
But no matter, I will take back what is mine and never interact with those beasts again. And I will be prepared for any ruse they have in store.
I tighten my hold on my staff and wince, I look down on my left hand to see an injury, a small red line running across the back of my hand. It has already dried and is already in the process of clothing.
Strange, I don't remember scratching myself on anything. Or maybe it happened when we were assaulted by those imps... I hope not, I don't want to catch any disease from them.
Someone clears his throat, Gamba, and once he has my attention he asks, "I know you are determined to find your compass, lady, but how do you plan to that? This forest is vast and even if we were to find the monkey, it is not certain it still has it."
"I can track it," he raises an eyebrow, prompting me to continue. "The compass has a bit of my essence imprinted on it. It is that trail I am following."
Ike whistles. "You can do that too? You sure have a lot of tricks up your sleeve."
"Tricks? It is not just a trick; it is a skill. One has not only to be able to not get overwhelmed by the environmental essence, but also filter out the excess sensory information, it demands a great deal of finesse and awareness."
He shrugs. "Saw plenty of sorcerers do what you just described... and with ease."
"That is not the same," I huff indignantly, "sorcerers in this era use their abilities in a completely different way. It's like, like they just do it on instinct... So of course, it appears effortless when they wield sorcery."
"Is that jealousy I here in your voice?"
I don't reply immediately, biting the inside of my cheek. "Let's just find my compass and be done with it."
I turn on my heel and walk off, but he easily catches up to me.
"Jealous much, I see."
"You sure are talkative today. What changed?"
"I'm in the mood. Seeing how resolute you are … I wonder where it all went half an hour ago."
"Hmph. I-I don't recall you being of much help either."
"And if you remember well, you will know I had my hands full with a… kicking and screaming matter."
"I-I, I… N-No. It was, I-I wasn't." I stammer which makes him smirk.
I end up looking away, clenching and unclenching my hands around my staff, and feeling embarrassed―no, mortified.
When I think back, I could have reacted differently... by casting a barrier around us for example, but I panicked and ended up making a fool of myself.
"Ugh… Get a room the two of you." Gamba groans. I was about to reply but Ike raises his arm before me, stopping me in the process.
When I look up at him, his face is tense, glaring ahead with a frown... But there are only bushes.
"What?"
The bushes rustle, then someone emerges from it, a woman.
She has black hair braided down her back, brown skin, dark-painted lips. She is wearing the exact same leather outfit have and holding the exact same staff in her hands. And her eyes, they have that same chestnut colour and glowing irises as mine.
I gasp.
This, this is me.
But… How?
I am overwhelmed by a sense of wrongness as I look at 'myself', she has stopped a few metres away from the bush she came from, her head tilted a bit and observing us, observing me.
The first thought that comes to mind is that she may be another one of those Junjus, but I dismiss it almost immediately. When I observe her through the lens of Spiritual senses, I feel Spiritual essence coursing through her being, so she is alive. The Junjus, on the other hand do not possess any Spiritual essence, I have never been close enough to examine one, but I know that the energy flowing in them feels alien, foul, it is like having a swarm of worms wrapped around my body.
Then she must be some kind of Mystical beast, but very few have the ability to shapeshift―I can count them on one hand―and even fewer interact with humans.
What I know for certain, is that the presence of this doppelganger does not bode well.
After what feels like an eternity she moves, pointing her staff in our direction. On instinct I cast a spell, a translucent blueish shield manifest in front of us, and an instant later a beam of energy slams into it. To my surprise, the beam was not as powerful as I expected, I barely felt it.
I study my double. Was that attack supposed to be a probe?
But then why did it feel so weak, and amateurish, like it is the first time she ever casted the spell. She attempts another attack, and I retaliate almost immediately. We both fire beams of pure Spiritual essence, mine overpowers her own, dispersing her beam into nothingness when they collide. She goes flying back when it strikes her.
I share a look with Ike and Gamba.
Gamba trails to where the doppelganger collapsed, he pushes aside the wild plants and stays motionless.
"You should come see this." He calls out. Without hesitation Ike moves forward, and I cautiously follow behind him.
What I witness is not as gruesome a scene as I expected. Lying on the ground is my doppelganger with half her torso and face gone but instead of blood and organs spilling from her body is... Is that… goo?
A silvery-white substance oozes from the open wound, but beneath it... there is no flesh, no bones, or tissues whatsoever, there is absolutely nothing organic about her.
With half a face, it keeps staring at me. It occasionally opens and closes its mouth, but no words come out from it. Then its body starts to boil, like a pot of boiling water over a stove, and convulses. The thing wearing my face eventually starts to melt away and the only thing remaining from it in a puddle of silvery you which get absorbed by the soil.
"What… What was that?" I say after long seconds of silence.
"I'm… not sure."
"When I was a boy, my parents once told me of a creature with the ability to steal people's faces, the Moyibi Nkam is what it was called. It would eat naughty kids and take their place." Gamba stares incredulously at the spot the creature was a moment ago. "I guess they were not lying after all."
Moyibi Nkam… Of course it does not sound familiar at all, and I don't remember of any shapeshifting Mystical beast with physical features like that one. And from the looks of it, it can also copy other people's abilities, albeit poorly… This is concerning.
"Do you think there are more roaming around?" I ask him.
"I don't know, but I wouldn't rule it out."
"Then we shouldn't linger here." Ike looks at me solemnly, "lead the way."
~~~~~~~~~~~
Sitting high in the canopy of a towering tree is a little monkey. It is alone, contrary to my expectations, which means it is an easy target. The ugly scamp does not seem to be aware of that fact or even care about it for that matter. This must be because it is more preoccupied with vandalising my property than be mindful of its environment.
In its disgusting little hands is my compass, it keeps tinkering with it, shaking it from left to right, chewing, and sometimes hitting it against the branch it is perched on.
I wince every time it tries to disassemble the item, with a twig or its nailed fingers―but the compass somehow manages to stay undamaged―and despite all that I stay rooted in place. Primarily to not attract its attention… and also because Ike has a firm hold of my shoulder, from my numerous efforts to prevent the simian from destroying the precious device, thereby exposing our location.
Some trees away from the monkey, another figure is perched. Gamba observes the little monkey with the upmost attention while navigating between the branches with uncanny swiftness and stealth. It will not be long before he reaches the monkey and snatches my compass out of the monkey's abominable grasp.
Already he was on the same tree as the monkey, but before he could move further a very audible rustle erupts from the foliage, it did not come from us, I'm sure, nor did it come from Gamba's position. And if I could hear it, the monkey surely did too. It stands alert then flees without bothering to check to know what made the noise.
"No!" I exclaim, jumping on my feet.
I see Gamba turn in the direction it ran off, he stiffens briefly then leaps upward, the next moment the branch he was on blows up.
"Get down."
Ike yanks me back down just before the trunk behind me explode too. I don't even have time to proves what just happened that he sweeps me on his shoulder, I lose my bearings, feeling nauseous as he moves impossibly fast, I hear an explosion, and dirt is flying everywhere.
"This is becoming annoying." I hear him mutter. When I get back on my feet I see that we have changed position, and Gamba is back with us.
"What is going on?"
"There is another one." He answers.
"No, two. The shots were from different locations." Ike peer from behind the tree then looks back at us. "I have lost sight of them."
"There is something that have been bothering me for a while, back then with the monkeys, and even now, we have been caught off-guard on both instances. How do they find us and how can they hide their presence so effectively?"
Gamba says pensively, and now that he mentions it, he is not wrong, in fact something about this place has been off from the very beginning.
"I believe it is this forest." I say, thinking aloud. "The moment we entered it; I have felt that something was wrong… My Spiritual senses feel supressed; I cannot detect as much as I usually do."
I pause, just realizing that Ike and Gamba are intently listening to me. I shift a bit, "from the scale of it there must be an array covering the whole forest, but arrays don't sprout out of thin air."
"Which means that someone or a group of people placed it there and are likely also responsible for all this mess," adds Ike to which I nod.
"But for what motive?"
We are interrupted by a snapping sound, and this time I am prepared. When a beam of energy fly at us it is blocked by the shield I had cast.
And there it is. Still wearing my face my doppelganger is idly sitting on a branch; its head is slightly tilted as it looks down at us.
Goosebumps rise on my sweaty skin when its gaze turns to me.
It aims its staff at us and shoots another blast, but my shield is still there so it is dispersed. The doppelganger does not seem bothered however, as it continuously bombards my shield with a beam of energy after another, with more frequency at first, then gradually with more intensity.
I end up in a position where I have to brace myself for every new attack. Not only that, but my reserves of essence are starting to drain at an alarming pace as the onslaught becomes more and more powerful.
"I… I cannot keep up for long." I say with strain.
From the corner of my eye, Ike makes a quick movement, and the doppelganger suddenly stops with the attacks, it casts a shield of its own to block whatever Ike threw at it.
"Now would be the time." He whispers over my shoulder.
I take advantage of that moment of distraction to strike, the first beam fractures the barrier, the second demolishes it, and the third hit the doppelganger square on the face and it falls from the tree.
I breathe a sigh of relief.
But apparently we are not out of trouble just yet. The second doppelganger finally reveals itself and attacks us without missing a beat.
This beam of Spiritual essence however was different, it was massive, massive and immensely powerful.
Before I know it a chant is pouring out of my mouth, weaving a matrix of glyphs large enough to envelop Ike, Gamba, and I completely. In a split second the charge makes contact with my shield.
I clench my staff harder as I feel the barrier vibrate violently, channelling more essence into it, the glyphs within the spinning matrix blaze brighter around us. The shield shifts, deflecting the blast sideways and in the nearby foliage, the ground shudders and a deafening explosion erupts.
And just like that almost half of my essence reserves are depleted. I have never lost so much essence this quickly in my life, I can feel My legs almost give out from the strain.
"Great heavens." Gamba mutters.
When I turn around the two of them are staring agape at the area hit.
Nothing remains from the section that has been struck, only a smoky crater of blackened soil spamming at least twenty metres long and a dozen of metres large. The air is thick with the acrid smell of burnt wood as even the vegetation next to it had not been completely spared―from both sides, the plants in the direct vicinity of the area of attack are up in flames.
Great heavens indeed.