The lights flittered on ahead through branches and over brooks, flashing coyly as you followed; and though they never tarried long enough for you to catch them, they never strayed so far ahead as to be out of your sight. You chided yourself again for chasing them, but kept at it just the same, wondering the whole time whether they were leading you out of the woods or deeper into them. After running through brambles and jumping over roots and stones for the better part of an hour, you had your answer and felt certain that you were in the very heart of the forest. As if to confirm you speculation, the lights stopped moving ahead and instead rose into the trees above you, resting in some type of lanterns which hung from the skeletal branches. Ensonced within their perches, the lights grew brighter, casting down their inky glow on the woods that surrounded you.
Trees sprouted from all around you, rising from the earth with ghostlike limbs of untold age and strength. They seemed to stand everywhere, even rising from the marshlike waters that formed the only clearings of any notable size. Mist rose in wisps and clouds from the waters, the latter reflecting silver from the moon above while the former wound themselves about the willow reeds before sending vaprous fingers upwards towards the waiting branches.
In the distance, crickets fiddled the self-same song they had from time immemorial, lending eerie harmony to the unseen voices of the night that croaked, howled, and whispered round the water's edge and through winding labyrinth of the trees. There was a peculiar feel to the place--a feeling that was at once both natural and unnatural, as if in this spot nature had somehow grown in size and now encompassed far more than you'd previously suspected. It was a place where anything might happen, and it was a place that you suddenly wanted to leave.
Too late, however, had your desire awoken, for with your first step the trees began to curl about you, their limbs intertwining and creating a woven prison of gnarled, skeletal branches. Within the growing darkness, you could hear them creaking and groaning as they wound and twisted around each other, locking you within an arboreal cell. The sound was maddening–like that of bone grating against itself beneath rended flesh–and you clamped your hands to your ears, desperate to shut it out. Still, it continued, seemingly without end–a long and tireless gnashing that reached ever inward. When it finally stopped, what little space existed between the tangled branches was consumed by gangly vines that snaked hungrily out of the shadows and wrapped themselves about your sturdy captors.
Alone within the ever-shrinking circle, your eyes searched frantically for an opening, a break, a tiny crevice in the impenetrable wall that seemed centuries old. But neither light, nor air, nor sound passed through the barrier. There was no chink within the fortress, and your mingled screams of anger and fear only echoed endlessly through the darkness within and without. You tugged at the vines till your fingers bled and hacked at the limbs until your arms grew weary, but your efforts were futile. The wall could not be broken by flesh or steel or human will; and so, riddled with despair, you slumped to the unyielding earthen ground–tired, cold, and bitterly alone.
You've no idea how long you stayed there. Time had lost all meaning within the noiseless void that held you. Hours, or perhaps days later, the vines began to unwind without warning, drawing their swollen tendrils back through the thickly-knotted branches of bark-encrusted sinew. Groaning and scraping in ancient protest, the trees parted and a single figure stood framed within the ink-veiled canopy of the forest. It stood utterly motionless, as if rooted within the soil as firmly as the tangled shapes that flanked it, its form obscured by shadow and mist. For a silent eternity it stood, gazing upon you with unseen eyes, taking your measure with unknown senses, before it began to approach.
Noiselessly, it drifted into the clearing that had become your cell, its shape shifting and reforming countless times as it drew nigh before finally settling on a form that appeared, at least within the wan light of the hidden moon, to be partially "human," though it might have easily have been formed of leaf and twig as flesh and blood.
It stopped an arm's length from you, watching you with the same eerie stillness and speaking not a word. When it seemed that the strained quietude could hold no longer, an unheralded wind rose in the clearing–a crisp breeze that seemed to emanate from the figure and rush towards you, brushing across your brow before wrapping you in a cloak of cool night air. It smelled vaguely of pine and juniper, but carried other scents as well. The combination was intoxicating, and as the fae wind whirled tight about you, voices began to echo round the timberland chamber. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of them–some deep and ancient, as the cool, moist earth and the bark-covered giants that rose therefrom . . . others naive and spry, as new-sprung leaves dancing nimbly on an errant breeze. They spoke with a common purpose, however, their voices blending into one thought, one intent, one mind.
~Darkness~ they whispered, ~the darkness watches you.~ You shook your head in confusion, understanding neither the message nor the messenger; but the voices appeared unconcerned with your state, and continued their strange warning without explanation. ~You cannot hide. You cannot flee. Three things you must know to defeat it--Name, Nature, and Nascence. Of these, only the second can we give. Its nature, is fire.~
Its counsel given, the wind faded and the fae host began to retreat. Desperate for answers, for meaning, for any small amount of clarification, you cried to the creature to wait . . . to explain. Your voice rang only in an empty clearing, however, for the creature had gone–faded, along with your cell, back into the forest from which it had come. You thus found yourself alone once more . . . alone, but with a new and uncanny sense of direction that allowed you to easily find your way back to town and to Merchants' Row.
