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Morrigan stood amidst the forest clearing, his hands stained with crimson—a stark contrast to the verdant world around him. The once serene chorus of the wilds now erupted into a rousing crescendo, celebrating his brutal act. Surrounded by the dense woods that glowed with an otherworldly green, he found himself swept back to the moment he first succumbed to their spellbinding allure. Enthralled, he watched as the mystical women of the wood wove around him in a dance of delight, their ethereal figures gleaming beneath the moonlight, their exuberant chants slicing through the night air like a blade.
The dancers parted, yielding passage to her—the very woman whose love had once enveloped him in an intoxicating rush of magic. Stepping closer with arms outstretched towards him, her gaze passionately anchored on his, she radiated an otherworldly light reminiscent of starlight. Every curve and contour of her form seemed to blaze with a divine luminosity, her lips glowing with an alluring promise of otherness and pleasure unparalleled. Yet, even as she drew near, Morrigan felt ice clasp his heart.
Sudden clarity shattered his enchantment, as the gravity of his actions—the life he had willfully extinguished—weighed heavily upon him. Memories of previous conflicts and calamities, which he believed time had healed, now ripped through his heart anew. These wounds from long-forgotten wars reopened, each one pouring fresh anguish into Morrigan's troubled psyche.
Panicked by the grotesque creature he saw mirrored in the water, he sprinted away from the jubilant phantoms, shaking off the clasp of a lady upon his hands now smeared with crimson, as his feet carried him swiftly toward the welcoming solitude of the lakeshore. The triumphant anthems were silenced, giving way to heartfelt pleas and gentle urgings for his return, their soothing whispers trailing him like autumn leaves swirling in his turbulent path.
Upon reaching the strand, with urgent motions he sent his vessel slicing into the serene waters, and with a leap of desperation, he sought sanctuary within its wooden embrace, his cries swallowed by the gentle kiss of waves against the side. Frozen by anguish but for a moment, he soon found strength to seize the paddles and venture a glance over his shoulder at the diminishing shoreline.
There remained the enchantress of the woods, her eyes a deep well of melancholic insight. Encircled by her ethereal kin—faces ghostly in their pallor—and by the verdant-clad warriors, they composed an ephemeral audience bearing silent testimony to his departure.
"Return to me," she murmured, her voice scarcely more than a breath on the wind that rippled the dark surface of the water. Her arms, delicate and pale as moonlight, reached toward him, pleading for his return to the sheltering boughs of the forest and its mystical inhabitants.
Yet in that fleeting moment, Morrigan grasped a bitter truth; he was an outsider to their surreal existence. The stark terror of his deeds stood in stark contrast to their transcendent world. Heart laden with sorrow, he turned his back on the beckoning shore with its spectral gazes and alluring calls. He paddled deeper into the lake's lonely expanse, yearning for comfort not in that enchanting forest but within the familiar confines of the mortal realm—a realm where trees were merely trees and men must endure the full burden of their actions in solitude.
In the eye of a psychic storm, Morrigan was battered by emotional gales, his turmoil momentarily quelled by a serene, empathetic presence from the mainland that whispered promises of absolution and kinship. The fleeting solace shattered as his gaze was caught by the stark red testimony of his terrifying act, igniting once more the inferno of panic within him, spurring an impetuous urge to vanish from the sight of his sin, to sever himself from the existence he had so brutally extinguished.
Hunched over in lonely suffering, a shadow etched against despair, Morrigan poured his essence into each stroke, driving the small boat with urgency over the glassy expanse of the lake. Venture he did to lift his eyes once more; a curtain of fog had unfurled, enveloping the boundary land in its ghostly embrace, muting the eerie echoes and apparitions that plagued him from the woods’ edge.
In gratitude subdued and silent, he welcomed this shroud afforded by the mist—a fortress shielding him from facing the reverberations of his earlier misdeeds. With energy seeping away and limbs quivering weakly, he found meagre respite beneath fixed wooden benches. As time slipped by in a hush, he summoned what remained of his will to purge himself of crimson guilt. Frigid lake waters served as his basin; there he scrubbed at stained hands, cleansed with vigor each oar blade and rubbed away telltale traces from his visage using his coat's inner fabric.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
His coat—a casualty too remorse-laden to salvage—found its final resting place as he anchored it with a weighty stone and surrendered it to the lake's abyssal cradle—a sunken relic to memorialize that day's grotesque events. Yet stubborn blemishes clung to his shirt—stark souvenirs he couldn't discard. Embracing these everlasting emblems etched by adversity, Morrigan nestled into the boat's hard embrace; although he had fled from shadow-laced woods' clutch, his odyssey into realms thick with solitude and introspection was but unfolding anew.
Morrigan's oars dipped and rose in a steady rhythm, each stroke powering the small boat through the silver ripples of the moonlit lake. His muscles burned, a welcome distraction from the chaos of his mind. With each pull against the water, thoughts swirled less like a whirlpool and more like a stream moving toward clarity. He had to consider his next move, craft his path out of this tangled web.
Should he step forward and admit to the fatal strike that robbed Valeran of a son? His defense seemed as flimsy as a leaf in the wind: an argument over timber, trees Morrigan had no claim upon. And what of the mysterious wood nymph, her phantom-like family, their twilight allies? Sharing such fantastical stories would only earn him looks of disbelief, cementing their doubts about his sanity—doubts that mirrored his own darkest fears.
Confession was off the table; it offered no sanctuary. Yet another haunting worry began to emerge—would he find himself ensnared by accusation? The fate of Valeran and his other kin eluded him; lost in that surreal confrontation, he presumed them dead. But now uncertainty gnawed at him like a relentless worm. Had they fallen victim to reality, or were they simply another layer of the spellbinding illusion?
The undeniable reality was the life he'd extinguished with his own hands—a steadfast anchor in these stormy seas of doubt. At first, he mistook the wrench in his gut for regret; now he understood its true nature: pure panic. It was an old acquaintance from days on blood-soaked battlefields—a visceral cry from his survival instinct. He had justified his deed as a sacred duty to protect nature's splendor—a splendor forsaken by all but him, its solitary sentinel.
Engulfed by an intense longing, Morrigan yearned to vanish into the depths of the forest, to be enfolded once more in the mystical embrace of the wood woman. However, as the impenetrable fog began to disperse, he realized he was unwittingly approaching the familiar solidity of the inn’s landing. With clarity dawning upon him and no prying eyes to witness, he recognized that time was of the essence—he needed to obliterate any remaining sign of his actions posthaste.
Under the cloak of solitude, Morrigan got to work with fervent haste, determined to expunge even the faintest of clues that could betray his recent indiscretions. Once sanitized from all incriminating connections to what had transpired, he would stand at a crucial crossroad—meticulously plotting his subsequent maneuvers in a reality that had irrevocably split from the once unwavering course of his existence. The future was a maze fraught with shadowy turns and Morrigan knew he must tread with both cunning and caution.
After deftly securing the skiff and gliding like a shadow to his quarters, Morrigan found himself besieged by an unstoppable torrent of exhaustion. The day's trials, laced with emotional upheaval, ushered him into the arms of a profound sleep—one that grasped him firmly and refused to let go.
Roused reluctantly by the innkeeper's call for the evening meal, Morrigan's consciousness returned in a fog of weariness. The clarity of awakening sharpened his senses, revealing the grim signature of earlier savagery—the rusty stains on his garment. This visual jolt returned his memory in full force, nudging him toward the window to witness the evening's embrace.
Twilight descended, and with it, a symphony erupted from the forest's heart—a multitude of trees swayed rhythmically in the wind as their leaves danced with an unbound joy. It was as if the forest itself had exhaled, expelling the fear and disquiet that once lingered both amidst the trees and within Morrigan himself, leaving in its wake an aura of peaceful euphony.
Peering into the thicket, Morrigan beheld the birches—their limbs delicate and whimsical as if they were maids lost in an intricate dance. Among them stood the firs—towering guardians—adding a note of grounded assurance to this wild celebration. The woodland radiated life and mystery as it beckoned Morrigan with the same allure he had first encountered.
Embracing discretion, Morrigan secreted away his bloodied attire within an old chest—its contents undisturbed except for this new addition—and cleansed himself of any physical trace of conflict before slipping into crisp attire. His movements were calm and unrushed as he made his way to dine among strangers. Inexplicably detached from the weightiness of what had transpired that day, he wondered at his lack of remorse—it was so absolute that it cast doubt upon the reality of those harrowing events. The threat of discovery should have been clawing at his conscience; instead, it loomed at bay—a trivial afterthought.
Amidst these contradictions, Morrigan found a unique solace—a peace that settled upon him as gently as dusk settles upon lands. Bolstered by the forest's gentle murmurs below his balcony window later that night, assuring him that there was naught to fear, a wave of tranquil ecstasy enveloped him tightly. And there he remained, on this verdant precipice—unfettered by dreams or concerns—as sleep reclaimed him under the vigilant gaze of mother nature’s woodland guardians.