Plotlogs
Beware He Who Whispers In The Dark Sr Sienna 241021
In an enigmatic forest path known as The Path of Forgotten Echoes, Kah, an ancient wolf entangled in a somber pursuit, navigates the unsettling terrains swathed in perpetual darkness. Amidst the whispering trees and elusive shadows, he encounters a siren voice, promising knowledge and power at a mysterious cost. This voice, manipulative and ancient, seeks to unravel the very essence of Kah, taunting him with the ghosts of his past victories and identities swallowed by time.
Despite his inherent strength and historical conquests, Kah finds himself ensnared, not by physical bonds but by the spectral chains of his legacy’s ambiguity. The voice lures him deeper into the heart of the forest, where the lines between reality and illusion blur, challenging his sense of self and purpose. Kah, defiant yet intrigued, engages with the entity, questioning the nature of its desire and the truth behind its tempting offer.
The forest responds with a more tangible manifestation of Kah's internal struggle. It ensnares him with vines and roots, physically dragging him into the earth, a symbolic reflection of the voice’s attempt to consume his essence. Kah, faced with his impending erasure, battles the embodiment of his eroded legacy, a confrontation that lays bare his vulnerabilities and the enormity of his isolation.
As Kah teeters on the edge of oblivion, a Keeper emerges, a figure seemingly familiar yet enigmatic, offering salvation or further damnation. She presents Kah with a final choice, a chance to redefine his existence beyond the shadows of forgotten legends. The Keeper's intervention provokes a moment of reckoning for Kah. In a desperate bid for self-preservation, he summons the remnants of his will, challenging the voice’s claim over his legacy.
Kah’s resistance triggers a transformation, not just of his physical form but his existential bonds. He endures a harrowing unmaking at the hands of the Keeper, a process that strips away the vestiges of his past glory and torment, leaving him bare and anew. The price of this freedom is profound, marking both a loss and a beginning.
Emerging from the ordeal, Kah finds himself on a path, literal and metaphorical, wandering away from the entity and the Keeper, whose true essence whispers of wisdom and sorrow. His journey forward is uncertain, marked by the dual specters of freedom and loss. The conclusion leaves Kah stepping into an undefined future, carrying the weight of his transformed identity and the haunting promise of shared paths with the mysterious Keeper, a testament to the enduring struggle between legacy and liberation.
(Beware He Who Whispers in the Dark(SRSienna):SRSienna)
[Sun Oct 20 2024]
In The Path of Forgotten Echoes
The forest path stretches endlessly, swallowed by an impenetrable darkness that coils like mist between ancient, twisted trees. The air is thick with the scent of damp earth and old wood, tinged with a faint, sweet decay. Shadows stretch unnaturally long, moving as if alive, slithering between branches that creak like whispers exchanged in secret.
Faint, fragmented murmurs drift on the air, layered like echoes of half-remembered conversations, voices just out of reach, familiar and unsettling. Occasionally, a figure emerges from the mist; a face, half-seen and immediately forgotten, fading into the shadows as though it had never been there at all. A dim light flickers in the distance, neither growing closer nor farther, like a memory one can't quite fully grasp.
It is night, about 55F(12C) degrees, There is a waning gibbous moon.
In the shadows the midnight hour,
A voice calls soft and low,
He whispers dreams of untold power,
Of secrets none should know.
"Come to me," the voice entices.
"For I can grant you more."
"The world is yours for just the price..."
"A thread from life's own core."
It's a tale as old as time, whispered on the tongues of those who warn of yearning for too much. Perhaps Kah might remember it, perhaps not.
In the dead stillness of the midnight hour, a voice drifts on the breeze, smooth and enticing, weaving through the branches like a whispered secret. "Come closer," it beckons, low and honeyed, promising knowledge buried deep and power untouched by mortal hands. Each word sinks into the night like a thread into silk, pulling with a subtle insistence that tugs at something primal; something ancient. The forest, so familiar to him, begins to change, the familiar scents of earth, bark, and wolves replaced by an unsettling sweetness tinged with decay.
The path beneath Kah's feet twists into strange patterns, swallowed by mist that coils between the roots of twisted trees. Shadows stretch unnaturally long, slithering like serpents over the ground, as if guiding him deeper. The volatile hum of emotions from the wolves he feels so often fades, leaving only the whispering voice to fill the silence.
"Just a little further," it promises, sweet as a lover's touch. "The world awaits, yours for the taking... The world awaits, yours for the taking. All I ask is a thread from life's own core."
With each step, the connection to the forest slips away, leaving Kah with an unfamiliar emptiness in its place. The air thickens with the weight of something old, something waiting.
"Come," the voice whispers, just out of reach. "I have been waiting for you."
While not a man of complete discipline, it's rare for Kah to find himself so distracted and so when he does lift his head to notice his surroundings he's surprised to find them not where he'd left them, so to speak. With a slow blink, his ears pick up the whispers of a voice he can't quite place. Does it sound familiar? Perhaps, but there's no true sense of recognition as the Ancient man looks around. Generations of instinct blend with an equal amount of training as the Egyptian seems to find himself not only not in the forest he'd been in before but one that doesn't offer him any sense of connection or presence. This is not the land he knows.
"I have conquored the world" he says, dropping any pretense of his more humble self as he walks alone through the strange Path. He doesn't stop though, his feet letting his instincts walk the path by feel and by instinct. "I have asleep" as if that answers this voice's mysterious question, or statement. "I am here now. What do you want of me?" Blunt and direct as always as he considers the words already spoken.
From the shadows, the voice coils, smooth and silken, a ripple of amusement threading through its tone. "Oh, Kah Nhet," it whispers, savoring the lane like a lover's sigh. "You, who conquered the world and slept through centuries, returning only to find yourself in a land that does not know you." The words slip through the darkness like tendrils, wrapping around Kah's arrogance and tugging at its edges. "All your victories, your feats of strength... What are they, if no one remembers? If the story changes with each telling?"
The mist thickens, and the trees seem to lean inward, their branches twisting like ancient fingers yearning to touch, to scrape away this exterior until he lays bared before What Watches Beyond the Path. "You were Lycaon, the cursed king. The blacksmith Bouda. The knight Melion. But what did any of that earn you?"
The voice drips with mockery, each name dredging up echoes of lives lost to myth, twisted through the filter of time. "Your triumphs were great, and yet here you are; another wanderer in a forest of forgotten echoes."
A chuckle, dark and intimate, dances on the air. "You think yourself above riddles, but riddles have always been your kind's undoing. Alexander knew that. The gods knew that. And now, so do I."
"You ask what I want?" It Who Observes from Behind continues, its tone almost playful, a sweet distraction from the danger that lies behind it. "I want what all the things of the dark desire, Ancient One. I want a story; a thread of your life, unspooled and cast into the void..."
"It is simple, really. Without threads, even the finest tapestry unravels. Give me yours, and I will grant you what all conquests could not..."
"Permanence. To be remembered forever, untouched by time."
The forest falls eerily silent, as if holding its breath, waiting for Kahs response. The path beneath his feet shifts subtly, as if inviting him to take one step closer to the offer.
Each passing word seems to wear at the edges of Kah's patience, or perhaps his calm. Some of him is restrained, another is the overall centuries of training, meditation, soldiering that have given him a wide scope of the world and a measured ability to see it and react to it with inctinct, but not without thought. This seems encroached upon as those words continue to thread their way around the man's confidence. "A story? You want to know a story of my life? You seem to know it already" he murmurs, his eyes still casting about and looking for where the voice comes from. He knows it's futile but there's no stopping him from doing so anyway, his preadtor's instincts having a need to keep a constant watch on his surroundings. Continuing to walk, he takes more cautious steps. "Being remembered ... isn't what it once was." He grunts, "How would you do this?" The question belies his interest, despite offering a denial of the value of this offer. His feet move slow but steady, unable to remain still.
The voice coils tighter around Kah, pressingi not every seam of his had-earned composure like smoke seeping through cracks. "A story?" it puirrs, its tone light and mocking. "Oh, no, Kah. I do not want a story. I want your story; your truth, your essence, unspooled dfrom the tangled knot of others' commands. What have you ever done for yourself, ancient wolf? Every ttriumph you claim was at the whim of another. You were a blade in Alexander's hand, a beast loosed upon Tyre, a tool wielded by kings and gods. You've lived lifetimes, yet never your own."
The shadows slither closer, brushing against his senses like cold breath on his neck. "You say being remebered isn't what it once was; how easily you life to yourself." The voice dips, soft with false sympathy. "Isn't that what you have fought for, time and again? To leave a mark that time cannot erode? And yet, you are a nameless dog in the forest, a cur who gnaws at the scraps of old glories while history forgets the taste of your name."
There's a low chuckle, smooth and cruel, curling beneath the weight of its words. And suddenly, upon the path, Kah is made to visualize himself in a gilded mirror, its reflection not of him at the moment, but as he truly is; a withered, gaunt creature, hunched and broken, with fur matted in dirt and blood, patches missing where wounds never healed. A leather muzzle clamps over his snout, silencing him, and a rusted iron collar digs into his neck, a frayed leash jerking him forward from unseen hands. His scarred body trembles, every step hesitant, as if bracing for the next blow. In the reflection, he stumbles, dragged like a beaten cur, eyes dull with exhaustion...
Not a wolf of legend, but a pitiful beast, bound and muzzled, cowering in shame.
With a snarl, Kah lashes out at that mirror, trying to break it into a thousand pieces. "Well you can't have what has never been!" His voice roars out, and for a moment his words a fierce, sonorous baritone rather than the quiet and soft-spoken measure that seems to strange coming from the big man. Whether or not he can break the glass, he'll storm past it as he moves faster as his anger builds. "They are still mine" he seethes. "Empires and kingdoms built on my back. Crowns and thrones. You do not have to tell me what my life amounts to." Kah whirls about as if he can catch this voice by surprise. Of course it would be in vain but he tries, none the less. "How can I give you what does not exist?" His hand reaches out to grasp at his neck. For him, his hands clamp onto something solid that immediately begins to burn the flesh of his hand, smoke trailing from the clutch as he yanks at it viciously causing himself more pain. "Will you trade one for another?" A wordless scream is all that follows, of frustration and hatred and anger that bleeds out of him like the plague that slowly kills everything within his aura.
The mirror cracks but does not shatter, the fissures spreading like veins, each fracture reflecting Kah's distorted face; furious, desperate, and haunted. His roar echoes through the void, but the forest does not answer with fear; it answers with patient cruelty. The collar around his neck shifts and melts away, evaporating into smoke, only for the ground beneath his feet to splinter apart. Vines and branches slither from the earth like serpents, twisting upward with unnatural speed. They coil around his limbs, stabbing through his skin and sinking deep into his flesh, pinning him down with each sharp thrust.
The more Kah struggles, the tighter the branches bind, piercing him like nails, each thrown and tendril pulling him closer to the soil.
The ancient wolf, once conqueror of empires and destroyer of kings, is dragged to the forest floor. His strength, so vast and unyielding, is rendered useless as the vines impale him at every joint, every muscle, locking his body in place. His blood seeps into the earth, absorbed like rain into parched ground, as though the forest itself feeds off his agony.
The air thickens with decay, the scent of rot mingling with the sharp tang of iron, as the branches twist, rooting him to the earth; a monument to his broken will.
The voice returns, soft and insidious, curling around him like smoke yet again: "Your life amounts to nothing but what others made of you, Kah. And now you are exactly as they left you: bound, bleeding, and forgotten."
The vines jerk tighter, forcing him deeper into the soil, his body swallowed by the earth until only fragments of his form remain above ground; like salt sown into the Earth after a plague.
His pain becomes the landscape, his struggle etched into the ground, as the forest buries him beneath the weight of centuries he can no longer escape.
Time becomes a meaningless thing; it could be a thousand years, ten years, a single breath, or more.
"Then what do you care to have it?!" Only a short time before, He had stood ready to deliver the Last Hunt to another of his own, and he is no exception. It's a struggle if a futile one, against the vines and roots that drag at him and draw him into the Earth. His nostrils flare in frenzy and his entire frame bulges with the exertion of that strength that serves him to little avail, now. Pain .. pain is the normalcy of life. This hardly registers to the man who's been stabbed and slashed and impaled, blown up by grenades and more. It's the encroaching darkness, the inevitability of what lies underneath it. The shadow of being Alone. Here there is nothing but the forest and blood and his screams against the truth. In the end, when there is little strength left, Kah can only close his eyes and try to stave off the panic as he tries to recite calming prayers inside of his mind. "You are no different. Take what you will, then. Who am I to stop you?" His words are defiant but broken. Bland of the emotion and fire, his voice is much as it was the first day he'd come to Haven. "When the End comes, it will come for you as well." Defeat. It's not something familiar to Kah and perhaps that is why he resists it so heavily, but he's here face half melded into the Earth, soon perhaps to be forgotten amongst the others that wander beyond the borders of the Path here.
For twelve years, seven months, and twenty-six days, Kah endures every agonizing moment, trapped in a stillness that mocks him. Footsteps come and go, echoes of lives and failures, as others join him in this prison; an endless parade of souls, each ensnared by ambition, each lured from their own paths to wither and twist into this forest of regret. He recognizes them, his comrades from India, brothers-in-arms from the Silver Shields; faces lost to time, bodies now bent and warped into gnarled trees.
On the eve before the world is set to end, his Keeper arrives: a familiar presence, and yet, unsettling in her delicate perfection. Her eyes gleam like polished jade, her honey-blonde hair falling in soft waves that catch the dim, twisted light filtering through the canopy. She carries with her a paste, thick and cloying, fed from the tears of those who wandered too far, sustaining the forest's prisoners.
She kneels before him, brushing aside the moss and vines that have grown over his back, as though they were nothing more than cobwebs. Her fingers close around the rusted collar his neck, and with a single, practiced pull, she lifts his head from the dirt where roots have wound through his hair and into his skin, binding him to the earth.
Her voice is like velvet, soft and sweet, a lullaby that grazes against the edge of his broekn resolve, "Is this how your life ends, old friend?" she whispers, tone neither mocking nor kind in its simple question, always heavy with truth. "Will you remin here, forgotten, another cur who laid heel at the feet of those who called themselves your master? Or will you rise and do what only I know you can do? I have been your eyes as you asked, but I cannot make you see."
The weight of the collar tightens for one last time, the question pressing in like a vice.
The words seem to go unbidden for a long time. Perhaps long enough that this Keeper will think that that there is nothing left inside the shell buried under the foliage of this Forest. Whatever winds come and go, and in the distance the wailing of others trapped, the murmurs of ther Keepers never really reach the ears. But then there is some sense of movement inside that mound that's grown up and around Kah. A shudder ... and a shiver. As though waking from a great slumber, the dulled light behind his eyes tries to ignite itself. The man moves slowly, arms beginning to strain against the roots and vines that hold them still. His back tries to straighten his shoulders try to flex and reach for the strength that still lies in him somewhere. Ageless, his flesh is timeless and it may be a small blessing for him that not all of him has completely withered away. "You .." the words is a whisper. Blood cracks appear in his lips, his voice sounds like sawdust but the blood that comes from his lip is fresh, a bright red spot of color in the endless stretch of drearyness. "I know you .." His memories are hazy, long lost in the bouts of madness and delerium that comes from spending so long trapped in the darkness. His body continues to try and slowly shift, but this time it's not to pull himself free with his strength alone. His eyes close and his breath comes shallow "I know you." The words sound more certain. His body starts to grow, calling upon the last strengh of his wolf one last time. It may not be enough to make the change, He may have forgotten how. But his instincts guide him now and once more he's fighting against the bonds that trap him; seeking to rise himself from the earth. And maybe that is the point.
The pain unfurls slowly, creeping through every fiber of Kah's body, not as a weapon might, clean and swift, but like a thousand hooks tearing at his core, pulling his essence apart thread by agonizing thread. Roots snap and vines shift, the sound like the cracking of old bones, as the forest responds to the Keeper's deliberating tug at the frayed thread hidden deep within him.
The unmaking begins at his core, spreading outward like cold iron sinking into flesh, twisting through every memory, every victory, every moment of weakness he has tried to bury beneath centuries of blood and pride. It is a pain unlike anything he has endured; a slow, deliberate peeling away of something deeply intrinsic, something that has shaped existence since the first time he raised his claws in defiance. And yet, it is subtle... the loss of something too long forgotten to mourn properly.
His Keeper is relentless, her presence unwavering as she stretches the thread within him to its breaking point, her hands patient and precise. The thread snaps, a sharp, final release that ripples through his body like the last note of a requiem. The roots holding him falter, their grip loosening as the forest seems to sigh in satisfaction.
A weight lifts - not the collar, not the roots, but something far heavier. A layer of bondage, unseen and unspoken, is torn away, leaving him raw, exposed, and terrifyingly free.
Yet with this freedom comes a profound emptiness; a silent mourning for something he cannot name. It is as though a piece of himself has been ripped away, something that, despite his denial, had always been a part of him. He stands on the threshold of choice now, the first step of a thousand toward a life he has never truly known.
And still, the loss lingers; a quiet ache that he cannot shake; a phantom limb that has been severed.
The Whisperer fades, his voice trailing off like smoke on the wind, and with him goes the Keeper; her hair like caramel blonde and velvet-sweet voice swallowed back into a cage of wire and cog, where she watches from her prison, watchful eyes gleaming with knowing sorrow. She waits, silent and patient, for the moment when he, too, will understand the price of his step toward freedom.
The motion is slow. Standing is slow. Dirt falls from him, Earth falls. Hair once neat and braided long since grown once more wild and loose around his face. His eyes cut toward this lasting vision and he meets those green eyes for a singular moment before the forest and reality once again begins to swirl around him. There's a moment of indecision but then the giant is stepping back onto the Path, symbolically. "We will walk this path together." His voice has returned, and it remains something more than it was. Kah says something else but his words are lost as the Path carries him further and further away from that familiar face that only comes truly into focus as it's whisked away from him.
Despite his inherent strength and historical conquests, Kah finds himself ensnared, not by physical bonds but by the spectral chains of his legacy’s ambiguity. The voice lures him deeper into the heart of the forest, where the lines between reality and illusion blur, challenging his sense of self and purpose. Kah, defiant yet intrigued, engages with the entity, questioning the nature of its desire and the truth behind its tempting offer.
The forest responds with a more tangible manifestation of Kah's internal struggle. It ensnares him with vines and roots, physically dragging him into the earth, a symbolic reflection of the voice’s attempt to consume his essence. Kah, faced with his impending erasure, battles the embodiment of his eroded legacy, a confrontation that lays bare his vulnerabilities and the enormity of his isolation.
As Kah teeters on the edge of oblivion, a Keeper emerges, a figure seemingly familiar yet enigmatic, offering salvation or further damnation. She presents Kah with a final choice, a chance to redefine his existence beyond the shadows of forgotten legends. The Keeper's intervention provokes a moment of reckoning for Kah. In a desperate bid for self-preservation, he summons the remnants of his will, challenging the voice’s claim over his legacy.
Kah’s resistance triggers a transformation, not just of his physical form but his existential bonds. He endures a harrowing unmaking at the hands of the Keeper, a process that strips away the vestiges of his past glory and torment, leaving him bare and anew. The price of this freedom is profound, marking both a loss and a beginning.
Emerging from the ordeal, Kah finds himself on a path, literal and metaphorical, wandering away from the entity and the Keeper, whose true essence whispers of wisdom and sorrow. His journey forward is uncertain, marked by the dual specters of freedom and loss. The conclusion leaves Kah stepping into an undefined future, carrying the weight of his transformed identity and the haunting promise of shared paths with the mysterious Keeper, a testament to the enduring struggle between legacy and liberation.
(Beware He Who Whispers in the Dark(SRSienna):SRSienna)
[Sun Oct 20 2024]
In The Path of Forgotten Echoes
The forest path stretches endlessly, swallowed by an impenetrable darkness that coils like mist between ancient, twisted trees. The air is thick with the scent of damp earth and old wood, tinged with a faint, sweet decay. Shadows stretch unnaturally long, moving as if alive, slithering between branches that creak like whispers exchanged in secret.
Faint, fragmented murmurs drift on the air, layered like echoes of half-remembered conversations, voices just out of reach, familiar and unsettling. Occasionally, a figure emerges from the mist; a face, half-seen and immediately forgotten, fading into the shadows as though it had never been there at all. A dim light flickers in the distance, neither growing closer nor farther, like a memory one can't quite fully grasp.
It is night, about 55F(12C) degrees, There is a waning gibbous moon.
In the shadows the midnight hour,
A voice calls soft and low,
He whispers dreams of untold power,
Of secrets none should know.
"Come to me," the voice entices.
"For I can grant you more."
"The world is yours for just the price..."
"A thread from life's own core."
It's a tale as old as time, whispered on the tongues of those who warn of yearning for too much. Perhaps Kah might remember it, perhaps not.
In the dead stillness of the midnight hour, a voice drifts on the breeze, smooth and enticing, weaving through the branches like a whispered secret. "Come closer," it beckons, low and honeyed, promising knowledge buried deep and power untouched by mortal hands. Each word sinks into the night like a thread into silk, pulling with a subtle insistence that tugs at something primal; something ancient. The forest, so familiar to him, begins to change, the familiar scents of earth, bark, and wolves replaced by an unsettling sweetness tinged with decay.
The path beneath Kah's feet twists into strange patterns, swallowed by mist that coils between the roots of twisted trees. Shadows stretch unnaturally long, slithering like serpents over the ground, as if guiding him deeper. The volatile hum of emotions from the wolves he feels so often fades, leaving only the whispering voice to fill the silence.
"Just a little further," it promises, sweet as a lover's touch. "The world awaits, yours for the taking... The world awaits, yours for the taking. All I ask is a thread from life's own core."
With each step, the connection to the forest slips away, leaving Kah with an unfamiliar emptiness in its place. The air thickens with the weight of something old, something waiting.
"Come," the voice whispers, just out of reach. "I have been waiting for you."
While not a man of complete discipline, it's rare for Kah to find himself so distracted and so when he does lift his head to notice his surroundings he's surprised to find them not where he'd left them, so to speak. With a slow blink, his ears pick up the whispers of a voice he can't quite place. Does it sound familiar? Perhaps, but there's no true sense of recognition as the Ancient man looks around. Generations of instinct blend with an equal amount of training as the Egyptian seems to find himself not only not in the forest he'd been in before but one that doesn't offer him any sense of connection or presence. This is not the land he knows.
"I have conquored the world" he says, dropping any pretense of his more humble self as he walks alone through the strange Path. He doesn't stop though, his feet letting his instincts walk the path by feel and by instinct. "I have asleep" as if that answers this voice's mysterious question, or statement. "I am here now. What do you want of me?" Blunt and direct as always as he considers the words already spoken.
From the shadows, the voice coils, smooth and silken, a ripple of amusement threading through its tone. "Oh, Kah Nhet," it whispers, savoring the lane like a lover's sigh. "You, who conquered the world and slept through centuries, returning only to find yourself in a land that does not know you." The words slip through the darkness like tendrils, wrapping around Kah's arrogance and tugging at its edges. "All your victories, your feats of strength... What are they, if no one remembers? If the story changes with each telling?"
The mist thickens, and the trees seem to lean inward, their branches twisting like ancient fingers yearning to touch, to scrape away this exterior until he lays bared before What Watches Beyond the Path. "You were Lycaon, the cursed king. The blacksmith Bouda. The knight Melion. But what did any of that earn you?"
The voice drips with mockery, each name dredging up echoes of lives lost to myth, twisted through the filter of time. "Your triumphs were great, and yet here you are; another wanderer in a forest of forgotten echoes."
A chuckle, dark and intimate, dances on the air. "You think yourself above riddles, but riddles have always been your kind's undoing. Alexander knew that. The gods knew that. And now, so do I."
"You ask what I want?" It Who Observes from Behind continues, its tone almost playful, a sweet distraction from the danger that lies behind it. "I want what all the things of the dark desire, Ancient One. I want a story; a thread of your life, unspooled and cast into the void..."
"It is simple, really. Without threads, even the finest tapestry unravels. Give me yours, and I will grant you what all conquests could not..."
"Permanence. To be remembered forever, untouched by time."
The forest falls eerily silent, as if holding its breath, waiting for Kahs response. The path beneath his feet shifts subtly, as if inviting him to take one step closer to the offer.
Each passing word seems to wear at the edges of Kah's patience, or perhaps his calm. Some of him is restrained, another is the overall centuries of training, meditation, soldiering that have given him a wide scope of the world and a measured ability to see it and react to it with inctinct, but not without thought. This seems encroached upon as those words continue to thread their way around the man's confidence. "A story? You want to know a story of my life? You seem to know it already" he murmurs, his eyes still casting about and looking for where the voice comes from. He knows it's futile but there's no stopping him from doing so anyway, his preadtor's instincts having a need to keep a constant watch on his surroundings. Continuing to walk, he takes more cautious steps. "Being remembered ... isn't what it once was." He grunts, "How would you do this?" The question belies his interest, despite offering a denial of the value of this offer. His feet move slow but steady, unable to remain still.
The voice coils tighter around Kah, pressingi not every seam of his had-earned composure like smoke seeping through cracks. "A story?" it puirrs, its tone light and mocking. "Oh, no, Kah. I do not want a story. I want your story; your truth, your essence, unspooled dfrom the tangled knot of others' commands. What have you ever done for yourself, ancient wolf? Every ttriumph you claim was at the whim of another. You were a blade in Alexander's hand, a beast loosed upon Tyre, a tool wielded by kings and gods. You've lived lifetimes, yet never your own."
The shadows slither closer, brushing against his senses like cold breath on his neck. "You say being remebered isn't what it once was; how easily you life to yourself." The voice dips, soft with false sympathy. "Isn't that what you have fought for, time and again? To leave a mark that time cannot erode? And yet, you are a nameless dog in the forest, a cur who gnaws at the scraps of old glories while history forgets the taste of your name."
There's a low chuckle, smooth and cruel, curling beneath the weight of its words. And suddenly, upon the path, Kah is made to visualize himself in a gilded mirror, its reflection not of him at the moment, but as he truly is; a withered, gaunt creature, hunched and broken, with fur matted in dirt and blood, patches missing where wounds never healed. A leather muzzle clamps over his snout, silencing him, and a rusted iron collar digs into his neck, a frayed leash jerking him forward from unseen hands. His scarred body trembles, every step hesitant, as if bracing for the next blow. In the reflection, he stumbles, dragged like a beaten cur, eyes dull with exhaustion...
Not a wolf of legend, but a pitiful beast, bound and muzzled, cowering in shame.
With a snarl, Kah lashes out at that mirror, trying to break it into a thousand pieces. "Well you can't have what has never been!" His voice roars out, and for a moment his words a fierce, sonorous baritone rather than the quiet and soft-spoken measure that seems to strange coming from the big man. Whether or not he can break the glass, he'll storm past it as he moves faster as his anger builds. "They are still mine" he seethes. "Empires and kingdoms built on my back. Crowns and thrones. You do not have to tell me what my life amounts to." Kah whirls about as if he can catch this voice by surprise. Of course it would be in vain but he tries, none the less. "How can I give you what does not exist?" His hand reaches out to grasp at his neck. For him, his hands clamp onto something solid that immediately begins to burn the flesh of his hand, smoke trailing from the clutch as he yanks at it viciously causing himself more pain. "Will you trade one for another?" A wordless scream is all that follows, of frustration and hatred and anger that bleeds out of him like the plague that slowly kills everything within his aura.
The mirror cracks but does not shatter, the fissures spreading like veins, each fracture reflecting Kah's distorted face; furious, desperate, and haunted. His roar echoes through the void, but the forest does not answer with fear; it answers with patient cruelty. The collar around his neck shifts and melts away, evaporating into smoke, only for the ground beneath his feet to splinter apart. Vines and branches slither from the earth like serpents, twisting upward with unnatural speed. They coil around his limbs, stabbing through his skin and sinking deep into his flesh, pinning him down with each sharp thrust.
The more Kah struggles, the tighter the branches bind, piercing him like nails, each thrown and tendril pulling him closer to the soil.
The ancient wolf, once conqueror of empires and destroyer of kings, is dragged to the forest floor. His strength, so vast and unyielding, is rendered useless as the vines impale him at every joint, every muscle, locking his body in place. His blood seeps into the earth, absorbed like rain into parched ground, as though the forest itself feeds off his agony.
The air thickens with decay, the scent of rot mingling with the sharp tang of iron, as the branches twist, rooting him to the earth; a monument to his broken will.
The voice returns, soft and insidious, curling around him like smoke yet again: "Your life amounts to nothing but what others made of you, Kah. And now you are exactly as they left you: bound, bleeding, and forgotten."
The vines jerk tighter, forcing him deeper into the soil, his body swallowed by the earth until only fragments of his form remain above ground; like salt sown into the Earth after a plague.
His pain becomes the landscape, his struggle etched into the ground, as the forest buries him beneath the weight of centuries he can no longer escape.
Time becomes a meaningless thing; it could be a thousand years, ten years, a single breath, or more.
"Then what do you care to have it?!" Only a short time before, He had stood ready to deliver the Last Hunt to another of his own, and he is no exception. It's a struggle if a futile one, against the vines and roots that drag at him and draw him into the Earth. His nostrils flare in frenzy and his entire frame bulges with the exertion of that strength that serves him to little avail, now. Pain .. pain is the normalcy of life. This hardly registers to the man who's been stabbed and slashed and impaled, blown up by grenades and more. It's the encroaching darkness, the inevitability of what lies underneath it. The shadow of being Alone. Here there is nothing but the forest and blood and his screams against the truth. In the end, when there is little strength left, Kah can only close his eyes and try to stave off the panic as he tries to recite calming prayers inside of his mind. "You are no different. Take what you will, then. Who am I to stop you?" His words are defiant but broken. Bland of the emotion and fire, his voice is much as it was the first day he'd come to Haven. "When the End comes, it will come for you as well." Defeat. It's not something familiar to Kah and perhaps that is why he resists it so heavily, but he's here face half melded into the Earth, soon perhaps to be forgotten amongst the others that wander beyond the borders of the Path here.
For twelve years, seven months, and twenty-six days, Kah endures every agonizing moment, trapped in a stillness that mocks him. Footsteps come and go, echoes of lives and failures, as others join him in this prison; an endless parade of souls, each ensnared by ambition, each lured from their own paths to wither and twist into this forest of regret. He recognizes them, his comrades from India, brothers-in-arms from the Silver Shields; faces lost to time, bodies now bent and warped into gnarled trees.
On the eve before the world is set to end, his Keeper arrives: a familiar presence, and yet, unsettling in her delicate perfection. Her eyes gleam like polished jade, her honey-blonde hair falling in soft waves that catch the dim, twisted light filtering through the canopy. She carries with her a paste, thick and cloying, fed from the tears of those who wandered too far, sustaining the forest's prisoners.
She kneels before him, brushing aside the moss and vines that have grown over his back, as though they were nothing more than cobwebs. Her fingers close around the rusted collar his neck, and with a single, practiced pull, she lifts his head from the dirt where roots have wound through his hair and into his skin, binding him to the earth.
Her voice is like velvet, soft and sweet, a lullaby that grazes against the edge of his broekn resolve, "Is this how your life ends, old friend?" she whispers, tone neither mocking nor kind in its simple question, always heavy with truth. "Will you remin here, forgotten, another cur who laid heel at the feet of those who called themselves your master? Or will you rise and do what only I know you can do? I have been your eyes as you asked, but I cannot make you see."
The weight of the collar tightens for one last time, the question pressing in like a vice.
The words seem to go unbidden for a long time. Perhaps long enough that this Keeper will think that that there is nothing left inside the shell buried under the foliage of this Forest. Whatever winds come and go, and in the distance the wailing of others trapped, the murmurs of ther Keepers never really reach the ears. But then there is some sense of movement inside that mound that's grown up and around Kah. A shudder ... and a shiver. As though waking from a great slumber, the dulled light behind his eyes tries to ignite itself. The man moves slowly, arms beginning to strain against the roots and vines that hold them still. His back tries to straighten his shoulders try to flex and reach for the strength that still lies in him somewhere. Ageless, his flesh is timeless and it may be a small blessing for him that not all of him has completely withered away. "You .." the words is a whisper. Blood cracks appear in his lips, his voice sounds like sawdust but the blood that comes from his lip is fresh, a bright red spot of color in the endless stretch of drearyness. "I know you .." His memories are hazy, long lost in the bouts of madness and delerium that comes from spending so long trapped in the darkness. His body continues to try and slowly shift, but this time it's not to pull himself free with his strength alone. His eyes close and his breath comes shallow "I know you." The words sound more certain. His body starts to grow, calling upon the last strengh of his wolf one last time. It may not be enough to make the change, He may have forgotten how. But his instincts guide him now and once more he's fighting against the bonds that trap him; seeking to rise himself from the earth. And maybe that is the point.
The pain unfurls slowly, creeping through every fiber of Kah's body, not as a weapon might, clean and swift, but like a thousand hooks tearing at his core, pulling his essence apart thread by agonizing thread. Roots snap and vines shift, the sound like the cracking of old bones, as the forest responds to the Keeper's deliberating tug at the frayed thread hidden deep within him.
The unmaking begins at his core, spreading outward like cold iron sinking into flesh, twisting through every memory, every victory, every moment of weakness he has tried to bury beneath centuries of blood and pride. It is a pain unlike anything he has endured; a slow, deliberate peeling away of something deeply intrinsic, something that has shaped existence since the first time he raised his claws in defiance. And yet, it is subtle... the loss of something too long forgotten to mourn properly.
His Keeper is relentless, her presence unwavering as she stretches the thread within him to its breaking point, her hands patient and precise. The thread snaps, a sharp, final release that ripples through his body like the last note of a requiem. The roots holding him falter, their grip loosening as the forest seems to sigh in satisfaction.
A weight lifts - not the collar, not the roots, but something far heavier. A layer of bondage, unseen and unspoken, is torn away, leaving him raw, exposed, and terrifyingly free.
Yet with this freedom comes a profound emptiness; a silent mourning for something he cannot name. It is as though a piece of himself has been ripped away, something that, despite his denial, had always been a part of him. He stands on the threshold of choice now, the first step of a thousand toward a life he has never truly known.
And still, the loss lingers; a quiet ache that he cannot shake; a phantom limb that has been severed.
The Whisperer fades, his voice trailing off like smoke on the wind, and with him goes the Keeper; her hair like caramel blonde and velvet-sweet voice swallowed back into a cage of wire and cog, where she watches from her prison, watchful eyes gleaming with knowing sorrow. She waits, silent and patient, for the moment when he, too, will understand the price of his step toward freedom.
The motion is slow. Standing is slow. Dirt falls from him, Earth falls. Hair once neat and braided long since grown once more wild and loose around his face. His eyes cut toward this lasting vision and he meets those green eyes for a singular moment before the forest and reality once again begins to swirl around him. There's a moment of indecision but then the giant is stepping back onto the Path, symbolically. "We will walk this path together." His voice has returned, and it remains something more than it was. Kah says something else but his words are lost as the Path carries him further and further away from that familiar face that only comes truly into focus as it's whisked away from him.