Chapter 44 - The Cursed Forest.
Dawn spread slowly across the rolling plains, pushing the blue-gray pre-dawn haze out of the gullies, covering the slopes in a thin golden sheen.
The grass still held the night’s moisture, the stalks bending heavily under their own weight, while a small mouse running through the narrow corridor between them froze abruptly.
It turned its pointed snout toward one of the trees, under which a horse lay tethered with its neck stretched along the ground, then fixed its dark bead eyes on the figure curled up nearby, saddlebags tucked under his head and a coarse travelling blanket pulled over him.
Aren slowly peeled his eyes open to a gold-gray dawn sky above him.
Over the nearest ridge, the edge of the sun was already breaking through, staining the horizon a deep amber, drawing long morning shadows across the open ground.
He sat up without hurrying, a quiet rasp leaving his throat, then raised his forearm over his eyes and held it there, letting his vision adjust to the growing brightness. When Aren finally lowered his arm and swept his gaze across the open expanse before him, scattered with sparse canopies, the horse was already watching him with its head lifted from the ground.
“Morning to you too…” He said quietly, not taking his eyes off the animal.
A while later he sat with his back against the bark of a tree, chewing an apple and looking out at the surroundings bathed in warm light, then gave the rest to the horse without turning his head toward it.
Then he rose, working through the saddlebags one by one, tightening the loosened straps, then walked around to the other side of the horse, felt the girth, tugged the stirrup, and satisfied himself the saddle was secure. He straightened, let out a quiet breath, and gave his gear one last short look.
“Right then.”
He set his foot in the stirrup, rose into the saddle in one steady motion, gathered the reins, and turned the horse east, toward the sun climbing slowly above the horizon.
For about an hour the horse carried him across gradually rising ground, until beyond another ridge a wide view opened onto a dark mass of forest occupying a rocky elevation in the distance.
Aren held his gaze on the tree line ahead before pressing his heels into the horse’s flanks.
“There it is… the Cursed Forest.” He said, urging the horse forward.
Reaching the tree line, he reined in and looked it over from the saddle.
The trees here were noticeably darker than those along the road, their bark the color of dark earth, almost black, and the space beyond them offered no visibility whatsoever.
The air drifting from within was wet and heavy, with an oppressive, unfamiliar mustiness.
He remembered the conversation in the courtyard garden of the royal castle, when Edith and Kyle had explained the route to Helios.
A map was spread across the table in the sunlit garden, in the shadow of the castle’s high walls, as Edith traced her finger along the detour route at the forest’s edge.
“Even though we’ve sealed the abyss, and the forest is less dangerous than it used to be… I still wouldn’t advise you to go through it, but rather take the route along the river near Augenstadt. It’s longer, but safer.” The queen said.
Aren looked down at the map, studying its surface, before lifting his head.
“But you sealed the abyss… doesn’t that mean there are no more of those creatures in the forest?”
Edith took her hand off the map, holding him in a steady gaze.
“It means no new ones will appear, but even after our victory, we heard of surviving creatures managing to attack townspeople in nearby villages and travelers. Those were hunted down too, but it’s possible some individuals survived deeper in the forest. Beyond that, there are other dangerous creatures in those woods besides the ones that came from the abyss.”
Aren exhaled, turned away from the forest, and pulled the reins, turning the horse toward the river.
Suddenly, just as he began moving along the tree line, low, barely audible voices reached him from the depths of the forest, weaving together in unintelligible speech.
Aren pulled the horse up sharply, going still in the saddle, eyes fixed on the dark trunks.
In their wake another memory surfaced, the moment of farewell with the Titan, when Bjorg-Var had passed some of his knowledge and energy to him.
“By passing my energy and a portion of my knowledge to you, I will sever my connection to this world forever, leaving behind only the transformed shell of the Great Forest’s root system. The stability and protection of the Unified Field, which I have maintained in this region, will begin to slowly diminish, causing various anomalies to grow stronger, which will now begin to appear here as well. Be prepared for this, for the path ahead will grow harder, and with every new Titan you find… with every new piece of knowledge you receive… the path will grow more dangerous still. Be prepared to face evil this world has not yet seen.” Bjorg-Var said, slowly dissolving into the surrounding darkness.
The memory faded, returning him to the dark trunks and the low, barely audible murmur from behind the trees.
The voices from the forest made Aren consider the possibility of an anomaly in its depths, and sent a heightened tension through him.
The stability of the Unified Field, maintained throughout Bjorg-Var’s presence in the region, was slowly fading, and by Aren’s own reckoning, this could have a negative effect on the seal of the abyss.
Aren had no idea how the seal actually worked, or whether Bjorg-Var’s departure could affect the Cursed Forest at all, yet he couldn’t ignore what was happening behind those trunks, because in the worst case, Waldruhm and everyone he cared about could be in danger.
Aren exhaled, pulled the reins, turned the horse toward the trees, then quietly pressed his heels into its sides and rode into the forest.
The trees stood so densely that their canopies closed high overhead, letting almost no light through, and a damp gloom reigned beneath the canopy.
The trunks were covered in a thick green growth climbing from the roots halfway up their height, and from the thick branches hung long, motionless strands of moss.
A thin mist crept along the ground, settling into the hollows between the roots.
Aren led the horse slowly, grip firm on the reins, eyes probing every gap in the dense growth.At every rustle he spun around, knuckles going white on the reins, only to find another snake slipping away from the hooves at the base of a root.
Farther along, several fallen trees lay across the path, broken long ago and long since locked into the ground, a thick living layer spread evenly across them, hiding most of their surface.
From the dense cover jutted large bone fragments, shaped unlike any species he had known before, and the size of individual pieces spoke of creatures considerably larger than a horse.
Turning his head, Aren noticed an arrow grown into the nearest tree, completely swallowed by vegetation, then shifted his gaze a little farther, where the remains of knight’s armor lay between the roots, nearly unrecognizable beneath the thickness of green.
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Aren guided the horse onward until the trees parted and opened onto a wide clearing exposed to open sky.
Dozens of toppled and torn trunks lay at sharp angles, overgrown almost past recognition, and the ground between them was crossed by a series of craters whose edges had long since crumbled. Across the entire clearing lay the whitened remains of creatures whose species he had never encountered before.
Aren swung down from the horse, let the reins hang loose, and moved forward, taking in everything around him slowly.
He slowed and stopped before a skull completely consumed by moss, split in two by a transverse crack. It was the size of an adult human’s upper torso, with wide dark eye sockets, from one of which a brown centipede was just emerging before vanishing into the back of the skull.
Aren walked deeper into the clearing, until pressed human footprints appeared in the dense ground cover directly ahead of him. He shifted his eyes to the nearest creature bones and looked more closely, and found that the fangs and claws had been neatly severed at the very base.
“What the…” He muttered under his breath, before a distinct crack of a branch carried from beyond the trees.
Aren caught the swift silhouette of a figure flickering in the gap between trunks and vanishing into the darkness, snapped his grip to the sword hilt, then slowly drew the blade from its scabbard.
He glanced back at the horse and moved toward where the sound had come from.
Aren walked slowly, sword hilt gripped firmly in his right hand, his left held ready to throw an energy shield.
Dry deadfall crackled softly underfoot, and between the trunks nothing moved except for faint threads of mist along the ground.
He heard only his own footsteps and steady breathing, calculating which direction an attack might come from.
Suddenly, from behind him, a distinct crack of a breaking branch.
Aren spun around and caught fast movement behind a thick trunk, moved slowly toward it, raising his blade and bracing for the attack, but suddenly felt a threat closing from behind, met the swing of an enemy sword with a block, the jolt of metal on metal sharp in his grip, and then a man stood before him in battered leather armor, fury on his face.
Aren knocked his weapon aside and drove a kick straight into his gut, and the attacker folded, dropping to the ground.
The next second, sharp yells tore through the silence from several directions at once.
Aren caught several attackers in his peripheral vision before one was already driving a horizontal slash at him, which he sidestepped, and found himself facing a third whose blow he caught on the energy shield thrown from his left palm, then immediately swept the man’s legs and dropped him onto his back.
He stepped back sharply and straightened up, measuring the distance to each opponent.
Three bandits stood before him, and from the trees two more emerged to join them.
Aren held his sword forward, moving his gaze from face to face.
“Who the hell are you people?” He asked.
Four of the bandits looked at him with wide grins, exchanging glances, while the fifth had no idea what to do with himself. One of them looked down at the weapon in Aren’s hand, then raised his head.
“What the fuck do you care? We’re just the last thing you’ll ever see in your stupid life.”
Aren frowned, tightening his grip on the hilt, while his opponents, chuckling, slowly spread out in an arc around him.
He stood nearly still, sweeping his eyes across each one in turn.
The two on the flanks moved at once, blades raised with loud exhales, but Aren drove his boot soles deeper into the earth and burst forward, slipping between the attackers directly toward those waiting at the back, forcing them to react before they’d had time to set their defense.
The bandit ahead raised his weapon in a defensive stance, but Aren pushed off the ground in a high jump, cleared him entirely, landed behind him, and with a full rotation brought his left fist into the face of the man just starting to turn, sending him into the ground.
Aren straightened up, ready to press on, but taut dark roots shot up from the ground, aimed directly at him. He turned and saw one of the attackers on one knee, palm pressed to the jutting rootlets, a pale energy pulse running up through them.
Aren began cutting down the attacking roots with his sword blade, slowly retreating, but several coiled around his ankles and yanked hard, throwing him to the ground.
He raised his torso, bringing his arm back for a downward cut at the roots gripping him, but a new wave of coils closed around the hilt and tore the blade from his fingers, and several bandits were already looming over him, arms raised to strike.
“Die, you piece of shit!” The words burst from them.
But at that same instant, blades struck a hard white surface with a sharp metallic ring, and a painful vibration ran up through the attackers’ grips.
Every attacker’s eyes went wide when they saw Aren’s body covered in a layer of magical white stone, its cracks filled with pulsing blue energy.
In the next instant Aren cut through the roots coiled around him with blue energy claws forming along the fingers of both hands, then came to his feet in a single spring.
They stared at the white stone armor and both his hands, along which long blue blades stretched, pulsing with that same glow.
One of the bandits involuntarily stepped back, eyes fixed on Aren’s glowing hands.
“Who the… fuck are you?…” He forced out.
“What the fuck do you care?” Aren answered.
Two of them lunged at him with open fury, while the kneeling mage drove another wave of roots racing along the ground.
Aren split the entire wave with one wide sweep of his blue claws, cutting every root in a single motion, then charged into the other two opponents who came at him with swords.
The magical claws sheared through the unenchanted metal blades with ease, the bandits’ swords fragmenting in all directions, leaving the men disarmed, before Aren brought stone fists, grown in place of the blades, down on each of them, driving one into the nearest trunk and the other into the ground with enough force to buckle the earth beneath him.
Slowly straightening, Aren turned toward the root-wielding bandit, still kneeling over the roots.
Through his Mage-sight, Aren saw the flows of energy binding his opponent to the tree roots, reaching toward his feet, and turned his body aside a fraction of a second before a sharp wooden spike shot from the ground.
The attacker stared at him with dilated pupils, motionless.
“What the… how did you…” He muttered.
Aren burst toward him, splitting the panicked root barriers the bandit threw up in desperate haste with several lightning sweeps of his blue claws, then closed the distance before the man could reach the dropped sword.
Aren pressed an open palm to his face and drove his head into the ground with a concentrated impulse, leaving him still.
He rose and turned toward the last one standing, who had kept his distance from the others, hands trembling on the sword hilt.
Aren narrowed his eyes, tilted his head slightly to one side, not making a sound, then began walking toward him in slow steps.
A sharp, frightened groan tore from the young man’s throat and he hurled his weapon away.
“I-I HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS!!! I’M JUST A NOVICE SEEKER, AND THEY… THEY FORCED ME!… I DON’T WANT ANYTHING FROM YOU!… PLEASE, HAVE MERCY!” He shouted, backing away and waving his arms wildly.
Aren stopped, seeing genuine fear in the young man’s wide eyes, and slowly exhaled through his nose and gave a short nod.
The young man’s breathing went ragged as he carefully worked around him in a wide arc.
“Th-Thank you… thank you.” He mumbled, then ran off between the trees.
Aren slowly swept his gaze across the battlefield, pausing on each of the four motionless bodies scattered across different parts of the clearing, then walked to his sword lying nearby, picked it up, and sheathed it.
“That was still a bad idea… I need to get out of here fast,” he thought.
Aren returned to the open spot deep in the forest where he had left his horse, but the spot was empty.
He spun around, sweeping the space with his eyes, then ran to where the horse should have been standing, and found only hoofprints leading deeper into the forest.
Aren raised his foot to move forward, then went rigid.
Turning his head slowly back, he found beside the already-noticed hoofprints a completely different set, wide and pressed deep into the ground, belonging to a cloven-hoofed animal considerably larger.
Suddenly from the depths of the forest a piercing horse scream hit his ears, sliding into pure agony, and Aren broke into a run, knowing whose voice it was.
He ran headlong, leaping over roots and rocks, until he reached the source of the sound, where he first noticed overturned saddlebags scattered on the ground, then saw what lay beyond.
The animal lay on its side, belly torn open, entrails spilled out, dozens of deep punctures across its body, its muzzle bitten half away.
Aren drew his sword, moved closer, cast a swift glance over the slain horse, then spun sharply, scanning the space on all sides, trying to determine which way whatever had done this had gone.
The animal’s blood slowly seeped into the ground from the wounds, filling the air with a heavy iron smell and an unfamiliar undertone.
The tracks of a massive creature led from the horse into the darkness between the trunks, where the forest swallowed every detail by the third row of trees. Not a single branch swayed, not a single bird made a sound, and everything around was soaked in the thick smell of blood.
Aren steadied his breathing to near-silence, slowly moving the sword from one impenetrable shadow to another, listening to every sound.
Suddenly from the dense thicket came a deep, drawn-out growl that cut through the forest’s silence.
He turned toward it and found in the depths four red lights staring directly at him. They drew slowly closer, while from the shadow behind them emerged a dark, massive silhouette that gained detail and scale with every step.
Aren took several steps back, tightening his grip on the hilt, and swallowed. In his memory he found no description, no word that fit what was slowly coming out of the forest before him.
The creature stepped onto open ground, pressing its cloven hooves into the soil with every step.
It stood a head taller than Aren at the shoulder, and its body was several times the bulk of a full-grown bull. Dark, matted brown fur covered its entire body, thickening into a dense shaggy mane around the skull and along the chest. On its broad shoulders and along the upper spine, rough bone plates jutted directly through the fur, forming a single ridge from the back of the neck to the shoulder blades.
It looked at Aren with four red eyes, arranged in two pairs across a wide muzzle, its mouth held half-open, baring three rows of hooked fangs, each wider than a thumb and the length of a palm.
From either side of the skull two massive horns jutted from the flesh, curving outward in an arc.
Several long tails trailed behind the body, with bone spikes at the tips.
It shifted a foreleg forward and pressed down with its full weight, a crack running through the ground beneath the hoof, then opened its mouth fully, releasing a low, crushing sound, and Aren felt the vibration of it inside his own chest.