The Sound off the Road
Night gathered, with it those whom followed such patterns found rest. It was the time of awakening for others, predators with large bulbous eyes and silent wings to stalk the night. Small skittering creatures were their prey and they filled the dark with their clicking songs, serenading the cold as if it was a lover, the symphony grew and grew as the stars awoke and the moon rose to its place.
One Jade Stone found himself joining this chorus and dance of night creatures. He had only just left his place of work half of an hour ago and was walking briskly towards his home, eager to join his wife and child for a late and no doubt cool supper. The mare whom was his wife always did wait for Jade to arrive home before eating, even though this meant waiting a terrible long time until the night grew mature and the warm meal gone as cold as the pale moon that shone brighter than any star.
The path Jade Star took would lead him off the main road and onto a connecting side path. One made of gravel and dirt and one that took him through the dark and eldritch forest, trees reached up tall from the black and slimy ground, they clamoured for the sky with branches twisted and gnarled like claws reaching towards the stars. To a lesser stallion this would mean a great deal of fear in what could stalk these ancient woods, but Jade found himself feeling none such anxiety. He had walked this path and these trees a hundred times over, and he was confident in his own safety, whatever fear the night had once given him was very far gone.
The trail to which Jade thought himself so familiar appeared to take longer that what was normal, perhaps it was an illusion, an affect from his tired and muddled mind. It took a whole twenty minutes before Jade experienced the overwhelming sensation that he was lost, that he had no idea where he was. This was a rare occurrence, Jade had trotted this path and many others so often that they had become like imbedded memories in his bones and muscle, a natural drive to his legs that required little thought to perform. Yet somehow this memory had been forgotten and its owner lost, Jade's legs had led him astray.
The symphony had halted and it was quiet say for the rustling of dry tree leaves in the evening wind, the clicking of small insects only occasional and never for long. As Jade searched for some sign of familiarity, sone sign to his location a seed of anxiety began to settle in his stomach and take root. Still he continued on down the path, he reasoned that it would not do him much good to simply stay rooted to one spot. So Jade marched on into the night, further into the twisted dark paths of these ancient woods.
We walked for what seemed like an age, his legs tired and cramped and his hooves screamed for relief. Yet Jade pressed on, wishing that his wife would not feet like he knew she would. It took time but the silence sooner reached Jade's ears, as if all the leaves had frozen and all the insects died. Jade felt and overwhelming sensation as if he was drowning, as if the silence was water and this forest submerged, her could not breath, his heart raced and his ears rung painfully. Jade quickened his pace to a near run, eager to escape this place.
Disparity began to fill his drowning mind, what hope did he have to finding his way home? What hope did he have to escape. Yet despite his clear feeling of lost and misdirection, one thing was missing from this concoction of anxieties, he did not feel alone. Lost yes, alone no, and as Jade slowed his pace to a crawl he looked around, he could not rid himself of this feeling of dread, that something moved beyond his sight and perhaps beyond the sight of any other for when he looked into the eldritch blackness if the woods he felt as if 'twas not the night that obscured his sight but an otherworldly veil.
Suddenly panicking Jade broke out in a run again only to have his leg caught upon a protruding root that tripped him terribly, he tumbled a and rolled down the steep hill by the road. Tall grass and bush branches whipped his face as moist dirt began to cake his fur and dirty his coat, it was all he could do to not snap his neck. Mercifully he landed upon something soft, wet marshy ground sponged his fall and saved him from serious damage, the stink of putrid fumes and the haze that settled on the area told Jade that he had landed himself in a bog of sorts. He rose on shaking hooves and looked to his surroundings, yes the bog dominated this area with the trees being only a secondary resident, pushing out of the damp slime rich ground to compete in the same reach for the ancient sky as the other plants did. The smell was odd and sickening, a musty damp smell like meat left out in the rain in a horrid state of squalor and rot, it made Jade want to lurch his lunch out from his stomach.
Jade shivered, it was cold, whatever memory of the sun's warmth had long been forgotten and left only the freezing behind in its wake. Jade pulled his coat tighter around himself before setting out in what he hoped was a saving direction. He stumbled and tripped his way through the the grove and the marsh, his hooves squelching into the muck with the ground pulling at his legs as if trying to consume him. He did seem to have some luck as the clouds above moved and the guiding light of the moon returned to him, it illuminated the land around him in a pale cold light. Then is when Jade came to notice something rather strange, coating the trees and stretching between their trunks and branches was some sort of material.
It was grey and brown at the same time, a glistening sticky surface that stretched like mucus above the ground between trees and coated the ground. It appeared soft and crusted closely in the cracks of the tree bark of seemingly every tree around, large bartering so of it were clumped atop the trees and Jade wondered if it was some sort of rabid fungus. An odd sensation followed the discovery of this material, as if a headsman's axe was lording over Jade's head and any second it could fall and end everything he was with one swift strike. There was a incessant buzzing about, like the area was charged and moving continuously without really making a sound and such energy and power surrounded Jade and muddled his mind with an overwhelming pressure upon his skull.
Jade shook the feeling away, or at least attempted not to focus on it. So he continued onwards with unconscious direction, as he went this weight and pressure increased as if guiding him forward into the deep forest. Something called to him from the dark. the pressure became too great and Jade fell to the soft ground once more, his vision forming a dark tunnel and the world seemed to distance itself from him and it shook as if some force quaked beneath the earth. Jade's hearing filled with the most abysmal sound, an echoing roar of primal origin and wrathful intent, the mere sound of it quaked his very being to its core and gave the sensation of a rodent stumbling into the lair of a great predator. The power he felt, upon his kind and roaring in his ears was everywhere, it's majesty was overwhelming for in that moment deep within the eldritch woods and among this putrid and ancient things there were no gods nor kings in Jade's mind there was only Him.
The moment passed quickly and fleetingly, as if whatever had produced it was simply drawing in its breath for another bout. Jade gasped for his own breath as the world returned to him, with wide eyes the stared deeper into the forest that to him was free from all fear and danger. He wanted more, so much more, what he had seen and heard laid but deeper into the woods, he on,y had to go out and meet it. Rising from the ground Jade took off in a run towards where he knew this thing to be, the path seemed clear to him, illuminated not only be the pale moon but by his own desire as well. He pushed his way through the thicken bushes that scratched and tore at him life claws, yet he pressed onwards ever forward further and further, the thick substance of both grey and brown became more readily present in everything around him, nothing was free from its grasp.
With great enthusiasm and desire Jade pushed his way into a clearing in the wood, there in the ancient grounds and under the star rich sky was where it laid in wait. A rock of blackest dark that reflected all light that touched it, embedded into the ground was it as if it had been cast from the heavens by jealous and lesser gods. Around it was Him, a shifting put ride morass of pure majesty in Jade's eyes, both a sense of awe and primal revulsion came over him as he stared upon a cent rock covered in damp and smooth flesh, objects of indescribable content moved among this morass, eyes, hooks, claws, beaks, teeth, like a thousand animals joined together in a harmony of both beauty and horror.
Jade stumbled forth on shaking hooves, he moved among the mass, amount Him, his legs plunging deep within the put ride fleshy material with every step. Jade fell to his knees, happy tears graced his cheeks as a sensation of bliss and belonging washed over him, he smiled as the slowly moving mass closed in around him. It grabbed Jade and held him firm, the flesh meshed with his own like he was one of the trees and he was joining this greater ecosystem, a tent rio shot forth suddenly from within the mass and struck Jade's chest with considerable force. Blood sprung forth and it was devoured and absorbed with gusto, yet it wanted more, so much more, Jade knew this and felt an obligation to oblige. As He began to devour Jade he screamed of course, his flesh was being torn from his body and his organs ripped open but through the pain he was happy, he was blissful, he was at peace.
He was with his new god now.
