The inside of the old tent is warm, despite the cold, early-morning air that slips through the holes in the fabric. Lyraax is sprawled out in a heap across Reigna’s sleeping bag providing an extra layer of warmth, and much to her dismay, another layer of discomfort. The last couple days of travel had been quiet and clear, until last night when she’d spotted clouds on the horizon. This morning. Her tent is wobbling a bit more than it typically does under average weather conditions. Please don’t tell me it’s gonna rain today. She sits up and shuffles Lyraax onto the floor of the tent, he simply yawns and grumbles a small disagreement before curling up where she places him and resuming his rest.

She stands and clips the dagger sheath she had tucked into her sleeping bag back onto her belt and slings her rapier around her waist before kneeling to roll up the bag. As she’s about to exit the tent, a powerful gust of wind whips by, sending the entire tent up and over itself, Reigna and Lyraax included.

“Oh fu-” she starts as her feet are unceremoniously lifted from the ground. Lyraax bounces into the air, his eyes suddenly wide with panic. They are thrown what feels like 60 feet from where the tent had been before slamming into the side of a tree with a loud crack! The wind outside is still howling and blowing the tent hard against the tree causing the fabric to warp and twist around Reigna and Lyraax like a giant spider’s web. If the fabric is moving like this, the frame must be broken. She thinks, trying to fight back the panic.

“Lyraax, can you get us out of here?” She screams over the gale. “I can’t move very well like this.”

“I can certainly try.” He barks back before stabbing his tail through the side of the tent and running it upwards, bisecting the worn leather and allowing the wind to blow it off of them.

Once the cold, swirling wind hits Reigna’s back, she takes a thankful breath. “Thank the Gods, and thank you Lyraax.” She pants. “I would really prefer not to die by suffocation in a collapsed tent.”

“As would I, Dear Lady.” Lyraax huffs as he comes to drape himself like a scarf across her shoulders. “We’re going to need a new tent.” He says, scowling at the tattered remains of theirs, now wrapped like an evening gown around the pillar of the tree’s trunk. They retrace the tent’s trajectory back to their campsite from the previous night, collecting any of Reigna’s things that were expelled from it in the tumble. She insists on keeping what’s left of it and slides it into her bag.

“Perhaps in Ifrita we can find someone to repair it or at least pay us a bit to salvage the usable material.” She says as she rolls it up.

“It couldn’t hurt I suppose.” Lyraax responds as the first drops of rain start to dot the ground beneath them. “We’re still two days from town, what will we do for camp now?” He asks, as Reigna slings her bag back over her shoulders.

“ I suppose we travel as best we can through the storm and see if we can make it there by dawn.” She says, her voice trembling, whether from shock or cold he can’t tell. “Otherwise we’re sleeping in the mud tonight, and that just won’t do.” He nods a silent agreement to her statement as she descends the foothill they’d camped on and returns to the road.

The first hour or so by her measurement is aggressively windy with a light drizzle, nothing too difficult to handle. By midday, however, the light drizzle has become a full fledged storm. Curtains of rain cascade by, slapping against her like a hail of grapeshot. The old dirt road is slick and muddy, every few steps her feet sink almost to the ankle and she has to forcefully pull them up out of the muck while taking extra care to not lose a boot in the process. As her and Lyraax follow the road they come to a fork with a set of signs stating which places lie ahead. Ifrita is noted as being southeast from this signpost, she follows the divergent path until they reach a stone bridge over a small river. On any other day she’d more than likely be able to walk across the stones in the river to reach the other side. Weather like this must be the reason why this bridge is installed here.

There’s a shudder down her spine and she ducks behind one of the trees on the road, pressing herself close to the trunk in an attempt to make herself smaller.

“Lady, what’s wrong?” Lyraax asks, his voice an echo in her mind.

“There’s someone hiding by the bridge.” She thinks back to him. They both peer out from her hiding spot in the direction of the bridge. Leaning against one of the trees is a tall man wrapped in a traveling cloak, its color is unclear due to the rain. If not for the wet shine of the material, at a glance he blends in with the soaked tree bark. A few more minutes of observation reveal three more men creating an arc near the bridge, ready to collapse on any unsuspecting travelers that try to cross. The storms really bring out the best of them huh?

“Lyraax, do you think we can get past them without needing to fight?” She asks in the safety of her mind.

“I may have a way.” He says. He slowly exhales, Reigna can hear a soft rattle in his breath and feels a wave of calm fall over her. The sound of the rain dampens slightly, the things before her have a haze over them as though she’s viewing them through frosted glass.

“What did you do?” She asks.

“I put a veil over us to make us invisible. Faeries do this all the time to avoid contact with mortals. Just don’t touch them and we should be fine.” He says, his eyes stern and forward.

Reigna takes her first unseeable steps out from behind the tree and stands in the middle of the road, the men don’t appear to notice her. She carefully approaches the bridge trying to keep all four men in sight. The taller of the men steps from beside the tree and leans on the stone of the bridge, his eyes staring in Reigna’s direction and, by extension, right through her. He’s unfocused, his eyes shifting left then right and back again. As she passes by him she catches a whiff of something on him. The scent is sweat, mold, and cheap alcohol. She manages to catch a glimpse of one of the other men, the same unfocused shifting glance.

These men are desperate and unstable, a powder keg ready to blow. She has no intention of being the match to light that particular fuse today. As she passes between them she hears a ragged, tinny voice yell, “Hey boss.” from beside one of the trees. The sound makes her stop in her tracks.

“What is it Logan?” The tall man responds, his voice a low and frustrated rumble.

“We been here all day, and nothing to show for it. Maybe we head back to camp and-” His voice is overtaken by the big man’s throaty growl.

“No, we ain’t leaving until we have something to go back with.” Reigna slips between them and starts her way across the bridge. Their voices slowly are fading behind her. Glad to be out of there. She thinks. Following the now partially flooded road through a swampy area. According to the history books and old stories, these swamp areas aren’t naturally occurring, many of them are the result of magical pollution left over from The Elven Founder’s Conflict almost three millennia ago.

The Kingdom Of Kyrrodhil used to run from this coast back towards its capital in what is now called the Kyrrodian Wastes. The desperate experimentation the people of Kyrrodhil engaged in during the war was expansive and questionable to say the least. They say Kyrrodhil’s arcanists had developed a powerful weapon, one they claimed would end the war. Ultimately they were right, it ended the war with a treaty called The Kyrrodhil Moratorium where the kingdoms had agreed to end the war and to avoid the use of magic for the sake of warcraft in honor of the many lives lost in the incident.

Kyrrodhil’s perfect weapon had malfunctioned and leveled the entire kingdom in an instant, hundreds upon thousands of lives gone in a flash. The pastures and farmland reduced to a stinking swamp in the shape of Kyrrodhil’s borders. The magic seeped into the land, raising elementals, reanimating the dead and causing a slew of other problems that resulted in the need for a containment effort.

Those bandits must have been living out here, and without the proper precautions, they’d driven themselves to the brink of madness, they probably don’t have many more days left to live. Ifrita was beyond this stretch of swamp, closer to the coastline making it significantly safer both from the magic poisoning and from the threat of bandits and other criminals. That being said, it doesn’t feel any safer. The falling rain and roll of thunder disguises other sounds, making her have to look over her shoulder every so often in order to ensure she isn’t being followed by anyone or anything.

The veil eventually recedes from her eyes and the sounds around her return to normal. She turns her head to see Lyraax’s head on her right shoulder, his eyes glazed over and unfocused.

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“Are you okay Lyraax?” she asks aloud, her voice mildly hoarse from the stress.

“I’ll be fine, Lady.” he says. “Had to keep you safe.”

“Thank you for protecting me from the Bandits, Lyraax.” she says scratching him under the chin.

“You misunderstand, the bandits were no trouble and wouldn’t have been had you been caught. I was protecting you from that.” He says, turning his head and narrowing his eyes.

Reigna follows his gaze, some 30 feet behind her, is a clump of trees, one of which is significantly taller than the others, large branches sprawling across the sky like grasping fingers, they sway wildly in the stormwinds. A loud creak, like wood twisting against itself, breaks through the howling wind for a moment. She focuses, before she can ask any questions the bottom of her stomach falls out.

“We should go, Lady. Now!” Lyraax hisses.

The tree’s branches sway again as Reigna turns to run. The wind isn’t blowing the branches. She realizes. The fucking tree is moving. As she runs she casts another glance back, the tree is further behind her now, the canopy of its branches eclipses one of the smaller trees it passes over. A single, thick, snake-like vine drops from it, dangling in the open air for a minute before descending the rest of the way to the ground. She swallows hard, the end of the vine is shaped like a noose.

“A fucking Hangman Tree?” She yelps, running faster through the swamp, trying to be mindful of overgrown tree roots and deceptively deep puddles. “I thought they were a myth.”

“All myths have some truth.” Lyraax says, gripping her shoulder tightly. “What do you think happens when you hang hundreds of people from an old tree and their angry spirits start mingling with a resident Dryad?” He asks, rhetorically. “It drives her mad and inspires her to seek more blood to pay back the endless revenants cohabitating her space.”

“That thing used to be a dryad?” She yells, her chest and legs are burning. She can see the noose-vines slithering over the ground with purpose.

“Technically, it still is. Just not one in her right mind.” He says, a pang of sympathy in his voice.

“Lyrax, I understand that she is technically one of your kind, but can we please try to refrain from sympathy for the thing trying to kill us?” Reigna shouts, her feet pounding hard against the squelching mud and twisting roots along the old road. For the second time today she can feel the muscles in her legs screaming in protest. Lyraax is exhausted and I can’t say that I’m much better off. We need to shake this damn thing. Reigna’s mind races as she tries to think of a solution.

I supposed that’s as good an option as anything. She shrugs to herself and hopes it works. She throws her hands in front of her face and mimes the motion pulling something over her eyes, at that moment a noiseless facsimile of herself appears, running beside her. The noose-vine lashes out directly towards her, narrowly missing the back of her head as she ducks to one side.

“Fuck, of course that wouldn’t work.” She grunts as she bounds over the trunk of a felled tree.

“I suppose it wouldn’t.” Says Lyraax, clinging to her shoulder for dear life. “The Hangman’s tree doesn’t use sight to track prey, it senses vibrations.”

“You could’ve said that earlier, dammit!” She yells. Again she makes the gesture from before, the doppelganger she conjured fades away and is replaced by the echoing sound of multiple footsteps around her. Again the vine lashes out, grasping hungrily for her back.

Whack! The vine connects hard right between her shoulder blades sending a shock cascading through her body. For a moment her vision becomes dull and blurry and she stumbles, but manages to catch herself in time.

“Lady, are you alright?” Asks Lyraax, cradling the side of her head with one small claw.

“I will be if we survive this.” Reigna slurs. Every breath sends a sharp pain down her left side and her running pace has degraded significantly. “Is there anything you can do to help us out here?” She asks, desperately. Her eyes catch a glimpse of light cutting through the rain and canopy of dead branches.

“Sadly, no.” He says, sounding defeated. “Much of my magic is illusory and depends on the targets having an intact mind to manipulate. This creature is more akin to an undead than anything else.”

“Can you make it to town?” She asks, pointing ahead to where she can see the lights.

“I can try.” He nods, leaping from her shoulder like a blue bullet, spreading his wings so quickly they slice the curtain of falling rain as though it were stalks of wheat. The interrupted drops hover for a moment before falling to the ground. “I will fetch help! Please be safe!.” He shouts back to her.

She tries again to distract the looming monstrosity. The core of its body is almost 60 feet away, but the grasping vines more than make up for the distance. She creates the distracting sounds and sends them rumbling across the ground around her in all directions. What I’d kill to have a spell like this with more range. The vines lift and lash out, striking dead air around her with a sickening crack! She stifles a yelp of surprise and pushes further ahead, attempting to stay out of reach.

She jumps over a tree root and lands into what she thought would be a patch of mud, instead, she is met by the slick surface of soaking wet cobblestone. Her feet slip out from under her and she is sent sliding across the ground. Several feet of carefully placed stones scrape and bump against her as she tumbles. This is the worst way to be reminded that people live out here. She tries to pull herself up as quickly as she can, completely disoriented and confused, her whole body wracked with pain that ranges from aches and stings to the warm, subtle pulse that implies internal bleeding.

Another vine cracks out in her direction as she starts to pick up her pace again, before she has time to create another small distraction. A dull thud reverberates down her shoulders, her ears ring like brass alarm bells, drowning out all other sounds around her as her vision blackens completely. Oh, I think I might be dying. She chuckles to herself inside her head. With what feelings she has left, she can detect the slimy sensation of the greedy noose securing itself around her neck like a wet, snug scarf. A violent jerking motion, followed by a quick, loud pop! All sensation leaves her body.

The ground beneath her is cold and rough but dry. The dull humm of wind spirals around her as she sits up.

“Where am I?” She asks, her voice echoing in the stone void around her.

“Reigna, The Larkspur.” Says a voice, seemingly from nowhere and everywhere all at once. She scans for its source, eventually landing on a figure in a simple black robe walking slowly towards her. “Daughter of Amaryllis Faberos and Talion The Fox, it would seem you’ve met with a terrible end.” He says, there’s no malice in his voice. She can, however, detect a pang of sadness.

“Who are you?” She asks as he reaches a hand down to help her stand. The man draws back his hood revealing layers of thick hair, as dark as raven feathers, flecked here and there with a green iridescence. His face is pale and slightly rounded, he would look young if not for the dark circles around his eyes. The eyes themselves are the color of light rebounding off of freshly fallen snow, bright white with the slightest glimmer of blue. His body, all except his face, is all sharp angles and weathered skin as though he’s spent an eternity working in a field.

She reaches for his outstretched hand, his touch is warm, inviting, and familiar. He heaves her to her feet and helps dust her off.

“I go by many names, most commonly I am called by my function.” He says, almost mechanically. “I am Death.”

“Oh, so I am dead.” She says, mostly to herself. A mix of emotions swirling in her head. On one side is an endless pool of regret, on the other a deep sigh of relief. “Well I guess I don’t have to worry about the cost of meals anymore.” She laughs, half-heartedly.

“My dear child,” Death says, a look of genuine concern on what she assumes to be his ageless face. “What hurts you such that you would even contemplate relief at the end of your life?”

“I don’t know.” She says, rubbing her hand over her shoulder. “I guess it feels a bit like a weight off my back?”

Death simply stares at her for a moment before holding his hand out to her. “Why not walk with me a while and talk about it?” He says gently. “We have some time.”

Reigna takes his hand and they stroll out of the cave and into an endless darkness. “Isn’t this the part where my life is supposed to flash before my eyes?” She asks, Death’s hand still cupping hers gently, as a father would if he were walking around town with his daughter.

“Typically yes, but let’s not worry about details right now.” He laughs. “Would you really be okay with dying here, like this?” He asks.

“Of course not, there’s still so much I want to do!” She says, her voice cracking. “But nothing has gone the way I needed it to so far. I feel like I’m getting older and what should be the best years of my life are slipping away so much faster than my goals are being accomplished.” She stops again, contemplating. “I have all these ideas and all these things I want to do, but it feels like no matter how hard I try, or what compromises I make to make my performances and art more palatable to a broader audience, it just doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it can feel like that sometimes.” Death nods his agreement. “But as they say, no kingdom is built in a day. It is tiresome work, you’re always building and revising and remaking. For some, the building never stops.” He says, gazing with a smile into the endless horizon. “Do you love what you do, little Larkspur?” He asks finally.

“Of course I do.” She says, quickly. “I dedicated my life to performance and writing and music, it’s all I’ve ever been good at, it’s the only thing that brought comfort to the worst days of my life.” Her voice trails off.

“Then the road ahead is going to be difficult for you. But I’m sure you’ll enjoy the ride.” He stops and smiles softly at her.

“What do you mean the road ahead?” She asks, searching his face for an answer. “I’m dead aren’t I?”

“For now. Worry not, this is not the end of your story.” He says placing a hand atop her head and pulling her in for a warm, comforting hug. “I’m sure we’ll see each other again, Reigna. But you’re not mine to keep this time.” He kisses her forehead and softly places a hand against her cheek. “Be more careful next time, I’d rather not see you back again so soon. Make haste.”