I was screaming when Djince slapped me hard in the face. 339Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfZFMA6lF8e
I saw stars. The hand that went to my face was clammy.
His eyes weren’t glowing, but they were creased up with worry. The sun was setting behind his head and, taking deep breaths, I looked behind him and saw Lupa turning a gum wrapper around in his hands, his tongue bitten between his teeth.
I took a few steps forward and wheeled around, my hands going out in front of me like I would run into something. “There was… We… I thought…” I turned around and Djince’s sword was stuck to the magnet on his back. I pointed to him and then threw a thumb over my shoulder. “Did I go off to piss and then start screaming when I looked into the woods?” I asked.
Djince slowly nodded his head, his hands outstretched like he would catch me if I fell. It was the kind of posture one adopted when approaching a wild animal. “Papyrus,” he said. Just my name.
I put a hand to my raw cheek as I said, “We… can’t go in there.”
“We won’t,” Djince said adamantly.
“So what’s goin’ on?” Lupa asked as he approached me from behind. “You were screaming like a squirrel done ran up a pant leg!”
Djince glared at him. “Navigate.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said tiredly. “We won’t make it. It’s protected by what’s left of a god: The Lord of Repetition, Beastmaster, and Protector of Cycles--”
“You recognized my work,” a familiar voice said from the edge of the wood and the three of us turned in tandem.
Witalis, God of Untouched Wild Places, was dressed in a robe of glowing green pine needles. There were bones and feathers sewn into the network, and I could see stained leather beneath it all. Stained? No, he's covered in moss, I corrected myself internally. Resting across his chest was a strung bow made out of clear glass. It shimmered like star light as he took a step towards us. When he smiled, his brown goat eyes met mine and he said, “You recognized my work.”
Lupa took a step backward and the god’s eyes went to him, but I grabbed his attention back as I took a step forward. “Witalis… Do you recognize me? You… You helped me before the end of the world.”
“You recognize me,” Witalis said. “Leave this place.” From the quiver at his belt, he pulled a black arrow and held it in his off hand.
“No probs,” Lupa said with a nervous laugh. “We were just going.”
“Witty… You know me. You must remember.”
“Papyrus,” Djince said, gripping my elbow.
Witalis’ eyes locked on the courier and his coal colored mouth opened just enough for him to state, “I recognize you.”
Djince was ignoring him. His face was pale. “Let’s go… Please.”
“I recognize you. You walked out of my forest,” Witalis said. “You really are special.” He drew the bow off his back and said, “No beast gets away from me. No beast gets away from me.”
“Witalis!” I barked in a scolding tone. “Snap out of it! That’s… Wait a minute, that’s my bow! I gave you that bow!”
Djince pushed me out of the way as a black arrow broke us apart.
Witalis laughed. “Papyrus, God Scribe!” he called out to us as Djince drew his sword and tossed his air pistol to Lupa. “I remember. You drove my brother mad. You drove all of us mad.” He drew another black arrow and tossed back his hood, revealing his matted mane. “Come closer.”
The three of us braced ourselves against each other and our scattered gear as the ground shook and rumbled. The trees of Worm’s Wood… were walking towards us! They sauntered and ran; some of them hitched rides on the larger trees. Some of them used their roots, others bent and dragged themselves like corpses out of their graves. The nettles spread and fanned; branches bent and weaved. Long before we had even gotten our balance back, the Forest had swallowed us whole and the sky had all but disappeared.
Witalis’ goat eyes locked onto mine as he nocked his arrow.
The trees and their needles glowed bright and sickly.
“Let the hunt begin,” Beastmaster said.339Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBt5fLe6sds
We were trapped. The trees had created a dome of thick foliage around us. Djince immediately went for Witalis, hoping to get in his space before he could shoot another arrow. I went for our bags, cursing myself for packing my gun. Lupa crouched down and braced his elbows on his thigh, pumping the lever as many times as he could until the readout chimed at him. I didn’t see if his first shot hit. 339Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjlPtBwRSuY
As I pulled my gun out of my bag with a whoop, Djince was thrown, somersaulting ass over nose by me, and I had to hop back to avoid him rolling into me. “Aright?” I called after him and he got back to his feet, his face knotted together in pain.
“Eh,” he grunted at me eloquently, before hefting his sword back up and running past me.
Following after him, using him as a shield in a way, I gasped when he got in close to Witalis. The creature had Lupa in a choke hold. His green cloak had turned into his pelt. His shape was that of a gorilla. Lupa’s eyes were rolling into his head, his boots kicking spastically.
Wildly, I shot once and the bullet buried itself in the ape’s stomach. Again and it glanced off the inside of its knee. Again and my bullets were gone and the gorilla let out a roar as it dropped Lupa to clutch at its head, flowering vines pouring from its eye.
As it stumbled toward the foliage perimeter, Djince hacked at its ankles and then its hands. I went to Lupa and dragged him by his red coat to our bags, finding some shelter there for him to recover.
The ape thing touched the pine barrier with flowered palms and it fell into the trees, disappearing as the trees reshaped, effectively swallowing him. Djince tried cutting at the wooden wall, but his sword glanced off with a thrumming ring. He shouted wordlessly, cutting again, but again, his efforts were rebuffed.
“Lupa! Come on!” I patted the Kallos bastard’s cheeks. I shouted at Djince, “He’ll be back!” The courier rolled his eyes at me in annoyance. “Fuck you! I’m trying to be helpful!”
Lupa coughed and batted my hands away. “‘Nough! I’ll be fine!” He was still coughing when he got to his feet. “Fucker crushed the airpipe like it was a bendy straw!” he said to me, gesturing. “Then he tried to crush my windpipe like a bendy straw.” He looked green and I didn’t think it had anything to do with the glowing about us.
“Djince,” I called after the swordsman, but he didn’t stop his pacing before where the ape had disappeared. “Djince!”
“What?!” he shouted, still not facing us.
“How did you get out of here? How did you escape?”
Djince just shook his head. Then he stopped pacing and readied himself. “Come on!” he roared at the pines. He’s just looking to fight. He doesn’t have a measure of flee or sense in him.
From beside Lupa and I, the trees parted and a panther the size of an SUV slipped out of the forest, its goat-like eyes rolling up in its head. I brandished my revolver and pushed Lupa back. “Get behind me!”
Instead, Lupa ran at the cat, yelling. He pulled a shard of metal from his ladies coat--it wasn’t quite a knife, more like a shiv--but before he could do any damage, the big cat batted him aside like a ball of yarn, raking claws like karambits through his coat and spraying down feathers everywhere.
I rushed to Lupa where he had collapsed, curled into himself. Surprisingly, he wasn’t hurt, but he was already whimpering over the state of his brand new coat. “It’s a women’s coat anyway, Lu.”
“Is not!” he growled defensively.
Behind us, Djince was already there, striking out at the panther. The big green thing parried his attacks at first, flicking its wrists playfully and with little visible effort. But it grew bored of fencing very quickly. It hunkered down, deflected one of Djince’s jabs, and then leaped, bearing him to the ground. His sword went flying, sticking fast in the opposite side of the dome.
The cat growled as it met him face to face, its tail twitching.
I took three big steps and bashed it over the head with my recovered crowbar. The cat yowled in surprise, whipped its big head up to look at me in indignation. I hit it again, right over the eye I had shot earlier and it cantered back, rearing up onto its two back legs, pawing at its face as birds flew out of its head. The birds ducked between gaps in the pine trees, calling and twittering, and the big cat fell backwards into the barrier with a cry of vengeance, disappearing with an exhale of white feathers.
Djince’s eyes were wide as Lupa came over and helped him to his feet. There was a crazed look in his eyes and he didn’t say anything even when Lupa told him his sword was stuck and we couldn’t get it out. He wasn’t looking at either of us. His eyes darted about the barrier and he flinched at every sound. “Come on!” he shouted as he paced about the dome. “Come on!”
“He’s lost it,” Lupa reported as I looked through Djince’s saddle bag for any extra ammunition. I didn’t find any. “Poppy, he’s really lost it.”
“Lupa, help me find more weapons, please,” I said calmly.
We eventually found a hunting knife and a scaling knife. Lupa took the hunting knife and asked me, “How many more times is this fuck going to play with us like chew toys? And how many more times can we take it?”
“As many as it takes in either case,” I said.
“Oh,” Lupa said with a nod. “That’s reassuring.”
“Glad I could help.”
“He’s taking longer to come at us. Djince is going to split at the seams if he doesn’t get his fight. He’s foamin’ at the mouth, Poppy.”
“I know, but if I freak out too, I won’t be able to ask my questions.”
“What?” Lupa asked incredulously and then the barrier in front of Djince split open and a great grassy hart, nearly twenty hands tall with emerald and jade antlers, ripped out of the thicket with a deafening bugle call. Djince grabbed onto its horns as then came at him, letting the creature push him across the floor of the dome before Djince lightly sidestepped out of the way and let the hart crash into the barrier--but the pine trees rushed out of the way to admit the horned beast and the hart tossed its head in laughter, its shrill voice making Lupa and I cup our ears.
Djince was smiling. He opened his hands and beckoned the hart back into the dome. The old stag raked a hoof at the forest floor before it charged. Djince stepped to the side, but the Hart tossed its head, intent on goring him. The Kallos gripped the horn and swung on it, flipping through the air as he arched his back and pushed out with his boots, using the deer’s gargantuan momentum to his advantage.
I wasn’t certain who was more surprised when the man landed on the buck’s back. Witalis and Djince both froze when the courier gripped the hart’s mane to keep from falling off. The great deer was letting out heaving breaths, its goat eyes slowly rolling towards the man sitting between its shoulder blades.
Djince let out a small chirp of nervous laughter before the big beast jumped, intending to crush him on the dome’s ceiling, but its towering antlers met the ceiling first… and stuck.
Djince slid off the thing’s back, rolling to avoid breaking anything too seriously and then he stepped back to avoid the hart’s struggling. The thing kicked its feet out and swung and thrashed, but its antlers were hung fast in the pine. The courier started laughing, gripping his knees as tears came to his eyes.
Lupa, mouth half agape whispered to me, “Why doesn’t he just get the trees to let him go?”
“Shh,” I replied. “Don’t give him any ideas.”
Djince took his time walking to his sword, ducking under flailing hooves whenever the hart had rested enough to try to loosen himself again. Its chest was rapidly rising and falling as panic quickly overcame its higher sensibilities. Djince put his boot against the wood and gripped his sword with both hands, but the effort was unnecessary. As soon as he had a grip on his sword, the trees let it go.
The stag had stopped struggling, green spittle running from its nose and mouth. Then Witalis’ voice came from all around us as he said, “The hunter… becomes the prey… like in all things. You have won fairly this night. What is your wish?”
Lupa opened his mouth, but Djince held up a hand to stop him. Then he looked to me and gave me a raised eyebrow.
I stepped forward and addressed the hart. “I wish you could remember what you were… and what you’ve become.”
“Fuckin’--!” Lupa said, but his cousin hit him lightly in the mouth.
The hart made a rumbling sound in its chest and the voice of Witalis said, “You want me to be able to tell you why you ended the world… or who did.”
“Yes!” I said, glad that he understood me.
“You should have wished for that instead,” a wheezing voice said from the forest floor. We were back outside the Worm’s Wood, but this time, the moon was on the opposite side of the horizon. We’re on the other side, I marveled before my gaze caught on the man swaddled in green rags, lying broken on the forest floor. One of his goat eyes was missing, red blood spurting in slow increments from the wound. He was gripping the starlight bow in his hands, and he shivered when I came close and crouched over him.
He smiled at me, his teeth reddened. “It is good to see you, Papyrus,” he said weakly. “So good to see you…”
I put my hands out to him. “What do… What do I do?”
He held the bow out to me and I took it from him and laid it aside and took his hands in mine. He looked surprised for a moment, but then he winced and said, “You were a good sister-in-law… but you never knew when to put something down that deserved it. You always hoped… even if you were the… only… only one hoping.” He pushed blood up out of his mouth so he could say, “Yours was a good wish.”
“Witalis… That which never lived can never die,” I said.
“But, Papyrus…” His eyes crinkled up as he grinned. “I did live.” His grip on my fingers relaxed then and he whispered with his one eye closed, “Just… Just put me out of my misery. Finish… Finish the hunt.”
“I-I can’t,” I told him. “You’re my brother, Witty. You’re my brother.”
“I can,” Djince said. When I looked up at him, I couldn’t see his expression. “Let me do this… for him,” he said, his tone gentler than his first two words. I stood and took shaking steps back to let him bend down next to Witalis. “Ready?” he asked, barely audible to the rest of us. I held my breath and then Witalis made a small sound and exhaled softly.
I dropped to my knees with a sob, pressing my palms to my eyes.
Lupa came near me, some sentiment on his lips, but Djince gently ushered him away. They left me there, stretched out over Witalis’ cooling form. He had remembered me… He had remembered me and he had remembered that he loved me.
And I remembered him.339Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxqWj9vnkhM
