15. Chapter 15:
Chapter 15:
Once our minds had settled, Foxglove went over to the cage in the side of the area to try and find out a bit more about what was going on in this tent. "I need to know what they want from us. Fa Raven seems to be some sort of ancient being, but the rest of these animals? most of them are from species allied with the Conglomerate, so I need to make sure that they aren't thinking about selling us out." She walked over to the cage, in which there were two foxes and a stoat. Most of the Stoat's left leg had been horrendously burned away, and I could barely stand to look at it. the foxes were not much better, with no major injuries, but having a strange personality that made me feel as if they knew more about myself than I did. I let Foxglove take the lead, as I was still thinking about what I had just found out. I was foolishly trying to regain a sense of self, any that I had previously had having been ripped to shreds by the revelation just awarded to me by Fa Raven. I tried to sense the fragment inside of me, trying to isolate its influence in my mind, as if cupping my hand around a section of a lake to keep the water from leaving - I just could not. The influence of thw witches tainted me, I hated myself and I did not want to hurt anybody else because of what I was being led to do. I could not even trust my own thoughts, never really knowing what was me and what was the construct of some understandable mind of a different sort. Not being able to trust yourself instills a different sort of loneliness, where even lies you tell yourself to ease the pain only drive it into you deeper, and you try to stop existing as a conscious entity. "Hey, Stuvlok. Come here." Foxglove called for me. I walked over, trying to avoid squishing any of the small rodents and birds under my feet.
"This is Hejj. I have asked him to tell us everything he knows about this place." She looked around, trying to subtly check how truthful Hejj was saying. "Hello Hejj. What do you have to tell us?" I asked, trying to establish a sense of control over the situation. I did not want this fox ignoring me. Hejj was small, even by the standards of foxes. He had to sharp ears, that stood up every time he looked nervous, which was often, leading him to look around in instantaneous paranoia, and curl up into ball every so often. His fur was a rich, deep auburn colour, and differed from the other foxes in havign streaks of a lighter pale every so often along his back. He sat in the cage curled into the corner closest to us, legs up in the air as he played with hsi bushy tail, and combed himself.
"Hello. I hear you need some information about this place." he said, looking at both of us intently. "Yes, that would be really helpful, what is this tent?" Foxglove asked, coming closer to the bars. "This tent? It is the central meeting point for the Order of the Corvids. They are a group of ancient birds who come together to guide their followers, and currently, Fa Raven, that ancient, rotting cadaver over there is leasing it. The leader changes every season." He said, trying to seem careless, but with a desperate note in his voice that betrayed how lonely he must have been getting in the cage. "The mice and rats and birds follow them because the Corvids tell them that following them provides a reprieve from the war. The congregation has increased tenfold since the war began. The Corvids are happy for it to keep going, I have heard they try stir up conflict sometimes as well! Anything else you'd like to know?" The fox slumped back down onto the floor, having stood up when he had been speaking, helping to show me and Foxglove that he was not really in the mood for talking. I suddenly got a question. "What did you do to get in there?" I asked, hoping that I would not further annoy him. "I ate one of these rats. They caught me, packaged me up into a small box and brought me here. I have been in here for about the past month, They want to starve me to death." Hejj coughed a few times, and I noticed how frail he was looking, his legs stick-like and the colour of his fur now quite obviously from severe malnutrition. His snout had shrivelled up, and he seemed to me now very weak and very tired, completely reframing what I had thought to be carelessness as a desperate resignation to his fate.
Next, we walked towards the Stoat, who did not seem to be paying much attention to the world around him, but was instead thinking about something deeply. "Excuse me, could you talk?" I asked. "Of course. I get very lonely in here. I was imprisoned for trespassing. They tell me that they will release me in a bit. What do you want to know?" he said, in a gruff voice. "Do you know much about whether the lake is safe at the moment?" Foxglove asked, tentatively. "Action around the beaches has slowed down considerably, I have heard of some action down south on the other front. Are you planning to go to the lake?" he said, suspiciously staring us down. "Yes, we are." I said. "Well, be careful." He grumbled, and went back into his deep thought.
Behind him, I saw Hejj waving frantically to us to get our attention.
"Get me out, you two, and i will give you anything you want." Hejj told us, almost dreamy in his voice, the sing-song quality almost tragic. He laid on the floor now, looking up to the ceiling of his wooden cage. I thought about this, and decided that it was not my place to meddle in this group's dealings. I knew that his punishment seemed quite harsh, but I could not think of whether the crime suggested such a punishment. Was one life worth more than another? Do base animal instincts allow us to get away with harming others? As I thought about this question, Foxlgove came to the cage and quickly said, "I do not think that We can do that, I am very sorry." She began firmly walking away, grabbing my forearm and taking me with her. As we went to leave by the exit, Fa Raven jumped out and stopped us in our tracks.
"Do not go yet. Wait." They said, those eyes of theirs now squinting in a sort of pain. "Wait for what?" I asked, "Thank you or all of your help, but we need to get going. The witches will nto wait for us before they consume the children they have taken." I explained, trying to understand their motivations. "Wait for the Rats to prepare the supplies for you. Then go. They will help you." They said, and scampered off towards the bowl of broth.
I looked ot Foxglove, a wary look in my eyes. I did not know whether I trusted the supplies or not, btu I knw that we had no other choice, as all of ours had run out not that long ago.
A few minutes later, a rat came to us and motioned for us to follow it out of the tent. Outside, a few supplies were arranged in two even grids, one smaller than the other. I went to the larger one, and packed all of the things into my pack. There was food, there were some herbs that it would very hard to just stumble across, mostly having been pounded into powders and even some weapons, a few flint shards and a handful of heavy hand-axes. Evidently, the weapons they used in the woods were not the most advanced, at least for my standards.
We waved the tent goodbye, only really seeing its massive majesty from the outside, scarlet folds of cloth and string rising in amongst the trees like a giant creature of some kind. The golden tassels at each peak flowing in the wind, and rustling against each other and the canvas material under them. While we walked, we did stayed relatively quiet, Foxglove only telling me directions, and me commenting on various things I could see around me. While we walked, eventually the tent faded out of view, engulfed by the soft complexity of the woods, absorbing light and people alike. Once night fell, and we had eaten some of the rations given to us, most of which were a relatively tasteless light green porridge-like substance which I did not enjoy eating, but was entirely filling, and seemed to contain everything I needed to be sustained for long periods of walking. My feet did nto hurt nearly as much as they had done before. I soon came back into time with the ways the woods worked and how they changed throughout the day, I relearned the scent of the trees releasing grains of pollen into the air in the early mornings, the high-pitched, sudden sneezes of Foxglove making me giggle every so often. We got closer and closer to the lake, and at one point, I began to be able to hear the waves arriving at the shore of the lake, the soft, sullen sounds of water begetting motion and motion begetting sound.
The next day, while walking, I began to have a headache.
It started suddenly, and I did not quite understand where it had come from, but it was growing in intensity.
I first felt it behind my eyes. A slow pulsing sensation that made it painful to blink, and made me feel as if my eyes had been blown up and enlarge to the size of pig bladders as I walked. i was careful not to let Foxglove know, as I knew that the capture had slowed us down greatly and that we needed to make up for the time that we had lost. I could not be the reason we floundered. Though my memories f what had happened outside of the woods before I had entered had been beginning to fade, I remembered the name of Wea distinctly, and I remembered that Foxglove had otter pups to be looking out for as well. I remembered my promise to myself and the promise that Foxglove had made, an tried to use it to shield myself from the pain, and not let it affect my movements, or my mood. This failed horrifically. The mind is beholden to nothing but the physical form, and no pain can be hidden from the other without consequences, however gradual they come on to you.
The ache soon spread to my ears, which seemed ot be heating up every time the pulse racked my head. My eyes began to burn, the pain only increasing in strength when I blinked, and so I was left in an eternal liminality between extreme pain and slight pain, whatever I did leading me into a situation where I had no chance of escaping the eternal constant. Suddenly, while walking, I began to feel my footsteps lighten, my breath slow, and I saw myself floating up off the ground, as I felt my legs collapse, and my eyes see the colour of absence.
In the distance, there is a shape.
The shape is larger than anything I have ever seen, larger than any building, larger than any creature, larger than anything I can even bear to imagine. it leaves a little pale grey around it so that I can tell that it is an object, not just where I am. The shape is largely amorphous, moving continuously, with no real way of describing it other than the shape changed in the same way a stream of water changes slowly and incrementally yet smoothly when being poured down a gradient. The colours were also unlike anything I had ever seen before. The colours could scarcely be called colours, but were more like emotions distilled and physicalised into properties of the form that stood before me. Worry. Anger. Fear. Joy. They all painted themselves up in front of me, and I could see them changing and mixing and disappeared. it almost seemed as if every few seconds, small tentacles were sent out, almost tentacle like, but more like a deformation of the surrounding air, the trees and grass moving with it.
Just looking at it, I felt as if I was going to faint - though I also felt a great sense of satisfaction, both feelings I could not explain. More than any of this, however, I was terrified. I could not bear move closer or move further away from whatever the shape was. It looked both alive and not alive at once, and I was perplexed at an almost primal level. Just seeing the creature made me want to leave, but I did not want to stop staring, to stop absorbing in whatever the creature was trying to do to me. I almost felt as if I was looking into myself, with one giant circular eye looking into wherever I was. The creature was at once separate form me, while also being a distinctly familiar, and personal part of who I was. I soon deduced that this thing must be a Witch, or at least the fragment inside of me. The headache still raged on, making me feel as if my head was close to exploding, the pressure so high that my eyes seemed to be being squished out of my face. I looked straight into the middle of the creature, somewhere I had not stared at before and saw an absence of existence that made me feel as if it was staring at me from out of that nothingness.
I finally succumbed, and felt myself being pulled to a direction I could not quite understand - neither up nor down nor left nor right - at visceral speeds, and the blood rushing out of my head, leaving my field of vision slowly degrading into a darkness, and my body feeling broken and useless.