BlackAndBlueEyes
09-13-15, 06:52 PM
Closed to Rayleigh
--Prologue--
The dryad's screams died away to weak coughs and whimpers as she went limp. Her thin, green hands, once clawing at my face in desperation, fell to her leaf-wrapped sides. My briar-knit arm was embedded in her chest just inches past my wrist, and I had something soft and vital in my grasp. I could feel the muscle melt in my hand as I poured more and more acid into the organ. The forest spirit's eyes had already lost their viridian glow. Her dark hair, interwoven with vines, fell over her face as her head rolled around on her shoulders.
I let go of the spirit's heart and pulled my hand out of her chest. Her lifeless corpse fell away, hitting the ground with a hard thud. The fist-sized wound began to smoke, the acrid vapors wafting upwards making me want to throw up. You would think that given how often I dispatch people with acid, I would be used to the scent of rotting and melting flesh.
Kneeling over, I wiped the gooey remnants of the dryad's heart off on the low grass and leaves that littered the forest floor. My skin tingled as it repaired itself from my battle, dozens of tiny little wounds on my face and arms and neck closing after being shredded by the grove's guardians.
All around me, their corpses lay still. Each of them had been killed in a different way. My daggers laid by the still bodies of two, a third was covered in the darkening welts and expired bodies of a hundred direwasps. The fourth choked to death on her own vomit after succumbing to my plague, and the fifth's head and shoulders looked as if they had been consumed by fire.
And there I stood, in the middle of the bloody chaos, the victor. My hooded tunic had rips and tears in it from where the spirits' thorny vines attempted to eviscerate me, but like my other wounds they too would knit themselves together in time.
I took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. I had to calm myself down. There was still so much to do, so much work to be done. And I could not screw it up.
I snatched my mythril mask up off the forest floor after it had been torn off during the battle. Using one of the leather straps, I tied it to my belt. There was no reason to wear it, not this deep into Concordia. There was nobody left alive to see me, to see the monster I've become. My glowing amber eyes, my mouth twisted in a terrible, shark-toothed smile, the mass of plants intertwined in the vague shape of a woman's face.
Before me in the grove stood a massive tree. Tall, serene, and proud, it commanded your full attention and wonder when you saw it. A tangle of roots as thick as my body drew life from the ground, and its myriad of branches wove itself into the canopy overhead. From within them, birds and smaller animals had made their homes. I almost felt bad for what was to become of them.
I swiftly made my way to the base of the tree's trunk, where I had dropped my traveling bag before I was rudely interrupted by the dryads. I flipped open the flap and dug around inside, pushing past papers and spare changes of clothes and provisions in search of something else. Fumbling around for a few seconds, I wrapped my hands around the four glass vials that would change the course of history.
I pulled them out slowly, tenderly, as if they were a newborn child. The vials were perfectly round and the size of my fist, and contained a viscous purple liquid. The sun beams that broke through the boughs above glistened off the curve of the glass, illuminating the poison within. I stood there enamored. It was quite a beautiful thing, the poison.
The culmination of hundreds of hours of research. Hundreds of hours and dozens of lives.
And with it, I was about to do the most important, terrible, unforgivable thing in my entire life.
I took a deep breath before I ripped the cork stopper off the first vial. According to my calculations, I would only need one of the bottles; but I had prepared additional doses of the contaminant just in case a few doses were lost, broken, or stolen from me in my journey from Underwood. Considering how much I was being paid to complete this task, the first of many on his quest of bloody vengeance, I felt the precaution was necessary.
Wasting no time, should more dryads emerge from the edges of the grove, I poured the purple liquid onto one of my hands, turning it over to let it soak into every possible inch in my vines. I emptied the rest of the contents onto my arms, threw the glass aside, and proceeded to rub it into my skin. I had to absorb as much of the plague as I could.
After several seconds, I decided to not take any chances. I scooped up a second vial, and repeated the process with my other arm. Within a minute, every single inch of me from fingertip to shoulder was glistening with the evil oily substance. While I was immune to the corruption that was being absorbed through my skin, I could not fathom the extent of the damage that it would wreak upon the forest and its denizens.
I tried to shut those thoughts out of my head. I couldn't think about that now, unless I had a change of heart. I closed my eyes, took a step forward towards the massive tree, and laid my hands on them. I could feel the immense life force emanating from deep inside it. It overpowered me for a brief moment; I could hear it compel me to turn back and abandon my mission. The force inside the tree fully knew what I had come to do, and it was screaming at me to stop.
I ignored its pleas, and fell into a dark place. I tapped into the power stored inside me, the shattered pieces of a Forgotten One's corrupted soul. I could hear the echoes of her laughter rattling around in my subconscious as I drew upon her power. Starting with my hands, and slowly creeping up to my shoulders, I could feel her magic turn my vines the same shade of crimson as the plants within Red Forest. I dug my fingers into the thick bark of the tree trunk, the cracks audible over the gritting of my teeth as wood split and splintered.
Suddenly, my mind was overwhelmed with tens of thousands of visions. A violent scream escaped my gnarled lips as the lives of every man and beast who made Concordia their home flashed before my very eyes. It was the forest's last, forceful cry for me to stop. For moments that passed like years, I was one with the forest, one with the earth. I tried my best to focus on that one single thought that burned dark in the deepest recesses of my blackened soul.
Do what we could not, Briarheart. Take away the beauty they do not deserve to behold. It is your destiny as our successor!
I latched onto that one single thought, and held on tight. The forest continued its assault on my mind, forcing me to bear witness to the multitude of lifeforms that I would inevitably cause the deaths and corruption of. It tried its hardest to get me to let go, but I only dug in deeper.
One by one, vines erupted from my arms, covered with the slimy plague oil, and burrowed themselves into the massive trunk. Two, four, ten, twenty, fifty. Through them, I poured all of my energy into the tree, forcing my plague and all of her hate into it. The visions began to flash a hot electric white in my eyes as every inch of the forest fought against me. I saw glimpses of the future, of mutated beasts, of chaos and blood and violence.
I could feel it weakening.
I could feel the plague taking hold within the Heart of Concordia.
Forgive me, I thought as I threw every last ounce of anger and hatred I could summon into the tree.
--Prologue--
The dryad's screams died away to weak coughs and whimpers as she went limp. Her thin, green hands, once clawing at my face in desperation, fell to her leaf-wrapped sides. My briar-knit arm was embedded in her chest just inches past my wrist, and I had something soft and vital in my grasp. I could feel the muscle melt in my hand as I poured more and more acid into the organ. The forest spirit's eyes had already lost their viridian glow. Her dark hair, interwoven with vines, fell over her face as her head rolled around on her shoulders.
I let go of the spirit's heart and pulled my hand out of her chest. Her lifeless corpse fell away, hitting the ground with a hard thud. The fist-sized wound began to smoke, the acrid vapors wafting upwards making me want to throw up. You would think that given how often I dispatch people with acid, I would be used to the scent of rotting and melting flesh.
Kneeling over, I wiped the gooey remnants of the dryad's heart off on the low grass and leaves that littered the forest floor. My skin tingled as it repaired itself from my battle, dozens of tiny little wounds on my face and arms and neck closing after being shredded by the grove's guardians.
All around me, their corpses lay still. Each of them had been killed in a different way. My daggers laid by the still bodies of two, a third was covered in the darkening welts and expired bodies of a hundred direwasps. The fourth choked to death on her own vomit after succumbing to my plague, and the fifth's head and shoulders looked as if they had been consumed by fire.
And there I stood, in the middle of the bloody chaos, the victor. My hooded tunic had rips and tears in it from where the spirits' thorny vines attempted to eviscerate me, but like my other wounds they too would knit themselves together in time.
I took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. I had to calm myself down. There was still so much to do, so much work to be done. And I could not screw it up.
I snatched my mythril mask up off the forest floor after it had been torn off during the battle. Using one of the leather straps, I tied it to my belt. There was no reason to wear it, not this deep into Concordia. There was nobody left alive to see me, to see the monster I've become. My glowing amber eyes, my mouth twisted in a terrible, shark-toothed smile, the mass of plants intertwined in the vague shape of a woman's face.
Before me in the grove stood a massive tree. Tall, serene, and proud, it commanded your full attention and wonder when you saw it. A tangle of roots as thick as my body drew life from the ground, and its myriad of branches wove itself into the canopy overhead. From within them, birds and smaller animals had made their homes. I almost felt bad for what was to become of them.
I swiftly made my way to the base of the tree's trunk, where I had dropped my traveling bag before I was rudely interrupted by the dryads. I flipped open the flap and dug around inside, pushing past papers and spare changes of clothes and provisions in search of something else. Fumbling around for a few seconds, I wrapped my hands around the four glass vials that would change the course of history.
I pulled them out slowly, tenderly, as if they were a newborn child. The vials were perfectly round and the size of my fist, and contained a viscous purple liquid. The sun beams that broke through the boughs above glistened off the curve of the glass, illuminating the poison within. I stood there enamored. It was quite a beautiful thing, the poison.
The culmination of hundreds of hours of research. Hundreds of hours and dozens of lives.
And with it, I was about to do the most important, terrible, unforgivable thing in my entire life.
I took a deep breath before I ripped the cork stopper off the first vial. According to my calculations, I would only need one of the bottles; but I had prepared additional doses of the contaminant just in case a few doses were lost, broken, or stolen from me in my journey from Underwood. Considering how much I was being paid to complete this task, the first of many on his quest of bloody vengeance, I felt the precaution was necessary.
Wasting no time, should more dryads emerge from the edges of the grove, I poured the purple liquid onto one of my hands, turning it over to let it soak into every possible inch in my vines. I emptied the rest of the contents onto my arms, threw the glass aside, and proceeded to rub it into my skin. I had to absorb as much of the plague as I could.
After several seconds, I decided to not take any chances. I scooped up a second vial, and repeated the process with my other arm. Within a minute, every single inch of me from fingertip to shoulder was glistening with the evil oily substance. While I was immune to the corruption that was being absorbed through my skin, I could not fathom the extent of the damage that it would wreak upon the forest and its denizens.
I tried to shut those thoughts out of my head. I couldn't think about that now, unless I had a change of heart. I closed my eyes, took a step forward towards the massive tree, and laid my hands on them. I could feel the immense life force emanating from deep inside it. It overpowered me for a brief moment; I could hear it compel me to turn back and abandon my mission. The force inside the tree fully knew what I had come to do, and it was screaming at me to stop.
I ignored its pleas, and fell into a dark place. I tapped into the power stored inside me, the shattered pieces of a Forgotten One's corrupted soul. I could hear the echoes of her laughter rattling around in my subconscious as I drew upon her power. Starting with my hands, and slowly creeping up to my shoulders, I could feel her magic turn my vines the same shade of crimson as the plants within Red Forest. I dug my fingers into the thick bark of the tree trunk, the cracks audible over the gritting of my teeth as wood split and splintered.
Suddenly, my mind was overwhelmed with tens of thousands of visions. A violent scream escaped my gnarled lips as the lives of every man and beast who made Concordia their home flashed before my very eyes. It was the forest's last, forceful cry for me to stop. For moments that passed like years, I was one with the forest, one with the earth. I tried my best to focus on that one single thought that burned dark in the deepest recesses of my blackened soul.
Do what we could not, Briarheart. Take away the beauty they do not deserve to behold. It is your destiny as our successor!
I latched onto that one single thought, and held on tight. The forest continued its assault on my mind, forcing me to bear witness to the multitude of lifeforms that I would inevitably cause the deaths and corruption of. It tried its hardest to get me to let go, but I only dug in deeper.
One by one, vines erupted from my arms, covered with the slimy plague oil, and burrowed themselves into the massive trunk. Two, four, ten, twenty, fifty. Through them, I poured all of my energy into the tree, forcing my plague and all of her hate into it. The visions began to flash a hot electric white in my eyes as every inch of the forest fought against me. I saw glimpses of the future, of mutated beasts, of chaos and blood and violence.
I could feel it weakening.
I could feel the plague taking hold within the Heart of Concordia.
Forgive me, I thought as I threw every last ounce of anger and hatred I could summon into the tree.