Phantom Unchained: Nicolai & Skulker's Journey of Self-Discovery

This was not going well.

In the time I’d been here, I’d seen the sun rise twice, and neither time had it occurred to me that the sky was so big or that the clouds were so white. I hadn’t thought about clouds at all, actually. I mean, who would? Clouds are just there. They don’t seem like they matter much. But now that I was seeing them every day, they were kind of a lot more amazing than they used to be. The more you do something, the less you think about it. That’s true in general, right? If you chop wood for enough years, you stop noticing how heavy an ax is. You just know how to hold it and where to aim, and your body does everything else while your mind thinks about other things.

Wood-chopping was harder now too.

I had set off from the village with a small group of men who had volunteered to hunt for food for the village this morning, leaving Skulker behind to protect the people (it would be hard for him to actually fight anyone if he had to keep his mask on). We hadn’t talked about it, but everyone seemed happy to have me back. No one liked being alone and afraid in the dark anymore. We walked through the forest with our bows and arrows ready; we didn’t have any real idea what we were looking for, but we knew there had to be animals out here somewhere.

I heard a sound between a hiss and a growl up ahead. The rest of my party heard it too because we stopped walking and stood still, staring into the trees ahead of us as hard as we could without moving our heads at all. It came again: low and rumbling and menacing with an edge of rage familiar from every nightmare I'd ever had in my life back home in Amity Park. There should have been nothing scarier than that sound on this side of the world - except maybe for probably every other noise out here - but instead there was just one thing: hope that whatever made that noise would be scared away by our presence in its territory so we could get back home sooner rather than later.

The third time it came, it sounded even closer and even angrier-er-er-er...and fainter too?

And then when it came again after that, it sounded even further away than before! I looked at my friends and they looked back at me as confused as I felt. And then suddenly Skulker flew past us all, straight into the trees where we had heard the animal noises coming from. He flew up higher into the branches than any of us could have jumped or climbed up there and disappeared from sight among all of those leaves rustling in his wake.

The rest of us looked at each other again for a moment longer than we needed to - none of us wanted to move forward alone - but then someone said “On three," and as one we ran forward into the trees after him until there was no more ground beneath our feet and only air beneath our arrows and overhead only leaves rustling in our wake above us as we went deeper inside into where Skulker had gone so bravely before us...