Part 5: Chapter Four: The Lady and the Forest

Chapter Four: The Lady and the Forest



The way ahead is long and winding. Thankfully, I've a full store of magic and a set of Yellow Wings to speed me back to Dondoran should worse come to worse.

Right off the bat I spy a spirit not far to my left. As is becoming a pattern, I am attacked on the way there.



They resemble the dolls created by Solvaring, but these are as tall as a man. They conjure magical stones and hurl them against me--harder to avoid than those conjured by Man-Eaters, as these stones are enormous, as through the second rank of the Rock spell.

Their melee attacks are hard to evade, but it's a fair sight easier to take than one of their rocks. I wonder if Solvaring created these to prevent intrusion into the forest and to kill monsters.



After defeating the Mad Dolls--my nickname for them, stemming from their jerky, severe movements--I collect the spirit. The ledge offers a fair view of the path ahead.



Ahead are more dangerous enemies--Death Huggers. They are to Bats as a mountain lion to a housecat. Their icy bolts are hard to avoid, but they are preferable to the beasts' impaling claws.



After pelting them with fire, a single staff-bludgeon crushes them, dispensing them without exposing myself to undue harm.



I spy another spirit on my walk--it's barely out of reach. I suppose I'll have to loop around to find it. Such a treasure isn't to be missed.



An Apophis! They are patient predators, assaulting their prey with the second rank of the Wind Cutter spell. I can dodge the bolts with some ease, but a single misstep leads to many bolts scouring my flesh. These aren't the welts raised by the Marionasties. Were I not blessed by the Earth Orb, I would be butchered like a prize hog.



After a while, I round an uphill bend--and find no spirit waiting for me. I must have taken the wrong way... I turn, checking my map, thinking I should have found the spirit. Along the way I turn aside several creatures. I take an unpleasant beating in an encounter with a great swarm of Death Huggers; afterward, my magic could only bring me to half-health before I exhausted my spiritual energy reserves. I walked ahead to usher more energy into my staff--

When another pack of Death Huggers burst from the wall and attack me. I expend much of my regained magic in blasting aside two of the three, but the last...

I rushed in, swung, missed. It tore into me, grappling me tight and ripping into my flesh with its teeth. I swing, trying desperately to hit--failing--



...it squeezes so hard... I can't... breathe... keep... o...

not... fair...

...

....

...

I awake tasting blood, my staff gone, agony erupting from my side. I know in an instant where my staff is--a few feet outside the entrance of the Death Hugger's tunnel. The Death Hugger is making a display, trying to scare off another Death Hugger.

My hands and legs are both asleep. I cast Soul Searcher on myself to try and jot feeling back into my limbs. It takes several moments to cast without my staff; I see exactly how badly I am injured. The Death Hugger has been taking bites out of my stomach. If it hadn't been interrupted by the other, I would have awoken just in time to watch the Death Hugger eat me alive.

I nurse myself with the Healing spell, barely managing to suture up my broken body. The effort of casting the spell restores feeling in my limbs. I crawl through the cramped tunnel, earthen tunnel towards the sunlight. Each inch forward sends a little more magic into my body, and every while I find enough magic to heal myself a little more.

And at last I push myself out, gasping, taking the deepest breaths I can, greedy for the blessing of the wind. The Death Hugger succeeds in chasing off its rival. I make a mad scramble for my staff, lying near the corpses of its brethren. I snatch it just as the Death Hugger notices I've escaped. I turn to face it, sending two bolts of fire into its gut.



It strikes me, but the wound is glancing. I retaliate with my old promise of a crushed skull. It falls unceremoniously.

I rest, restoring myself to full health. I check my map again; I am around half-way to my next destination--the dock for a boat that regularly leaves for Larapool. It should be in for the next few days, restocking before the next voyage.

Even fully healed, I ache. Magic can restore one's wholeness, but not vigor.



Goblins attack after I return to my trek--thought-walkers of laziness. They are pathetic fighters, spraying a half-learned variant of the Homing Arrow spell. They can barely control its direction with their phylactery-knives. I dispatch the with ease.



Apophi? I feel certain that I should be able to defeat them--but after my near-death experience, I'm in no mood to take an undue risk.



The greatest knights are led by caution.



Another stray spirit. The map is less ambiguous about this part of the Dondoran Flats--I think I can capture this one without much effort.



Indeed it is so. And no unpleasant ambush this time.



The boat is quite beautiful in the distance, a handsome shadow against a setting sun.



No sooner do I cross the bridge am I faced with a pair of Frog Knights and a Frog King. The Frog King is the same joke, but far more regal. Its blade slices the air, a great chopping blade near-impossible to dodge at such a range.

I keep my wits about me. The docks are in reach, after all. It's barely a walk at--



Twenty paces from the docks, a Goblin jabs its knife into my back, twisting.

They are as poor at stabbing as they are at spell-casting, it seems.

It missed my heart.

When I wake up, the sweet taste of a healing draught on my tongue, the first thing I see is Shannon's face.

She carries me to the inn near the docks, sets me down on a soft bed. I sleep. I wake, much later, to the work-a-day light of an afternoon sun.



I lay there a while, then staggered out of bed to the men's washroom. I bathe in the hot water of a communal bath, trade out my clothes for a clean set, and toss out my blood-stained shirt. When I come downstairs, I find Shannon there as well. I ask her where she's going--Larapool, she says. "The water capitol of Larapool," she said, "is on the other side of the lake. There is no fairer city in the Isles. It's even as pretty as the castle town of Limelin."

I tell her my father's last letter came from that place, and thus I must venture there.

"I see you're having trouble with the creatures here," Shannon said.

I sigh, resigned to my fate. I'm no warrior; I'm a spirit tamer. I'm just lucky that I haven't been slaughtered yet.

"There is a small forest near here," Shannon said, "by name of Glencoe. I know as sure as the earth that not a soul has set foot there in years. There must be a crop of spirits for the taking."

I ask why no-one has been there. "It's simply out-of-the-way," Shannon said. "The wood there is strange; it grows fast and hardened, like coral. Fire won't take to it. The leaves, though, will burn with a damp smoke, almost like fog, and cause strange dreams when inhaled, dreams of a long-ago time seen through the many eyes of the men and women who lived there. The air is uncomfortable--there is no fog, but the air is thick and wet. Some run from the forest not long after entering, fearing they are drowning."

Ominous. But I don't fear drowning; my strength in water and air are such that, with a moment to weave a spell beforehand, I cannot drown. Shannon marks my map where I might find a way to Glencoe. Feeling much more rested, I decide to leave immediately. Shannon wishes me luck and sees me off.



I was rather near the place Shannon marked when I was suffocated by the Death Hugger; I follow the path up to a high ridge. I look along the ridge and spy a fallen tree leading down; I run down its length. There is a fork ahead; I take a right--and there is the spirit I missed earlier! I feel lucky already.



The lucky feeling fades when a Cockatrice strikes. They are massive beasts, conjuring otherworldly hails of stone to crush their prey--which, given the size of a Cockatrice, must be either massive or made of many victims. I send it to an early grave with wind-magic.

It is dusk by the time I pass the age-worn sign set before Glencoe Forest's entrance, but when I reach the forest proper, it seems to already be night.



The air is just as heavy as Shannon described. Each breath is heavy and wet and cold, nearly arctic. My hair stands on end, my skin breaks out in goosebumps. If Connor was unseasonably cold, then this place was a full season ahead.



I am soon ambushed by strange, blue-skinned Goblins. They must have dyed their skin blue--some Goblins do so because of legends of Night Goblins, creatures that haunted Konnacht in bygone ages. Of course, they do that so they don't have to put in the effort of getting stronger. But these skin-dyed Goblins strike hard and strong with wind-magic, not the lazy strokes of other Goblins. I blast them with my earth spells. When they die, they simply slack and fall, as if turned off.

After the fight, out of morbid curiosity, I check their flesh. It is not dyed. It's also hard, harder than rigor mortis; I press into the freezing-cold skin, and feel ice crystals crack beneath my fingertips. They are frozen corpses--undead.



Though the frozen creatures raise my wariness, they are well within my power to handle. I follow the flicker of a distant spirit like a candle on a windowsill. I find one along the riverbank.



Waiting for me is a vulgar creature--a Hot Lips plant, a predator kin to the Man Trap. It has a great number of nicknames, all insulting to women. They were used once as cosmetics; very recently, they have gone extinct, the last crop burned by the jealous lover of their tender. This shouldn't be here. It's too cold, too far out of their narrow environmental needs...

But it's real. The barbs in my skin tell me that.

I spy another spirit on the far side of the lake. I decide to explore the other half first; I'll take it on my way back out. I don't want to spend any more time here than I absolutely have to.



I climb a great hill dividing the forest; on the way up, I am attacked by a set of creatures. One is a ghastly assemblage of flesh and wood, the other a loose collection of funerary wrappings bound around a grave-dirt-scented whirlwind. The tree reminds me of the Treants of the old sorcerer-tyrant Hammer-of-the-Sky, weapons of terror to keep his "children" in-line. I dispatch it first. Its companion dogs me as I maneuver around the Treant, hurling conjured stones at me. I cut it with wind and finish it with a blow from my staff.



In the middle of healing after the encounter, I saw something wholly unexpected--a cabin. Who would be mad enough to dwell in such a place as this? The air aside, the monsters here are much stronger than those on the road. There are no lights inside. Perhaps it's abandoned?



I find a spirit near the back of the cabin and add it to my panoply. I circle and notice the monsters do not draw near this place. A warding spell?



I find the door of the cabin. Taking a deep breath--slightly against my wishes--I rap the door with my staff.

To my surprise, a syrupy voice says, "Come in."

I open the door and slip in.



A woman?

The light is meager, but enough to see by--not enough to escape the thick glass of the windows. I cautiously approach her, ask her name. She introduces herself as Kelly. I ask her why she lives here. She says she is waiting for her lover to return; he won't be much longer. Couldn't be.

Where is he? I ask.

She looks wistfully into the distance. "Follow the scenic valley into the forest and you will come across a Blue Cave," she says. "But I can assure you that the road will not open without permission from the spirits."

A valley...?



Before I leave, I check the other room in the tiny hut. While she let me take a mystic trinket as a gift "to remember us by," I see nothing else I could bear asking for. Yet... there's something strange about the bed. I feel the sheets; it's caked in dust. I brush away the dust and... smell something. It's faint, but greatly offensive, cutting through the neutral and damp stench of Glencoe's stagnant air.

I kneel and check beneath the bed--

Kelly. Well, the hair is the same length, though the color has faded...

Curled into a ball, facing away from the door. The smell is much more identifiable now. Rot.

I back away and return to the other room. Kelly is in the room, smiling at me. She says farewell. I say farewell to her. I leave the cabin.



And run.



I halt--is that a spirit on the hill? Feverishly, I remind myself I came here for spirits. Don't I want to bolster my strength against the enemies of Celtland? I've slain ghosts on the way here--no time to lose my nerve for one who simply wishes to talk.

Calling on fire to steel my resolve, I blast through a handful of treants and claim the spirit.



I reach the top of the hill and turn to my left--and see a way leading downhill. A little valley. I follow it. Was this here earlier? I didn't noti...

All the gods.

It can't be.



"Water is life. To squander life--to spill it, to take it without need, to arrange death and ensure its coming--is the sin of water."

I've seen this before, in sacred texts, illustrated in harsh inks with brittle pens. An entryway. There are several for each. And I've found one.

Jahannam. The hell of water.

Here.



It's fortunate the next spirit is right on my path out.



Before I can stop myself I see a final spirit flicker in the distance, the one I left behind earlier. I can't stop myself. It's one spirit, the way of earth within me cries. I can leave one spirit be. But fire burns brighter. It is here. I came here for it. I can't let it go.

I loop around the lake, add the spirit to my collection, and turn, my legs aching from all the running I'm doing.

I see it over the hillside--a flicker of white. I see it, think at first it is a spirit. But it isn't.

For one thing, spirits are silent.

I could feel this one's quiet, gleeful song halfway across the damned forest.



I will never return here.

It knows who I am.

Next: Possession and the Pit.