Project: TheirWorld - Chapter 030 - Part 1

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Ties

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TheirWorld

Though she had spent a good amount of time helping around the guild, Guin learned a lot of skills and gained quite a bit of faction credit, but nothing came up about the missing pelt, the traps, or even the corruption in the woods. Just where did these hunters hunt that no one had noticed anything?

The cook called everyone to sit for a late lunch of meat pies, roasted potatoes, leek stew, and several batches of sweets - compliments of Guin, who had become the hunters’ new pet, it seemed. Everyone gathered around a long table - which had seemed to appear like magic when her back was turned - and began talking excitedly to one another, laughing and filling their bellies with cheap ale. A set of giddy men off to the side began to play small instruments and people sang jolly tunes of hunts and other things. Keeping her eyes and ears peeled, she went around talking to those at the table, building as many connections as she could.

“Would you like a tart, Master Euen?” Guin offered the Master Hunter a plate of the sweets she had made.

The man’s lips curled into a tight smile as he took one gingerly, and said, “Thank you, girl.” He began turn away, but instead looked at her again, as if deep in thought. “Tell me,” he started. “How does a girl like you go so deep into the woods? The beasts aside, the corruption… it changes them. The ones there now wouldn’t be difficult for hunters like us to deal with, but you, you are just a child.”

Guin laughed. “Trial and error, I suppose. And maybe just a bit of luck,” she said. “The hunters haven’t said anything thus far about the corruption. Do they think nothing of the corrupted beasts?”

Dawl shook his head. “They do, yet they do not,” he told her looking into the woods. “These woods are always strange, even on the most normal of days.” His eyes skirted over to her. “... Plus, the most obvious signs of corruption are not for the eyes of normal men.”

“What do you mean?” Guin asked, putting her plate of tarts on the table and taking one to nibble at.

“What do you think the corruption is?” he asked.

“Death,” Guin told him. “Darkness. Sticky, rot. Disease that spreads over the land.”

“Mmm,” Dawl went, starting to walk toward the forest’s edge. Guin followed. “It is death, in its way. Rot - but not as I think you believe it to be.” Guin furrowed her brow as together they looked into the deep of the woods. “This kind of Corruption is not like an illness that you can catch. It does not simply spread over the grass and kill the physical body. What you have called ‘corruption’ is simply a description of what you see - not an explanation of an event. The darkness you see? The rot that you smell? We - the hunters, I, - know nothing of it except in from the tales of our elders. Our betters.” Guin looked up at Dawl as he cast his eyes to the ground, hate and sorrow reflecting in them as she realized what he was saying. “The Corruption, you see, is a spirit itself, created by the malice of other spirits - a malice so strong that it has gained the power to influence the thoughts and minds of souls, and drag them into its own power. The more souls it gathers into itself, the stronger it becomes.” He turned to her, putting his hands behind his back. “But it is not darkness, girl, nor is it anger. It is very depth of sadness.”

Gaping, Guin looked into the forest, clenching her fists. “You said you cannot see it - but, how do you know all of this?” she asked after a moment.

“I am a hunter,” he gave her a wry smile. “A hunter of White Fox Forest.”

“That’s not the real answer though, is it?” she said. “I’ve talked to people around town, around here, to Pastor Jormund - none of them know anything. They think it’s all superstition and folklore. Why do you seem to believe it?”

Dawl sighed. “Jormund, Jormund… that fool,” he muttered, a slight grin appearing on his face. “Bloody walking contradiction, that one is. He will talk till day’s end about the Lady and fill your head with nonsense - all the while denying his own reality. I say this, but you would do well to heed Jormund’s words.”

“Because I’m a child?” Guin asked bitterly.

“Because he is one of the few left in this village who knows what this forest really is,” Dawl told her grimly. “Once, Bade was a bastion of peace and prosperity between the Che and Veil kinds - but now it is just another outpost institutionalized by outside forces. Even before the Paladin came, people had already forgotten the true history of this land. More’s the pity - somehow, all good intent became spite. The appearance of Corruption is not unusual in this land. It hasn’t been for a long, long time.”

“And you and Jormund?”

“Jormund and I… suffice to say, we know the dangers of these woods better than most.”

Yes! Guin exclaimed in her head. It wasn’t much, but it was progress. She would take what she could, so she asked, “How is that? Pastor Jormund didn’t seem too keen on the woods when we talked about it…”

Dawl looked a little uncomfortable, but her told her, “His - ours - is an old story.” He stuck a finger in her face. “Understand: There is nothing in this world that is all good - just as there is nothing in this world that is true evil. Life has never been about good and evil, girl - there is only life and the laws of nature - laws that are to be obeyed.” But as Guin started at him expectantly, he folded his arms. “But you aren’t just going to accept my wisdom, are you?” he said, bitterly. “Fine. The village would know most of it anyway, though I doubt they would tell you much. Jormund and I are - were - old friends. I would be yet, if I felt I deserved it, but… We made many memories together in these woods. Some were good, others were not - that is the way life goes.”

“One of those laws, I suppose?” Guin asked with an amused snort, which he returned in kind. “Why aren’t you friends now?”

“You will learn as you grow older that people will naturally drift apart,” he told her, but she didn’t like this answer.

“Perhaps,” she said. “But people don’t ‘naturally’ become angry at one another; not without reason. When you were speaking last night, it sounded like you two had some experience with a Corruption that appeared before. Did something happen?”

The question made him look even more uncomfortable, and he went over to sit at a nearby workstation. This time, when Guin went over, he began to speak softly. “Something did. Many years ago - though not so many as I wish it were.”

Dawl looked out over the area in which the guild was merrymaking; laughter and dancing giving such vibrant air in sharp contrast to the shadow that seemed to weigh down the Master Hunter’s shoulders. There was silence between them, for a time. They watched and listened to sounds of life that was in front of them, around them. Then:

“My grandfather loved these woods,” he started, his voice cracking slightly. “When we were children, we would go to my grandparent’s cottage and listen to his stories - what stories he had! We hung onto every word. So often he spoke of the spirits and the magical creatures that lived in the woods. In the air,” he lifted his eyes to the sky. “The adventures he went on - I can only dream of.

“The stories of his youth were our favorites; how he lived as a youth, traveling here and there with his friends from the Veil, serving his lord and master until one day, he met a beautiful woman who loved the Lady and joined this village.” Guin’s eyes narrowed. This story sounded familiar. “My father and Jormund’s mother hated him and how he filled our heads with ‘nonsense’ - but together, we learned to love the forest. Be at peace with it - even if we couldn’t see into the Veil like Grandfather did.

“After a while though, Jormund began to change,” Dawl went on. “He started siding more and more with his mother - a Paladin sent by the imperial church to change us ‘heathens’ into devout followers. Eventually he, too, began to send cruel words in my grandfather’s direction.” Dawl’s hands gripped his knees tightly as he continued. “In those years, we grew apart. He, bound to the path his mother set him on, and I, keeping at the heels of my grandfather. Grandfather would take me to the woods and teach me the ways, even as he spoke to things that I could not see. I accepted that I, like my mother, simply did not have the Gift. I would never be like my grandfather. I could never be the Servant to the forest as he was.”

“Servant…” Guin muttered. Could it be? “Your grandmother wouldn’t be Alta Noin, would she?”