Into The Forest

Renard and Fidel ride to the mouth of the forest trail, where the pair dismount.

The refreshing scent of damp earth and healthy bark calms the nerves, both for Renard and Fidel. Though initially conspicuously quiet, the simple, familiar, and indeed exciting work of escorting Renard through the trails soon focuses Fidel away from his pain and relaxes him greatly.

His familiarity with the forest, and enthusiasm to be sharing it, is obvious. A great smile beaming on his face, he tells stories of how certain big trees fell, how the lumber from different species is used, and how these paths were first explored and forged. Though truthfully not all that interested, Renard nods along to indulge the boy, who is regardless proving a keen and quick navigator.

Particularly, when Fidel pauses on a mossy ledge and splays his hands to present a hole in the canopy below, which exposes a sweeping view of the shrunken roofs of the town of Ashurst, and announces they are halfway there, Renard is stunned. Even with the interruptions, they have barely been walking an hour.

The Mayor’s estimate of this being a day-long hike is probably only accurate when a member of the party is highly unfit. A blush lances across Renard’s cheeks for his slowness in realising this, and with inexplicable shame for abandoning the man, while all the same knowing that doing so was right.

Tamped leaves and dirt crunch beneath their boots. The heat of embarrassment soon fades in the nippy mountain air, and when ducking through a string of logs fallen off the trail, Fidel stares up at the canopy and lightly sighs.

“I often come up here to get away from Father," he confesses, then proceeds on.

“I have known that man too well for my tongue to lash him," Renard says, ducking under the same logs, “but today I saw a cockerel, legs trapped beneath his nest, pecking at his own brood. I would be ashamed to fight my son before company, much less before company of worth, as much as I would be ashamed to strike myself across the face."

“Like a trapped cockerel… it sticks well," Fidel mutters. “Sir, I will ask, you knew him."

“Very briefly. We spoke at a party, most a decade ago. Some matter of finance earned him poor repute — by courtesy, I pried not further."

“I see."

“I would not pry you either." But, unable to restrain himself, he sharply barks a laugh, “for those mines in Meurille."

“It was on the word of a careless prospector that he considered the project," Fidel interjects like a spear, “then by the cruelty of an Ordish developer that he was scammed for all he was worth. He was a trusting man," Fidel insists, difficult to place whether he is defending his father, or criticising him for foolishness.

“You are hurt either way," Renard notes.

“It’s all nonsense," Fidel mutters with a surprising edge of spite, even as he heaves a breath so leaden and heavy he might cry.

He shakes off the sentiment, refocuses, and scrambles up a rotting tree trunk. Leaned against an elevated ledge, it forms a precarious bridge over the steep, unnavigable remains of an old mudslide, the end of which extends so far down, it is beyond sight.

Renard tests the bottom of the unsteady bridge, leaning the weight of his foot on it as if dipping his toe into water. Fidel observes him from above like a lion upon a rock.

“How much happenstance has brought us here?" Fidel muses out loud. “And what use is the light when it’s God who spits at me?"

Too preoccupied with the log to grasp Fidel’s words, Renard scrunches his brow. Fidel waits with chin raised in an unshakable, unconscious echo of natural authority.

The log is rickety, but Fidel scampered up. Renard fumbles step one... two... three, focus demanded in every footfall to keep the log from spinning or snapping. A loud creak issues underfoot. Tongue tight in his teeth, Renard grasps a thin, nearby branch for support. Four...

“—Wait," says Fidel. “Please, go back down. Let’s use another way."

Renard does.

Fidel scampers back down, hugs his arms, and trembles beside Renard like a hunted rabbit.

“Steady up, boy," Renard claps him on the shoulder. “You steer the course well yet."

Fidel digests these words, then weakly dips his head.

“Lad, be assured. This venture would be greatly more arduous without you." Though, it may be hazardous to let him near the anomaly — but that is a bridge to cross once they get to it.

Fidel delicately slides his thumb down the leather strap of his satchel — then nods, reclaiming his spirit. “Forward, then," he announces.

“Onward," agrees Renard.

Trudging through the fallen leaves and tickling shrubs, the two proceed deeper.

Despite that spell of doubt, Fidel cuts through the forest as smoothly as a fish up a river.

His demeanour holds more focused now than he was playing tour guide. But his energy intensifies with quiet excitement as he begins to whisper, “we’re near…"

The treeline ends at a clearing. Fidel crouches in the bushes to hide himself, points, and whispers, “there."

Renard slaps the boy along and strides into the clearing.

For, though he cares not to discount Fidel’s caution, hunting ghouls has honed Renard’s sense for the presence of danger. As testified by the Mayor and Mr. Klee, that sense is not firing now, and the atmosphere of this damp, moss-caked clearing is as inoffensive as the rest of the forest. A shallow stream trickles down a ledge and slices through the clearing on a mild incline. Renard steps over the piddly thing and then, observes the ‘anomaly’.

Floating just above eye level, overlaid on the air, is an array of iridescent, semitransparent ‘tiles’ of pure light. Like twinkling stars, each tile’s presence is persistent, but ephemeral, seeming to fade in and out by the angle they are observed but never giving the sense that they are not there. Even at their brightest, the trees, moss, and stones of the clearing are clearly visible through the titles, though somewhat distorted as if the image were filtered through water. Queerly, no matter the angle Renard regards the thing at, the array always faces him in the exact same alignment, though it does not feel to be rotating. It feels both flat and static; moving but still. Renard’s head aches mildly at the impossible logic.

He backs up a step. Once he stops thinking, the headache fades.

It is bizarre. When he is not thinking, there is also no sense of danger — or even really anything. The absolute lack of presence this ‘anomaly’ has is perhaps the oddest thing about it, because it ruthlessly tempts Renard to do the same as the Mayor and Mr. Klee did: shrug and say, ‘what an odd thing. It’s there,’ as if there were nothing to note about it. There is no urgency. It evokes nothing. In fact, because it is so inoffensive, but so obviously strange, it actually becomes funny.

“Sir Renard, do you see?" insists Fidel.

A chuckle rolls from Renard’s chest like Jupiter’s thunder. “It is nothing!" He thumbs his throat. “…Is what instinct begs, a light mockery of this strange thing." He breathes out and massages his head, straining to shutter his heart with iron, and squints in to inspect it again.

Amid the overlapping jumble of the twinkling array, like the pit in the eye of a whirlpool, there is a single, strange, ash-blue lump poking from the spot where most of the tiles converge. Unlike the rest of the array, the lump behaves like a normal object when Renard changes his angle of observation; it does not rotate to face him. Otherwise, the nature of this lump is hard to define: in its stability, it appears stonelike, but the softness about it looks the same as living flesh.

It is like the tip of some larger form, poking out of the anomaly. A single trail of yellow fluid drips slowly down its peak. On Renard’s hip, Kingslayer hums.

“That wasn’t there before," says Fidel. “What is Mr. Klee telling everyone, some harmless balderdash… you’ll solve this."

“Hm," agrees Renard.

Renard fetches a stick off the ground and pokes the array. The stick passes through without any resistance, not acknowledging the array at all, as if it were simply passing through air.

Fidel nervously backs off several steps. Renard removes his glove and touches the array — same effect. There is not even a tingle on his skin.

“Take distance," orders Renard, unsheathing Kingslayer. Eyes fixed on the anomaly before him, he watches Fidel scramble up the ledge and back into the treeline in his periphery. Satisfied the boy is as secure as he’ll get, Renard draws Kingslayer closer, and closer to the shimmering breach—

—And that is when, with a scream, the world snaps.