Chapter 1 Memories
Favia was afraid. But it was that particular kind of afraid a 12 year old child feels, when they are doing something explicitly forbidden. It was fear mixed with excitement and curiosity. She was stepping in the Forgotten Forest, after all. There were countless stories adults told about this mythical space. That it feeds on human souls, that it wonders the world, refusing to behave like a normal place should, that elves and fae live there and, above all, that it contains something ancient and long since forgotten. Something incomprehensible to a human mind. It was most certainly no place for a child. But it was also an opportunity. For all their talk, no adult of the village had ever been to the Forest before. While she was here, a legendary distorted moon, tell-tale sign of something unnatural over her head, eerily quiet forest all around her, seeing things no human being had seen in millenia, quite probably.
She continued forward. Counterintuitively, the forest seemed to only go quieter as she went, steps of her new shoes she barely managed to beat out of her father, who couldn’t stop complaining that she’ll outgrow them very soon, getting barely audible. She felt a weird pressure start mounting. ‘Perhaps, it was a bad idea, after all’ she thought. But she wasn’t turning back, she knew it. She was in too deep for that already. The weird silence continued for half an hour. At some point, she stopped hearing even her own heartbeat. When her fear was reaching its peak, she finally saw something. It was a weird, half destroyed building leaning on one side, made of some kind of smooth, pitch black material that shone in the pale eerie light of the distorted moon. Its inhuman origin was obvious to anyone with eyes and an ounce of common sense. It was barely one story tall. More than anything, it looked like a tunnel leading underground. The door was missing. Either never intended in the first place or long gone.
‘No one is going to believe what I saw – she thought with a mix of excitement and regret that she was here alone – I just can’t not go in now’. She carefully approached, checking her surroundings for any supernatural creatures, and not seeing any, stepped inside. It was dark. It seemed as though the weird material ate what little moonlight managed to get through the forest and the opening where the door should be. She cautiously continued exploring this strange building.
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The floor sloped down noticeably, confirming that it was, in fact, a tunnel leading underground. Weirdly, despite looking extremely smooth, the material wasn’t slippery at all, allowing her to go down the tunnel with relative ease. When, all of a sudden, the world went white. “AAAAH” the scream echoed in the narrow tunnel, as she immediately covered her eyes. The sudden jump from night to day was painful to the eyes adjusted to darkness. “ Initiating transportation sequence ” what followed was a series of weird sounds, that sounded like speech, but not in any language she knew, and it did not seem like the sound was produced by a human either. At this point she was regretting her decision immensely, but it was far too late to do anything about it. Because at some point, the opening leading in the forest behind her disappeared. “ Checking compatibility… No danger for the patient found, proceeding with transfer”. The very next moment, she lost consciousness.
The influx of new memories was a painful process, one that a young brain was ill equipped to handle, to say the least. Fortunately, the machinery in the holdout was still relatively functional and was able to manage the rate at which memories poured in and stabilised and protected her mind to a high enough degree that there was no danger. It, however, ment that the process took more time. “Transportation to the surface initiated… I hope it works out well”
Favia opened her eyes and looked at the night sky that was mysteriously clear now. Her mind, however, wasn’t. ‘What was that light? I don’t remember anything after that weird voice said something about initiating something… Wait. That was definitely not in our language how do I… Whatever, I have to return quickly. Imagine how jealous boys in the village will be! They won’t believe me that I’ve been to the Forgotten Forest!’ Thinking that she ran back home.