The first thing Faith noticed upon waking up was how bright everything was, and for a moment, she thought the great beast chasing her down must have slain her on the spot, and taken her soul straight to the promised Land of Judgement before the throne of Heaven. Then she felt something awfully heavy, humid and disturbingly warm on her face and her eyes shot open in horror. Looking down she could see some sort of mask of strange red flesh morphed onto her face where the gas mask once sat. She stared into a group of eyes, bearing strange cracks in their clouded pupils, and the eyes stared back at her.
She screamed as she desperately tried to rip the thing off her face, what else was she meant to do? Not a single other thought occupied her mind, she didn’t even think to check what it was attached to before human voices began to speak.
“Whoa! Easy there!” The voice of a young man, probably in his mid-teenage years, called out to her as she damn near ripped off her own face.
She paused to turn her head to the direction of the sound, seeing a young man of asian descent attached to the thing on her face… a thing that was apparently his arm, which seemed to extend up just past the shoulder to the point where his shaggy black hair met his neck. Honestly besides the slimy sheen to his skin, the presence of gills on his neck and of course the freaky arm mutation he seemed too small and… normal… to be the type of cultivator that could have taken out that thing.
Unlike his companion, who looked to be an older cultivator of indeterminate age. Covered head to toe in shaggy brown fur, limbs thicker than tree trunks, probably a good two and a half times her height. He had what seemed to be ursine features, small round furred ears closer to the top of his head than the sides and a nose that seemed halfway to a snout. As he began to speak, she noticed too he had distinctly sharp canines too.
“Very screamy this one. Welcome to land of waking!” He chuffed in broken glish.
As Faith calmed herself down she felt a lance of embarrassment flow through her. So she was rescued by two cultivators, that certainly more than explained the thing on her face… she probably should have guessed in the first place. Cultivators coming this deep into the Great Forest surprised her, for some reason though even the most experienced apothecaries in the local area seemed to avoid going into the true depths beneath the fungal-infested canopy, on top of that the Si-absorbing properties of the fungus made it worthless for most to cultivate. But she supposed she had gone this far too, despite the worst of the myths and whispers she had heard on the way here the biggest threat had been a Spirit Beast of perhaps low tier 4, it certainly wasn’t impossible to meet others like her. By their unusual accents neither of them were locals, perhaps they were on a similar pilgrimage to her own? But evidently better equipped, given they didn’t need masks to breathe here, perhaps Wanderers who had made the choice to assign one of their mutations just to survive in such a cursed land? She had truly made a fool of herself once more, hadn’t she?
“I- I apologise. My actions have been truly shameful. I was just surprised upon waking- I did not expect to meet two cultivators so deep in this place, toxic and devoid of Si as it is.” They apologised.
“Two of us? Wait… Cobalt, are you hiding! Weren’t you the one grilling me about the importance of proper etiquette or whatever have you!” The smaller, and likely younger, cultivator, addressing… something.
With a shimmer of the air a shape began to bleed into existence, and all at once her instincts were assailed with the primal dread of the presence of a predator. The other cultivator, Cobalt, was a young looking woman with pale leathery skin dotted with patches of scales, their lithe build contained layers of obvious corded muscle suited for explosive release of power and was easily two and a half heads taller than Faith, and probably more than one head over the boy whose arm was attached to her face. A small amount of saliva leaked from the edges of her mouth, a mouth that Faith’s instincts told her contained vicious fangs, that drove more fear into her than was perhaps rational. Blood red eyes, slitted like a primordial carnivore, stared into hers with an unmistakable underline of hunger, before quickly turning away and flashing with shame.
“I- I apologise greatly. I was… sorting myself out. I am Cobalt of clan Phagos… Sectmaster of the Lead Cave.” Cobalt apologised, before moving into an introduction. Her introduction of herself as Sectmaster bore no hint of arrogance, or even pride. In fact, if anything it was full of pain and sorrow, and no small amount of shame.
“Grrkkn of Hurhn! Pleasure meet!” The furred giant introduced, far more chipperly. They introduced their name in a strange guttural growl, far different from how the other introduced him. Privately Faith decided to think of him as Gorekin, as even her imagination struggled to replicate the exact throaty sound.
“John Zhou, clan Aurelium, also of the Lead Cave. May we know your name stranger?” The smaller furless cultivator asked.
“Ah… my apologies…” Faith stammered, shaken out of her stupor and forcing her eyes off this Cobalt with a colossal effort of will. “Faith… just call me Faith. I am not from around these part, I am on a pilgrimage see.”
“That strange. I hear about human pilgrims, but human no go here. Never go here, even they who no fear the Old Gods remember the wrath of the Mother Forest.” Gorekin noted.
The gears of Faith’s mind stopped in their tracks. “Wait… you said human… implying?”
“Ah right, sorry!” John apologised hastily. “There is uh… you will want to sit down for this.”
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“You were from how far south?” The strange green skinned girl asked, even with her face completely completely covered by his shapeshifted right arm.
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“Yeah, all the way on the south border.” He answered. She was clearly not a native to the Empire then, something her slight accent probably should have tipped him off first.
“How?” She asked, dumbfounded. “I mean, that would require an Abberant mediated teleportation formation surely? At the very least!”
“We don’t quite understand all the details ourselves.” Cobalt answered carefully. “Golden Age technology, it’s dangerous.”
“So how can you breathe?” Faith asked.
“We um… we met um… it’s a long story…” John winced.
“After Gorekin here took us to his tribe we encountered a machine that apparently represented the Will of the forest. Believe it or not… and it tried to kill John but I managed to convince it to settle down and talk instead. And then by the end it gave us this strange medicine for our trouble that let us breathe in its air.” Cobalt elaborated for him.
“A… the forest? As in-” Faith asked not quite disbelievingly, but clearly unable to fully believe either.
“So why are you here for your pilgrimage anyway? What’s here for you, I mean?” John asked, changing the topic. “I mean, I heard some of the Atomic Priests go on great journeys to better understand the whispers of the Atomos, but as fa-”
“I am not an Atomic Priest! Do not lump me with those… those…” Faith hissed, before quickly losing steam, withdrawing into herself. “I- i’m sorry. I have no right to speak.”
Ah, one of those, John thought to himself. She was probably from the Holy Union, the Atomic Priesthood in the Empire loved to denounce them as heretics and fanatics all. He supposed it made sense they must have saw them in much the same way. What fire once blazed within Faith however, by the way her tone quickly sizzled out, was little more than embers.
An awkward silence followed for a few minutes, before Faith finally gathered the strength to continue talking. “I heard stories, of the Garden, a pure land untouched by the sin that ended the world. When the day of the Golden Promise comes, and those of us descended from those chosen to be left behind upon this charred world are called to judgement before the throne of God, they say all the world would be like the Garden. A place where things make sense.”
“Ah, where this garden meant to be?” Gorekin asked.
“North, past the Great Forest, at least that is what my studies have led me to believe. Ancient texts from the attempted Burning of the woodland speak of angels and demons that descended from the trees, choking flames and casting judgement upon those who dared encroach on sacred ground. It made sense to me then that what I am looking for might be up north.”
Notably, John noted as she recounted her motives, she did not have nearly as much conviction in her supposed reasoning as would make sense for someone willing to walk this far. Even he could realise it was a poorly veiled excuse, the only part that was probably true…
[The last fragment of the sentence, according to makeshift EKG based polygraph analysis, likely truth with a probability of 78%] ARTOS finished the thought for him with a helpful number.
Gorekin, already poorly versed in human social skills, pushed forward with all the subtlety of a bullet wound. “Oh, we been to far north! All Forest Kin tribes pilgrimage end there! Nothing but endless wasteland of snow, no garden possible, just ice and empty human ruins!”
“That, no, that doesn’t…” Faith sputtered, before processing Gorekin’s words a bit further. John couldn’t see her face, obviously, but he didn’t need the input from ARTOS’s eyes to know that she was paling underneath. “Human, as in… what are you?”
“Gorekin is a native of this forest. His people have apparently lived here since the Greatest War, possibly longer.” Cobalt explained. “I know, this is a lot to take in, but…”
“I- Sasquatch? You were meant to be only myth! Furred fae that sneak in and steal babies who do not pray!” Faith interrupted with a terrified squeak, pointing at Gorekin with a trembling finger as they attempted to back away. Not that they could do much with ARTOS stuck on her face. They tripped over a white fungus-infested root and fell helplessly to the floor on their back.
Gorekin let out a disappointed growl, revealing several sharp canines, probably not helping his image. “Where that story even come from! What human word- Dox-shit! Why we even eat human! Beside, how we even know if you no pray!”
“Gorekin… your feelings on the matter are understandable, but will not help the situation! She has been taught these myths out of ignorance, not malice, she didn’t even know your people existed much like we didn’t! So let us please try and deescalate the situation!” Cobalt stepped in before things could get messy. Letting some of her power flare as her claws instinctively extended into metallic blades.
Gorekin huffed. “Fine, make sense! Still, no happy! Is really how see us?”
Faith continued to tremble in place, though she no longer seemed so focused on Gorekin but Cobalt. ARTOS helpfully confirmed this by stating: [Preliminary chemical analysis of breath suggesting statistically significant associations with fear response]
To her credit, the green skinned girl did not run away, and in fact started to apologise. “I am sorry, I can see how such myths can be hurtful. I had truly not known your people were anything more than a children's tale until now, I never lived anywhere near the Great Forest after all… but is it true there is nothing beyond the forest also?”
Gorekin shook his head. “Thank you for apology, but sorry nothing past forest. Just endless snow, and pure white Cousin Beasts size of small mountain.”
“Somehow I… I had a feeling…” Faith mumbled to herself, something that would not be audible to John if not for the fact she was quite literally stuck to him.
“Well, if you don’t have a direction to go anymore, why don’t you go with us?” John offered, extending his spare hand.
“I don’t know what I want. I don’t know where I am going. I don’t even know what to believe! Everything I thought was true, no longer makes sense!” Faith laughed bitterly.
“So how about we find out together?” John replied, not even noticing the way a memory from ARTOS flickered in the depths of his subconscious mind, echoing words he said in a place he was not equipped to remember at the time.
Faith stared at his offered hand like it was alien for a good, long moment, before tentatively reaching out, and hesitantly taking it without a word.