Orrick’s jade eyes grew dark as a storm-swept sea. “Because he chose you. He has always chosen you.”
She growled, whirling in his direction and leaping for him, but he was already gone.
Part Two
The Phantom Wood
7
Garren
30th day of the Tenth Month, 1774
Garren’s side burned as he trekked through the forest. “Gods…” he groaned, grasping at the wound the blasted demon had inflicted upon him. His hand came away wet with blood. The gash wasn’t clotting. His legs felt heavy as if his boots were made of iron.
The forest was unnervingly quiet, devoid of the usual sounds you would hear in the deep wood. No sound of small animals moving about, the call of a falcon, or the rustle of leaves on a swift gust of wind.
The trees were thick with rough-hewn emerald needles. They towered above him, nearly reaching higher than he could see. Their gnarled branches creaking on a non-existent breeze was the only sound that could be heard. The needles of the pines just brushed the top of his head as he limped beneath them.
For a moment, he could have sworn a branch trailed after him, reaching out for another fleeting touch of his hair. He turned sharply, but nothing followed. Garren narrowed his eyes, pushing forward through the seemingly endless wood.
The towering evergreens, although haunting, were quite majestic and beautiful, if he was being honest. He had not seen trees this colossal or spectacular in all of Svakland. They were near perfection, but their stillness created an otherworldly sensation that sent his skin crawling.
Specks of dust floated ahead of him and danced in the golden rays of the dying sun, turning them into shimmering flecks of gold that swam through the mist swirling around him. It was magical, yet so out of place in the dark and menacing forest.
It was called the Phantom Wood for those who had supposedly gotten lost in its tangled web of fog and trees. The old man had told Garren that the legend of the forest dated back centuries.
“When the moon grows full,” the old man said as he gazed up at the clear desert night sky, “the trees move on their own accord, and the mist grows thicker, trapping those who enter its lair, feeding on their souls until they are nothing but a ghost added to the haze.”
Garren was witnessing firsthand the way the forest seemed to shift as he moved through it, the mist hanging heavy in the air and clinging to him like an unwanted cloak as he trudged onward. But the full moon was still a day away. If the forest was this disorienting now, he couldn’t imagine what it would be like on the night of a full moon. It was a wonder the man had made it out of this place at all.
But it wasn’t the unnatural nature of it that urged him to venture within its depths. No, it was the much darker legend the man had regaled him with.
The legend of the White Demon.
As the elderly man had spun his tale of the creature, Garren had become more and more enraptured with each word.
“The legend of old speaks of a barbaric demon that comes from the Phantom Wood on the eve of the red moon to feed on the blood of the innocent.” The old man wove his tale. “It is only this night, once every seventy-five years, that the bloodthirsty demon appears. Where it lingers in between, no one knows. But the blood moon will show itself once again in just a few short months. I fear for my people. I fear for the devastation that is to come.”
Garren had spent the past weeks scouring texts and tomes wherever he could for mention of the beast. However macabre, the idea of the creature excited him. The mystery was far different from any other demon he had encountered in the past twenty years. None had disappeared, only to return at a specific point in time decades later. Where was it hiding in between? Where did it go for those seventy-five years?
Yes, this creature was something else entirely.
It was at least several centuries old if the man had his facts straight. It sounded like a tall tale. Something parents told their children to keep them from behaving poorly. Like the stories his mother had told him as a child of nymphs, djinns, and ghouls. Stories passed down through the generations with no concrete proof to back them up, the details altered with each retelling.
Garren had found no mention of this White Demon in any of the texts in Sangalia. However, he had found mention of the wood in a particularly ancient tome. Even so, it held nothing of significance. No actual knowledge of the forest or the creature. It had essentially been a long-winded warning to deter anyone from trying to enter the cursed place. But even if the demon didn’t exist and was simply a figment of the elderly man’s imagination, Garren felt called to investigate. He was a demon hunter, after all.
He had fought and defeated many demons over the years. It wasn’t until three years after that first encounter in his father’s smithy–in his fifteenth year–that he fully grasped the existence of demons and their detriment to Svakland.
He remembered it all too well. It was the night he vowed to hunt and kill the creatures, to rid the world of their pestilence.
The sharp sting in his side brought him back to the task at hand. He needed to find Sardorf.
That was another thing he had found no mention of in the texts, Sardorf. So his mission was truly based entirely on an old man’s word. “Blasted skies…” he murmured, his voice uncannily loud in the ominous quiet.
His movements were becoming increasingly more difficult. Sweat ran down his face and into his eyes, blurring his vision. Without a breeze filtering through the trees to cool his overheated body, he was beginning to stumble, and black spots danced in his view. The fog didn’t help as it continued to cling to him like a constant weight on his back. The air was thick enough to be considered something else entirely. It pulled the breath from his lungs.
What the hell is this place?
