I was back in Leyo, searching for some more information about goblins and encounters with them. There were also boards where people could post seeking help, I always checked them as families of those afflicted by the goblin sickness would try to reach out to others in hopes of getting help. What I noticed was that someone during night time came around and took those posters down.

By that time, of course, I figured those must be the authorities, wanting to keep anything from getting out there and causing an uproar. Further confirmed by the fact that when I went to families of victims from the illness, they told me no one came to help, even though the posters were taken down.

The day I returned to Leyo, I saw one such poster. It was night by the time I arrived, so it was just in the nick of time. I took the poster down myself, as I already knew what fate was to come of it. I first had to account for the possibility that someone posted it to lure me out and catch me.

Given my vast experience, even at that young age, I could tell quite easily when these were just bait. I wasn’t someone of high interest, so the writing of the authorities releasing such things wasn’t different from their normal one, thus I was able to discern their more educated writing.

The person who wrote it, as you later will know him as Robin, had all the nuances of a young, not so educated but still knowledgeable man. While the writing was rough, the details he offered about the illness afflicting his mother were quite on point, and I was getting a sense of who he was. Thus, I decided that I won’t linger around and head straight for his home once prepared.

The journey would take me quite a few days, as he was in the most northern regions. Besides the gear I would require, it was also an issue of making sense of where he was living. His house wasn’t built in a town or village, but in the depths of a forest. The forest was also near the place where the oldest death occurred.

Once the next morning came around, I strapped on my bag. I was afraid that I could get captured or killed during my journey, so I took the precaution of sending my personal one back into Molavia to my dear wife. It contained all the information discussed so far, as well as all my fears and such I had of the ones in power.

Making peace with the fact that I may die, I went onwards, to where I would eventually meet Robin.

Then I arrived there, some days later. And the last chance I had to turn my back and return home was in a small, shabby town at the edge of the forest I was about to enter. It wasn’t as if I knew what would follow, but what I had done prior, made it feel that way. Maybe it was fate or tied to magic itself, I just could tell at the time the road forward led to the truth.

The One Who Held The Truth

This part of the story only concerns Robin’s side of things. So, as such, I will tell it directly as I wrote it from his mouth. The parts until our meeting were added after, as I started to write only after some time we met.

Robin’s Mom

The night my mom fell unconscious was like a gut punch to me. It was the same day my wife told me she was pregnant, so you can imagine how happy I was beforehand. It was a great feeling, one I can only describe as pure jubilation. My father, who with my mother was living in the same house, congratulated me, then quickly set his gaze upon the forest. He knew my mother best, and seeing as she didn’t return from her morning mushroom gathering, being afternoon when the news came about, set him to go out and find her. I tried to persuade him, tell him that I would go, but he insisted he was the only one who could find her, and he took pride in it too.

My mom wasn’t like any other woman. She braved the wilds like no other and went into places most would avoid, let alone dare to set foot into. Even my father, a hunter like me, would get lost trying to trace my mother. But it was for that reason they fell in love with each other. He would get lost trying to find her, and when he did, he then found her stuck in a place only he could get her out of. So I was sure he would find her like usual and bring her home, where I could have a big surprise for her on an otherwise normal day.

However, night started to come about, and my father was still out there. I was worried of course. Some bear standing between them and our house was something I thought of. My father, although he could not kill bears like he once did, he could still handle them, that I was sure of. But anything could happen, and my wife knew I wanted to go, so she gave me reassurance I can leave her alone with a kiss on the cheek, and a whisper of goodbye in my ear. It was a position I hated to be in, but I had no choice. So I strapped my bow, sheathed my sword and disguised myself with my bear cape, and into the forest I went.

Dusk for me meant a good time to return from a hunt,but not then, then it was to find my parents. It took me a while to trace back my father. Not only due to the setting night and his habits of hiding his tracks, but everything going in my mind too. I kept pushing forward, getting deeper and deeper into the forest. There were parts of it which I had to avoid as well, even though that’s where I lived all my life. It’s like they say “Don’t poke the sleeping bear”, in my case that would’ve been going to the Old Tree or the Pool, there was the Uneven Hill as well, that I avoided at all cost. But unfortunately not that time, as the tracks led to there.

My mother knew of it as well, so it didn’t make sense why she would go in there, and from the footprints that were picking up speed, I could tell my father was thinking the same. If she went that way, one of the beasts could have gotten her.

And a beast yes, not an animal no, something more. Something darker and fiercer, thirsting for blood and hungering for flesh without reason or instinct, just something imprinted on them. That’s what most people referred to as ‘magical beasts’, and although I haven’t seen one in my entire life, my father’s word was enough reason to keep me at bay.

For most common folk that notion would sound childish or stupid, but not to us forest folk, who knew what the step of a bear sounded like and how the smell of fearing prey is, and how everything worked in a forest. My father was sure such things were there because the usual didn’t apply to them. You couldn’t smell them, nor hear them in the dark, and whenever you would think you traced one, it was to only lure you deeper into their own feeding grounds. Thus his fear, and through him, mine.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

My step then got faster as well, but I had to keep my breathing steady, hide my tracks as I went. Every precaution I learned and painstakingly got punished for not abiding by, I took them. If my father got lured into a trap by such a beast, then it worked, as his footprints were visible, so I couldn't let myself be lured in as well. You can imagine how hard that was for me, but I couldn’t call myself a hunter without that calm of mind, no one could. The one excuse I could give my father was that: I would do the same had my wife been there instead. Probably worse than him to be honest, but still, no way for a hunter to behave, and that’s how we trained each other.

The words I was thinking to reprimand my father with, believing him to be fine, faded once I stopped before a glade. My father held mom with gentle, trembling hands, both of them on the ground, one fearful, one silent and asleep. I quickly joined his side, holding mom to see what was wrong, not even thinking of asking questions. “Speak Robin” my father said, knowing we couldn’t keep the silence, barely hiding his own fears.

I asked right away what was wrong, why was she unconscious. He then responded in his usual sarcastic, but painful at that time, voice “The forest sickness she got, remember? Word is out that some get worse.”. I knew of it of course, just didn’t know it could do such a thing, and the same I said to him. “It doesn’t no, this is something else,” as he said that, he peeled mom’s eyelids back, “look at her eyes. They’re green.”. I wanted to know what would happen next, my father looking as if he knew or at least heard of it.

So I didn’t need to know much more. There was something wrong with her, gravely so for my father to act that way, and I wasn’t acquainted with the illness. So I picked her up, my father almost jumping at me for it, forgetting for a moment I was his son and there to help him. Should’ve warned him in retrospect, but still, we hurried back home, wrapping her gentle body in my bear cape.

Something like that never happened to us. If there was an illness, I knew of it, and if I didn’t, my father did. For both of us to not know what was going on with my mother, made our minds lock away from the outside to allow us to focus on getting her to safety. My father’s senses only came back to him due to me obviously being a bit too emotional about it.

The one thing that stuck to me from that night was how beautiful my mother’s golden hair looked when enveloped by the dark fur. It was as if I was holding a great treasure, that at the same time was sinking in a deep darkness. It made me forget for a while about my father, who was struggling to keep the pace with me, telling me to stop worrying all the way home, but never to stop running.

By the time I was back home, the night of the forest completely surrounded us together with its usual chill. I found my wife safe and sound, and she immediately started to prepare a place by the fire for my mother when she saw us, no words were needed.

After taking it all in for a few moments, my wife asked me about what happened, and I told her. Then I switched my attention to my father, who held her hand tight by the fire. And for the first time in my life, I saw him crying. Eventually he told me, what I didn’t think I would hear, “She’s dying Robin. This is not the same forest illness,” he said in a grave, deep tone. “I only saw such a thing when I was still a young’un, challenging the forest and running around like a wild animal. I never told you, why would I? No one even believed me at the time.”.

My father proceeded to tell me how he found this other hunter in the forest, his eyes crazed by something. The word goblin apparently came out of his mouth, which for the time of my father, it was a scary story to put kids asleep with. So when he tried convincing others of what he saw, it obviously didn’t seem much more than a hunter’s story to gain reputation. “But now it spreads around for some reason. A few people in the past years near us, then I heard word of it down the river too,” he was speaking of the village we were near, “whatever is causing this, it now got your mother.”. I didn’t persuade him further, he obviously thought mom would die, and I didn’t believe he was just giving up on her, it was just a matter of fact to him.

To me, however, not so much. No one seemed to really understand what his illness was all about, and since that was the case, my job seemed quite simple at first: find the cause of it. If I could, the next step would just be finding a cure in a timely manner.

Only my wife could sleep that night, I basically forced her to so at least someone could have a clear mind in the morning. Meanwhile me and my father talked of our next steps, while also trying to give him some hope we may be able to still help mom. So we decided that we should spread the word around, send posters and letters to people from around Fenoa. Then, if no response came in around a week, I would venture into the parts I was taught to avoid at all costs. My father wasn’t entranced by the idea, obviously, especially since I was still of second rank as a hunter, but we had no choice. He told me of what he knew, and in about a month or so, the illness would drive my mother crazy, shortly after dying.

Thus I believed two weeks is the most she can survive with whatever poison is in her body, then it would be irreversible. Although my father still had his reservations for me to try such a thing, it was only a matter of time until it happened, and he knew it best, as we both felt ready to do it then and there, let alone wait one hour longer.

Once morning came by, I gave my wife the words to put on the posters, and went with her in the village to mail them around the country. Then the wait began, which felt like forever with each passing day. We had a couple of, what I later got know as, officials from the inner state. They told me to keep quiet about the visit, and just tell them everything I knew, which I did. It was three days after they left and a whole week after releasing those posters that I had enough.

Both my wife and father could tell I no longer had the patience. My father, in a way I could tell, was glad I would go for it. It was that glimmer of hope that made him forget about my own safety, but I couldn’t blame him for it. Had we been in different positions, I’d want the same from him. So there were no words needed, as I was steeling my resolve to journey into the darker places of the forest.

The forest we lived inside was rather large. A range of mountains ran at the very north of it, some three kilometres from our house, so there would be a river running not too far from us, and long, spread portions of land covered solely by trees. The darker sides laid further north west and east from our house. But the part which my mom explored was actually down south east, the river separating the side on which the Uneven Hill was at, and the side we lived on.

“Be safe son,” my father told me, fixing my clothes as if I was still a kid, making sure everything was ready. “And don’t forget, if you hear something ahead, always look to the sides. They know how to lure us.”. His advice made my heart tremble a little. As a hunter you never kill two things: humans and beasts. One is obvious, the other you simply don’t meet face to face with. The thought of me meeting with such a creature sent cold shivers down my spine. It was then I was glad for my wife, who hugged my arm tightly and washed those worries away. She was stronger than she looked, and my father could only smile proudly from a distance with teary eyes. I knew what that must’ve reminded him of, so I didn’t want him to think too much about it, he needed to defend the house, and emotions had no place in that.

We both knew that one dangerous thing about animals, if left alive, is their spite they develop for you. Bears, for example, as intelligent as they are, can be just as spiteful when you leave bad memories for them. And it’s our saying that “A half dead stag will grow antlers to one day kill you.”. That’s why we always kill what we hunt, especially if it’s a predator. With beasts, we didn’t know what to expect. But if they were smarter than whatever other animal wandered the forest, then it wasn’t outside our expectations for it to come and try gaining vengeance some other way as well.

With that being said, I sheath my sword to the side, placed the cape on my shoulders., the bow on top of it, feeling the weight of the weapons and that which I killed with them. Then my leather backpack, strapped tightly to my back with only bread and some vegetables from around the east side of the forest. I also wore my hat, since this was a proper hunt, then the silver bracelet around my right arm, to remind me of my wife when in doubt.

Unconstrained by fears and doubt, I left my home. Heart in my grasp, mind opened to surroundings and soul burning with determination.