Six men ventured into the Ashmoran Woods, drawn from the scattered settlements of the Seven Shadows. They were not soldiers. At least, not in the way a contemporary man might imagine. They were volunteers: hunters, traders, and wanderers, all hardened by necessity. While each carried an axe, spear, or bow, none entered seeking violence, although they had prepared the worst. Their true purpose was to search for the lost. A number of their scouts had vanished when the forest began its slow advance. It defied nature, creeping inexorably toward the desert and swallowing the land beneath a tide of blackened bark and twisted roots.
Despite the evident corruption, the creature responsible for the forest's blight was no demon.
Although not commonly known, demons seldom troubled the blasted southern lands. The wastes were a crucible that tested all things--mortal, beast, and fiend alike--and few of their kind have the patience to endure it for long.
Centuries ago, in the desperate time after the birth of sin, the Kurwanis tribe struck a pact with a demon, a warlord who had claimed the sands of their desert home. She had seen the writing on the wind, the slow death of their world, and knew that when mortals perished, demons would soon follow. So she gave them ivory carved from her own horns, and cursed it with magic that warded away lesser beings of her own kind. The adventurers, descendants of the Kurwanis, still carried those talismans as relics. They still remembered the old bargain that, for the most part, shielded them from demonic meddling.
No, what they hunted was something else. Not a demon, but a monster. One that had once been a human. A man who had once held many fears, just as those six men did now.
- - - - -
Theokles exhaled through his nose, smooth and steady, as he crouched beside the withered thing tangled in the roots. At first he had mistaken it for a natural formation, another grotesque product of the Ashmoran's pollution. The body was hollowed out, brittle as dried wood, and its skin was splitting like old bark where the roots had grown through it. His fingers hovered over the chest, where a sickly blue bloom strained to unfurl its petals but remained stunted, struggling to live atop the death it fed upon. He hesitated to disturb it. That was until he saw the faint gleam of ivory hidden in the tangle.
A pendant. Worn smooth with time and yellowed with age, with a single unusual glyph burned into its surface.
Recognition tightened in his chest.
This man's name was Aristide, and he was a friend. He was the one who led Theokles to the Kurwanis, and the reason he had found a place among their people.
Aristide had called his homeland France, a nation of Theokles' own world--Earth. Theokles had never heard that name for his world. Supposedly, it came from an age far beyond his own, a future he would have never seen. He might have dismissed such claims if Aristide hadn't spoken of history with a scholar's certainty, recounting lands and kings Theokles had never known. Without him, the people of Mayko would never hear such fascinating tales again. A sickening anger settled in Theokles' chest, knowing he would never be able to repay what he owed to him.
"I'll create good in this world, enough for both of us." Theokles spoke, offering a prayer to whatever spirits were listening.
There were steps coming from behind him, carrying with it a light that made heat prickle on the back of his neck.
Ruhad, the leader of their company, planted his heavy spear into the ground as he knelt beside him. His broad frame remained still, his expression unreadable. Then without a word, he extended a torch, its flame flickering between them as a silent offering. Its meaning was understood without need for words.
For a moment neither of them spoke. The torch in Ruhad's hand flickered, casting jagged black shapes across the dead man's husk. Theokles saw something rare in the old nomad's expression. There was an unspoken grief, tempered only by duty. When Ruhad finally broke the silence, his native accent was rough and quiet.
"Fire will release his spirit." He offered, then carefully added, "carrying him beyond the reach of the corruption, and into the arms of the Goddesses."
Theokles hesitated. Cremation was an acceptable funerary rite, although he strongly disliked the precedent it would set. He knew Ruhad understood this world better than he, yet there was something callous in the suggestion that unsettled him.
"Do you mean to burn the forest as well?" Theokles finally spoke.
Ruhad shook his head. "Only the tainted parts. If we remain true to our purpose, the Goddess of Earth will mend the destruction." He tightened his fingers around his own pendant. "I would spare as much as I can, if possible. This place was once sacred, but I fear it is lost due to his evil."
There was a determination in his tone that made Theokles consider his words. Aristide had been summoned to Mayko years ago, and Ruhad had known him for a while longer than he. This was not any easier for him, especially as their leader.
With a solemn nod, he reached up and clasped his friend's forearm as a sign of understanding. He took the torch, then left in its place the ivory pendant that belonged to Ruhad's people.
Ruhad stared at it for a while, and his mouth stiffened to a line. "This is on us now," he whispered, closing his fingers around the medallion. "We will see that the Sage of the Ashmoran Woods answers this."
Their eyes met, speaking in a way only those who had taken lives before could. Behind the hardness in his friend's gaze, Theokles saw how much he truly cared for every man he lost. That, more than anything, was why he had trusted his judgment. Without another word, he turned and placed the head of the torch to Aristide's body.
The flames caught quickly and consumed the withered flesh like dry parchment. When it reached the stunted flower in his chest, a sick feeling twisted in Theokoles' gut. It made him wonder how the goddesses of this world would judge them for what they might do. Neither he nor Ruhad spoke as they watched the body burn.
"Movement!" Came a cry from ahead on the path.
The warning rang out from the forward scouts in their company, sharp and urgent as they sprinted back into their direction to consolidate their forces. Instinct took hold of Theokles as he reached for his axe, while Ruhad turned to face the woods around them.
"Form a circle!" Their leader shouted, stepping forward to scan the darkness between the trees. The others followed suit, weapons raised, breaths held as they looked in every direction.
Something was coming.
A low rustling shivered around them, like wind stirring dead leaves. But there was no wind. Theokles turned, his grip tightening on his weapon. Shadows shifted in the underbrush, moving against the firelight--twisted figures, draped in tattered armor and rotting leather, their features lost beneath broken helms and the remnants of cloth cowls.
They stepped forward onto the path.
Withered flesh clung to their frames, brittle and hollow, their limbs creaking with unnatural stiffness. Some bore weapons: rusted swords, moss covered spears, the remnants of fighters before they had fallen. Others had nothing but their jagged, dry fingers, which had curled into talons.
A shout rang out as the first of the husked figures lurched toward their numbers. Ruhad's men met them with steel and bronze. Axes cracked through desiccated bone, spears split hollowed torsos, but no sooner did the husks fall than the ground itself started turning against them.
Blackened roots surged up from the soil, winding through broken limbs, lifting their mangled and twice-slain remains into the air like puppets on tangled strings. Their necks cracked as their heads were forcibly pointed toward them, mimicking awareness, their empty eye sockets locked onto the men who had tried to cut them down.
Theokles exhaled sharply. He was warned that the sage used sorceries, but this was far worse than what he expected.
Then the air itself grew heavy as a deeper presence made itself known.
Above them, the canopy stirred. A shape descended from the gloom--slowly, deliberately--borne aloft by more twisted vines that curled and writhed like living veins of black magic. The figure was wrapped in strips of decayed cloth that had been marked by blasphemous script. Its body was gaunt, almost skeletal, and its feet dangled uselessly. Thorn wreathed icons hung from its robes, swaying with each languid movement that jostled it in the air. What remained of its face was barely human, its eerily serene features stretched tight over its skull.
The Sage of Ashmoran was now truly nothing more than a monster.
For a moment Theokles simply stared, allowing his breathing to steady. Many terrible things had happened in his presence since being cast into this world, but nothing stirred his heart to battle quite like this. He loathed this part of himself--the reactionary brute, the unquestioning soldier, but in this instance something had to be done. His gaze shifted to the husked bodies hanging in the trees, then to the creeping corruption twisting through the earth. His resolve hardened like cooling iron.
Even if he hated it--he would allow himself to become something else, for the sake of the people around him, and the others who had become bound to this place.
His fingers clenched around the haft of his axe. Then he pointed it skyward at the monstrous sorcerer in challenge.
- - - - -
When everything had ended, Theokles sat apart from the others, staring at the ichor stained weapon in his hands.
The battle was over. The sage was cut down, his husks laying scattered and broken, their bodies finally still. The uninjured among Ruhad's men gathered them in a pile, peeling away their personal possessions so they could be sent back to their families. Then they set torches to them, burning away the worst of the corruption. As they crackled, the air carried the sickly scent of charred roots and rotting wood.
Ruhad and the others moved through the wreckage, tending to wounds and gathering what remained of their supplies. Every missing scout had been accounted for. Theokles wished that felt like a victory.
