I: The Stag

Sinne had only known peace for as long as she could remember.

The peculiar thing was that even if she knew this and that she had the knowledge a lifetime, she wasn’t sure how long she’d actually been alive. She’d wondered about it several times but each time something had called her away from the thoughts. It wasn’t like it matters, she knew that there was some sense of remembering. Otherwise she wouldn’t know all that she did. The time was vague though. Like the ideas and memories of the things she did know were held away from her so that her fingertips could just barely brush the tips of the thoughts.

No matter how she knew what she did, Sinne understood that the place she lived was peaceful. The meadow was always warm and the wood beyond it was always full of green life. Flowers bloomed in the sunlight, animals chattered in the trees, and Sinne was able to live well. It provided everything she needed, after all. Fruit from the trees and animals that she hunted fed her. The sun kept her warm. Her hut provided her shelter. The weather was kind, though sometimes a soft rain would sprinkle across the woods to water the plants. It was always warm and pleasant though.

That was until the day that everything went wrong.

It was early morning, or so she assumed because the sun had just risen over the treetops. She remembered that the sun was daylight and the thousands of stars in the dark sky was nightfall. Something that she couldn’t quite place learning but knew that it was correct all the same as she collected her bow and quiver from the small leafy hunt she lived in and prepared to set out.

“North,” she muttered. “Today, I will go north.”

Sinne was fairly sure she knew what north was as she secured her weapons onto her back. The sun always rose in the east and moved West across the sky, which meant that North was between those. She wasn’t quite sure why it had to be north, but Sinne felt surely unsure about it. As she did with most things. It was just a matter of following the instinct she had, it wasn’t as if there was danger in her woods.

She paused as she placed a hand on the flap of her hut. Danger. That was a word she had never thought of before. However, the idea of it caused a shiver to roll down her spine. A feeling that was strangely foreign to her. She didn’t like it. Her eyes flickered back to the other weapons that had been in her hut. A large, two handed greatswords, axes, knives and some other things. She knew the names of all of them as her eyes roamed over them. Again, she wasn't sure how.

There’d never been a cause to use any of them in the past. She’d never even felt an itch to touch them until that moment as she stood in the doorway of her home. Something in her moved her to select a weapon from its stands. She blamed the twisting of her gut and the slight, unusual chill in the air.

“A sword,” she muttered. “The Greatsword?”

She’d have to strap it on her back because of it’s length but something about the large weapon brought security. Like the weight of the heavy weapon would act as an anchor in a storm. Again, she paused. Storm, she didn’t remember ever being in a storm yet she understood what it was as it came to her mind. As easily as everything else.

“Lots of new things,” she muttered as she removed her quiver and strapped the greatsword with a belt over her shoulder and then secured the bottom end around her waist. When she was sure the sheath would not move around uncomfortably, she placed her quiver back on and slung her bow over her shoulder. The weight on her back was unusual, but a safe feeling as she nodded and headed again toward the door.

The moment she stepped out of the hut was the moment that Sinne realized things were indeed strange in her small wood. Her home had always been green, like an infinite spring was always causing the flowers to grow. The meadow now was yellowish like a wheat fields ready for harvest. The tall grasses swayed in a cool breeze, something else that was unusual, like a sea of pure rippling gold in the morning sunlight.

Beyond the grasses the trees had also changed. While they’d always stood tall with their long white trunks and stark green leaves, they were no longer like that. The leaves had turned into violent shades of oranges and yellows, like the sun had stained them all with its colors while Sinne had slept.

“Fall,” she muttered.

Sinne found herself breathlessly staring at the scene for some time before a particularly cold piece of wind swept through the meadow. It rolled over her, causing a shiver to vibrate her body. She at once wanted to go into the house and close the door, escape from the cold, however she needed to go north.

“But why?”

Sinne couldn’t say herself. She just knew today she needed to hunt in the north. So that’s what she would do. Strapped with her weapons and braving the cold, she set out. The grass was up to her waist today as she started through it, her fingers trailing along the tips of it. She wasn’t sure how she knew that north was in the direction it was. Sinne had never had issues with directions, her instinct had always brought her where she needed to be.

It was about an hour into her hike through the wood that she spotted the first tracks. Hooves. She crouched by them, touching the mud. It was still wet, which meant that the marks were likely very fresh. It’d definitely passed through within the last few hours, sinceit’d rained just before dawn and the mark was made after.

Sinne looked up, her eyes scanning the horizon through the brush. The trees this far in were not the tall, thin ashen trees that looked like fire had set them ablaze. They were large, twisting trees covered in moss and reaching high up into the canopy. The ground was sloping up gently now with large rocks spotting the terrain. As she was taking in the strange scenery she realized that she’d never been north of the clearing. Every time she’d left it had always been south into the flat forests that were a favorite hunting ground of her’s. Perhaps she hadn’t noticed that there was a mountain nearby. Though she figured that she would have known if she lived at the base of one.

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Still, that was something that she’d worry about later. For now, she was going to hunt. This deer looked to be on the larger side from the way the hoof marks pressed deep into the mud. Like there was a great weight on it. There were no other marks besides these, so it must have been alone.

She straightened and pressed on in the direction the hooves went. The trail was easy to follow. The deer seemed to have been leaving her every signal possible on it’s route up. Though the hike became harsher, the ground sloping up sharply after some time, the deer took the easiest path. It wound through rocks, past meadows much like her own, and eventually up the side of the mountain.

It was here that Sinne considered turning back. She’d been warmed by the walk so the cooler weather created by fall didn’t bother her as much. However, the question of whether or not she’d even be able to bring the deer back home crossed her mind as she stopped at the foot of a steep, rocky incline. The trees were thinner here. Only a few small ones clinging to crumbly patches of earth jutted out through an otherwise pure rock slope. She eyed it before looking back the way she’d come.

“How long has it been?”

The sun looked barely half way through the sky, yet she felt as though it should have easily been nightfall by that time. This was the farthest she’d been from her home. Though she knew that it lay somewhere below her to the south, she couldn’t be sure where. It was like the tether that grounded her, tied her to the peace that she’d always known, was growing thin. It left her disoriented.

What is this feeling, she thought to herself. There was no real danger besides perhaps falling on a rock. Still she felt her teeth bite at her lip, the sharpness of it pressing in to cause a discomfort that drew her from her thoughts. She took a long, deep breath and turned back toward the slope.

This is when she spotted him high up the slope, staring at her from atop a large rock ledge at the treeline. Sinne gasped. She’d seen thousands of stars in the night sky. Dancing around the moon like twinkling fireflies. This creature was like one of those stars had fallen to the earth. The stag stood pure white against the dark colors of the trees. His head held high as great branched antlers grew from his head like a tall crown of light.

“Beautiful,” Sinne said.

Was this what she’d been following? She’d seen no other deer and the stag certainly looked like it could have left the tracks. It probably stood a head or two taller than herself, not counting the antlers. The beast seemed to stare down at her for a time as they both stood frozen, the slope between them. Then he turned, pausing only for a moment to look back down at Sinne once more as if daring her to follow, and disappeared into the forest behind it.

Sinne did not look back at her home again. Without an ounce of hesitation she was mounting the slope. Weaving through rocks as she picked her way up the mountainside. By the time she had reached the top she was breathing heavily. The deer had disappeared into the forest so it had a decent head start. If she didn’t hurry she’d lose it. Spotting a track at the edge of the forest where the deer had been, Sinne finally paused. Looking over the wall of trees before her.

This was no wood. It wasn’t anything like the places she’d been yet. This was a forest; a dark, thickly overgrown forest that was covered in a deep shadow. Like the leaves didn’t want any light to enter. Sinne swallowed back the lump in her throat. A moment of worry washed over her as she thought about what could lurked in the trees. Her feet didn’t seem to want to move even as she stood at it's edge, a single step from it. It was the thought of the deer within that drew her forward at last. Not because she wanted to turn it into her meal, but because she wanted to look at it once more. Somehow, someway, she needed to see that the deer was safe. So she pressed forward.

Stepping into the forest was like stepping into another world. The air once she crossed the threshold chilled her skin and caused yet another shiver to roll down her body. She didn’t like this cold, dark place. As she moved forward this thought only intensified. It was as if the forest around her moved in ways it shouldn’t. Long shadows twisted in the corners of her eyes like the vines themselves were coming to life. Brush rustled in different directions like animals lurked beneath but she didn’t have the courage to check for them. Even the ground itself seemed to grab at her like hands were sprouting from the earth to take hold of her feet, though every time she looked down she was simply tangled in vegetation.

“I don’t like this place,” she stated. Though it seemed muted as it was swallowed by the shadows around her. That was when she heard the first scuffling. Off somewhere to her right like a large beast was shuffling along the bark of a tree. At once Sinne had her bow up, an arrow notched and pointed in the direction of the large spider as it sprung from the trunk of a large tree at her.

Sinne let out a yelp as she let her arrow fly and shuffled back away from the beast. Her heel caught onto something and she was falling backward. A chorus of snapping twigs and crunching leaves enveloped her. Then she was up again, her bow ready as she looked desperately around for the spider. Her breathing came in short, harsh gasps until her eyes fixed on the lump on the ground that had her arrow protruding from it’s flesh.

The first step she took toward it was hesitant. Nothing had ever come at her like that. With the pure intention to harm her. She couldn’t be sure that’s what it had meant to do, but Sinne had felt her heart skip when it’d flown at her. That was what being in danger was like.

It should be dead, she thought as she crept a few more steps forward and jabbed the beast with her toe. When it didn’t move at her prompting, Sinne realized she was still holding her breath and let it out. The exhale was shaky, in fact her hands shook also. Her whole body seemed to do so.

She lowered her bow, looking about at the dark forest. She wanted to go home. Back to the meadow where she was safe and things did not jump at her the way things in this forest did. She bent to look at her arrow in the spider’s body. It had curled its many legs up around the arrow, like it’d spent it’s last moments trying to remove the tip from its flesh without luck.

“I’m going home,” she stated. “That’s enough for me today.”

Shoving the legs aside with her hands, she pulled the arrow out and placed it back in her quiver. Sinne then turned back toward the south. There was nothing that could keep her going in that forest. Not when her heart hammered in her chest the way it did. Not even the stag. No matter how much she wanted to see it again. Something had tried to kill her and there was a nagging feeling in the back of her mind that if she continued, there would be no going back to her meadow.

“Commander.”

The voice brought Sinne to a stop mid step. Causing every fiber in her body to flinch she snapped her eyes around the shadows. Something had spoken to her, she knew it. Though from where she couldn’t be sure and by whom she didn’t know. It sounded again, this time in a different tone. A female voice. At once her hands flew to her sword, pulling it from her sheath as she moved to hold it in front of her.

“Sapling,” again a different voice. A gentler, soft voice.

“Lightbringer."

Another voice. The words echoing around each other as the noises rose from the shadows. It was like visions of formless people were dancing around the edges of her sight. Every time one spoke she would snap her eyes in the direction she'd thought she'd seen someone. Only for it to be a dark, empty space in the forest or a twisted tree. The sounds rose, louder and more at once.

“Valiant.”

“Commander.”

“Lightbringer.”

“Stop, please. Stop.” Sinne felt her heart beat rising as she spun, looking for the shadows as they danced and called to her.

“Sapling.”

“Herald.”

“Please,” Her breathing was coming in gasps now.

“Traveler.”

“Sinne.”

“Wayfinder.”

“Boss.”

“Champion.”

“BE QUIET.”

Sinne’s voice cracked, peaking in volume. It seemed that it was enough. The voices had stopped and she wanted nothing more than to leave. Her heart raced and her body felt tense enough that she could run from there to her meadow. However she also felt rooted in place, like her feet had sunk into rock and would not allow her to leave. Her eyes burned terribly and she realized that water dripped from them. Crying, she realized she was crying.

Then a powerful voice sounded that shook Sinne to her core, “Dreamer.”