Bright moonlight peeked through the leaves of the trees, dappling the worn dirt trail and providing just enough light for Mist-Rolling-Softly's keen eyes to safely guide her footsteps down the path. She quietly practiced saying her newly-awarded Druid name as she picked her way carefully over the stones and roots which threatened to engulf the ancient route; she had been told by her mentor, Tree-Dying-In-Sand, that she would need to be familiar with it before she reached the site of her final lesson.
The Order into which she was about to complete her initiation was among the oldest and most secretive of the various pagan orders that had sprung up since the fall of the Creator's Church about a decade ago, as well as one of the most rigorous. Misty had been training with the Order of the Green Knife for six years and had watched her peers steadily drop out, one by one, seeking less physically and mentally straining spiritualities or abandoning the spirit altogether. Of twenty braggarts, filled to the brim with the bravado and overconfidence of youth, only she remained, her own bravado transformed through years of dedication and stubbornness into the confidence of a honed protector of the wilds. All the struggle, hardship, and pain she had endured would culminate tonight, in what Sandy had said would be both a lesson and a test, and from which she would emerge a true Druid of the Green Knife, with a voice on the council and a seat around the Great Fire.
Her footsteps made no sound as she strode down the path, though her ceremonial gown, sheer and the same color green as new spring leaves, whispered over her otherwise bare skin with each stride. She was thankful for the warmth of the summer night, and the lack of the usual north breeze which would have made the journey a bit too chilly for her liking; Misty couldn't imagine what this trip must have been like for the Acolytes who graduated in the winter months. She hoped, for their sake, that Order's ritual garments were seasonal rather than static.
The deep, mournful note of a horn bellowed through the forest, startling Misty out of her idle musings; she flinched and spun around, seeking the source of the unexpected sound. Not a single leaf rustled, not a single cricket chirped; a silence covered the forest like a blanket, broken only by the horn's fading echoes. As she stood, tense and alert, her strained ears caught the distant bark of hounds, coming from somewhere back down the path. Her eyes narrowed; was this a part of the lesson? Or was this something else?
The Creator's Church had not gone quietly into the night; in spite of being rocked by scandal and corruption, it had fought viciously to hold onto whatever shred of power it still clutched in its withered grasp. It had not been too many years since the last time rumors had spread of hunting parties seeking heretics in the outcountry, and while such gossip had not reached her ears in many moons, Misty still felt that caution, rather than boldness, was the best course of action.
She slid off the path like a silent wraith, concealing herself within the thick underbrush of the forest, just as she had been trained. Her gown, unlike the protective and functional clothes she would normally have worn on a trip into the brush, seemed determined to snag on every stray branch and disturb every quiet leaf. Misty frowned in frustration, her mind warring with itself as she watched the trail she had just left; surely, if the sound indicated danger, the elder Druids would be on their way to spirit her out of peril. On the other hand, the notes of the horn and the barking of dogs were coming from behind her; if danger had found her sisters first, she might be the only one left to tell about it.
The sounds of the hounds, while distorted by the echoes in the trees, were clearly drawing closer, and at a much more rapid pace than Misty was comfortable with. She extended her hand and concentrated, feeling the energy of the earth and the essence of the moonlight like a thin liquid on her fingertips. Furrowing her brow in concentration, she slowly moved her hands to weave those energies together in a spell of concealment, damping her scent and pulling the shadows more deeply over her athletic form. Combined with her small size and jet black hair, she would be nearly invisible to all but the most careful of observers, even those among the animal kingdom.
Her obfuscation was completed only scant seconds before movement on the path entered her field of vision. Misty let out a tiny gasp in spite of herself; nothing could have prepared her for what she saw.
The barking had indeed come from hounds, but hounds of a size that Misty would not have believed had she heard the tale over a beer in the longhouse. The first two creatures that greeted her sight were nearly the size of bears, and moved with the speed of mountain lions. They were followed by a half-dozen dogs of similar breed though much smaller size, more akin to mastiffs than ursines. The beasts did not lead a group of armored men with grim faces, set on destroying the heretics and bringing the order of the Creator back to the lands; rather they pulled a chariot that looked as if it had been crafted of sticks and logs bound together and embellished with wire made of pure gold.
Piloting the chariot was a man who took Misty's breath away. He was at least seven feet tall, with broad shoulders powerful arms; he wore no clothes that Misty could determine, and the moonlight glinted off the clearly-defined muscles of his chest. His face was concealed by the shadow of an enormous deer-antlered headdress, which seemed to defy the trees by passing with supernatural ease through the low-hanging branches.
The dogs barreled past Misty's hiding spot without a second glance, and the chariot rolled past as well, its rough-hewn wheels creaking as they bumped over the uneven ground. Within just a few short moments, the entire party had passed, going around a bend in the trail and moving beyond Misty's sight. A second horn note blew from down the path, bouncing off the vegetation and spreading through the forest like the tide through mangroves.
Misty took a minute to catch her breath; of all the things she had learned to expect from the forest, nothing could have prepared her for that. The man and his pack had clearly been making for the standing stones where her own initiation was to be completed; was he a part of it somehow? Or was he a coincidence, some forest spirit on a journey of his own, completely unrelated to her lessons? And if the latter were the case, how would he react to an uninvited guest at whatever event he had planned?
In the silent warmth of the night, Misty's pulse began to slow and she forced her breathing to become more regular. She frowned, realizing that even if the man in the chariot was not a part of her ceremony, he could in no way be used as an excuse for not continuing. What would she tell the other Druids? That she had toiled and sweated all these years only to turn back at the last possible moment, out of cowardice? That rather than face the unknown, no matter how unknown, she would lay down all of her efforts and go back to her village in disgrace, to mill grain and milk cows? Absolutely not!
Her mind thusly resolved, Misty got to her feet and regained the path. Keeping her spell of concealment in place, she continued on in the direction of the standing stones, determined to complete her purpose and ensure the last six years of her life were not a waste. She spurred herself forward and jogged along the road, remembering her training: move towards what frightens you, rather than away. She wished heartily that her athame was at her side; being armed against dangers both physical and spiritual would give her far more comfort than a sheer gown and her bare hands.
Misty's naked feet, toughened by years in the forest, padded softly on the dirt track, lifting tiny plumes of dust beneath them and she inhaled to the beat of them; inhale four steps, hold four steps, exhale four steps. The noises of the forest did not return with the passing of the chariot; the only sounds that broke the night were her footsteps and her breathing. She tried not to wonder at the silence, or allow it to gnaw at her nerves.
The path contained many gentle curves as it moved in a rough, sidewinding spiral towards the standing stones, and at each one the hunting horn blew again; the hollow sound becoming less distant each time it sounded. It seemed both challenging and beckoning, driving Misty forwards and causing her to ponder the consequences of turning back at the same time, until the euphoria of running pushed all other thoughts out of her mind. In a state of physical exertion she felt the energy of the forest most keenly, and tonight it wrapped around her like a lover's embrace, helping to draw her to the center of the spiral while fueling her uncertainty; the native animals, she found, were not simply silent, but had fled beyond her ability to sense them. She could sense the hunting party, though. Their energy was both dark and light in equal measure, rough and smooth, bitter and sweet, and she could learn nothing concrete about them from their distant auras.
Misty came around the final corner and the sacred clearing opened up before her. In it were the ancient standing stones: seven oblong rocks ten feet tall, half-buried in the fertile soil, surrounding three larger rocks that towered at least twenty feet into the air and made a hemisphere around a granite altar. The altar itself was a single massive cube, almost ten feet long and four across, buried in the ground so that only the top four feet were visible. Vines grew thick across all the stones, their tiny rootlets finding purchase in the smallest of cracks as they climbed towards the sky to better gather the light of the sun and they rays of the moon.
The altar was normally decorated with offerings from the Order's druids. Bundles of flowers, decorated bones and painted skulls from their feasts, and bowls of spring water and home-made mead usually covered what surface of the rock was exposed between the vines, to be enjoyed by the spirits of the forest in whatever way they enjoyed physical things. Tonight, however, the altar was bare and smooth; even the vines had been pushed aside and lay in tangled heaps on the ground around it. The offerings, Misty saw, had been moved to the outer circle, filling the gaps between the shorter guardian rocks and leaving only a single space through which she could approach.
The horn blew again, and Misty fought the impulse to cover her ears against the noise that rattled her eardrums. The air in front of her wavered and trembled, then opened like a curtain, revealing that the emptiness of the site had been only an illusion.
The clearing was suddenly full of people. Beings a foot or more shorter even than Misty's five foot stature and cloaked in brown robes that concealed all their features stood in front of each offering, their arms raised to the night sky. Misty saw the dogs of the hunting pack tied behind the circle, laying in the grass and panting happily. All but the largest two; they were no longer beasts that went about on all fours, but stood upright as men on either side of the altar, their faces still dog-like but with eyes that were decidedly intelligent. They regarded Misty inscrutably with lolling tongues; the one on the right of the altar brought the hunting horn to his lips with remarkably human-like hands and blew a single, drawn out note.
