Chương 109: The Day of Your Death

The path had been a winding road on the peak of a long forest hill, so when Solas dragged her off, they both fell sharply. Miriam tumbled through the trees but quickly anchored herself with a web of vines wrapping around a pair of hunched oaks. Solas's momentum ripped her out of his grasp as he tumbled past her into the woods, his grinning face vanishing as the darkness swallowed him.. She was torn with a moment of indecision - launch herself back onto the path, or go after Sol.

She could hear Eoin calling for her, but in that moment she knew if she went deeper in, he would not follow. He had been terrified of whatever this forest held and he valued his own life too highly to risk it for hers, and certainly not for Sol. With a sigh, Miriam released the vines and tumbled after Solas. The branches and brambles that seemed so thick up by the path somehow got even thicker.

The result was that her fall couldn't build up much momentum, but her skin was lacerated by dozens of grasping branches and thorns. Worse, all the foliage seemed untouched, as if Solas hadn't just barrelled through. It was as if no one has walked through here in years. She finally gained stable balance as the hill leveled off. She wished she still had her nice yellow jacket that had been ripped apart when she reached the Second RIng.

Her winter coat had proven too cumbersome and warm while she ran, so she'd stowed it away in her pack on Eoin's cloud. Still wearing the backless shirt she'd put on after entering this Ring, she was scored all over in angry amber scratches. The forest itself was dark, but didn't seem any more imposing than any other dense forest she'd hunted in back in her human days. The woods outside Marybel had many sections as dark and foreboding as this.

"Sol?" she called softly. There was no movement she could make out. Not a single breath of wind made it through the thick foliage. No animals skittered in the underbrush. There weren't even any insects. Miriam summoned a vine spear and trudged forward slowly. The crunch of dry leaves under her feet seemed far too loud, announcing her presence with every tentative step.

"Sol?" she again called, as quiet as she could, feeling foolish for both trying to shout for his attention and yet remain unnoticed. Nothing. She wandered among the trees for what seemed like an hour, emboldened with every step that wasn't met with danger. Soon she was running among the leaves, their crunching a cacophony of noise that seemed to be getting louder and louder as she drifted aimlessly. There were no tracks. No signs that Solas or anyone had come this way.

Frustrated, she leaned up against a tree to rest. Where were these Fetch Eoin had warned about? For that matter, even the whispered voices in her head seemed to have stopped. She rested against the cool bark of the old oak behind her, finding that sweet spot between her horns where it was comfortable to lean her head. Danger, Dryad! Miriam snapped up, spear held tight. This had not been the sound of the taunting whispers from the path.

This had been a voice like Sailleach's, emotion that she could understand rather than words. She could still see no movement in the woods around her - as far as she could tell, she was alone. Slowly she turned around and placed her hand on the old oak.

"Was that you, friend? I didn't know trees could talk." Only old ones. Miriam looked around the empty forest.

"You must be a very talkative bunch, then. These are the oldest trees I've seen so far in the Tír." Danger, Dryad!

"Yes… but from where? We're alone here. In fact… have you seen a man walk through here? He's unusual - tall, with dark skin and white, almost sailcloth hair." Danger! You don't see.

"What don't I see?" Miriam asked, but right as she asked, she did see something. Movement, out of the corner of her eye. She looked and there was someone - partially hidden behind another tree, only yards away.

"Hello?" A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. She walked carefully towards the person, her spear still clutched in one hand.

"Hello?" As she neared the tree, she could see more of the person hiding. Their skin was a pale gray, and it seemed from what Miriam could see that they were naked - or maybe their clothes just matched their skin well?

"Hello? I'm looking for -" The hidden person turned and peered out from behind the tree. It was her face. Horns, eyes, mouth, nose - all the same ones she recognized ever since she came to the Tír. Except these eyes were dead, milky white and slightly glowing. Miriam gasped as the full figure of her hidden doppelganger was revealed. Her stomach was slashed open horrifically, spilling guts and entrails to the ground. A hand fell onto her shoulder and she spun, lashing out with the spear.

She was horrified to see another version of herself, but this one was missing half its face, a gray skull peering out from beneath flensed flesh. The spear passed through as helplessly as if she had attacked a cloud. They were everywhere. All around her now. They had been there the whole time, she realized. Just as the tree warned her. There was her, skewered by an arrow through the chest. Her, little more than a torso. Her, with a slit throat. The day of your death is coming, Dryad! Which way will it go?

Miriam tried Waterfall, but the force did nothing. Rising Tree passed right through. So many possibilities! But these are most likely, aren't they? A whole host of her own deaths paraded towards her. One, pierced by a hundred tiny holes. Water needles, Miriam realized. Another with a surgically clean slash through the chest. Bonecutter, she identified. Another suffocating in a pool of floating water. Another dropped from a great height, smashed on one side like a hare stuck by a carriage.

"All the ways Eoin could kill me," she whispered. Yes! You could die many ways between now and then. If you manage to survive, however, your fate will surely be one of these. The Master of Mist is known to be quite ruthless. The Fetch swarmed her, pulled her down into the earth in a vortex made of nothing but ghostly versions of herself, each having faced a death more horrific than the last. They clawed at her, their fingers somehow corporeal while their bodies seemed no more solid than the wind.

The scant light of the forest above was fading as she sank deeper into her own deaths. She fought as hard as she could, reaching up towards the light as everything faded more and more into darkness. Perhaps none of these depicts the day of your death. Perhaps the day you die is today. Miriam felt herself being pulled down into her grave, so much like being pulled down into the well which brought her to this world in the first place.

She remembered in that moment wondering if perhaps it might not be best to just let go and let death take her. She'd lived so long… who was she to be afraid of death? Her eyes flew open. That was right. Why should she be afraid of death? At that question, something within her shuddered and relaxed - a tension she had never even known was there. Fórsa flooded her whole body. Pain wracked her, but at the same time it wasn't unpleasant. It felt almost like when Sailleach had rebuilt her body for the Second Ring.

For the first time it was like the three separate Natures of her body weren't separate things at all. It was all just fórsa - all just the stuff of life… and death. She took a deep breath, and it was like she'd been constricted her whole life.

"You're just pantomimes," Miriam said. Her body abruptly ceased sinking.

"You wear the face of death and think you're its messenger. But you're not." She took one step up. Hands clawed at her but could find no purchase.

"I've died many times now. Each time has meant a new beginning. But you, who claim to foretell the end of any who step into your forest… have you turned your sight upon yourselves?" A black miasma began to seep from her. t. Those hands that clawed at her pulled back as the ghostly skin began to rot. Shrieks filled her mind - not shrieks to terrify, but shrieks of pain. Fórsa radiated from every part of her body.

"You're not the vengeful spirits you pretend to be. Even if you become incorporeal, you're still living creatures, aren't you? And anything living can die." Miriam pulled herself upward, wrapping herself completely in Death. Anything she touched withered and burned.

"I spent a long life being afraid to die. I spent my old age longing for it. And I spent much of my time here pretending dying wasn't a part of living." One of her hands burst out of the ground and clawed into the dirt, pulling herself up. Her body was wreathed in black flames, and at that moment she could feel something change. The Fetch that burned under her fingers were no longer rotting. They were simply… dying.

Almost like the iron she had so narrowly escaped from under Teilgcheárta, anywhere her flames touched began to be rendered inert, but here it was a natural death. Death was the end, carried by an endless river back to Life. From their end new life could grow. Ends become new beginnings. It was almost like she could see what these Fetch creatures were trying to be - a link with death, a representative of the ultimate fate everyone will inevitably face.

Beings who could look into the void of nothingness and bring it back to the living. She could feel each of them reach out towards that infinite distance, only to fall short, incapable of really connecting with death as a pure concept. At the same time, she could feel every inch of the forest around her, the pulsing life that fought so hard against their inevitable end. What they sought to be, Miriam was. The Fetch scattered, fading into nothingness as they wailed into the distance.

Miriam steadied her breathing and stood. There was no hole beneath her. It had solely been a trick of Mind fórsa. She looked at the black fame which was still wreathing her hand - her power had been real. With a thought, the flames doused and she nearly fell over, exhausted. She found herself leaning once more against her oak friend.

"I hope I didn't scare you." Trees. Dryads. We are Nature. Spare no fear for death.