My name is Fufu and I am a talking pig... or at least that's what I believed all my life because in the end it turns out that I was not. This is the story of how I discovered my true nature and it begins the very day Sabela left for the city of Nebula to deliver a letter.

After talking to my sister in the Pinewoods, I returned home and felt quite discouraged. And as if that wasn't enough, there I was met by an unknown gentleman with a tremendous wooden face, the kind that seems incapable of creating the most miserable of smiles.

He knew dad from something, I guess from when he was an adventurer. I didn't want to talk to him; humans don't really like to see a talking pig. Besides, I didn't feel like going home now that Sabela wasn't there anymore... I don't know how to say it; it didn't feel like a real home.

I decided to go to the Purple Forest, even though I was forbidden to go I was unable to resist... it was the Song, the Song that only I could hear and it came from beyond the forest, from beyond the King's Barrier... it came from the depths of the Nightmare Nation... and every year it grows stronger and stronger...

I went into the Purple Forest, but the Song was not the only reason I went there. I could find a lot of truffles, and I loved to eat them. Moreover, some of them grew as big as babies' heads and sometimes they had noses, mouths, eyes...

I sniffed around the forest to see if I could find any truffles, but unfortunately my snout didn't pick up anything special: the stale sweat of the purple trees, the wild scent of a family of goblins that had set up a lair in a nearby cave, the bluish electricity emanating from the King's Barrier...

I thought about going to visit the goblins to see if they wanted to be friends with me because the humans were more about shouting at me and throwing stones, but before I headed for the cave I smelled something familiar: it was dad and I thought it was strange, he doesn't normally go that far into the forest.

I also recognised the delicious floral perfume of Lucia, a friend of mine and also my sister’s. She scored ten, because she always fed me sweets and scratched my belly. Accompanying those two very recognisable smells, there was another one that was not so recognisable: blood and death. It was the man with the spider scar on his face.

I thought they would be looking for me and that's why I didn't go out to meet them. Dad didn't want me to go to those woods under any circumstances... but I wanted to keep going back and I would keep going back. I didn't care what he had to tell me. With that in mind, I decided to hide myself and wait for the moment when Lucia was alone to see if she would give me some trinkets.

They were talking about the King's Barrier, they were approaching it, and it seemed me very strange: humans don't usually do that because they are terrified of what lies on the other side. The eternal wilderness of the Nightmare Nation; where the only thing that survives is monsters. I guess witnessing the magnitude of that desolate place makes them realise how insignificant and miserable they are.

I decided to follow them and as we went deeper into the forest, the trees became weirder and weirder: it began to appear in the wood faces of human beings or rather things that wanted to look like humans and ended up being deformed ghouls. As if that wasn't enough, the branches of the trees gradually lost their foliage and began to change until they looked like arms with hands and everything. The most curious thing is that, at a given moment, the arms even began to move erratically, without any sense whatsoever, they simply moved for the pleasure of moving. The ground was also becoming more peculiar because now, instead of having grass, weeds, brush and all the usual forest floor stuff, it now had the same purple fleshy texture as the trees.

At one point, the tree trunks were completely covered with those heads that looked like humans, and some of them began to move, movements without rhyme or reason, with chaos as their only guide. They blinked in an uncoordinated way, their eyes moved in different directions, their mouths opened and closed, making their teeth rattle. But everything could get even weirder: they started talking, first a single word was what I heard: "Left!” a few steps further on: "Profile, militant!". Suddenly, the forest was a shower of disjointed words: "Waiter! Exam! Horses! Chicken! Bonfire! Cordoba!"

We got to the King's Barrier and I could see a crack two metres high. That was not good because monsters could come in from the other side and all they wanted to do was kill and eat humans. Lucia stood in front of the crack and placed her hands on it, from both of them a blue light was born and covered the wound in the Barrier and I understood why they had come to the depths of the Purple Forest: they were going to use my friend's Faith to close the crack.

The Nightmare Nation could be seen through the King’s Barrier. It was like an endless desert, with no vegetation, no animals... only monsters. I discovered that on the horizon there was something approaching at full speed and with each step it was revealing its monstrous appearance. It had a round body covered with black hair, but more than hair it looked like tentacles because they were so big and thick, it also had a large number of legs and thanks to them it was able to move at great speed.

As I got closer, I could see that it had a thick-lipped mouth with many teeth that were like needles. I thought it was strange that none of the three of them did anything about the monster, but as I looked at them I realised why they did absolutely nothing: they didn't realise it was coming towards them. Dad was looking at the sky while he stuck his finger up his nose, and the man with the scar was picking the petals off a flower. Finally, Lucia was so focused on closing the crack that she hadn't noticed the monster.

“Look out! A monster!” I shouted, but it was too late.

The monster slammed into the barrier and broke it, leaving a space large enough for a great number of monsters to enter. Lucia fell to the ground from a mixture of shock and surprise, though no damage was done. The monster approached my dear friend, licking its lips.

“Oh, by Helios!” cried Lucia.

Dad hit the creature with an axe and split it in two, and then he grabbed a red crystal that beat inside the monster and squeezed it until it broke. The bad part didn't end there: the earth began to shake and the ground opened up into the shape of a grinning mouth more than three metres long, with teeth bigger than me.

Next to him, the flesh began to transform into several tentacles more than two metres high: Lucia, my dad and the other man made their way in using their weapons. I was about to follow them, but that's when a tentacle grabbed me and lifted me into the air.

“Nooo! Help! This thing took me!” I screamed in terror.

“Fufu!” Lucia shouted, and was on her way to save me, but Dad grabbed her by the shoulder.

“It's better this way,” said dad.

“What are you talking about? If we left him there he will die!”

Dad didn't want to argue and punched her so hard on the chin that she was knocked unconscious.

“Was that necessary?” asked the man with the scar.

“What do you want me to do, that she should risk her life to save that thing? That thing!? I always knew I should have cooked the Black Egg for myself..." said dad and he didn't even look at me but put Lucia on his shoulder and went away with the other man leaving me alone with the monstrous mouth.

In those moments I didn't care if he ate me... because I understood that dad had never seen me as a son and our relationship had been nothing more than a lie.

He never loved me, he just put up with me until he finally stopped. The tentacle came down into my mouth, but those teeth didn't make mincemeat of me, instead the mouth closed and he kissed me. Then... he set me free.

“What... Why didn't you eat me?” I shouted at him, but I didn't get any answer.

I wasn't happy, I couldn't go home because dad would be there and he didn't want me anymore. I thought it would be best if they thought I had been eaten to death. Humans... I thought about them and didn't know why I should like them. Apart from Sabela and Lucia, none of them treated me well. I thought of the goblins that lived in a cave nearby, maybe I could find my place with them. I'd rather take my chances with the monsters than give humans a second chance.