Chapter Thirteen King Hawthorne The Woodlands The First Age of Ouranos
The creak of branches dragged King Hawthorne’s eyes upward to the snarled tangle that had grown so thick it nearly blotted out the light. Decay crunched under his heavy boots as he stalked through the forest with his sword angled over a broad shoulder. His nostrils flared in agitation. The taint on the wind was unmistakable and foretold of wicked things arriving on the breeze.
It had been another day and another endless list of reports about the forest behaving erratically. At first, it had been benign events, nothing to be overly alarmed about. A tree falling unexpectedly. The fruit from another suddenly dropping well ahead of the harvest. It was easy to dismiss them as mere anomalies of forest life. These trees weren’t inanimate. They’d always had a sentience. They’d always had eyes. One had to expect they’d act out from time to time.
But things had shifted quickly, morphing from harmless to deadly. Missing children dragged from their beds at night by thorny vines. Holes unexpectedly opening in the middle of a worn path used safely a thousand times before, swallowing entire families up.
“Your Majesty,” came a voice from behind, and he turned to find one of his soldiers approaching. “I found another one.”
Suspended in the soldier’s arms was a body. Hawthorne thought it might have been female, but it was hard to tell anymore. She’d been “infected,” for lack of any better term to describe what was plaguing the forest. Her body had twisted like the trunk of an ancient tree, leaves and branches sprouting from her eyes and mouth and nose. The effect was grotesque, and he resisted the overwhelming urge to look away. These were his people, and they were dying at an alarming rate.
He had to be the one to look. Had to be the one to bear final witness to the life they’d given to this… monstrosity.
“Put her with the others,” he said. “We’ll bury them all, as is their due.”
The soldier nodded and then walked away, disappearing into the trees.
The king waited, standing alone in the darkened forest. He had to figure out what was causing this. Rumors swarmed of similar events happening across the continent, though he wondered if any were as alarming as what transpired in The Woodlands.
With a grim press of his lips, he continued walking, heading to the Fort. A makeshift infirmary erected at its base treated those who could still be saved. His healers were having some success medicating the strange rot infecting the citizens of his kingdom, but no one wanted to admit the last part out loud. Any progress was only temporary; after a brief respite, the symptoms always returned.
He rubbed a hand against the back of his neck, feeling the weight of his people’s lives press on his shoulders. Where could he go for help? There was no one to turn to and no one to ask. Perhaps he’d have to travel across the Lourwin Sea for aid. But the journey was long, and he feared what might happen in his absence.
The wind picked up, lifting his acorn-brown hair from his shoulders as his senses twitched with uneasiness. Lowering the sword still balanced over his shoulder, he spun around, but the pathway stood empty. He held still for a moment, listening for any foreign sound, but the forest was silent. Much too silent.
He shook his head, annoyed he was letting his nerves get the best of him before he turned and continued his journey.
When another rustle in the bushes drew his attention, it was already too late. Vines moving in a blur circled his limbs, squeezing his arms and legs and cinching his torso so tightly he couldn’t breathe.
He tried to cry out, but another tendril constricted his throat, choking off his airway before he was dragged into the forest. The last thing he saw before everything went black was a canopy of dark green leaves closing over him like fingers.