Hollar stamped out into the distant field, his feet punching holes into the tall grassland. He saw the curling mountains of the Ironrounds, long slopes of dark stone peaked with a white cap. The peace here was all consuming, if he didn’t have to contend with the past then he might consider settling down here. His thoughts turned bitter, there he was being outside of the cycle again. Hollar shook his head quietly and began to work.
He dragged his foot in a wide circle, drawing out a diagram from memory. ‘Flytrap doesn’t know what it’s talking about.’ He thought, angrily digging his heel through the soil. His temper rose and he snarled. ‘Mulch with opinions.’ Hollar started to lace the disturbed soil behind him with small dots of amber he’d been collecting for a while now.
He remembered each one, so small and perfect in its uncut state. He liked them since he was a boy, like a preserved pearl of time. Some of them even had small bugs trapped in them. The oldest of his collection, the one that started his love for them, had a large captured horned beetle in it. Hollar looked at the small stone with a frown, forgetting his wrath then. ‘I’m really going to have to sacrifice more for this…’ He looked deeply into the trapped creature’s eyes. One single thought hit him like a sledgehammer. A profound realization. ‘Mulch with opinions.’ Hollar tightened his fist then, swallowing the piece of amber whole in his hand. ‘Never Again.’ He remarked, a single tear rolling down his cheek. Hollar set the horned beetle amber down in the middle of the circle he drew.
With a sharp yank of the goad, he instructed his pet to start collecting sap and twigs from the forest, and not to stop for the foreseeable future. He felt the mimicked pain of the creature move from the outskirts of the town and head back towards him.
Weeks of indirect work to blind Flytrap culminated in this moment. He stood here at the edge of Flytrap’s peripheral view. Weeks of redirecting roots away from this area, encouraging them to seek rotting nutrition in seems. Rolling roots into balls around mineral veins. Encouraging roots to seek water lines away from this little slice of heaven. Now was the time to test his work, to see the repercussions of a planned misstep.
His hand hovered over a branch too close to a guardian. The very act of looking at the branch itself gave him pause. As if it were the last line to cross in his mind. He placed a slow tentative hand on a stem. His hand moved up the length of the stem, quietly seizing one of the small branches on it. He smiled, starting to believe his work was bearing fruit. He pressed further down on the small branch in his hand. Nothing. A sickly snap creaked out from the stick. Nothing. Hollar smiled as he took the large branch and snapped it violently. NOTHING! Hollar took it and launched the branch end over end, watching it sail over the horizon and landing in the grasses he’d been standing in prior. All that greeted him was the silence of the woods. Whispering wind rustling the leaves of the forestry around him. The gentle sway of the grasses shimmering to the whims of the cool breeze.
He looked down at the final act, and smiled wide and wordlessly. Triumph. He took the goad as violently as he did the branch and directed his monster to rip whole trees from the earth. Mentally, he drew a sharp image of his new carve out. An isolated range on three sides, a poisoned firebreak of coppiced trees and ingrown forestry isolated his sliver of heaven. He seared the image of it all and burned it deep into the mind of his mindless beast. Twisting its flesh into a crude map so that it had no chance to forget, or ignore his order. Hollar turned to find it lurking in his new domain, already molting his map into its flesh. He saw it gripping trunks and dozing over multiple trees in fewer strides. Hollar turned, and started walking deeper into the forest.
He marched all around until it was in his sight. Isolated. Dominant. Blooming. Slightly diminished. Pained and alone, the massive looming pethorn bush swayed in the breeze. Sensing one of its own nearby, the large bush unfurled to reveal its heart to the man. Hollar saw it as a comforting aspect. The few things that would willingly open itself up for his sustenance, was going to be this clade’s downfall. His eye caught something glinting then. Another piece of amber laying in the dirt. He leant over and grabbed it. The stone was hot in his hands as he pushed his will in it with the weave. He marked it as his, the symbol of death he had come to perfect over the years, the Carrion Bloom.
A deathly antlered skull headed beetle formed within the amber, swimming in frozen time. Moving but not moving at all. Hollar stepped forward, and placed his hand out. The pethorn bush laid out a single tendril to share its sustenance with him, share its sugars and water with him. Instead, Hollar gently grabbed the vine and paralyzed the mighty pethorn with a single pulsed thought. Frozen and held, the vines began to shudder. The thick stem of it shrieked in pain as his skin hardened into stone, bruising its thorny growth. His other hand, amber firmly planted in his palm, punched down with all his might. He felt the squishy membrane of the root ball deep in the ground. He took the amber and hardened it to a diamond with his grip and plunged it deep into the root ball of the plant.
He pushed his demands further, suddenly and violently exhausting all of his stored sap he’d stolen over the years. These stolen whims of will being suddenly expended now reminded him of starving. It was like eating the last morsels of food in the pantry just to wake up in the morning tomorrow alive. In his free hand, he stole as much sugar and water and power as he could from the planted beast deep within the ground. It crystalized along his arm, darkening from bright green sap and into festering black rock that faintly smelled of burnt sugar. He burnt the stolen fuel too, needing it to corrupt this innocent guardian to his own need. To follow the Carrion Bloom.
It curled in his hand finally, no longer able to resist his will to change it. The smell of festering life tickled his nose, decay was already setting in. Hollar yanked his hand from the deep pethorn bush, watching it fully curl in on itself and die. He extended his index, pinky, and thumb into an obscene sign. ‘Kneel’ He mentally commanded, preparing to pull on the piece of amber telepathically. He felt a new goad in his hand now, the feeling of extreme cold overtook him then. His chest felt as if it was going to explode. His mind was scattered, hurt, betrayed, scared, alone. Hollar rose an eyebrow, learning a new piece of lore. He leant in and pulled hard on the new goad in his hand. ‘I said. KNEEL!’ He pushed his will as hard as he could into the weave.
Before his eyes, Hollar saw the earth begin to mound. Small rootlike fingers poked from the soil to pull up a large rotten mass of plant flesh. The soil fell off in meaty chunks, peppering the floor with small remnants of the once mighty pethorn protector. His eyes drifted up to the center mass of this newly claimed golem of rot. A bright orange glow took over the once verdant green in its chest. A once mighty thorned golem of plant, thorn, and leaf has turned to something more mushy, dank, and rotten. Its once strong arms were atrophied, blackened, and now frail. Hollar settled on a festering sack of bile on the creature’s back, accompanied by large imposing horns atop its head. As in his nightmares, a tall legged abomination stood from the ground with proud antlers. The smell of festering bile filled the air as it shook off the last remnants of dirt clods. Curdled and fallow ichor sloshed from it. Highly flammable oils sheened the ground as it stood, leering left to right in place like a drunk.
Hollar smiled at his new corrupted creation. “Good.” He muttered. ‘Go forth and multiply. Consume.’ Hollar seared the mental map of this land he had stolen into the beast’s mushy skin, setting it forth to claim and corrupt the rest of the hidden golems in the ground. Hollar smiled to see the thing stumbling off through the forest. Something finally gave way to him, the feeling of helpless abandon he had mired through for so long. A single tear rolled down his face as he felt in control for the first time. Real. True. Control.
Hollar walked down the long slope back to the open field he had started work in. Satisfied, the golem protectors of this little slice of land were to be uprooted and corrupted. He started to collect as much wood and sap as he could. The pile rose well above head height around the circle, and for the next three days did he labor without sleep.
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The land slowly withered from green to yellow. The pile sat in carefully curated rings of decreasing size from the center of his initial diagram. Hollar saw his control expand to a small horde of the corrupted beings in that time. They multiplied like aphids in the summer, their smell of decay and rot rolling through the land here. The once suffocating might of Flytrap held this valley, the overgrowth of choking pethorn suffocating all life here. Now it bent to his whim. Hollar set his hand on the ground and started the ritual.
Bright flashes of light dominated in brief sequential bursts. The smell of burnt amber filled his nose as he pushed his aching will into the weave. Exhaustion threatened to take him, but that was not enough to cease his effort. The forest remembered a slight, and Hollar had done much more than insult a tree. His hands and feet ached as he felt the ground warm, he could feel the smaller blazes starting to take hold in the ritual sacrament around him. Small burning piles of wood donating just enough of their life to the cause. Green wood smoking brightly, as those fires took hold. His eyes watered from the smoke, forcing him to close them.
Blackness. Smoke. Pain. He felt a small twinge of irony at the thought. All of those things intimately while confined as a druid, dabbling in the unlife of the cycle allowed him to break past that. To see the world in more than just ever turning wheels of life and death. To see the utility in things beyond life. He needed to speak to her again, to reach into the sea of souls and pull on the threadbare tapestry. Just to hear her voice one more time. Just to see her face. Hollar pulled that face, held onto it from memory. It wasn’t the pain, the smoke or the darkness he channeled. Those things bring ruin if you follow them too deeply. Hollar followed the love he once held, the woman he loved so deeply. The child he lost.
There, before him, standing once more was his thing. He’d gripped the goad with bleeding hands, summoning his entire retinue. Dozens of festering beings of death lurched and twinged in pain and agony. Hollar looed around at the blazing fire, parasitically sapping itself into his whim. The beasts around him stood silent sentinel, watching from the dark like monsters of the past. He closed his eyes again and saw her face, pulling hard to draw it back from the sea. He felt the pull of the world give, the aches of pain laving him as he floated. He felt the heat of his creation fade from perception, smoke inundating his sight. He opened his eyes to the sky and saw the bight light of the day shining down on him, his eyes blinded and rendering him paralyzed.
The ground molded itself under him into a cocoon, stones pressing tightly under his feet. His sight returned, unveiling nothing but forest in all directions. The smoke cleared, fresh cool air ran through his clothes. The pain returned, sharper, more defined now. Before him was a mottled black corpse, suspended in stone, bones slowly knitting back together. The flesh twitched and writhed uncontrollably. He seized the face, and body, from memory. Shaping it in his mind’s eye like clay. The flesh danced to his command, arching out into long shapes around him. Black stone baked into place, his skin seared. The tower took shape, his eyes bled. The forest died, his flesh warped.
Surrounded like the gods of old, Hollar looked out to his creations, his kin. A sinhle withered black arm punched out in the same obscene gesture. All at once his creatures took armfuls of flaming timer leftover from the grand pyre. Lighting like fireships of the ancient world, they sprinted out into the forest. He yanked harder on the goad, as if he could shove them by the very sacks of flaming ichor that now bubbled violently on their backs. Enormous fireballs rippled out In the remnants of the cutout of forest he had. He sensed the pulsing fear of the remnants of life that clung to the forest’s vestigial gasps.
Hollar drew from the new fireballs and yanked on the weave as hard as he could. Small creatures snatched up in the proceeding fireballs were dragged into his court by the remaining rotting golems. Twisting and kneeling to the whim of his mind. Small creatures molded together into skittering blackened beasts that nipped heels. A couple larger game pulled from the searing flames and molded to the rotten golems. Adding their mass into larger abominations that squealed in horrific agony. Blackened beetles bore from the buried remnants of the golems he had. Molting from the abundant decaying organic matter that now peppered the soil.
He felt the hand of a small child holding his free hand’s finger. Don’t look down. Comfort radiated from the feeling. He seized the hand, lifting it into his arms. A childlike beetle crawled, antlers prickling his chin. A blackened hand caressed the creature as he turned to the newly formed Carrion Throne. Built from fused ribcages of unlucky animals caught in the onrushing waves of flaming golems. An antlered skull sat atop of the throne. The fire husked man took a seat. Deathly thin from immolation, he fused to the chair, his gaze locking onto the opposite throne from him. A decayed corpse, moldy milky eyes glaring back at him lifelessly, a small babe fused to its arms. The blackened husk gave a withered smile as he sent a death pulse through the tower and into the ground.
All around him the forest burned in agony. The energy sapped from the still raging fires, slowing their march in the dead crevice. Trees twisted and grew spikes that skewered air. The ground blackened like a spreading curse from the tall tower. More golems ran forward aflame, suicidally charging into the last brown vestiges of forest he had claim of.
He felt the sudden loss of the golems as they dumped their flaming guts onto the forest floor. Animals of all shape and size scattering as a terrible forest fire sweeps with unnatural rapidity. His tendrils through the land creeping further like grasping hands. His bony fingers gripping and ripping what life still exists underground. Hollar felt a second heat radiate out from the tower, smaller, more subtle. The pulse was the burning afterthought of a deeply planted root finally severing. Finally sensing a massive dump of burnt alkali leaching into the soil.
He sent his slender fingers down. The final act. The final betrayal. His hands gripped the fibrous cord. A throat in his hand, one of many, the only one he’d ever held. He pulled, squeezed, cut, burn. The lone organic tendril writhed in agony, and the forest trembled all around him. The spread atop the surface was complete, and now the festering wound this land became coiled in on itself like a snake. His beetles burrowed up from the earth, dragging rotten refuse with them. His festering war forms lurched in agony, their pain filtering back through his bodily tendrils of the earth. And the forest writhed in his deep hands, the leaves of the unburnt greenery reoiled in shock. The immolated corpse shined its bright white teeth as he finally snapped the deep tendril. Rupturing a massive supply vein from the very earth itself.
Life bearing pethorn blood spewed violently from the intrusion, and bubbled up to the surface in guttering pools of bubbling black frothy fluid. He burnt it all into a more stable form in the ground, where he’d need it later. Now was the time to follow the lead of this massive root, deep into Flytrap.
Hollar took one last moment to look at the vestigial remnant of this dead land. One last mind pulse brought massive curling sheaves of stone, animal, plant, and corrupted earth into a wide bulb. Splaying out in a massive blooming flower the cocooned his tower in gripping hands, screeching beasts, and coiling writhing thorn vines. The stairs coiled up and around the massive blocks of seared black stone, polished smooth by the demands of its master. Golems began walking to and from the outside of the Carrion Bloom, conveying the looted splendor of the land he’d corrupted for himself. ‘Never Again, Flytrap.’ Hundreds of beetles swarmed the base, engorged on stolen sap from the lands that surround. Gnashing teeth forming a chorus of insect song piercing the sound like banshee wails.
He pulsed a single thought, echoing off the carved symbols deep within his tower, and piercing the stone and soil beneath the deepening foundations of this dark tower. He pulled harder than he’d ever done in his life. His power traveling down familiar underground highways that connect the land. He strengthened the cordage into neigh unbreakable length with the reserves of fuel he had. Slowly, ever so torturously slowly, the force bent and pulled on the pethorn forest towards the horizon. Powerful ruptures of stone shook the land in rhythmic seismic slow motion, connected guardians suddenly lurched as if drawn to the tower. He felt it then. Awareness. A sense as if someone had finally noticed their toe had an infection.
‘I know you.’ Hollar said mentally, pulsing it through the ground. Mycological messengers conveying his words chemically to the thing that poisoned his future.
A stunned silence echoed back through the rhizosphere, roots coiling in pain and stunned silence. The cold depths of rage then answered in fierce retort. The silent underground war began to reject the new bony hands that ripped and stole with the deathly grip of the damned.
Hollar reached his skeletal hands out through the lithosphere, sending burrowing beetles to eat and steal and scythe through living roots.
Guardians pulsed to life, clawing at the ground around them in sudden activation.
The net closed, and the fire spread.
Hollar knew, it was time.
Feet trampled, the land recoiled, it was going to play its next move.
