The Shadows

Alur

Acel watched carefully as his quarry  floated on light hooves through the underbrush of Alur forest. He watched it and followed, looking for signs that the creature would make if it noticed his movements. He breathed deeply and softly, bringing up a bow fitted with an ashe arrow, his favorite kind. He brought up his bow, drew back the arrow to his right cheek, and let it fly. The arrow struck home, but not true, and the giant animal brought it's hate and pain filled eyes to the one who just gave him that pain. He roared with his mighty chest and charged.

The Gigas Boar plowed through the trees like grass, ripping them up seemingly without effort. Acel cursed himself for missing his mark again, then brought his bow back up and shot another arrow straight into the boat's eye. The arrow easily pierced it's eye and went into the brain.

The boar stumbled and fell, it's body landing heavily in front of him and shaking the ground hard enough to shake the ground beneath his feet. It's body, as it sat layed out in front of Acel, was at least two feet above him. Standing, the monster was probably eleven feet high to the top of its arched back. Acel briefly imagined those tusks, easily four feet long and a half foot in diameter at their thickest, needle sharp at their tips. He knew what those thing could do to his unprotected skin.

He mentally cursed himself for thinking about what could but didn't happen. He wasn't shredded by the sharp tusks, so there was no reason to worry.

With a mental shrug, he brushed off his thoughts and set to work on skinning and otherwise harvesting the still warm corpse of the once mighty creature. He selected his favorite blade, a knife made of stone that he had saved from his childhood years. His mother still called him a boy, but boy's didn't hunt some of the most dangerous game there was to hunt. The Gigas Boar was considered to be something too monstrous to be game. Monstrous it was, but as every monster that had ever been tamed or slaughtered, Acel found the weak spot and let the arrow fly.

He harvested about 50 pounds of the Boar's flesh as well as the rib and leg bones. He left the hide there, it would be far too heavy to carry, especially with his already heavy load. He packed what he could carry, and set off toward his home villiage. He set out with his 100 or so pounds of game. Hunting them was outlawed by the Legion, although the outlaw was more of a safety warning than anything else.

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He had been walking for a couple hours and still didn't break from the woods. He knew his direction and he was sure he knew how far he had come to get to the boar. When he had entered the tall trees that same morning, he had traveled for maybe an hour before he found the boar. He stopped and looked around, confused and concerned. He must have followed the boar for longer than he had originally thought. The Alur woods were no place to be in the dead of night, and he shouldn't have gotten lost in the very trees he played in as a younger child.

He ventured on for awhile, waiting to see if he would break from the woods before stopping in a clearing. He was frustrated at his idiocracy at getting lost in a woodland. He hastily made a net and roped it to a tree nearby. He then hoisted the hundred pounds twenty feat into the air, an exhausting task even for the most hardy men.

Having finished his hiding of the day's reward, he brought out another rope and climbed and separate tree. He thought that a fire would be very unwise because of all the other creatures that would be attracted to the light and heat. He mentally went through a checklist that his mother had taught him long ago to remember of the most urgent needs that had to be met in order to survive in these woods. One of the first was to never, under any circumstance spend the night in them. Acel smiled to himseld. Check. The second was to never have raw flesh on your person while in the woods. The blood would attract a wide variety of animals and other things that didn't quite count as anything living. He looked over to his giant 100 pound meat hook and smiled once again. Check. Third, and perhaps the most important, always be afraid. Always fear everything in the woods, big or small, living or dead, animal or plant. He shivered to himself as he thought about why he should fear those things. To this, he did not smile. He was afraid, very afraid, and the more he learned about the forest, the more he grew afraid. But, in equal measure to his growing fear, he also gained love and respect for the tall trees.

Dire wolves, his mother called them, were wolves after a sort, them being at least 5 times their smaller cousins the timber wolves, who by themselves, were twice the size of a grey wolf, and infinitely more cunning and violent. The didn't hunt in packs unless they were hunting something much larger than even they were. The Gigas Boar was one of those few creatures they hunted together. They were huge, black, and usually hungry, so when they hunted, they devoured whatever was cursed enough to be their prey. They didn't wait for their victim to die, the wolves just tore the victim to shreds.

The Flaand was a mosquito. The males, or drones, were twice the size of the mainland mosquitoes and gathered in swarms ruled by a queen. The queen usually didn't have a mate for long, and then ate him and somehow convinced another drone to join her in unholy and grotesque matrimony. They had sharp stingers that could peirce leather and a venom in them capable of paralyzing a young dragon. The venom kept the victim alive and awake to keep their blood flowing as the said victim was swarmed with almost palm sized bugs that worked together to drain them of every drop of blood with long needle noses. The poison not only made you unable to move, but also heightened the nerves, so the victim felt everything. However, once the venom is applied, there is a very simple cure and once stung, if the victim survived, they would be immune to almost any paralysis poison or venom that could be applied accept for only the most potent of concoctions

Possibly the most dangerous creature was the Eant. It was a living tree, of the more bloodlusty variety, and they could almost never be distinguished from the rest of the towering oaks and redwoods with a mix of birch. They looked exactly like trees, for the most part, and they didn't like people or animals at all. Whenever a wanderer passes withing their circle of roots, they would snatched them up and press the body into their trunk until they exploded from the pressure. The worsted part about them was that as soon as they had the victim, they worked slowly to bring them to themselves. No animal would come to take it once it was in the branches of the wooden giants. The trees could only be burned, they couldn't be cut effectively, as their bark healed very quickely. However, most of the time, they slept, only waking when a potential victim stayed too close for too long.

And those weren't all of the dangers in the woods. Their were small shrubs that if you stepped into them, they would start sucking you down into an impossibly large stomach. Their were small fields of flowers with pollen numbed your legs to pain while small imp looking creatures devoured your legs and then the rest of you should you fall. The flowers grew in the blood of the victims. Their were shape changers that could be anything they wanted to within or without the forest. Their were shadow walkers that could blend themselves perfectly with any shadow they could find, and then launch small darts that pierced the skin and sent a poison shooting through the blood to the heart in seconds. Even a small nick could be fatal. Other insects like the Gol that were like wasps, only about the size of a flea and more fond of stinging you with their whole bodies than just their puny stinger. They burrowed into your flesh an ate everything organic they could find like locusts. And then their was the most feared of all creatures that called these woods home. The legendary alpha. She was the master of all the wolves, no matter how violent or independent. She was the undisputed leader. She was the only creature in these woods that had no fear of anything in the woods, because they all, mosquitoes, Dire wolves, Eants, Gol, and every other creature here, respected her. Not feared, but respected. Acel had no idea what she did to earn the right to walk these woods without fear, but he wanted to know.

For many years he hunted the shewolf, trying to catch a glimpse of the silvery coat that travelers sometimes described when finishing their tales of near deaths mingled with many a tankard of ale and mead. He never caught sight of her, not even that glimpse he wanted so badly. He dreamt of her. His family called him crazed, but he wanted to find this creature, to know how she tamed Alur. He didn't want to kill her. He didn't even think of that. He wanted to see her, just once, and then maybe he would know.

As a child, he played within the fringes of these woods, enchanted by the danger, but not knowing why he should be afraid. He commanded that respect once, when he showed no fear the the forest. The animals and even the passive killers of the woods did nothing to disturb his games of hide and seek. Even dire wolves let him be.

He lost that respect long ago, about the time that his father died. And he wanted it back. The forest treated him as much of an outsider as anyone else. His forest was no longer his, and he wanted to know how to get it to accept him again.

With these thoughts and memories lingering on his mind, he wrapped himself in his cloak and faded off into the land of unrestful dreams.