He can’t make the figures out clearly. They aren’t the same arcane wanderers he ’s spied before, those people made black b y the necrotic essence of the calcified plains. These new creat ures are different. They aren’ t human, but c onglomerations of dissident life forces. O ne moment the y resemble hawks, and in the next they are simian. They are leopards and then wolves, humanoid and then serpent.
Whatever they are, t he creatures keep their distance. He wonders if maybe they ’ re the basta rd offspring of fused worlds, random ly jettisoned souls that have melted together into unstable forms. They are h ybridized survivors without any true identity, creatures so drenched in darkness they don’t even realize what abominations they’ ve become. They mewl and growl at his passing, but they keep their distance.
The world is vast behind him. He looks back over his shoulder and sees endless plains like dry ocean s. The wastelands are broken and withered. Fissures in the ground leak vapors that congeal into mistsludge. The horizon is preposterously far away, a tiny cut at the edge of a blank nowhere. There are mountains and hills and the ruins of cities in the distance. Black lightning scars the sky.
He can see further than before. The shadows seem less thick.
Things are more real here, he realizes. I’m close r to the border. Closer to the edge of the Whisperlands.
He follows the Eidolos’ directions, empathic knowledge not so much known as felt. H is instincts guide him, even though he knows they are not his instincts, for the knowledge has been instilled in his mind.
The voices in the wind grow louder. They remind him of his spirit, and he is fil led with sadness. He suddenly feels very small, and very alone.
H e comes to the edge of the forest. Hard wind rattles the skeletal branches. D ead leaves fall like shards of glass. Black-grey mist obscur es any detail of what lie s deeper in the trees.
His fingers tense near the hilt of his blade. He knows he isn’ t prepared for this, even with the information the Eidolos has implanted in his subconscious mind.
The mist envelops him in frozen arms. His boots sink into dust and silt. He presses through the mire, and enters the trees.
W eb-patterns of shadow mark the path. Brackish fluid drips down and collects in rancid pools. The air is cold and raw. He smells organic waste and feels the tang of smelted iron on his tongue.
There are no paths, no means to find his way aside from following his false instincts. Soulrazor/Avenger cuts a swat h through the corpse-dry trees. The ghost wind drowns out the sound as he crash es through the underbrush.
He senses a presence nearby, a malign entity as much a stranger to th e dread wilderness as he is. W hatever it is, it keeps its distance.
He carries on. He ponders the dire reality of his situation.
W ithout his spirit, even Soulrazor/Avenger isn’t likely to do him much good against a cadre of mages.
This is suicide. But I have to try.
He walks. There seems to be no end to the forest.
Eventually he escapes the mist, and the trees thin. He moves through clearings filled with black earth and dead leaves. Piles of dark branches stand ne xt to long-abandoned campfires. He smells charcoal and mold. T he whispers of the dead are stronger there.
He looks closer. What he’d thought were branches are actually bones, burned to black and stacked in heaps.
Some of the trees are made o f bone, as well. Their blanched hue has been discolored by a fire that seems to have ripped through th at part of the forest some time ago. He runs his finger against a tree and wipes away a film of burned grime. The bone underneath is yellowed and cracked.
Skin flags dangle from the bone trees. They hang placid, as there is no wind that deep in the forest. The flayed flesh is coal black, the skin of some shadow-infused beast. The hide banners stretch like standards and mark an uneven path through the haunted woods.
He smells meat in the air, and he grimaces at the taste of salt and acetone.
The ground ha s been disturbed by the passage of other creatures. C rude blades made of fused carbon lie scattered on the ground. He hears a faint groan in the distance.
Mountains loom ahead, still many miles away, barely visible through the dead branches.
Bla de in hand, he follows the new path.
Tendrils of web stretch between the trees. Dark silk play s against his skin like smooth fingers. He feels dust on his skin and burned wood on his tongue.
Bodies dangle from the trees, suspended by necrotic threads. They appear frozen in mid-fall and hang at violent angles. Most of the ir flesh and clothing has corrod ed off the bones. They bob like grisly marionettes.
He pushes through the perpetual gloom. His joined arcane blade lights his way with a subtle shine like blue moonlight.
The forest grows darker. He smells dead fish and glacial moisture, a raw ice-water breeze that clings to the trees like saliva.
He sees m ore signs of passage, bla des and bedrolls and cold camps that have long-since been looted for anything of value.
The presence he sensed earlier return s. It shifts in the dark. Being close to it makes him f eel like he stands at the edge of an abyss.
The air is grey. His feet swim in a cold wash of shadow that obscures the forest floor. The air is so cold he feels crystals in his beard, and every breath freezes in his throat and lungs.
He realizes he hasn ’ t passed through any of the black webbing for quite some time. He’ s moved past its outer perimeter, past the warnings, and straight into the home of whatever made them.
A bone-white and bladed arm as long as a lance launches at him from out of the darkness. He uses Soulrazor/Avenger to knock it aside, then hacks through the carapace and severs the knife- limb. T ender layer s of pulsing red meat lie be neath the cracked bone shell. White puss oozes from the maimed appendage.
He sees the trees and the darkness, and nothing else. He stands surrounded by a world of shadow, and it grows thicker as the curled howls of his attacker draw close. Fear ices his gut. He holds the blade ready, and calls his spirit. H e remembers that she isn’t there, and his heart sinks.
Another blade-limb erupts from the dark. He barely rolls away before it slices by him and cleaves a bone tree in two. Another limb flies out, insanely long, a bone needle mounted on a pale and twisted tentacle. He can’t see the source of the limbs — they stretch back into the vertical sea of darkness beyond the trees.
He rolls beneath the hacking a ttacks and ru n s forward, leaps over piles of skin and bones left to wither and freeze on the soiled forest floor.
The creature bleeds into his vision like a white wound. It’ s humanoid, but only barely, a pale and writhing mutation with an elongated torso that twists like an eel. Its head is bald, with tiny black eyes and an enormous maw of razor teeth. Its many arms are spindly whips of flesh dotted with bone spurs.
It resemble s the strange creatures he saw before, back at the edge of the forest, only this one is white where they were dark. It’ s somehow resisted the corrupting pall of the Whisperlands, only to evolve into something much worse.
It whips another bone-claw at him, but he ducks beneath it and charges. The creature releases a blood- curdling scream that rattles the ground and chills his blood. He smells vomitous fumes and rot gases. Its teeth are curved and black, stained with ebon flesh.
It can’t raise its limbs in time to defend itself, and even with its fearsome fangs he knows he can kill it, and he does. Soulrazor/Avenger plunges into its skull and cracks it open like ice. White blood sizzles when it hits the dark ground.
The hunter falls without another sound. Its body melts into a milk pool. He stands over its remains.
He finds its lair. It isn’ t far away, a deep cave system built into the side of a massive hill, a dark orifice in a darker cluster of stone that’s been camouflaged by the shadow landscape. The forest continues on past the hill. He ’ ll scale the stone and ascend to the Shadow Lord’s next layer of defense.
The Eidolos had named the Shadow Lords leader: the Witch Queen. What was she looking for? Why had she built her stronghold t here, in that dreadful place?
H e feels that it ’ s important to search the hunter’s lair. Something drives him, a base instinct he can’t ignore.
