Horrors in Timbrethinil

[Ataraxis]

“There!” Lillian shouted in haste, plunging her hands deep into the roiling green of the stream. She felt her fingers graze along a patch of scales before the salmon zipped past, slipping away between her ankles. The girl spun to recover her catch, almost losing her footing on the slippery stones that made the riverbed, but she found it too difficult to ford even these shallow waters. She ran after it in clumsy splashes, but gave up short of a dozen yards.

She could have easily fashioned a fishing rod from the long sticks that riddled the floor of the embowering forest, but chasing after fish without any clever apparatus had seemed like an amusing idea at the time, what with all those washed-out relics in the city complaining about how simpler things were back then. “That’s it, I’m never trusting elderly nostalgia again.” She padded along a few feet further, rousing the murky surface with froth, until she stopped before two tall branches, each towering soldierly over one side of the waterway. Between them was the open weave of a net, its dark and web-like threads reflecting the sunlight as would a glass mosaic. Trapped in it was the salmon that had escaped her, struggling in vain against that supple but unbreakable cage.

“Sorry, little guy,” she said after crouching over it, her tone genuinely apologetic. After dampening her hands in the stream, Lillian slid them beneath the flailing creature, closing the left around its tail while only using the right to support its head. With the utmost care, she slipped it into a half-filled wooden pail she had awkwardly assembled from leaves and slivers of bark. “I can’t afford to die from starvation just yet.”

Though not quite short of breath, the mere thought of working up a sweat had made her tired. Deciding she could afford a moment of respite, the girl closed her eyes, taking in as much as she could of her surroundings. The freshness of noontime air cleansed her lungs with every whiff, and the warm rays of the sun at its zenith, filtered through the emerald canopies overhead, felt like gentle sleeves that swathed around her protectively. The coolness of the stream washing against her forelegs was a pleasant contrast, and that subtle but undeniable smell of coursing freshwater caressed her nose like the sweet aroma of a heavenly balm. With that done, she undid her net and rushed to the riverside. Slipping into her boots, she feelt ready to tackle the long way back to her makeshift home on the hillside.

Lillian was deep in musing as she trekked up a natural path that cut between twisting rows of evergreens. It always amazed her how quickly this place could rejuvenate her, and it helped her understand just why the elves cared for this forest so much. It held something magical, something beyond the tired and secular meaning of the term, beyond the utilitarianism that so many had come to associate it with. It held a magic long forgotten, much more than parlor tricks or showy displays of power. It held something… sacred. Yes, she thought: there were things in this world she knew to be sacred, and without a doubt, the forest of Timbrethinil was one of them.

“Or at least,” she added with a sigh, stopping at the crest of a crisp and grassy rise, eyes wandering over the western panorama, “it used to be.”

There in the distance was the heart of the forest, but at its core was a cancer that had spread unchallenged. For miles and miles, the forest had darkened like an infection, and where proud trees had once stood as its stalwart guardians, only gnarled and crooked shells remained, corrupted into undead traitors by the far-reaching hands of the Necromancer. That wave of death was advancing, and she could almost see the forest wither, could almost see its colors fade before her unbelieving eyes.

She turned her gaze away, feeling like the lowest of the low, feeling as if a murder was being committed, and all she did was to turn a blind eye, thinking those exonerating words that all cowards think.

“There’s nothing I can do.”