The Decent

(not first person for reasons)

The hollow was in disarray in stark contrast to it's usual spartan and clean appearance. Outside the hounds Hunter and Chaser growled and yipped in concern and empathy at the sounds that came from inside.

Walker shivered and raged about his Hollow, sweat poured from his body as the shakes of addiction unfed coursed throughout his limbs. The world pressed in around him, the sounds of the Hedge and it's thorns tortured his nights and darkened his days in fear. He whispered repeatedly like the hermitted mad men of old.

"Need to go home...Need to go home..."

He tried to ignore the prying and concerned voices of his hounds as they spoke to his mind, his detox twisted the words into threats and promises of pain. He threw what ever he could find at his door and shouted for the mongrels to be silent. The hounds howled in sorrow at the bile that poured from Walker's mouth.

They were gone, they had left him, alone and lost. His hermits, his most trusted, his anchors were gone. Had he not been loyal, had he not done his part. Why would they take from him everything. Walker screamed his throat raw as the pain of detox and the hurt of a heart freezing wracked his body.

"It's their fault..."

The whisper dripped with malice and venom. Had they not come, my Hedge would have stayed calm he thought. He thought of everything he had done to assure a quiet Hedge, everything he had done to make the local thorns safe for his hermits, for his drugs. These culprits assuaged his rage but for a moment, he had someone to blame, to punish. A mad cackle passed his lips as his hand reached for bow and quiver. As his hand wrapped around the vicious weapon crafted by the deft hands of one of his drugs, a calmness swept over him...but it would not last.

Walker's mind filled with the visions of the trespassers dead and bleeding, their blood corrupted by his weapons. His nostrils filled with the smell of their viscera and entrails, his teeth gnashed at the feeling of their dead flesh under his hands. Walker moaned. His hand released the weapon and he moved away from it as if it had struck him.

"You would make me little more than a monster, no better than the flock I have tended to!"

He yelled at the inanimate and uncaring object.

"You want the Ministry to come for me, as I have gone for others...no..no..no my lovely it will not be so. I keep the monsters, I am not one!"

a voice whispered back

"Lies.."

Walker flew into unbridled rage tearing his hollow to shreds as he damned the voice that lied so truthfully to his mind. He thrashed until his rage was spent and he fell to the ground like a broken toy. A sobbed whisper repeated again and again as outside the howls of grief filled the night.

"I need to go home....I need to go home...."

No one but Autumn.

Breathe in....

The Hedge holds me close as I crouch in a small copse, my bow resting in my hand, the weight familiar and comforting as the vines and thorns press against me like a eager lover. I look through the boughs watching the horrid creature as it feasts upon it's latest kill. My right hand moves back and feels the soft and comforting fletching of my arrows.

Breathe out...

These creatures have been my life since my "escape" from Arcadia. This Hedge is full of the foul beasts I now know as Briar Wolves. They hunt me endlessly, and I return the favor. We have both had victories and losses, I now bear more scars then I care to think of and their numbers dwindle day by day. It is just me and them and we cannot coexist.

Breathe in...

I draw the arrow ever so slowly, my own ears incapable of hearing the shaft as it is slides from my quiver. The Briar Wolf pauses in it's feast one ear flipping my direction. I freeze holding the breathe I just took in, my arm grasping the arrow slowly cramping as I focus on not moving. A tense and admittedly terrifying minute passes and the beast returns to it's meal.

Breathe out...

Through out these past months that consisted of nothing but hunting and being hunted, I have learned fear...fear in it's truest form. There is no such thing as conquering fear, it is a fallacy, a turn of phrase that makes people feel invincible, as if they have truly defeated something that is unbeatable. Fear will always be there, waiting, lurking, there is no conquering fear, there is only understanding fear. Once you know why you are afraid of something it is no longer a weapon against you, but a weapon for you.

Breathe in...

The Hedge, my true fear, reluctantly releases me from it's embrace, allowing my arm to bring the arrow about and notch the shaft. My feet slide across the soft ground bringing one knee to rest upon the ground stabilizing myself for the shot that was to come. The Briar Wolf stops it's feast and suddenly goes tense...

Breathe out...

Upon my understanding of fear I felt myself make a deal, someone or something unseen reached out to me it offered guidance and understanding. Asking in return for service on a level, and support of a belief structure on another. I somehow naturally understood what was being asked, and I agreed. That was the moment Autumn blessed me, and laid upon me the mantle of responsibility that has grown throughout these year.

Breathe in...

I drew my bow the tell tale creak of the bending wood echoing throughout the Hedge, as if the Hedge itself was announcing and approving the intent of the action. The Briar Wolf's tense body turns ever so slowly, bringing it's all to human eyes and bloodstained maw to face me. It stares at me hard, our eyes making contact and in this moment both she and I know how this is going to end.

Breathe out.

First day of Freedom?

I walked the boughs of my forest letting my bared feet sink into the soft moss that covered the wyrdwood. The scents around me were thick, wet and heavy after the rain that had fallen, and the forest buzzed with in a choir of a thousand insects as they emerged into the moist humid air. I breathed deep the sent and felt the smile spread across my face. This was home, my home, and I walked without fear. I remember the feeling of my ranging gear, heavy and solid, hung about my body and my cloak keeping out the gentle but cool breeze that followed the storm. I was at the moment contemplating returning to my lean-to and relaxing for the afternoon in the glory of the Heart’s Tree when I saw the movement…the shadow that changed everything.

I crouched low to the branch my feet and stance sure as my bow appeared in my hand by reflex. It was at this point that I knew something was wrong, hunting was forbidden unless food was needed, all rangers are used to living on near to empty stomachs…so the fact that my bow was suddenly in my hand meant something had warned my instinct, my nature as a Brother of the Heart’s Wood. 

It moved again quickly nothing more than a shadow to my eye, without hesitation I gave chase, moving to cut it off from a path that would lead it to the Heart’s Wood. My mind was a whirl, it had been so long since I had needed to move in defense or hostility that my mind was growing confused, bringing up thoughts and memories that weren’t mine. I attributed it to the Forest at that time, trying to remind me of why it needed to be defended, of the knowledge it held. Another movement, I loosed an arrow and heard the dull thud of of impact followed quickly by a grunt of pain. My body turned to ice…it sounded sentient…it sounded Fae. I fell from the boughs and looked upon the fallen shadow. 

He was young…handsome, one could almost say beautiful in the innocence and betrayal that showed on his face. He seemed so familiar to me that I felt a hot tear fall down my cheek as I knelt beside him, the realization that I had just killed a boy wrenching my heart from my chest. I blubbered, I screamed, I wailed apology after apology as the boy just looked up at me and smiled softly before the light left his eyes…and with that light my world went dark. Everything around me became cold…and suddenly I felt…I felt scared, no I felt terrified. I looked about me panic and bile rising in my chest. The forest was foreign, and angry, the air thick with the smells of danger and death. I stepped back from the fallen boy and felt a sharp pain as I turned to see fresh blood drawn in a line on the forearm of my bow hand. The offending thorn dripped a single drop of my blood and everything around me went silent…as if the world held it's breathe. 

I watched that drop of blood fall to the ground and at the moment of impact everything came alive, the night that had suddenly fallen filled with wretched and horrible Howls, a sound I could never explain a sound I shall forever fear. I ran like a coward, I ran without shame, tears stained my face, my bowels vacated in the true response of prey. I felt it then, the response of the forest around me, it fed on my terror, it grew closer every step drew a new hideously sharp line of blood upon my skin as more and more thorns reached for my ever so soft flesh.

They came then, led to me by this forest that spread my fear like a beacon. They emerged from the thorns and brambles like creatures of nightmare. The first one to reach me pivoted and lashed out with a claw that grazed my shoulder and sent me spinning through the thorns, more blood spilled, more lines gained. I landed upon my back all thought of resistance and survival replaced by paralyzing fear and the endless repeated whisper of “I need to get home, I need to get home..” spilled from my lips. I looked up and into the eyes of the second as it stood on it’s hind quarters walking as if a biped. It looked down at me, we made eye contact and what I saw was such a true form of sentience and hatred that I still cannot fathom the insanity behind that glare. We both knew how this would end and as if savoring the thought of it, the wolfen creature lowered it's slavering jaws to my body and kept eye contact as long as possible before I felt it tear into my abdomen. I screamed as it tore flesh from bone uncaring about the clothes between. I felt my life ebb from that wound and all I remember is thinking “This is not home.” then everything went dark…

I awoke to a world of pain and blood, I was feverish and knew I did not have long before the fever would reach a point to where I would no longer be able to move. I looked about me and saw carnage my arms were painted red with dark coagulated blood and my mouth was filled with the ripe copper taste of the stuff. The wolfen creatures laid about me torn and shredded in a fashion so gruesome I wondered who would be capable of such horrors. It was then, amongst those terrible thorns in a place that smelled of death and viscera, that I realized those horrors were committed by me, I gagged and wretched, and each movement reminded me of the fatal wound that festered upon my torso. I knew my mind had begun to shatter so I focused on doing everything I could to repress the atrocities I had committed against other living creatures and moved away from that damned place looking for what I needed to survive. This was my first day of freedom...

Have you ever been so terrified of something that it was all you could think about...every moment of every day you fantasize about it, working yourself into cold sweats and dreadful nightmares. I have, I am, and the focus of my obsession/phobia is the woods. Now before you get to judging me I want you to understand that the house I grew up in butted right up against a forest, and the window from my room faced directly into their tangled branches and mangled trunks. All through my childhood days I couldn't sleep...every sound every flicker of movement from the woods would bring forward some hideous creature or idea to my mind and every single one of them wanted me. So that was the beginning of the fear, the obsession came after I got a bit older and my friends and I started playing this game where we would see who could go the furthest into the woods before getting to scared to go much further. Despite my fear I was starting to get good at this game...the fear became almost comfortable, don't get me wrong I would still piss my pants if I suddenly heard a loud noise, but it almost seemed like I was ok with being afraid of the woods because I wouldn't want to have to be afraid of something else. So like I said, good at this game, and only one friend was able to go further than me walking further into the darkened forest and disappearing from site. I heard his wavering shout of victory muffled by the leaves and branches....then I heard something else. A quick short scream of pure terror, then cut off....so fast that I couldn't be sure if it was my friend or some animal fallen victim to the predators that stalked that darkness. Me and my friends called the game and set about trying to to call back our other friend (the one I swear I heard scream) but he wouldn't return. After five minutes we went running back to my house and started hounding my mother telling her that our friend was lost in the woods. She calmed us and told us that his mother had called and that he was home safe and sound...so he must have run off to scare us and gone back home.

To me that wasn't enough I swear I heard him scream, not only that the "friend" that came back wasn't the same....I mean sure he looked like him....talked like him and even acted like him, but I always felt he was a little off. That is when everything in my life went wrong. My parents would listen to my stories only to tell me to grow up, my friends shunned me as some crazy wacko caught up in fiction novels, and anyone else I interacted with seemed to label me as the local crazy kid. It all escalated when until I was put into an asylum because I tried to prove to everyone that my friend wasn't really my friend by stabbing him in the arm with my father’s hunting knife. In hind sight that was probably a terrible idea.

For years they kept me there and "straightened" me out. What really happened was a I took my obsession...no my love, or hatred (it is all kind of bound into one I think) for those woods and I hid them away, I healed and accepted that I was deranged and they finally let me out when I hit the age of 21. Once free I went straight back to my home by the woods, to discover that my parents had moved on...they had left me behind, forgotten their "mad" son. I was hurt, but didn't really have time to dwell on it...I had work to do.

I set to studying the woods learning everything I can animals, foilage, trees, fruits...everything. All in preparation to go into what I feared the most and find my real friend...I knew he was still in there. That is of course how I ended up being what I am now, I went in and didn't come out for a long time, I was taken, kidnapped, what ever everyone calls it nowadays...I don't really remember much about what happened when I was back in Arcadia...like everyone else I have distant memories and ideas, but I do remember that I was guarding something that was in the woods. The only clear memory I have is that the woods I was in have been the only woods my entire life that I wasn't afraid of....they were beautiful, awe inspiring, the trees grew so high and their boughs were so big that I spent days walking among the branches with out once touching the forest floor. When I came back it was actually an accident you know? I just wandered a bit to far, oh and no I don't think I ever found my friend but I did learn plenty about the hedge...it is my home now...the hedge, it terrifies me, and haunts me...but I don't know anything else, sometimes I think about going back....no no no don't worry I would never...none of us would right? But just to see my woods again...to live without fear, well I will admit I look for arcadia sometimes just to see if I can take one step further...still playing that childhood game you know?

The reason I tell you all of this is so you understand what I mean when I say that the vine that is currently wrapped around your neck is a special type of goblin fruit referred to as an oddement. It will strangle you slowly...kind of like a garrote, not pleasant is it? Don't worry this isn't your fault and yes I will cut you loose you just have to choke a bit longer to understand that you don't belong here, that you wandered just a bit to far...this is my hedge these are my thorns they terrify me, they hate me, they love me. Just as I hate and love them. Everything going black now? Good when you wake up...just remember stay away from the woods, we die and the woods grow.