Chapter 8: Into the Dark Woods: Part One
I found myself experiencing a strange mixture of terror and joy. I didn’t really think was possible to feel like this, at least not when you were of sound mind.
The terror came from the fact that I was currently high enough in the air that the trees beneath me more closely resembled houseplants than they did the huge pillars of the forest that they would have been if I had been standing next to them. Seeing them like that caused my stomach to tighten and my heart to beat harder in my chest. I knew that I should be in the grip of blind terror, that I should be staring down and mindlessly flailing to grab onto something, anything, that could provide me with some stability, some assurance I wasn’t going to fall. Before, it had overtaken me, but now . . . now it was sort of there. It was like an incoming tsunami that I could see, but which I knew would never actually reached me.
I think that part of what was holding it at bay was the sheer elation I was feeling, the sheer unadulterated joy of freedom!
I was finally out of the Sanctuary! I was finally free to see more than just the same area that I’d become sort of frustratingly familiar with over the last few weeks. I was completely aware that it had been there to keep me safe. I’d known that I couldn’t leave without risking less friendly elements finding me before I was ready. However, for all that I’d known that in my head it hadn’t changed the fact that, as more time passed, I’d felt more and more shut in, trapped, almost suffocated! This freedom . . . it was a balm to my soul like you wouldn’t believe.
I hadn’t even been planning to go so high when I started out. Hell, I hadn’t thought that I’d even be able to get that high if I wanted to. But here I was, soaring higher than I’d ever thought would be possible for me, and for a time I just let myself bask in that simple joy.
After some time though, the glow of joy dimmed a bit, and I got back to focusing on why I was flying, and what my mission was. As far as my speed went I might not be flying as fast as a fighter jet, but I was able to eat up the distance between me and my target at a decent rate. And as I travelled further I slowly started to edge up even higher.
My fear, it was still there, but it was distant, almost smothered. If felt secure in my own power, knowing I would not fall. At my back my wings were spread, beating gently, despite not really needing to do anything they served nicely as a constant reminder that I wasn’t just hanging there helplessly. Gravity was not my lord and master, not anymore at least, so falling was an act somewhat similar to walking into a door, something I could avoid with a modicum of effort and attention.
For a time, I simply enjoyed the experience of flying along, with no particular thoughts clouding my mind, just pure enjoyment of the sense of freedom unrestricted flight granted me. It was not to last though, because a sudden vibration from my pocket brought me out of my careless peace. It was funny, the feeling was almost exactly the same as when my cell phone was set to vibrate. However, the source of the familiar buzz was not some item of technology, rather it was a crafting of magic. Reaching in, carefully, since I didn’t want to risk dropping it, I pulled the buzzing object out and held it before me.
The small magical device that Hadriel had given me vaguely resembled a compass in that it was flat and had an eight-pointed star embossed across its face. However, this artefact had no needle, instead, there was a tiny point of blue light that ran along the edge of the device, always highlighting the direction in which I was meant to travel. The whole thing seemed to be made of pale blue glass that held some sort of viscous liquid that filled it completely. According to what the red-winged angel had told me as I drew closer to the target area the light would shine brighter, then would go out completely once I was flying over it.
As I looked down, I saw that the tiny point of bright blue was now distinctly brighter than it had been the last time I looked.
The fear of heights continued to try and gnaw at me as I looked down, but it was overshadowed by a combination of uncertainty and anticipation. This was it, I was going into danger, consciously, not in ignorance. Right there, in the nearing woods, there were dangerous creatures I knew nothing about. To be sure, it might be due to predatory hunger rather than maliciousness, but that would make little difference if the fangs came for my throat.
The change came with such shocking suddenness that I paused in mid-air. It was as though one instant the world around me had been normal, then suddenly the air felt different, heavier, hotter, more oppressive. I felt as though something was wrong, as though I was being stalked by something that was only just out of my field of view. Something like that should have stolen up on me slowly and quietly as I got closer to my target. Instead, it was just suddenly there, hovering at the back of my mind. Even then I might not have consciously noticed it, but since it came with the abrupt change in the whole atmosphere, it was unmissable.
Danger, that was the simplest and most primal way that my mind could interpret the change, that I was in danger. I didn’t know if it was some power of mine manifesting itself for the first time, or if it was simply ancient instincts being roused from the slumber civilized living had placed them in. Either way, it was insistent. The forest ahead of me was not the safe one that I’d been flying over a few moments ago, rather this one was the home of monsters, and it wasn’t keeping that fact concealed.
Levitating in place I looked down at the woodland beneath me, trying to see if there was anything that I could see that stood out. With the change in atmosphere, I felt that I should be looking down on trees that were darker than they were meant to be, maybe growing out of a bubbling swamp, maybe with a few ravens in the trees cawing for added ambience. But there was nothing like that, instead, the forest beneath me seemed to be every bit as normal as every other part of it that I could see.
I really didn’t want to have to go any deeper into it, but I couldn’t see much of a choice.
Slowly, I descended into the forest.
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He rose from sleep like some vast leviathan rising from the ocean’s depths, he broke from his slumber in an almost violent eruption!
His eyes opened, greeted once more by the darkness he had come to know. Once he would have panicked at this, waking within the half-collapsed ancient chamber so devoid of light that he could not even tell if his eyes were open or not. Once it would have terrified him, but now, despite having only just woken up, he lacked the energy to be afraid. After all, what did he have to be afraid of? Here, in this darkness, there was nothing more terrifying than he was.
Even as his sluggish thoughts began to clear he could feel it once more, the hunger that had been his only companion for months. For a moment he was confused, wondering why it had awakened him. That was why he was here, after all, so that he could sleep without being tormented by his incessant appetite. He knew that this place had once been a storehouse for magic items, and in the centuries those tools had been here their magic had seeped into the very rocks of this place, leaving an aura that permeated the surrounding area even after the artefacts themselves were long gone. It had been that magic that had let him rest here, as his body absorbed that ambient energy and allowed him to slumber without needing to awaken for regular sustenance. He might still hunger, but at least he could find some relief in the oblivion of dreamless sleep. The only time he’d awakened before had been . . .
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That thought managed to burn through the fog in his mind and return him to full wakefulness, despair bubbling up as the implications crystalized.
The last time he’d been awakened like this had been because of the elf girl that had disturbed him. The smell of her, both her flesh and her magic, had been too much for him, and his hunger had slipped beyond his control.
Now . . . now there was something else coming, something that he could feel, smell, taste, even though they were still far away. They were strong, of that he was certain. Strong, powerful, and loaded with magic. About the dilapidated chamber the sound of his inhuman limbs, slithering, as his hunger grew, could be heard with ease even if they could not be seen, responding to the detection of such a bounty.
He felt a sob begin to build in his throat, but for some reason, it just stuck there. It was the same with tears, his eyes stung, but not a drop of water fell from them. Almost hysterically his sob morphed into a bitter chuckle. No tears for him, why was he surprised? After all, tears belonged to people, and he was no longer a person, he was just a monster.
Slowly, he began to feel his body come to full wakefulness, first his limbs, then his central form. Actually, could they really be called his? After all, they were commanded more by his hunger than they were by his mind. He might have some self-control after the hunger was satiated, but until then he was more of an unwilling passenger to his own flesh than he was anything else. Damn it! this wasn’t fair! It wasn’t fair! It wasn’t fair!
Trapped in his malaise of frustration, depression, and bitterness he was only peripherally aware of his body beginning to move out of the chamber he’d hidden himself away in. The ruins he slept in might be half-collapsed, but the portions that remained were surprisingly solid. More than that, the corridors that connected the large underground chambers were far larger than the passageways of a human construction would have been. When he’d first stumbled upon this place he’d been driven by the scent of magic and the hunger that tore at him. He hadn’t taken much note of it at the time, but after his reason returned it had become a perfect place to hide between feedings.
He came about a turning and was brought out of his dark thoughts as he spied a distant light. It was faint, more the reflection of a reflection of light. But to eyes like his, eyes starved of illumination for weeks, it might as well have been a beacon. As he drew closer, the faint light began to reveal details of his form that the darkness had been concealing. His form was larger now, the main body thicker, his multiple limbs longer and stronger. What remained of his human form now rested only a foot or two beneath the ceiling, and given that these corridors seemed to have been built to drive something the size of cargo trucks through . . .
Had he really grown so much during his sleep? Had he eaten so much the last time he lost control? In truth he wasn’t too sure, aside from that elf girl, all the rest of his last time awake was mostly a blur. His heart leapt to his throat as a thought struck him, had he eaten any people? Sure, the elf girl had been bad enough, but she’d been trying to kill him, so he wasn’t feeling too guilty about that. But if he’d eaten someone human, like a hiker or a hunter . . .
He finally emerged into the sunlight, and for a moment he instinctively tried to raise his hand to shield his face from the bright light of day, only for it to come to a jerking halt as he remembered that his arms were trapped. Actually, for all he knew the portions of his limbs beneath the flesh of his larger self might simply be gone, melted away into the greater mass. It wasn’t as though he could feel them anymore, so it was entirely possible.
Within him he could feel the hunger growing, maturing. Before it had been a sleepy, almost indistinct feeling, for all of its demanding potency. Now though . . . now it was growing sharper, more focused as it seemed to sense the distant power. Not for the first time he wondered if he was just going insane, splitting his mind in a vain attempt to distance himself from the horror of his situation. After all, how could ‘hunger’ be intelligent or aware? But that was how it felt, as though some part of him had taken control, some part that had neither remorse nor conscience, just pure animal instincts to hunt and consume.
Whatever had woken him, it was still distant, but he could feel it. He remembered something from back . . . before, before the Black Sun, before he’d become . . . this. Something about how sharks could sense blood. Something about smelling just one drop of blood when it was just one part in a million or something like that. Could it be that he had something similar, only his body could somehow instinctively sense magic? That had been how he’d managed to find the underground ruins, and the hidden vault of magic artefacts that he’d promptly consumed, all before he even realized that it had been magic that had been drawing him.
Regardless, the part of him that was tied to his hunger seemed to realize that even though the distant power was approaching, it would be some time before it arrived. Not too long, but long enough that it saw no point in just waiting for it. For a moment he felt his limbs tense, as though the hunger intended to rush to meet this coming prey, but then they relaxed as the primal part of him decided it was better to wait than to expend more energy than needed. As it did so he could feel his control over himself returning, a temporary control, one that he knew would end as soon as his instincts scented the prey having drawn close enough.
Back when he’d first begun to change, he’d taken these brief moments of freedom to try and restrain himself, but it had never worked. Chains snapped, concrete walls broke, and pits were easily climbed out of. In desperation, he’d even tried to kill himself, but even that had failed. Eventually, he’d simply given up, realizing that the best he could do was to try to isolate himself, and hope that would be enough.
Without really thinking about it he’d moved into the forest, towards some trees that he was familiar with. They were old trees, thick ones that had the sort of roots that went down into the earth and left the trees they came from as immovable as half-buried boulders. What he liked about them was that the lower branches were only a few feet off the ground, and had broken off into jagged stumps by some earlier occurrence. As a child, he might have enjoyed using them to climb the tree, but in his current state, they were more useful for something more practical.
Like a cat pushing into the side of some furniture he pressed his bulk up against the tree, then slowly drew his side along it. He felt the pointed branch dig into his flesh, then heard the dull tearing as his skin caught and came off. Rather than pain, he felt a pleasant sort of relief, almost as though he had finally been able to scratch an itch that he hadn’t been able to reach. He repeated the action, moving to other trees, tearing away long swathes of skin on each attempt. On any other animal any mortal animal, such self-mutilation would have meant only death, either immediately by blood loss, or a later and more lingering one from infection and disease, but not for him.
The first time he’d done this he’d been much smaller, barely larger than a pony. Back then he’d thought he was going to die, that the same force that had been twisting his body had somehow caused it to mutilate itself, that he was coming undone, but as he survived and grew he came to understand what was happening.
What he was doing was something akin to a snake shedding its skin as it grew. Granted, his skin came away in thick and wet strips and flaps of meat, but the hide that was exposed was always whole, and quickly grew strong. The old skin would always become tighter as he grew, then split and be shed with ease, so he should not be surprised that he had to do it once more after he had noticeably gained in size. It wasn’t even something that he had to devote that much attention to. As with so much in his life now it seemed that his instincts were perfectly capable of dealing with this without his conscious intervention. Soon all the old skin had been shed, decorating the trees like some grizzly parody of Christmas decorations.
Some part of him noted, now that he could see himself in the daylight, how the hide revealed by his actions seemed different. It seemed blacker, shinier, almost . . . glossy? That was different from what he remembered, but in truth, he didn’t really care. All of it, the fear, the hunger, the despair at the lack of control, all of it was just growing to be too much! He didn’t deserve this; he didn’t deserve to be an unwilling passenger to his own flesh! So, why . . . why was he like this?
As the familiar depression settled upon him, his body lowered itself to the ground, sinuous limbs curling into place to comfortably support it as the new skin grew out and hardened. About him, the strips and patches of skin and flesh that had been torn from his body steamed lightly in the sun, their scent carrying on the wind. Already other creatures could catch the scent and were being drawn to it regardless of the instincts within them that screamed for them to run. While he was still there they would not draw close, even the lure of the scent could not overcome the instinctual fear of a predator as large and deadly as he was, but when he was gone they would close in and feast.
That was of no concern to him though, indeed, it wasn’t something he was even aware of. Instead, he just fell deeper and deeper into his thoughts, finding an escape from reality within the tides of his emotions. However, even if his mind was distracted his body naturally knew how to rest and prepare.
The prey was still distant, but in time it would come closer, and when it did . . . the hunger would be satiated.