Forty-five minutes later, Shintaro realized he was definitely going the wrong way. Sighing in annoyance, he turned in a lumbering circle, trying to make sense of where he was. He had been walking away from the sun, which meant he'd been heading east. He racked his brain to see if he could remember which way Amy's house was, but he couldn't recall her saying which direction she lived in. 

And there was no one at her house that had magic, at least the magic that he could track, so the Magic Detection Spell would do him no good. He would have to rely in guessing which way he had to go.

And it was definitely not this way. 

Shintaro spun on his heel and decided to try for the direction he'd come in before. He was already agitated from the failed Magic Detection Spell that he had sent out, and being lost was not helping him at all. Unfortunately, he didn't know any spells that took him directly where he wanted to go. 

Other than teleportation, but his sluggish steps told him that he'd used enough magic for one day - even though all he had done was sent out a spell. The spell hadn't been an easy one, but it wasn't like it had drained him completely. 

He was probably exhausted from the lack of sleep and how many times he'd sent out that same difficult spell over the past three months. 

So teleporting wasn't an option. He figured if he tried, he'd end up somewhere totally random, far away from the place he actually wanted to go. If teleportation would even work, but he didn't really want to drain himself to find out. He had to keep looking for Kai and his father, and he couldn't do that when he was too exhausted. 

After another hour of walking, Shintaro got the unsettling feeling that he'd walked into a place he shouldn't have. It still looked like the middle of the woods, an overgrown patch of forest, but he couldn't stop the alert dread that sank to the pit of his stomach. 

Warily, he stopped and glanced around him, feeling as if a thousand eyes were on him all at once. The trees were tall, overhanging and intertwining their branches to create a cavelike structure. Everything was overgrown, including the thorns that were as long as his last finger. The ground before him was uneven, piled with rocks and fallen branches. 

But it wasn't the appearance of this section of the woods that unsettled him. As he turned in a circle, examining the branches above him for any signs of life, he got the chilling feeling that he was being watched closely. 

But by what, he didn't know. 

Keeping an alert eye on the trees above him, Shintaro continued walking, hoping the stretch of woods didn't last long. He couldn't remember coming through here before, which gave him the sinking realization that he still was lost. 

But he would keep going until he at least got out of his section of the forest. He didn't like the feeling of eyes burning into the back of his head as he walked, and he wanted to get away from it as quickly as he could. 

As he walked, however, it was almost like he was going deeper into the woods. He clenched his hands at his sides, wondering when in the world this had gotten here and where in the world he was. 

Finally, when he realized he was getting nowhere, Shintaro stopped in his tracks and glanced above him again. Every sound he heard made him turn in shock, readying his fists to fight whatever would emerge. 

"Do tell me," said a male voice from above him, behind him, below him, beside him. "What are you doing out in the woods all alone, Shintaro?" The voice was distinctly male, something about it familiar, but it sounded wrong. Dispirited. Empty. Blank. Meaningless.

It was coming from everywhere at once, just like the day Brethren had entered earth. As he spoke, his voice echoed around the whole area, sending terror coursing through Shintaro's veins as the words rumbling in his skull, under his feet, in his ears. 

Gritting his teeth, Shintaro forced the memory away and turned in a circle again, scanning every spot that he could see that looked like a hiding place. The treetops to his right, left, and directly above. The lower branches that bowed almost directly above him. Behind the thick foliage of the thorns to his left. 

"Where are you?" he said as calmly as he could, lowering his head again and standing still; but keeping himself alert, in case whoever was speaking to him was planning attacking him. 

"Oh, here and there," the voice sighed, and it sounded as if the normal way the man would have said that was with smugness and arrogance; but the tone of his voice sounded too blank to have arrogance in it. The guy mostly sounded tired. 

Shintaro definitely knew the owner of this voice, but he couldn't quite place who it was. He had heard the voice before, and he could almost hear it talking in the back of his mind - but he couldn't place who the voice belonged to. 

"What do you want?" Shintaro asked, moving on to another question, keeping his guard up as his eyes darted around him cautiously. 

"Nothing," the man replied with a tone of voice that suggested he was shrugging. "I just happened to notice that you wandered into my residing place. What do you want?" 

"Well, I was going to say nothing," Shintaro said, crossing his arms over his torso, "but now I want to know who you are." He leaned back on his heels slightly, looking up at the trees above him and the foliage around him. The feeling of uncertainty and dread wasn't leaving his stomach, and he began to recognize the feeling.

Whoever this person was, they had Dark Magic. 

"Really?" the voice said with no emotion behind it.

And then the shadows sighed dispiritedly. 

Shintaro jumped, startled, as the shadow to his right, the shadow of the nearest tree, leapt off the grass and formed into the figure of a man, straightening his back and facing Shintaro. The figure remained a shadow, but it had a physical form that consisted of darkness. There were no facial features, other than the glow of too familiar red eyes fixated on Shintaro.

The man's shadowy arms lifted and crossed across his chest, but it wasn't a gesture of dominance, arrogance, or impatience. It was simply the act of crossing his arms. There wasn't anything behind it. 

Before, Shintaro would have thought it was a threat, a challenge, inviting him to go rip of the head that sat on those shoulders. 

But now, that act was not like the one he remembered.

"Do you recognize me now, Shintaro?" the Shadow Spirit asked, and once more, Shintaro realized how wrong his voice sounded. It wasn't the right one, the one he was used to. It sounded wrong in that man's throat, like someone had replaced his vocal chords with those of a depressed male. 

Shintaro clenched his teeth, half expecting the Shadow to lunge forward and attack him mercilessly, laughing all the while. Half-expecting the Shadow to start pacing around him, rambling on about how Shintaro had coincidentally wandered straight into his clutches. Half-expecting the Shadow to be the Shadow that Shintaro remembered from years ago.

But nothing happened. 

Thorn didn't seem to be in the regular Thorn mood today.

~

YEP!

I 

HAVE

BROUGHT

THORN 

BACK!

EHEHEHEHEHEHEHE-

ENJOY THAT, MY READERS >:)

P3ac3!!~~~