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the-fforestt · 4 years

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a village lies on a flat expanse, others like it visible, but distant.

one day, a traveler shows up. Not many travelers left these days. The village ignores them. The traveler ignores them as well.

The village continues this behavior, even as the traveler pulls out stones, trees, and magic, and surrounds the village with a barely-there barrier of trees with stones laid in their roots.

The villagers, however, did take notice when the stranger took out a shovel, made out of materials of unknown origin, and started to pat down a path to the village closest to them. the path was long, but straight as a ruler.

the traveler then dawned a cloak of sky and a helmet and boots made out of the same materials as the strange shovel, and also covered this path with trees.

However, no stones were placed at these roots.

The village watched from afar as the traveler used their strange magic and bones to rise the trees from the ground, and causing plants that would have never grown to burst forth.

The traveler worked and worked. and sometimes left the night sky and work of trees to sleep somewhere, unseen.

Some days, the villagers would never see the traveler at all. just the magic of the trees being grown, a helmet, boots, and an evershifting cloak of sky and clouds and rain and storm.

The traveler started filling in gaps between the village paths with more and more trees, and soon, you could only stay on the path without straying into the risen forest.

Throughout the travelers doings, the villagers dared not travel along the path the traveler made to the other village. No one knew what would happen.

One day, the traveler, nor the travelers magic was seen. It seemed they were spending there day in whatever strange place they deemed home.

This day, a brave boy who had a grandmother in the other village stepped up, and to the fear of many, decided to walk the path.

He started out at evening, not fearing what came with the dark, but as it got darker, it got colder. The trees, the traveler's trees rustled politely.

The brave boy spotted a light from somewhere very close to the created treeline. He stumbled a few steps, daring to go off the path shortly. Almost stumbled into a flower of death. He staggared away from it, continuing to stumble warily. That was until he wandered in to a stone area. There were stairs around the area, all encasing it save the entrance. There was also a campfire, but no one tended to it.

The wind blew cold, so the brave one drew closer to the fire. It was so warm. He slept on his little trek, only to awake as the sun grew in the very small gaps inbetween the trees.

He continued, and made it to the other village by eve. After he left the path, he felt like a weight was lifted. He shook it off as not having trees every inch he looked.

However, if he woke the night he slept in the stones, he would have seen the face of the traveler under their helmet in the trees, smiling and benevolent. And if he looked behind him as he left, he would have seen a glimpse of the traveler, looking at him as he left, sadly smiling.

It would seem that every time the traveler seemingly disappeared, someone would get up a nerve and step onto the path. The foolheartier ones walked into the woods built past the stone-root trees. Those ones only came back a year later.

Decades past, and when people did see the travelers face, they looked no different than the day they first walked through the village, save for the mess of leaves and twigs and grass in the hair.

As these decades past, there were still only a rare few days when the traveler was not seen working and growing. And as they grow, so does the forest they've worked so hard to raise up from the ground.

Soon, there is only one distinction.

Forest and Path.

Centuries have gone now. the ones who knew the travelers face lay dead in a graveyard the traveler allowed space for in their forest. There are new paths now, to more villages.

More villages consumed by trees. Ever expanding, the trees rise up.

The traveler still silently smile upon whoever walks the paths of their forest. And they will do so, as there is almost nothing left but the forest.

#forestcore #forest #stories #long post #adventurecore #cryptidcore #in the travelers sense

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thesleepiestspiny · 5 years

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Eroded

Terrandus stood in the dead of night. So, so many things had happened at once recently.

It started with the horrors he experienced in that castle. Having to be pieced back together after attempting to end things peacefully with the owner and his horrible walking bodies. He still felt a twitch in his eye every so often from the torn nerves knitted together. He can remember the dazed, horrified look in Saiyel's eyes as he rounded the corner to find her. But as damaged and hurt as they had been, they had been escorted out by the big light adept and his little demon.

Then, he learned long after the fact that his once-bitter rival, the knight known as Windallus, had been lied to. Fervently and shamelessly, he'd been tricked into turning against his own home, and in a maddened frenzy upon the realization, Terrandus had to kill him. He can still hear the choking. Seeing those glistening yellow eyes fog over. Feel the last desperate pull of the man's very soul trying to cling to his body.

It was then that the final straw had been drawn. In the midst of a fight with the leader of the evils he'd faced, and the several duplicates he had manifested, he heard a loud, guttural scream as Terrandus looked past the one he had locked blades with.

He saw the fear in Laddegus's eyes as he witnessed a cursed blade stabbed through his phylactery. He saw Gieg desperately smash the construct away and try to keep Laddegus stable.

He saw the light in that man's eyes die as his soul shattered. And he heard a roar of pure grief and rage.

That demon stood by him now, shaking with what could only be described as trauma and yet glee. Because he held within the claw on his tail, a special key rune he and Terrandus had obtained from the Embermaw camp.

Oh, the Embermaw camp.

That's where Terrandus is sure he finally lost himself.

He had tried, one final time, to do things without hurting anyone. Gieg even tried to humor it.

But Inferna would not, refused to, listen to reason. She merely kept sending her people to their deaths as the combined might of a demon scorned and the most dangerous stone adept born yet were forced to cut them down. However, Inferna's agitation turned to fear as she began to see the look in the two's eyes, and saw the demon's aura growing with every kill. She attempted to use her true form to batter the two into submission, but Gieg had gained far too much strength. He matched her size and wrestled her to the ground. Terrandus stabbed her in the throat. Over and over, until neither of them could feel the heat of her dying breaths. The remaining dragons fled, and the unlikely duo raided her tent.

Which brings them here. To Gieg's plan.

He had sensed through one of Mezmerane's constructs that he was heavily protected in a pocket realm all his own, controlled by his own thoughts. However, with a key to his front door, they had the ability to alter where that door opened up provided they had enough power. And Gieg had just gained some of the strongest souls there were.

Terrandus motioned stiffly with his hand as he made a doorframe-like structure infront of himself. Gieg slotted the key into place above it, but did not let go of it. It turned from sickly green to burning red as he forced it to open in a specific spot. As he did, Terrandus was met with the sight he would have once considered ghastly. A torn-up, barely living corpse that one could only assume was the real Mezmerane. And assume he did, as he dragged the surprised, gasping figure through and tossed him to the ground behind him.

The man stood, cackling through his pain as he gripped his mask.

"So... you got tired of pla-"

Terrandus and Gieg rushed to close the gap as Mezmerane pulled another cursed implement from beneath his cloak. Up close, Mezmerane realized something.

There was barely any life in the boy's eyes. None of the adorable idealism he had so longed to break.

He'd broken him. But did it so utterly, that he was left unlike shards of dirty glass. And now, like him, the boy was ready to make anyone who tried to step on him bleed, suffer and rot.

The battle was one-sided. Not only was Mezmerane nowhere close to being in proper condition, but it was a battle on two fronts. He collapsed to the ground after being stabbed by two of Gieg's detached claws. He crawled away on his back. The smile faded from his face as Terrandus grabbed him by his singed antennae, holding him up as Gieg kept him pinned.

Terrandus raised his free hand, planted his boot on Mezmerane's torso, and wedged his fingers inbetween the mask and Mezmerane's forehead. And began to pull.

An unearthly scream, two voices combined into one, was let out with every inch. With so much resistance, Gieg had to chip in yet again, holding Mezmerane's head in place and clawing away at the spikes digging into the old man's skull.

Eventually, however, it gave away.

Terrandus pulled the mask from the cleric's face with the loud snap of over-worked metal and the dull rip of tearing flesh. In its efforts to stay attached, it tore away most of Armerane's face above his jaw.

The man's unlidded eyes kept staring into those of the boy he had destroyed. Gasping, choking as he felt all of his injuries kick in at once. He felt his skull barely held together by the remaining fragments of metal spiked through him.

The boy spoke for the first time in days. His voice was hoarse, and his lips pressed so tightly together he clearly strained to get them open at first.

"You wanted this. You told me yourself. I wanted to do something right for once." And for the first time, in a long while. The boy smiled.

#kendesai #oc #spiny art #spiny's story time #death.//.#gore.//.#BAD END #facial horror.//./#eye scream.///.#mood music: RUINous by Go! Child

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dreamtimeagain · 3 years

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...I was walking alongside a massive copper pipe, part of the inner workings of some kind of manufacturing plant. It was the end of the day, and as I walked along, I could hear the ping of the cooling metal as the contents of the pipes drained away. The hallway I was in was built with deep turquoise bricks, with black metal grating set high into the celing, but under the lights, which cast dark grids of shadows on everything I could see.

As I walked along, I was in no hurry, just casually finishing a shift monitoring the pipework. I was the last one in the building and when the last of the pipes stopped creaking, I headed up a flight of stairs to the main room, intending to leave for the evening.

The main room was a massive square chamber with hundreds of pipes leading in all directions, some large with bulky bolted junctions every few feet, others narrow and skinny twisting this way and that, turning the whole place into a maze of copper. But I was confident that I knew the best path across. However, as I stepped into the room, it began to change.

The pipework slowly started sinking down, along with the floor itself, and the room began to fill with a heavy mist. The mist was almost neon green in color and glowed, filling every crevasse inbetween the pipes. It was also really heavy and hung low on the ground, obscuring the floor entirely. I climbed up onto the nearest pipe, determined not to let the glowing green soup touch me.

As I moved quickly from one pipe to the next across the room, I heard several voices, and looked up to see people standing over me. They were massive, 2-3x taller than the building, which no longer had a roof, and they were discussing something amongst themselves, until one of them noticed me rushing across the room.

Then they got angry, and tried to stop me by swatting me off the pipework with their pudgey hands. I dodged them, climbing faster, leaping over large gaps and swinging from narrow pipes. But before I could reach the other side, one of them managed to grab me. Snatched me from the air, and held me up in front of their face. They too glowed greenish, like the mist below, and they were not happy to see me at all.

With a woosh of wind in my ears, the one who held me tossed me away. I fell through the darkness for only a few moments before I landed in a clearing. I didn’t fall hard, just simply, appeared on the ground. There were trees and green grass all around me, but it was still fairly dark. A faint bluish hue to the sky told me that it was early in the morning.

From behind me a group of children burst from the trees and ran past. I didn’t care anymore about my job at the plant, and instead decided to follow the children and join them in their games. We rushed through the trees skipping over roots and ducking under branches, until we all stopped at the edge of another clearing.

This one had a small lake in the middle, and the children were thrilled to see it. They all ran down to the water’s edge, grabbing small boats and sticks and paddling away from shore. I didn’t follow them. I decided to do my own thing, and turned away from the water and back into the trees, where I climbed higher and higher until I emerged into a third clearing.

This one was long and narrow with an old dried up creek bed flowing down the middle. It was full of small pebbles and gravel, light grey on the banks, and dark blue in the middle. In the clearing was a large piece of wood, sculpted to have a hull like a small boat, but perfectly flat on top instead of hollow. I stepped onto it, and rode it down the dry creekbed as if I was surfing.

The slope of the hill was enough that I could gain momentum despite there being no water, but as I reached halfway down the clearing, there was a shout from behind me and I turned to see a man, dressed in grubby brown clothes with a duck-like beak angrily shouting at me. As I watched he summoned a spout of water from thin air right in front of him, and it began to flow wildly down the creekbed that I was surfing on.

When the water reached me, the wood easly floated on top and I flowed with the water all the way back down the hill, through the trees and to the lake that the children were playing in. They had abandoned their boats on the dock and were now in the shallows, each holding a metal bucket filled with paints of different colors. As I watched, they poured the paints back and forth in some kind of mixing game, giggling at the different colors they made.

Then suddenly, from beyond the trees to the west, I spotted a large column of smoke and the children dropped their buckets and ran yelling up the hill away from it. I decided to follow the smoke instead and headed through the trees. On the other side was a large plain with some hills and rivers that created natural crevases and edges in the rolling landscape.

Up on one of those ledges was a large white stone wizards tower, with a blue peaked roof, several stories tall. It was attached to the side of a regular brick building that looked like it belonged in a city. There were crowds of people running away from the structure, and I could see that the smoke was billowing from behind the tower section.

Then the tower exploded. It didn’t go in one big blast, but instead a series of smaller blasts that demolished the structure from the base all the way up to the peak of the roof. I could feel the heat from the fire, and several large stones flew through the air trailing smoke as they rained down on the crowd around it.

I yelled at people to just wait, watch the stones as they arched through the air, and only dodge once you knew where they were going to land. I showed them how to do it, easily dodging three stones in a row, each about the size of a car tire. The last landed right next to me, sinking into the soft white sand that I was now standing on.

Once the fire started to fizzle out, I decided to see if there was anyone left inside the building and made my way around the back side where there were several large steel dumpsters in front of the back door. I pushed them out of the way and walked into a dark hallway. To my right were the bathrooms, and to my left the carpeted hall went further into the building and I could see several doors along the way.

I walked over to the bathrooms, but the main door was closed and locked, and there was a handwritten note, red ink on a white paper, taped to the door. The note said that the person had shouted into the bathroom before the fire took over, and that they didn’t get a response so it was probably empty. I looked past the doorway and saw that the room beyond was collapsed and full of rubble, so I shrugged and went the other direction.

Down the hallway, the first door I got to was on my right, and it looked like some kind of actor’s staging room with a large mirror and vanity taking up most of the far wall. When I pushed the door all the way open, a woman stepped out from behind it and told me I was in her way as she pushed past. She was wearing a crimson red robe, and underneath a pink t-shirt and skirt.

I followed her, trying to tell her that the building was still on fire, but she ignored me. Instead she headed into the next door along the hallway which turned out to be a large auditorium, and there were dozens of men of all kinds inside. They were all dressed in the same outfit as the woman, silky crimson robes over bright pink t-shirts and shorts. As soon as she entered, all of the men turned to pay attention to her and the whole group began to do some kind of synchronized slow ritual dance.

Before I can say anything to them another woman grabs me from behind. She is dressed in a white sweater and blakc pants and has impossibly long dark brown hair that kind of floats around her as if she was underwater. She tells me I’m not supposed to be here, and the next thing I know we are immediately back outside, standing in the white sand next to the stones that I dodged.

I tried to tell the woman than I was just trying to help by warning the people inside the building about the fire, but she looked at me like I was talking gibberish. I turned and leaned down to show her the stone I had dodged, when I was run into by another person. A woman dressed in flowing orange and pinks who was leading a small group of children away from the building.

When she ran into me, my smartphone, which I didn’t remember ever holding before this, was knocked out of my hands and split open when it hit the edge of the stone. I turned to warn her to be careful, but she just smirked at me condescendingly and turned away without saying a word, pulling the little kids along with her.

I chased after her as she dodged through several large red sheets that suddenly hung down in front of me, and I shouted trying to catch up with her. But then she looked panicked, and let go of the kids hands, dashing deeper into the silks, abandoning them. As I approached, I slowed down and tried to be friendly and smile at the children, who turned out to all be little girls around 5-6 years old.

They were scared and upset at being left alone, but I crouched down next to them and showed them my broken phone. I reassued them that they were not in trouble, as they were not the ones to break it, and distracted them by pointing out all the parts of the phone (the screen, the motherboard, the speakers, ect) and explainging how they worked together to make phones function.

As I am explaining the parts of the device, the girls huddle closer and ooh and ahh appreciatviely and seem to calm down alot. Then I hear a voice behind me, I think it was the same woman in white from before, who says something about how she can handle the girls from here, and that I have other things I should be doing. I turned my head to look up at her...

...Then I woke up.

#dream #lucid dreaming

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