I entered the forest by the dangerous way. But I didn't know that yet. Angus and I burst through the tall pines bravely. For a few moments, it was like we were flying. Flying like a bird, not touching land. But then I felt a rush of air strike me and realised we were falling. We descended onto smooth granite boulders and I shrieked. I was thrown from Angus and fell onto bare ground. Groaning, I looked around where I'd landed. The ground was peppered with trees and seedlings - hardly surprising because we were in a forest - but there wasn't much leaf litter. Instead, the ground was quite dry and sandy and boy, it hurt to land on it. There were some small grassy banks nearby and yet more boulders. Beside me, my bow and arrows lay, so I quickly gathered them up. That's when I noticed the bowstring had come off my bow. I groaned as I knew I'd have to string it up again, which would take some time. I went over to my quiver and pulled out a rope with a loop and a pocket on either end. Putting the end of my bow which still had the string attatched into the 'pocket' I hooked the loop onto the other side of the bow. I lowered the bow until the rope touched the ground and then I stepped onto the rope. After that, I put two hands on my bow and pulled upwards. Pulling upwards gradually was quite hard, as I hadn't needed to string up the bow for a long time. I kept pulling upwards, until the bowstring went slack. I twisted the bowstring a few times to make it stronger, before I was able to hook the bowstring onto my bow. Lowering the bow until the rope went slack, I checked my bowstring was in place. Thankfully, it was, so now I could focus on other things. I went over to see Angus, ignoring the painful bruises I'd got when he'd thrown me off. Angus didn't seem relaxed, with his ears back and the whites of his eyes showing worriedly. I spoke sweetly as I mounted him carefully, holding the reins firmly. This part of the forest was unusually quiet so I was keen to ride away. If there was one thing a battleground wasn't, it was quiet. Battlegrounds are NEVER quiet. I squeezed Angus's stomach to urge him on and he trotted away obediently. Angus's hooves clip-clopped down the forest in a relaxed fashion. However, despite the peaceful setting of the forest with the birds tweeting, evergreen trees and broadleaved trees and gentle slopes, I was on edge.
"Somethings gonna leap out at us soon." I thought. "This part of the forest's too peaceful." I shifted uncomfortably in the saddle. Angus strode on, completely oblivious to anything wrong. But then up ahead, I saw a tail with a black smoky mist trailing after it. I'd seen that smoke before but didn't know where...
I suddenly felt Angus tense up. Angus stopped and pointed his massive head forward, snorting at the smoky tail. We heard an angry moan before the tail disapeered. A horned, horse creature rose from the bushes, shaking its matted mane and tail. It was dark as night and it's mane and tail were darker than obsidian. The unicorn stared at us before charging at us. I screamed and Angus neighed in fright. Shaking, I loaded 3 arrows into the bow and shot them into the unicorn. This time, the unicorn screamed, rearing up on his hind legs. Angus shook his heavy head agitatedly and jumped around, almost bucking. Next I shot more arrows but they all missed the unicorn. The unicorn continued to look at us angrily, it's ghostly white eyes spooking Angus. It lashed out at us, swiping the air with it's horn, while Angus jumped aside, terrified. Scaredly, I thought,
"I need to do something more deadly! If I don't kill this unicorn, it'll kill us!"
The unicorn then kicked Angus in the face. At that point, things got a whole lot worse. Angus reared up violently, throwing me off his back. The bridle and headcollar fell off Angus and to my horror, he ran away from me! Angus's thudding hooves stamped on my bow and arrows and my only weapon splintered into pieces.

Uh oh.

I turned around and saw the monstrous unicorn standing above me, a wicked gleam in it's ghostly white eyes. It seemed to be laughing at me, at my puny attempt to kill it. I wondered if this would be the end of my life. After all, this unicorn was intent on killing Snowdrop warriors.

But looking at the loose bridle and reins, I suddenly had a crazy idea. It was ridiculous, but it might be worth it if it meant I survived. I rolled away from the unicorn, just as it stabbed it's horn at me. I jumped up and grabbed the unicorns head. The unicorn was surprised by this and swung its head round to bite me but I slammed his head into the ground. Now the unicorns horn was firmly stuck in the ground, I grabbed Angus's bridle and reins and attached them to the unicorn. Getting the browband over his horn proved difficult, but after a bit of fiddling, I managed to get it on. Then, I ran and jumped onto the unicorn, forcing it to put his head up. The unicorn roared with fury as I tugged its head upwards. Then when it pulled its head out of the ground, its horn snapped. Both the unicorn and I watched with shock as the horn splintered into shards and the dark misty magic in it disapeered into the air forever. The unicorn roared one final unicorn dark roar-neigh, before it lost all his dark power. Now it was as weak as an ordinary horse. I kicked the unicorns thighs sharply. The unicorn snorted and stamped a hoof. But then it took off at a high speed gallop and the dark beast hurtled further into the woods. I felt adrenaline drift through my reins for the millionth time that day as I gripped the reins tightly, now in control of the dark unicorn. I thought I'd got the main problem over then but I wasn't out of the woods yet. Up ahead, there was a humongous tree trunk. I couldn't go round it, as there were deep gorges on either side of it, nor jump over it... oh no I'd have to go through it!
"Only one way to do this..." I thought, bracing myself for impact. I brought the reins closer to me, stood in the stirrups in a streamlined position and kicked the unicorn into top speed gallop. The unicorn neighed sharply
in annoyance but speeded along like an F1 car. Collision ensued. I gripped my reins so hard it hurt and gritted my teeth as I felt the impact. The second the unicorn crashed into the tree trunk a deafeningly loud noise tore through the entire forest. It was like a something had been shot, it was so loud.

Then, like a heavy door opening, the tree trunk creaked and rattled. And then slowly, slowly, it began to roll. It rolled down a slope behind it, hitting something at the bottom with a tremendous 'boom!'.

I ran over to the top of the slope, leaving the stunned unicorn alone. At the bottom of the wooded slope, there was a humongous tree and a mess of wood, splinters, leaves and bracken. Slowly but determindly, a wolf with a charcoal colour head emerged from the mess. He shook his thick pelt and then turned to face the top of the slope.
"Growler!" I yelled, unable to hide my surprise.
I bowed to him respectfully. But Growler only fixed his wise amber eyes on me and said surely,
"I should bow to you, Skye. You have done things I have never done."
before he ran off into the central part of the forest, leaving me standing there, awestruck. The wind blew my jet black hair as I mounted the unicorn again. With no weapons to fight with, I couldn't fight. I turned the black unicorn around and slowly rode back to camp.