Regret gave way to desperation after walking several miles in the hellish wood. The sense of loneliness somehow attached itself to the feeling of being watched with a quiet and calculated dread. Visually, everything else I had experienced up to this point was far more intimidating, but this forest had been a presence that was very real and very upset. It did not like the fact that I was there. Yet, nothing truly unexpected had happened. Then again, maybe I had just come to expect so much worse. Perception is reality. I walked and walked and walked and, with exception to the mental agony caused by the unknown, I was essentially left alone. The trees were decorated by the features of man, almost faces if not for the leaves and branches distracting these characteristics. In fact, they were similar to those I had encountered on the walls of that dreaded sea of blood. Only now, they seemed more lost, more abashed. It felt as though they had given up what little hope that could possible still exist here. Unless I was losing my mind, which was very possible, I could have sworn the trees were whimpering.
My own misery is taunting me. The air stings my lungs. I can barely see. Wicked eyes surrounding me, the trees are watching silently. I could try to run, but I don't see the point.
It was becoming easier and easier to fall victim to my surroundings, to succumb to the torture. Had these trees once been a mere man such as I, struggling to understand where he was or what he was becoming? Would I just continue to move forward until my body gave up? Would I die here, my body decaying into the ground and becoming just another piece of this depressing wood of suicide? I slowed my pace, spun a full circle trying to spy any semblance of an escape, found nothing. Exhausted, I fell to my knees. The forest was getting exactly what it wanted as it watched me slowsly slip into despair. I found a rather large branch and began sharpening it into a blade with one of the many rocks on the ground beside me. I would die here, I knew that much, but it would be at my own hands, not those of the sick, twisted evil that has created this Hell.
I'm tired of trying, I'm sick of the waiting, if there's nothing that I can do. A pitiful lullaby to sing the tortured to sleep. Please, oh please, dear Temptress, come back to me. Show yourself, answer my cries, show me the way. Allow me to make you mine. We could settle down and change the end, nothing but time, start over again.
Footprints. A straight line, a steady flow, created by a pair of magnificent shoes. They were right in front of me. Had they been there all along? Was I too busy wallowing in self pity to notice I was not alone anymore? I traced the footsteps with my eyes, slowly raising my head, and there she stood as beautiful as ever. This was not possible. I watched her destroyed beneath the crimson with my own eyes. Had I willed her to return? Had I made this happen? Had I figured out this funhouse of insanity? I decided to test the theory and spoke out loud, "Oh, master of this maze of wonder, creator of this den of torment, show me a way to press on and continue down the path to the unknown!"
With that, the Temptress urged me forward with her slender, delicate hand. As I moved forward, trusting her gesture, the wall of the mountainside in front of me began to quiver and quake. An entranceway to a dark cave unveiled itself to me. Without hesitation, I followed the Temptress into the shadows and fog of the dank, cold cavern.
I have been reborn! I have broken free! I'm free! I'm free of all the shackles of your control! I have figured this place out! Throw everything you have at me now, I dare you! You can't deny m! o not defy me! I am drunk on lust and soverignty! I have been reborn!
The souls of the carnal,
those who betrayed reason to their appetites,
their sin was to abandon themselves to the tempest of their passions.
“How does this insolence still live in you?”
he cried upon that terrible sill of Hell.
- Dante Alighieri
