“Master Bloodthorne has set the course, and so we shall follow it!” snapped Kaz, for once on his side about their direction despite that they were headed west. Then the imp, still in his dog form, turned to Damien from his spot on the knoggelvi’s head. “Though it takes us even farther off the course to Eirengaard.” Ah, there it was.
“This Lux Codex will prove useful. Now, shut it, both of you.”
The path into the forest was disused, grown over but easy enough to eke out. It led away from the main road that would add an extra week to the journey into Faebarrow and the Grand Athenaeum where the book was held. Being untraveled made the Gloomweald that much more desirous to Damien—less chances to see others and a faster route. The barony they sought was just on the other side, a measly two days, well worth the supposed risk of…what was it even? Amma hadn’t been terribly specific, just something about spirits and unfinished business, and he had a feeling the vagueness only heightened her anxieties.
A few gnarled and thorny bushes marked the edge of the wood. Autumn was fast approaching, lending itself to the dead-appearance of some of the trees, leaves fallen away and trunks drained of their vibrancy. Damien led the way in beneath bare branches that blotted out the midday sun. As they entered the wood, a hollower, windswept sound came up around them.
Damien took a deep breath, the smell slightly fungal and wet, but then this was a thick and old forest, after all. Shortly, the path was gone, and they had to pick their way across by glimpses of the sun when it peeked through the heavy tree cover. Damien had found his way many times in much more threatening places. Frankly, he couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. There was no flow of lava running beside them, no evidence of cannibalistic tribes littering the forest floor, not even the distant sound of over-sized wings beating ever closer by the second. Yes, there were moments when, from the corner of his eye, he thought he saw movement, but the animals of any wood were fast to hide out of the site of a predator, and what could be more apex than a blood mage?
Amma, however, was clearly not having any of it. Her head snapped about at even the slightest sound, and she didn’t blink for a very long time. If he had been a weaker man, he might have felt a little bad. “Amma,” he began, and even his voice made her jump, the knoggelvi beneath her huffing. Damien groaned. “Look around at this place. You’re surrounded by your favorite thing—trees. How can you be so afraid?”
“How can younotbe afraid?” she asked, voice low but annoyance creeping into it, an amusing surprise.
He scoffed. “Because I can kill anything with a simple spell, or—oh.” That was right, Amma was not a mage, and even if she were, she was still small with none of the claws or teeth of a draekin or goblin. Perhaps he had been too quick to be bothered by her reaction, and he felt himself weaken a bit. “Amma, what is that?”
She swiveled toward the direction he pointed. “What?” Her voice was a terrified, little squeak.
He grimaced, not what he meant to inspire. “That tree. What kind of tree is that?”
“Oh, it’s just a maple.”
He waited, but she didn’t go on. “All right, and what about that one?”
“That’s…another maple.” She bit her lip. “Can’t you tell?”
“No,” he lied. “How can you?”
“The leaves.”
If ever he wanted her to be chatty, now was it, yet for the first time, she wasn’t delivering. “Interesting. And that’s another, I suppose?”
“Well, no, that’s a hemlock, and it looks totally different.” She eyed him then instead of the gloomy wood. “They’re not poisonous even though most people think they are because of the name. You can actually make tea out of the leaves; Laurel taught me how.”
“And what does that taste like?”
She glanced upward, and then a little smile played on her lips. “Like winter, I think. Like the stillness in the trees when it’s cold enough to see your breath and the crunch of snow under your boots.”
Damien stared at the dreamy look that took her face, how the shadows of the forest fell over her features, taking away the seemingly unending supply of bright-eyed wonder and revealing a deeper contentment, something quiet yet still joyful. He almost asked her about this Laurel, about sharing tea in the cold, about all of the memories of winter she had buried in her mind, and autumn too for that matter, summer, spring, but then he swallowed it all back and stuttered out another shallow question about the local flora.
They went on similarly for some time until Amma’s words became less stilted, and she even managed to laugh lightly at Damien’s perhaps obvious questions. Soon she seemed to realize there was nothing to be frightened of, and even as they went deeper into the thicket, she remained relaxed. The forest darkened, though, to be expected, and eventually night fell, and with it, the sounds of the night fell on them as well.
Amma had managed to find them food from fruiting trees and bushes along the main road as she promised, but the apples and berries were gone now, and so when they dismounted and Damien said they would stop for the night, he set out to find them something heartier. Amma attempted to stay close, but caused too much noise keeping on his heel. “You need to stay put,” he instructed, pointing back for the knoggelvi.
“What, over there? By myself?”
“Kaz will stay with you.”
The imp, who had taken on his natural form again, stood there with spindly arms crossed, glaring back black eyes that shined menacingly in the dark.
“And you’ll have the knoggelvi.” He waved a hand and returned them to their natural states as well. Dark shadows immediately enveloped their black forms, and as the fur fell away to reveal the sinewy hide beneath, even Damien shuddered a bit.
Amma whimpered in the back of her throat. Perhaps they weren’t ideal companions for the eerie wood, but surely he wasn’t much better.
“I will only be gone a moment. Just…sanguinisui, sit here until I return.”
Amma dropped down onto the leafy floor with a huff, crossed her arms, and pouted up at him. He groaned and hurried off before changing his mind.
It did not take Damien long to find and capture a hare, but he decided to dress and butcher it where Amma could not see: she’d seen him spill enough blood, and he thought to save her further discomfort in the wood she detested so much. But the entire decision had apparently been wrong, as when he returned, Amma immediately sprang to her feet and demanded to know what took so long.
