Vol.1 Ch.14 – Menace in the Woods

Chapter 14: Menace in the Woods

The next morning we washed up in the spring and had a pleasant breakfast before heading out. If everything went according to plan we'd only need to overnight three more times before reaching the Dark Lord's castle and one of those nights we could rest within the safety of a village. The day was surprisingly uneventful. I'd been expecting more resistance the closer we got to the castle, even more so as the day's trek took us through a dense forest, but the only bit of excitement had been a bear which we'd managed to avoid. The big beasts were only dangerous if you made them angry and we'd had no reason to do so.

Forests always somewhat unnerved me. Forests were alive and magical and not all of that magic was benign. Part of that was our fault, as the spirits of the forest did not appreciate us felling their trees to build our homes, and part of that was because some of the beings that lived in the forests were simply evil. Usually I was able to tell whether a forest was a hub of such evil creatures but even when it wasn't I'd had enough bad memories to make me worry. This forest, however, felt weird to me.

On the one hand I did not spot any of the telltale signs of an evil forest, such as animals walking around with obviously lethal wounds as though nothing was bothering them, animal bones randomly adorning trees, or a constant feeling of being watched by something hungry but on the other hand the forest did not feel entirely benign either. It almost felt as if it couldn't make up its mind about being evil or not.

When night approached we found a nice cave and after thoroughly checking that it didn't belong to the bear we'd passed, or to any other creature for that matter, we made camp. Dinner was a simple meal of flame-roasted peppers and some smoked meat we'd bought back in Rhine's Cradle on some hearty bread from Lycia.

Just as we were about to discuss watch shifts I heard chanting. Nothing particularly worrying by itself as many cults had rituals that had to be performed in a forest at night, but the chanting included words that... you know that feeling when your ears contract when you're hearing a sound you can't quite make out? Now imagine the way your ears contract when they're picking up a sound they don't want to make out. And there was only one language that had this effect on mortal ears.

Some called it the black tongue, the people who spoke it called it the tongue of the ages, I called it filthy Outsider language, because it was spoken only by beings that did not belong in our world. Well, and also by their cultists. Untainted mortals lacked the capacity to even speak it, much less to hear and comprehend it.

When the chanting was interrupted by the panicked bleating of a goat I knew what was happening. I pulled out my gear and the girls looked at me.

“What is happening?”, Alisha asked.

“Cultists”, I said. “Outsider cultists.”

Selene took in a hissing breath but Alisha seemed confused.

“What do you mean, 'Outsiders'?”, the elf asked.

I shook my head. “Later. Hurry, we can't let them get away.”

I didn't give her time to argue and I was glad she didn't but what was more surprising was when Selene drew her sword and followed me without hesitation. Interesting. She seemed to know about them, too.

As soon as we got closer the two girls took in hissing breaths. I was guessing their Sense Evil finally told them what was happening. After that it didn't take us long to find the cultists. They were each holding a torch and they made no attempt to keep their chanting down, making them easy to find. There were five of them, arranged in a rough half circle with the goat between them and all of them wearing wine red robes that covered them head to toe.

They were all facing something that at first glance looked like a particularly gnarled tree – but then it moved. It took me a minute to realize what exactly I was looking at. Its body was bulky and roughly tree trunk shaped, except instead of gnarled bark it seemed to be wet and squishy, with fanged maws dotted around its surface like knotholes. The branches coming out of it were large tentacles swaying in the breeze, bereft of anything resembling leaves. I was half expecting them to be covered in spines but they weren't. They just looked horribly squishy but also muscular, like they could squeeze the life right out of you if they caught you. Its legs were the weirdest part, though. It had three legs and at first glance they looked like dark bones tipped with hooves at the end, but a closer look revealed that they weren't bare bones at all. They flexed like they had muscles underneath the skin, the whole construction was just so spindly that it looked bony at a glance.

“What in the name of Odin's ball sack is that thing?”, Selene breathed.

“It's a Dark Young”, I told them, just as quietly. “It's the first time I've actually seen one, I've read about them. They're the children of one of the Outer Gods, Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat. They act as a link to let the goddess commune with her cultists, to instruct them in the proper rituals and... to accept their offerings.” I added the last part just as one of the cultists, thin and lithe with the robes bulging outward in the chest and thus presumably female, took a knife and carved the goat's tongue out of its mouth while another cultist, this one tall and broad-shouldered, held the goat's jaws open for her to work.

When she had finished removing the tongue, she cut it into five even pieces and each of them ate a bite of the raw tongue. Afterwards they moved as one and raised the goat up to the Dark Young.

The monster didn't have any eyes but it still seemed to be considering their offering before leaning its massive body forward and then back, clearly a nod. After that, one of its tentacles curled down, patted the woman who'd cut out the tongue quite gently on the head, then grabbed the goat and pulled it to one of the mouths. The poor animal was thrashing feebly, already suffering heavy blood loss, and then the mouth chomped down on it. The poor thing bleated out its pain and then it died while the Dark Young kept pushing it deeper and deeper into its maw until it had swallowed the whole thing.

Then the thing started talking. The context was clear. They'd given their sacrifice and now it would teach them in return. But I didn't care. I drew my longsword and in response the girls grabbed their weapons as well. “Alisha, take care of the ones on the left, Selene and I will take the ones on the right.”

“Do they really have to die?”, she asked. “Could that thing be controlling them?”

“Alisha, they're cultists”, I said. “Cultists of a thing so evil that even the gods we usually consider evil will help fight against it. We can have the morality discussion later but taking down cults like these is our duty. Not just as adventurers, as thinking beings of this world.”

She still looked conflicted. “Alright, fine, but you will explain why these cultists are bad.”

“I promise”, I said. “Selene, wanna start us off with an ice storm?”

She flashed a grin. “Thought you'd never ask.”

She carved a rune into the air and the ice storm started raging around the cultists. Alisha didn't wait for it to finish. Instead she started hurling air lance after air lance at them and I got myself into position to storm in once the ice storm calmed down.

Ten seconds later, once the ice storm had died down, one of the cultists had become a frozen statue and another one was half frozen but more importantly had two holes punched through him. I stormed in under my cloak of invisibility and before anyone could react had decapitated a third, the one who'd held the goat's jaw open. Selene stormed in to engage one of the two remaining cultists but he drew a pristine rapier like the one the nobles favored and, with surprising expertise, blocked Selene's attack. I tried to go for the fifth cultist, the tongue carver, but the Dark Young whipped a tentacle at me, forcing me to jump back instead.

The cultist took the opening and made a gesture of foul power and right above Alisha a dark red portal opened. I dashed toward her and tackled her out of the way moments before a mass of spiny tentacles reached through the portal, whipping and grasping. A second later the portal snapped shut and the tentacles dissipated into ectoplasm.

Alisha shot a couple more air lances downrange to give me cover fire while I ran full speed at the cultist. She made two more hand signs and summoned two more portals but I ran past both of them and tried to run her through at speed. The Dark Young whipped another tentacle out and I threw myself to the side but this time Alisha had expected it and used a gust of wind to pull the cultist forward, straight into the path of the falling tentacle. There was a sickening crunch and the cultist was crumpled to the ground, bits sticking out in directions they weren't supposed to. It would have been funny if she hadn't been so very dead.

Selene, meanwhile, was still busy with the last cultist. She'd cut through the man's robes several times, exposing bare skin, but hadn't inflicted any real damage. The bare skin did show signs of outward corruption and I was curious how he hid them when he wasn't creeping around the forest sacrificing goats to evil tree monsters. There was a gnarly pale canker on the right side of his chest, bulging outward almost like a breast. It looked poorly grafted on, the skin tone not even close to matching, and pulsed as if in time with his heartbeat, dark veins spreading outward from it. His feet, meanwhile, looked to be halfway along a transformation into cloven hooves and I was surprised how well he moved on them.

The Dark Young was looking at their fight with obvious interest but its massive body worked against it as it couldn't swipe at Selene without risk of accidentally hitting the cultist so it held back, its fanged mouths undulating.

“How do we fight this thing?”, Alisha asked me. It was a good question. How did one go about fighting a twelve foot tall carnivorous tentacle tree? I remembered reading about their weaknesses once but what had it been?

“I guess we cut off the branches, then the roots and then we try to shove something painful down every mouth.”

“Like magic?”, she asked.

Then it hit me. “Of course! Magic and miracles. Both of which use the power of this world and it hates that. We need to incapacitate it and then feed it air lances and Selene's lightning miracle.”

“Alright”, she said. “Does it have any magic of its own?”

“I don't know. All I know about them is from a bestiary I once read in the capital's main library. I assume so since they're supposed to be direct descendants of an Outer God.”

“Alright. I don't know how to defend against those tentacle portals though”, she said.

“You don't”, I told her. “We need to stay close so we can push each other out of the way. And don't assume that's the only trick it has.”

“Got it.”

Just then Selene finally managed to decapitate the cultist, his head flying off. A tendril shot out of the canker and tried to snatch the head out of the air, presumably to reattach it, but it had flown off too far too fast. Selene had noticed the canker's behavior though so she made sure to stab it specifically right afterward.

I half expected the Dark Young to attack Selene the moment the cultist had dropped but it didn't. Instead it moved its tentacles in a way I couldn't help but interpret as a shrug and then it simply wandered off, its reason for being here concluded. It lumbered away, its spindly legs surprisingly capable of carrying its huge body around, and started muttering.

That wasn't the disturbing part. We'd heard it speak before. No, it wasn't even that disturbing that its voice sounded like splintering wood with something slimy and bubbling underneath. No, the disturbing part was that it wasn't speaking in the black tongue. I understood it, and easily. It kept muttering: “Liiiiittle... sissssster... liiiittle... sissssster...” over and over again.

I realized we could just let it walk away, but killing the cultists and then leaving the thing they had been worshiping alive felt backwards to me so I explained to Selene what Alisha and I had planned.

The blonde nodded and drew her sword again as I pulled my battleaxe from my bag. We ran-- alright no, we didn't run. Running through the woods at night is only useful if you're trying to break your legs. We advanced in a loose-legged gait, knees slightly bent, one that looked goofy to onlookers but managed forest terrain well, until we reached the Dark Young's legs and then on my signal each of us chopped into one of its legs. Selene's enchanted blade carved through the leg almost too neatly while it took me three chops with my ax to get through it. After losing two of its three legs it keeled over and roared with most of its mouths but one of them kept muttering about the 'little sister'.

Selene had danced away after her attack but I only barely managed to get out of the way before it toppled over. It started thrashing its tentacles wildly, trying to grab us or find purchase but I switched my battleaxe for my longsword, seeing as how the tentacles seemed softer than the bony legs, and hacked through a tentacle after dodging a swipe.

Alisha sent whirling scythe blades at the tentacles and managed to chop off two more before the Dark Young growled something and a red portal appeared above Alisha, much larger than the one the cultist had managed to create. Selene threw herself at Alisha and the two of them almost got clear of the attack.

Almost.

Two of the thinner tentacles managed to grab onto Selene's ankle and the spines started shredding through her leg. I ran to them and hacked my way through the tentacles until the portal vanished. When it did I ran back at the Dark Young, presenting an obvious target so it couldn't focus on the girls until they'd gotten back up. I knew Alisha could fix Selene fast so I didn't need to be reckless for long.

I weaved between its two remaining tentacles, letting them get just a bit closer than I would usually allow, making it think it had a chance to catch me. Just as I'd dodged away from them a red portal opened above me and I was expecting sharp pain when a barrage of air lances flew past me, piercing the creature's hide and more importantly disrupting its concentration, making the portal flicker and die before any tentacles could grab at me. Then Selene, sure-footed again after a healing miracle, called down a lightning strike right into the maw that had been chanting the spells into existence.

I'd seen the lightning miracle twice before but both times it had been against beings that belonged in this world. Now, targeting an Outer God's spawn, the god Thor did not hold back in the slightest and the bolt of lightning was so searingly bright it hurt my eyes even through closed eyelids. The thunderclap was almost deafeningly loud, only eclipsed by the Dark Young's squeal of anguish, which sounded a lot like a slaughtered pig if pigs were twelve feet tall and made of weird cancerous wood.

Yet still, the thing thrashed so I walked over and pulled my sword. I felt Alisha casting her enhancement miracle on me and, surrounded by divine power, I rammed my sword into one of its mouths, finally ending it. And then a black mist shot out of the monster and wrapped around the three of us and I felt myself falling.