Lone Wendy: The Girl and the Forest of the Gods

by D E Dunn

  Madness, when dark things roam freely in your mind. When the things before your eyes defy imagination and reality slips away. When the world becomes so inconceivable, that facts and fairy tales melt together into an indistinguishable mess.

  I stared into the eye of a giant, and felt a fear so fierce, my legs could not hold me. No thoughts would come, only tears. I whimpered powerless and paralyzed. But what was it that so much I feared? The monster so large? Or myself... so small.

  ***

  Sitting on a hill, under a tree at sunrise, big sky dwarfed only by endless land. Staring, so still, into the distance, I never slept. My eyes are cold and glaring, hiding my thoughts behind them. My fears, hate, and despair.

  I could have kicked the shard. Laid beside it. Stepped over it, walked away, and never known. I should have known, I'll never find it.

  The thoughts replay in my head.

  I'm nothing, I'm useless, I'm stupid

  The new mantra in my mind.

  I should have just died, I should die. I'll never make it home, I don't even know where home is, or if it still exists. Even if it does, even if I could get there, everyone would just hate me. I hate me.

  My teeth clench, as I slump over limp on the ground, and lay there through the day and the night. Watching as giants and massive creatures wander the plains. Their fearsome looks contrasting their calm and gentle nature. I find it soothing to look at them, drifting peacefully as I drift off to sleep.

  I dream of home, a place as lost to me as I am. A place I left, for a foolish dream I suffered for, only to find the world empty and cruel. I think of my mother, I see her face as I stare out. I think of Wil. I wonder, will they remember me for who I was? Or will my leaving define me? How empty I feel...

  Journal

  A calming night beneath a vibrant sky. The stars dancing as the branches bow and sway. The breezes gentle and warm. Sharply clashing as they meet and rustle the soil amongst grasses rolling over like waves in a vast sea. A sea of earth stretching far into the distance until it fades into the void.

  So beautiful, and yet lost to me. I can't think of these things. I'm numb, I'm tired. I'm ill, and I'm alone. I've decided not to eat. Do what I should have done long ago, and end my journey. This is my end, to slowly fade into this peaceful place, still and calming. Here I'll lye for all eternity beneath the stars, until the dust swallows my bones.

  I'm sorry, or, should I be...

  -Wendy

  Part 2

  Little Pond

  I tried to go without water, but the pain was too much. I pull myself over to a nearby spring to drink. Cupping the cool water in my hands, something magic about it as it dribbles over my lips, relief as I drink. As I rise, a root catches the charm around my neck, breaking the strap, and sending the necklace plunging into the water.

  I watch as it drifts below the surface, before turning away. "Useless thing!" I mumble.

  Clouds gather suddenly over the sky as I walk on. A thunderous boom shakes the earth, and a terrible pain permeates my head. My ears ring, my body burns, as if my blood were on fire. I fall, feeling a vibration through my very being. A vision of metal and fire flashes against my eyes.

  'The charm! it must protect me' I realize.

  I fall back, leaping into the spring without thinking, snapping my hands through the water, before I plunge below its surface. The spring is deeper than I had imagined, a clear black color, I see the charm sinking and swim after it. Catching it as it sinks slowly into my hands. A blinding flash of light blitzes across my eyes. I'm out of breath. Crashing through the surface, I claw up the edge and fall onto the soil. Shocked back to alertness by the cold water, shaking. I clutch the charm tightly. The clouds form into a fierce storm as my pain fades.

  ***

  That night was extra dark. I collapsed shivering, somewhere between dreams and hallucination. Darkness, wrinkled hands, and glaring eyes, from a mind inside my own.

  In the dark a fire erupts twirling through stoney chamber. Metal men stand idle beside a man in a robe. The fire buries itself into the man, burning him from the inside out. His eyes bleed before bursting into flame. Flesh melting all around deep in the earth. I travel backward almost flying, floating upward looking down into a chasm. Through a forest, over a hill, a mountain in the distance. The plains?

  I awaken suddenly from my nightmares to find a beautiful morning. The vastness no longer so fearful as I vaguely recognize pieces of it from my dreams.

  I leap to my feet, a hope rekindled in my heart. I know where I need to go, I will survive!

  Chapter 9

  It's the Journey

  Season – Spring

  The Metal Men:

  Come to a man in a dream,

  Born a time never the same,

  Crafted by a careful hand,

  Men of metal forged in flame,

  The master was betrayed,

  And cast out in shame,

  The man long gone,

  Non now remember the name,

  But always lingering to greet the dawn,

  Soulless eyes in heartless frame...

  -Unknown

  Part 1

  Tattered Hearts

  I've been walking for days across endless tundra, rocky gulleys, and flat plains. The day moves with me and the night as well. I have to end this, I have to know, if the contents of my visions are real.

  In the black I found hunger, murder, and pain. I suffered, but I was not alone. There with me, lost dreams and broken hearts. The Kennel Master, a sad monster, Charles. I guess that's what his name was, I found it when I searched him after the hounds left. Amongst the rotting flesh and leaking oil, held close to his steel heart, a letter written he could never send. Regret for his actions, sorry for the fate of his wife and children.

  It described the great cataclysm of the war as the Gods lost their minds. He followed the God Boro. Even after the Gods killed their own followers, he kept true to his vow. His family begged him to leave with everyone else, but he stayed. He went to his master's shrine, and as a reward for his loyalty, his body was butchered by the insane God. Vital pieces replaced by machine so that the God's last servant might live forever. But worse yet was his family. Caught fleeing, they were tortured until the brink of death, when their souls were ripped from their bodies and trapped within the newly created, twisted hounds.

  He lived through centuries of suffering and regret. A want to die, but unable to leave the ones he loved.

  When he died, when I killed him, he had already succumb. He threw himself between me and the beast. Sloppy movements, weak blocks, emotion took hold. He only thought of losing the hound, and the soul of his loved one inside. The scream, the moan of agony as he died, hand outstretched towards the dying beast, it was real pain. As he fell, himself dying, his last and only thoughts were of losing the ones he loved. Love is what made him continue his unnatural life, and love was what killed him.

  I felt it, as I lay defeated. The pain of how this world can take all that you love, and swallow your dreams.

  After many days of walking and reflection, finally I see a mountain rising from the flat earth, slowly drawing larger and nearer. A forest in its shadow growing from wind swept hills. Walking down a slope through a gulley I come upon a river, and, a bridge? A good thing maybe, but what's it doing out here?

  I hesitate before crossing it. I feel afraid, but it also feels right. My foot falls on the worn stone brick unleashing a tingling of memory. A sense of whimsey as I continue, confusion and longing following. The sun streaking through the trees across my eyes brings peace, a certain serenity, though an ominous shadow.

  Glancing through the trees like gazing upon still water, concealing death just below its surface.

  Across now, my foot kicking up dust as I step almost through a portal to another world. An heir of fate, a feeling as though I’m expected. I feel like I am meeting a life long lost, like a friend seeing you again for the first time in ages. A warmth, though a distance.
>
  A road leads deep into the forest. Broken and aged wooden fences lining certain parts of it. Coming to an intersection I see the path I must take, a narrow trail calling to me. As I enter it, I'm pulled back from my body into my mind, a deep breath drawing into me. This part of the forest is strange, almost creepy. I feel deja vu.

  A tattered and decaying rope twirls in the breeze as I exit the canopy. Broken blocks and fallen boards, buried wagons and derelict machines, sunk into the earth. The ruins of a long abandoned camp.

  Standing among the remnant memories of a foregone era, I don't feel alone, and I'm not. The whispering of ghosts in the pine. The eyes of those who cannot forget gazing through me. I feel their steps as I step, gaze upon the world as if remembering, and feel chills as I touch what once belonged to another, as they lament. This place is truly old, a portal to an ancient time, kept as it was by those who died here. In a way still living, never leaving, and wholly fearful.

  This is the place.

  Journal

  Empowered by the fires of carnage. Thriving on hatred, fear, and sorrow. The infernal machines, driven by hungry ghosts, to devour us all. And we leap willing into the mouths of them. Caught up in the moment with not a thought of the consequences. We see the fire of their eyes, these steel contraptions. More so capable than we are, stronger, faster, immortal. And they bow to us, ours to use. What power we must have, that these things would kneel before us, do as we would command of them. Yet we use them for their purpose, to devour, and destroy. It is our words, but their will. And when at last we feed them everything, we will find ourselves, too, eaten.

  -Wendy

  Part 2

  Parts Left Behind

  I stumble through the ruins, a breath taking feeling, when my foot knocks against wood and steel. An old chest half buried in the dirt. I don't know what's inside, but it emanates memory. I dig the box out enough to pry it open, and sort through the chests rather bland contents, it looks like someones luggage. Then among the junk, I find a book, tied and leather bound. My fingers twitch as I grasp it. I feel the energy of the life that last held it, pride, and conviction. I untie its cover and look through. It appears to be someones journal, filled with notes and insane ramblings. I skim its pages:

  [a satellite] – [machine] - [orbiting the heavens] - [a false God]

  - [alien]

  The last page catches my eye:

  [I am the master. My hands sway fate. With a wave of my left, I doomed mankind. With a wave of my right, I shall bow the Gods.

  Maison,

  High sorcerer]

  Sorcerer? A word both foreign and fearful. The wielders of magic are a rare and forgotten thing. They say that a sorcerer founded the machinists long ago. I wonder if this 'Maison' could actually be him?

  I look around the camp in shock. A gentle and hollow howling from under the trees at the edge of the camp cuts my curiosity short. As I investigate, I discover a hole into the bowels of the earth. A dilapidated stairway and scaffolding falling and rotten leading into it, too old to use. The drawing darkness calls to me. I take one last look at the world, and with a heavy breath, begin my descent. Slowly crawling along the rocks on the side of the structure, the black once again taking me.

  Nearly slipping a few times, I finally reach the bottom. Pale darkness engulfs the place like a fog. I can hear the distant sounds of drifting water and shifting stones. Who knows what could be in here, animal, demon, or man. The embers in my roughly crafted torch take hold, and give birth to a guiding light. Comforting and yet dull. The subtle sparkle of daylight above leaving me as I creep forward. My breath grows more shallow with every step. I stop with every sound and wonder. The darkness ahead of me in the tunnels almost moving, stretching, pulling me in. Staring into me more deeply than I stare into it.

  The tunnels a different world. A void like interior that shakes my confidence to the core, it's like it is winter again. The phantoms of freezing endless night fly freely through my mind. I shake, knock kneed, the memory almost too much, I feel myself about to crumble. But a faint light in the distance catches my eye. Soft and flickering, it looks like a gaslight. Stumbling forward to investigate, I find that it is a gaslight, tied into pipes bolted into the walls. This is no ordinary place. The taint of evil haunting the air. I follow the pipes, growing more and more numerous, until I enter a tunnel almost completely coated in them running along a metal walk way. Exiting the other side, a huge open cavern with a hill of rubble in the middle, a massive machine sits humming with energy atop it.

  I look around the hollow empty place barely lighted by gas lights all around. Slowly I make my way up the pile of rubble towards the machine. The force of the thing pulls on me, intensely bright, and emanating heat. Gazing upon it in wonder, carefully crafted, my eyes spot symbols carved into the metal. And then the name, Maison, carved into it as well at a point in the middle. Atop the point, a shard of glowing stone.

  'This is the shard, this is the God Slayer...' I can barely comprehend.

  That's what the journal meant, this "Maison" built this machine, and drove the Gods insane...

  Just as I realize, a light pulses behind me. Before I can react, the rubble crumbles under my feet and explodes. I go flying through the air with chunks of rock. I land hard near the base of the rubble and roll to the bottom of the hill. Recovering myself, I look up to find a strange ancient looking mecha charging up another shot. I bolt into cover as the rock behind me is blasted into molten chunks. Hearing its metal gears whirring, and the hard crumbling rock beneath its feet, I pull my spear and try to hide. I grip my spear tightly as I ready to ambush the thing, but another light flashes from around a corner. Multiple blasts tear into my hiding spot as more come, and I’m forced to retreat into the tunnels.

  I run fast, thinking that they're heavy and cannot catch me, but soon learn that I'm wrong. They keep pace, their bolts of energy flying faster, taking out rock on all sides of me.

  I grit my teeth as rock explodes into dust next to me, I need to destroy that machine. If I’m right, it powers these things. If nothing else, it frees the shard.

  Pushing myself, I manage to gain ground on them. Again I set up an ambush, hoping to down one and backtrack. My heart pounds as I try to control my breath. I hear their soulless footsteps closing. Leaping around the corner I aim for its chest cavity, but it rebuffs my attack effortlessly. Powering through my swing, I try to dodge, but feel its steel blade tear into my leg. I fall hard, unable to breath as my blood splashes onto the rocks. I quickly pull myself up, and take the chance to run back.

  The pain in my leg subsides after I push myself through the first few strides. Coming across the other mecha, I run just between them, feeling the heat of their energy bolts as they zip by me.

  Undaunted I continue, my leg nearly buckling with every step, swallowing the pain as I force myself to go on.

  As I turn a corner a huge metal sword comes crashing through the cavern wall. A melee mecha confronts me, stopping me as I try to dodge past. As I step back it strikes at me again. Off balance I have no choice but to try to block it with my spear. I put all that I have into it, but the overwhelming strength of the mecha again forces through. Its sword glances off of my spear and plunges into me, impaling me through my right shoulder. Screaming out it pain, I hold my resolve. Its sword stuck in me, I have a clear shot at its chest. Pushing through the pain I throw all of my weight into my spear. Howling with pain as the force of my thrust drives the mechas sword deeper. I smile for a moment as my spear penetrates, staring in shock as it does nothing. The thing lifting me into the air, I try to swing again but my spear is stuck deeply in it.

  Just as I begin to panic, a bolt of energy shoots past me landing on the melee mecha. It dissolves most of it into liquid metal and sends me sailing through the air.

  I land, numb, dizzy, and disoriented. Shambling to my feet, drenched in my own blood sizzling from the blast. I stumble for a moment before I continue running. Reaching the machine, the only thought lef
t in my mind.