Chapter Text
𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐬:
𝐅𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐲, 𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐥, 𝐌𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭
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Sat by a small campfire on his rucksack, his tarp and hammock already tied and prepared, Fundy was cozying up with a mess tin full of steaming, root-vegetable stew he had scrambled for himself. It was good, really good — but any type of hot food at the end of a day spent walking tasted divine, or so he had learned early on, when laying his eyes onto warm food, less tasting it, was a particularly exceptional occurrence.
Of course, the forest was not quiet — it never was, but the falsehood of quiet stalked through the dead of night and placated the villagers huddled in their homes, whose breaths fogged up the windows, the windows of bulging, wide eyes — how could it? It lived a different life, a life not consumed by a goal, a life worth living, a life fueled by what it had, not by what it lacked.
But a forest always missed the lost, not the dead.
It was not quiet; it was serene. For a couple of weeks, months, it had been serene. If the swaying treetops of fir and spruce and oak and beech allowed it, he observed this calm: cycles of the Moon, rain clouds covering constellations, cracking of caps of pinkish boletes, alarmed whistling of jays, white-and-black woodpeckers scaling bark, crumbling logs smelling of wet fungus and sugary rot, pale hinds of fallow deer flicking in the fields, stripped and teethed-at spruce cones, tracks of a wild sow and her piglets in withered mud. As he had watched the rhythm mellow and repeat, for tides would not stop crashing against shores, he had begun to feel content, he had begun to… not forget, per se, but… hope it could stay this way: stay simple.
The more he was content, the more the forest missed him.
Cold creeping down his spine, Fundy pulled at his bag and shuffled closer to the now-kindling twigs, peering into the embers. Both his socks and boots set by the fire seemed to be thankfully dried out, relatively — a stupid mistake on his part, thinking he could have ‘shortcutted’ his way through a puddle-ridden trail of all — so he did not interfere when the flame finally died out, savouring the last bits of warmth stuck under the layers. Toads croaked in the distance. He yawned — time to sleep.
It was between him tying up his rucksack to a tree and him crawling ungainly into his sleeping bag, rocking side to side in that old hammock of his, when some heavier animal rippled through the dry leaves with a steady rustle of its steps — right, it was deer rut season, he had heard the stags a couple of days back bellowing, one particularly close to where he had been sleeping that night — probably a deer. Quieter, Fundy resumed spreading out his sleeping bag.
A branch cracked right at the other side of his hammock.
“What a pitiful little wretch.”
Fundy stilled. With a heart pounding through his chest, he stared into that veiled darkness sprawling before him. Eyes wide, trying to see whoever must have stood there. No one stood there. The slithering, spat words now seemed so distant, a hazed memory — he second-guessed himself if he had really heard anything, for his mind could not be trusted, the tricks of ears and eyes known to be cruel, yet harmless. Uncertain, his exhale trembled through the night. Right. Tricks. Right.
“Oh, and here I thought the traitor kept to his ways.”
“Who’s there?!” With a scramble back, throat closed, Fundy spun wildly, desperately struggling to pinpoint the stranger between the drowned silhouettes of trees, scrubs and bodies that melted just inches off into the nought. In his quaking hand, a pocket knife, had it been fiddled with in panic, more than the blade open and drawn; sharp edges of the cold thing bit into his palm.
“The fruits of his labour, the disgrace, walking unspurred; it ɾҽѵօӀէʂ me to watch an existence of such… blasphemy, of such…” A sneered hiss washed over his nape — whirled, Fundy lashed out with the knife, digging blindly wherever he could — it all came from everywhere, the steps, from his front to behind, to his left to his right, seemingly circling him. “...ʍօçҟҽɾվ to one’s օաղ beliefs.”
“What do you want?! Who’s there?! Show yourself!” He hung onto the brandished blade like a lifeline. “R-Right now! Show yourself! Whatever you are!”
“Be advised: I do not take it lightly being spat on, particularly by… վօմɾ ҟìղժ. A ʂʍìɾçհ like you shouldn’t have a voice to begin with.”
‘What does that mean,’ the first clear thought darted through Fundy’s addled mind like a rabbit past a hawk’s talons, ‘what’s that supposed to mean?’
“But sure: I shall… humour you.”
He blenched, hand covering sight — from the cinder hollow had uproared a cerulean flame and blazed too bright, be it a blinding flash of cold white in whole-darkness — and, blinking rapidly, with a mind seared blank, eyes ticking back and forth, he squinted at where the supposed intruder should have stood, gauging, hoping, quaking. They were supposed to be there, meant to be there, were there. Surely, their voice must have given them away — yet Fundy, peering past the shaking tip of his knife, saw no one. Still. His stomach dropped. Still. What was this? Magic? It was as bright as ten suns here, so… how…?
Out of the corner of his eye strode a dip of weight, passing through the forest floor — akin to a pair of feet — having him back away slightly, focus trained on the crushed leaves in front of him. Fundy swallowed, breathed out. Breathed in.
“W-what do you want from me?”
Tck; the being sneered. “It doesn’t ʍąէէҽɾ what I want… what matters is what I— am able to… ցɾąղէ.”
Past the derided aftertaste of spat syllables, shuddering, Fundy minutely shifted. Without a thought. Only a breadth. Only a blink. Weight from one leg onto the other. Nothing. Zilch.
Now the world was collapsing everywhere around him.
In front of him stood a shadow. It was an unnaturally-still silhouette of swelling, pitless dark, swallowing the fire’s reflections, whose pair of seething eyes bored right through his skull. The look of frothing contempt and utter disdain sent cold down his spine when they peered at him like he was complete nothing, a bug squashed under a boot, a corpse of melting flesh — it didn’t sit right with him, it was all wrong, this was all so wrong — he had seen them before, whirling, oozing, gliding, a painfully familiar darkness forsaking him to just lay there — he was shaking. “I-I— I remember you.” Everything blurred. “Oh my god, I remember you, I saw you, I-I—” A choked out breath; lungs tightened in a vice. “Y-You belong to them. You’re one of them! You were there, you— where did you take Lux?! Where is she?! Tell me!”
“Of course this is about հҽɾ.” Heart hammering out of his ears, Fundy still heard them creep towards him. He could not move, could not defend himself, could not breathe. “I see the potential of an arrangement being made. Should I… քɾօѵìժҽ the bearings of your…” uttered foully, as-if tasteless, “ʂìʂէҽɾ, all you would be necessitated to do is to pass down an… ìէҽʍ to a certain someone, should you… happen upon them.”
‘They are with them.’ One ear in, out the other. ‘They are with them.’ Fundy’s back collided with a tree. ‘They are with them.’ Head shaking from side to side, he blankly stared ahead, at the someone who was not there. Suddenly, ‘they will tell you where she is,’ blaringly clashed into the hoards of, ‘they belong to them,’ blazing his mind anew. This would help him so much. They would show him the way to her; they knew where she was, they— oh Gods.
“What did you do to her.” Ears pressed flat, Fundy straightened, baring teeth. “W-what did you do to her?!”
“Nothing, you fool…!” Squealing like a dying animal, their exclamation abruptly cut off to a rocking sigh and a barely contained hiss of razor-keen restraint. “I will give this offer only once, ʂʍìɾçհ.”
A small price to pay. It swayed in his mind, the words flashed in his vision, ‘A small price to pay,’ again, again, again. ‘Don’t think about it.’ He could be an errand boy, sure, if that was what it took to finally see her — he could pact with who had destroyed his life, sure, if that was what it took to finally see her — he could take on this deal, sure, oh Gods, what was he doing—
“L-Let’s do it, then.”
‘Just don’t think about this, Fundy, don’t think about this and you’ll be alright,’ quaked through his mind while everything spun and swirled around, his voice distant, not belonging to him, said through a stranger’s tongue, “you tell me where she is — Lux, I mean — and I’ll do what you want, sure.”
He wanted to throw up.
“Be it.” A sharp inhale of the shadow made Fundy jerk away. “The first you trust is to be endowed with this… subsidy.” Into the leaves was carelessly dropped a small, golden figurine of sorts. “Be thoughtful to who you ʂքҽąҟ to. None other you meet shall… know of this transaction.”
“And this—” Thrown forth is a loadstone compass. “—will take you where you ʍօʂէ desire…”
‘What have you done now, Fundy?’
Completely locked-out, he kept staring at the rolled-over, pocket-sized objects long after the roaring flame had fizzled out, long after the last syllables, last words of the demon had crawled into his ears and rotted. Nausea had his guts in a vice — he felt horrible, properly horrible and he could not do anything about it, for he simply stood, and stood, and stood, and Gods, what had he done…?
Once, he found himself on his knees, clutching the compass in one hand, the figurine in the other, peering blankly ahead. The next, he was retching into a bush. The last, the hammock swayed under him, and all he saw were the pair of keen eyes boring into him, boring into him, boring into him.
Oh Gods; oh Gods.