Aceldama

[Devonus]

(closed, but open. Plot being developed via PM and chat, so message me if you would like to join)

The giant red oak stood as a crimson landmark to my death and rebirth, a grave under which I slept each day when the sun blasphemous rays banished me from the face of the earth. Contrary to popular belief, the dead, do indeed dream. Each day as I lay in my earthen grave, as the the roots of this ancient oak caressed me and cocooned me, dreams and nightmares danced behind my soulless eyes. Dreams of natural beauty long forsaken, dreams of love long lost, dream of blood soon to be found. These dreams and nightmares, shaped me just as I shaped them, giving me purpose for the coming night, giving me the drive to spend another day, another year, another century alive, or what passed for it anyways.

The current dream that gripped me, that drove me from the earth when the sun finally said its goodbyes to the world, was an innocent fancy turned wrong. It was a wish for a place to call home, a place to truly be at peace, a place, to finally regain what I had so long ago lost. I know its but a pipe dream, the innocence, the love, my humanity that I lost so long ago forever lost on the winds of fate.

But i'll pursue it just the same...

I crawl from the earth, a loud howl greets me as was usual. Agar was returning from his hunt and would soon arrive with prey in mouth, a proud and happy gleam in his eye at another day and night successfully spent serving me. I am forever grateful for that magnificent beast I call friend.

The howl fades, and with it comes the sound of silence. Not true silence of course, only the cities of man and elf could ever have such, the silence of the forest was an entirely different silence. It was the ever present sound of crickets in the grass, the lofty flap of wings gliding and soaring silently in the night, the echoed cries of the predators that called Lindequalmë home. Of those predators, me and Agar were some of the fiercest in the area, or at least so I liked to believe.

Tonight was not a night for the hunt though, tonight I would enjoy something I had not embraced in so many a long year. Tonight I would put hoe and shovel to earth, tonight would be a night of growth, of creation, cursed though it might be.There was much work to be done, and only a few hours to start. I could of course have started with a proper place to live, but that would come in time, for now I only wished to find and make other brothers along the lines of the brother oak behind me. I so longed for the company of the plants that had so long forsaken me, and if they would not keep my company willingly, they would keep my company as my children, much as I had once accompanied my sire.

The clearing around the oak had a few small cyprus trees which would have to be removed eventually, and the ground was thick with grass, weeds, and vines. Though I was loathe to remove them by force, there was little else to do, though I would wait to properly dig up and transplant the trees when the time came. I said a silent prayer to the gods and goddesses of the woods, the ones that had probably long ago forsaken me and mostly likely viewed my prayers as a curse upon their ears, but nonetheless I prayed for thier forgiveness of the death I would soon wrought upon some of their lesser children, in past times I would have used my powers to coax them to exist elsewhere, or reduced their pain as best I could. But for now, I would have to endure their cries of pain, hate ,and spite as I yanked them from their rightful place, and focus only on the beauty would soon grow on thier grave.

Perhaps it is selfish, but besides myself, Agar, and this Ancient oak whome still holds love for me, to whom do I owe allegiance or sympathy? The gods? The plants and creatures of these woods? Those who forsake me upon my death? And surely not the elves, not those whome cursed my existence long before I came to be what I am now...

A pained grin slowly creeps across my face, my lips curving in a mocking smile as I remember just who and what I am, remember that this dream is not noble, nor good, that I indeed am the bane of life both natural and human, that my existence and those I hold close are cursed. I give a soft laugh as I reach down for the first weed in what will later be my garden my home. A silent curse echoing in the clearing as I remove it from the earth, a curse to all that lives, a curse unto the land itself.

[Isylle]

Somewhere in the deep woods, a herd of deer backed away into the shadows, their big, brown eyes fixated on the centre of a placid, moon-drenched meadow. Iridescent moths and sleek bees skimmed the emerald-green sea, lighting here and there on varigated islands of beckoning flowers. Though ancient trunks and dark canopies closed in on every side, the clearing shone resolutely like a solitary beacon in the wine-dark abyss. Did the deer fear the light?

Perhaps.

A plaintive bleating disturbed the foamy buzzing suffusing the meadow. There was a doe circling worriedly, her ears cocked for the distressed reply from her fawn. The doe was young, the fawn was her first, and pure, sweet maternal concern blinded her to everything but her child's plight. At first, it looked like kudzu. But kudzu did not possess cruel, barbed thorns all over its stems. Kudzu did not lie flat and invisible beneath the surface of the grass. Most of all, kudzu did not tighten more about the errant foot with each panicked struggle.

Once again, the doe snapped at the vines. Once again, she was rebuffed. Her lips were torn and bloody from the hard thorns, but this was for her child. In between each determined lunge, she cried out for her child. The vines cared not. The vines moved not.

Over the sounds of struggle came music. The hummed notes were calm, soothing, and ethereal in a A# D# F# F C# G# A# way. They were the sounds of an unfettered someone loving life as it came and without a care in the world. Soon, a figure appeared from the edge of the woods, radiant in the light. Her white blouse, her red vest and skirt, and her white parasol all conspired to render her a splash of color at least equal to the incumbent wildflowers.

Isylle was smiling. Isylle was always smiling, on the general principle that life was what one made of it, so why make yourself unhappy? Hundreds of years of smiling had refined it into a weapon equal to ancestral blades or heirloom wands. The smile conveyed the purified idea that everything will be all-right, that you were loved and cared for, and that mother will take care of everything for you.

She slowly twirled her parasol as she ambled across the field. Grasses heightened and flowers bloomed in her wake, as if she was a tanker leaking vivaciousness from all over. The doe finally noticed her when she was perhaps five steps away from the snaring mass. Motherly love triumphed over all and, snout dripping thick blood, the doe stood her ground alongside her fawn. From the shadows of the woods, dozens of unblinking brown eyes stared into the meadow.

"Dear me. Hello there~" Isylle stopped and turned the full force of her smile towards the despairing mother, "You seem to be in a bit of trouble. What is it?" Her gaze, half red and half green, drifted down towards the trapped, exhausted fawn. "Oh, no! That's terrible. You poor thing, how did you get in there?"

The fairy stooped down and gently laid a flawless hand on the fawn's head, "Shhh, shhh. Relax. Shhh... Don't struggle. You must have accidentally stepped into this patch when going after the flowers, right? Especially these big, sweet-smelling, purple ones right here. Right?" There were a few bites missing from the flowers in question; it seems that the deer had not gotten far before stepping into the vines.

Isylle softly stroked the little furry head, "Life's so mean sometimes. You didn't know you were going to have a terrible night, did you? You didn't know there were spiky vines around the delicious flowers, did you?"

She gripped and twisted. There was a crunchy crack.

"You didn't know those were mine, did you?"

The doe belled and charged. There was a hissing of vines and a long minute filled with the sound of a deer's worth of bones being systematically broken in the least lethal order.

Isylle bent down and gently stroke the damaged flowers. Her red-drenched hand left a thin trail across the petals and leaves. "Hmm, maybe I should have put these out on all of the gardens. I hope the unprotected ones are didn't get hurt, the poor things."

The Fairy of Flowers always smiled.

[Devonus]

Dirt and sap, the lifeblood of the weeds I had just ended, coats my hands. A pleasant smile gracing my lips as I lay the last weed to rest on the compost heap behind the tree, it would have to be moved later, so its stench did not intrude upon the beauty that would grow here, but for now it would do.

Of course the work was not done yet. The land still had to be tilled, the seeds sown, and then nourished, but for now it stood ready for such endeavors. The field before me was all but bare, almost sad in its lack of life, but all was not finished. There remained the smaller cyprus trees which I would later have to remove, but of more import were the purple flowers that dotted the desolate field.

It was not normal, their gorgeous purple hue easily differentiating them from the rest of the red forest, where all things grew crimson from podes curse. Their stems showed some influence, a soft tinge of red at their base where Pode’s influence slowly crept up. The flowers themselves remained largely untainted however, which also was cause for curiosity.

I had debated pulling them, as they were still in my way, but they were far to pretty for such a thing, they like the cyprus, demanded care and attention in their removal. However moving them itself was indeed an issue. I had skipped pots and such when preparing for this, having expected to find nothing worth saving amongst the brambles and weeds that had coated this clearing, and finding such a beautiful misplaced flower had been far from expected. Which also begged the question of when and how they got here, considering this was my home and I hadn't noticed them before.

regardless of the reason, they still need to be moved...

With a soft sight I lift my wrist to my mouth, making a small puncture and letting my blood slowly drip onto the flower, gently caressing its flowers as its screams of protest slowly slip into words of love and lust, of need. Its flowers throb slightly as they grow wider, the purple hue slowly gaining streaks of violet as the petals unfurl. It was a shame I could not become acquainted with its natural version first, but at least now it would be more pleasant company. I gently dig around it and carefully remove it by the roots, the once pale veins of that supported the indigo beauty a soft pink now, having tasted my blood.

I do this for the others scatter in the vicinity, five in all, and plant them in a circle around the old oak, Its thoughts echo of love and protection for me, and the new brothers it now had around it. I dare say it held a bit of pride to be favored by me and graced with such ornaments beneath its boughs.

Now where is agar, he should have returned hours ago, unless he lost his prey.

[Isylle]

Two-by-two above a quaint little pond, the dragonfly couples hovered and flittered like shameless exhibitionists. They wove effortlessly between the reeds, danced over the lilly pads, and, on one occassion, got almost devoured by a particularly voyeuristic sunfish. The foiled fish retreated into the shade of a huge, rotting log. The redwood log laid, half-sunken in the silt, between the pond's shore and the soggy little island in its centre. A legion of woodlice and millipedes quartered themselves within, determinedly reducing a thousand years of growth into so much dung. It was a good, simple life, in the moist darkness of the wood.

A tremor ran through the log. It sounded like enormous drums might if they were far away, on the Other End. THOOM. THOOM. Went the sound, a measured second between each beat. Thoom. Thoom. Came the echoes from every tunnel and every burrow. Chitinous forms scurried for the safety of the Deep Burrows. Tiny minds shivered at the intrusion into their orderly life. They were too small to have the concept of a doomsday.

Isylle's boots, brown leather dusted with the rich, black soil of fertile fields, left just the faintest imprints in the rotting wood as she walked across the natural log-bridge. Buds and leaves and twigs sprouted in her wake, all along the bridge. All plants reveled in her terrible presence.

Disaster! The caves were closing, the burrows tightened. The dead walls that had comforted and sustained thousands were coming alive, twisting, moving. Countless souls, adults and eggs alike, were crushed into unrecognizable pulp as the wood grew vivaciously under some unfathomable, foreign influence. The tunnels narrowed with every passing moment, the little ones clambered over, under, and besides huge trapped millipedes, dodging between desperately waving legs, in a bid for the alien world of light and wind. Some ancient instinct in all of them preferred an uncertain exile over a certain death.

The log's surface flooded with hundreds of crawling bugs. Many fell into the water. The sulking sunfish was astounded by the sudden windfall. The dragonflies paused their exercises to indulge in a snack. Isylle hadn't noticed; genocide was but a game.

A few more steps carried her from the holocaust and onto the island proper, where three purple flowers hung limp and dim. The ovaries had swollen to triple their original size and were still growing like a smooth, green cancer above the light green leaves. Isylle smiled. These took some time to mature, but that was to be expected of flowers that drank in the essence of sensation from all their surroundings and purified such a ethereal thing into fruit. Another month, and they'll be ripe.

There was a disturbing pink tinge about the lower stem, but that investigation is best done with a more complete sample. Besides, it was rather pretty.

Isylle retraced her steps over the log, negligently crushing from it any life that had previously survived, and went to her next garden. This was the youngest one and had five plantings of a slightly different breed. Hopefully, they will have a more visceral and powerful effect, especially when purified into a potion. That'll show-

She stopped. The field, which had previously been lusty with wildflowers and grasses, had been denuded. There were pieces and fragments of the violently evicted population strewn carelessly all over, like the remnants of a battle won. All that remained standing, it seemed, was the largest of the trees. In the center of it all was a terrible beast. It had two arms and two legs, like the axe-wielding tree-fellers in old legends. It had no face, its head was covered in countless pale gold strands that writhed in the wind, gleamed with an unearthly light, and whispered against one another in incomprehensible speech. Smeared and powdered earth covered it, as if it had ripped itself from the dark and evil places forgotten in the deep. Its flesh, bloodlessly pale in the moonlight, was covered in places by a cloth woven from thousands of corpses of flowers. It stood there amidst the carnage, admiring its own work with the air of immense self-satisfaction.

The parasol stopped twirling, Isylle's hands briefly nerveless as she beheld the creature. Her smile, her warm and cheerful smile, her friendly and maternal smile, froze like molten glass dripped into cold water. For an uncounted eternity, she stood there, on the edge of the clearing, mute and still. A chill wind rippled her skirt, her hair, and her ascot, but her mind registered nothing of it.

The monster moved. It turned towards Isylle and cast its gaze on the fairy. It did indeed have a face, which was handsome, but it seemed all the more terrible for it. There were two eyes, blue with a faint hint of red, and they fixed on Isylle almost immediately. The attention was a palpable thing that roamed and probed, pierced and assayed.

Involuntarily, Isylle lifted her own gaze, one primrose red and one emerald green, onto that visage. There was nothing to do but walk. There was no direction but forward. To the face of that thing in the field, Isylle smiled.

Because genocide was just a game.

The smile said, in no uncertain terms, 'Hello. It's nice to meet you. I'm interested in hearing what you have to say. Don't worry; smile also! Because I'm going to take good care of you from now on, to love you and cherish you, until the end of your time.'

Isylle's boots left faint imprints in the dirt as she walked towards the other. Around her, a faint greenish circle appeared; hundreds of seeds previously sleeping in the ground awoke and began to stretch eagerly towards the light above and the water below. The Fairy of Flowers clasped one hand to her breast and spoke in a voice as warm, rich, and friendly as her smile.

"Hello~"