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...
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