VIII.

Yesterday was very strange, to say the least. I was sitting with Sefgh, Matt, and F.P., with M-Bot driving the car, looking out the window, when I saw something extremely unexpected outside - a sign on the trail. The sign, with words in red paint, looked worn down from age, and it wasn't written in a language any of us knew. It read:

We debated over who could possibly have put the sign up and what it could mean, but our question was given a partial answer soon enough. '1 Elis' was, in fact, a unit of measurement - the sign was referring to something that came up a couple minutes away on our path, which was when the strange events really began. If anyone is reading this - what's the most disturbing thing you can imagine finding in an empty, mysterious forest? How about a decomposing head on a pike? Beyond the obvious questions this raised, there was also the difference in age between it and the sign. The sign looked like it must be years old, but the head had to be somewhat recent if it wasn't a skull. Looking closely, it wasn't anyone we recognized - nobody had hunted down Zsuius or Screech, which was a relief, since it meant that nobody we were hunting had started hunting us back. That was my first thought, or at least my first coherent thought. My second thought was to wonder what it was even doing here. Back in the ancient medieval ages, heads and bodies would be left in public right outside towns to show travellers the power of the ruling monarch or local lord. We were still days away from any town, and it wasn't a medieval society with a cruel ruler, just a disorganized farming village with an informal mayor. What message could this possibly be sending? We were the only people even passing through on this path, it seemed like.

The others did not take it in stride the way I did. Sefgh and Matt were pale, and F.P. could barely even stand to look at it. Even M-Bot, who typically put up a front of unemotionality, was silent. We could have kept moving and in fact F.P. asked us to, but I wanted a closer look to see if there was anything around the pike that'd help fill us in on what had happened. Sefgh stepped outside with me to investigate, but quickly vomited from the sight and smell before turning and climbing back into the vehicle. It was hard to say how old the head was, given my lack of expertise, but it was still legible as a human head with a human face, so it couldn't have been that old, especially in this heat. The eyes had been eaten already, leaving hollow sockets crawling with maggots. The mouth was held open in a position of agony, and the tongue had been eaten as well. The victim looked to be in their late 20s or so, and was clean-shaven. They had brown hair reaching down to about their ears, one of which had a worm sticking out. Flies buzzed and swarmed around the head - they were the only source of sound for miles, it felt like. It was jarringly, deafeningly loud. I looked around the pike to see if there had been anything written down, any signs planted, any trails of blood. There was nothing.

The death was contextless and meaningless. A sad way to go, I think.

As I was about to step back into the vehicle, I noticed something out the corner of my eye. Through the fog, I saw a vulture perched on the top of a tree, stalking the woods for corpses. It was as if a hole had opened up in the gray murk just so I could see this. The vulture swooped down and landed right in front of me. It looked at the pike, looked to me, tilted its head, and let out a raspy shriek. It flew ahead of the vehicle, low to the ground, and slipped in between two trees a few feet ahead, right at the edge of my vision. My curiosity was running wild, and I followed it to find a small path carved out between those two trees, far too small for the vehicle but wide enough for me and the others to walk along it. I went back and told everyone what I'd seen.

"A, how can you have the stomach for this stuff, Maine?" Sefgh asked.

"It's just death," I responded, "you have to see it eventually."

"Not like that... not like that," F.P. said, "that's just awful."

"And you want us to go down that path 'cause you saw a vulture fly into it?" Matt asked.

"Maine has gone insane," M-Bot opined.

"If you won't go with me, I'll just go myself. I have to see what's in there! I was given a sign!" I exclaimed.

"I thought you didn't believe in signs. Aren't you skeptical of most of the things Alzeki tells us?" Sefgh asked.

"I'm skeptical of Alzeki, but of course I believe in signs. Who doesn't? I just don't like to follow them." I answered.

"Then why now?" she asked again. I didn't have a response, and while I was trying to think of something M-Bot interrupted.

"If you go follow that path, can we just leave Maine behind?"

"We can't do that to him!" Sefgh exclaimed, shocked. "He's one of us!"

"He's a tactical asset, too!" Matt added on.

"Wouldn't it be dangerous to go down there by yourself, Maine?" F.P. asked, concerned.

"And I'll do it if I have to," I responded decisively. Right then, I felt drawn, motivated in a way I almost never did.

"Can we at least drive up to the path so we don't have to see that thing anymore?" F.P. asked back.

I answered yes, not that he'd needed my permission to begin with. After driving up a few feet and putting that unsightly head behind us, Matt, Sefgh and I walked out to slip between the trees. M-Bot was not inclined to come with us, and F.P. needed to lay down after seeing death. It made sense, especially given his younger age. The first time can be a lot.

The opening was just wide enough for one person, so we all slipped in one at a time. The path was dark and narrow, and hadn't been maintained - the ground was grassy, and branches at times jutted out into the space and had to be broken off. If it wasn't for the sign I'd been given, none of us likely would have noticed this path was even here, and if it weren't for the fact it went perfectly straight, it'd be hard to tell if we were still on it. The smell of death wasn't so strong here, but it persisted. The stench, cramped space, the darkness from the trees overhead gave the vague sense that we were walking into a tomb.

It was dark enough that, even midday, it looked like dusk. The leaves and branches were thick enough that you couldn't peek through except in the tiniest glimpses, and even if you could, it was just more of the same thick clouds anyways. Hardly a great source of light, and they almost seemed dimmer than usual today. I looked around and it dawned on me that there were no other paths, that this was the only breach in the endless defense of densely packed trees, that it was so long you could see only darkness ahead of you and only darkness behind you. The grass was starting to subside, exposing a path of rough dirt tangled with countless roots, more and more branches jutting out ahead of us. I wasn't sure how far the path continued, and it seemed like it might trail off into a dead end, smothered by the density of the forest. The air was still and silent, and there were no signs of life - until, that is, a fly whizzed by our heads. Many flies began to fill the air, and the sound of buzzing was loud in our ears. It was just a few at first, but soon we were brushing aside whole swarms of them, streams passing between the trees, the buzzing growing louder and louder. They flew further into the path, and seemed to converge on a point, crowding around something. An intangible moment passed, and like they all shared one mind, every fly dashed away, leaving us to see what they'd converged upon: a hanging body, swinging high from a tree branch overhead.

The body was too high up to inspect closely, but looked to be a similar age and general profile as the man who was decapitated. Late 20s or so, clean-shaven, darker skin. I wasn't sure if this was a coincidence or not. The sight wasn't as gruesome as what we'd seen earlier, but it was still disconcerting. The smell was strong, too, so we moved ahead quickly until we got out of its miasma, then stopped to catch our breaths and talk.

"Maine, I think we should really get out of here," Sefgh said, "I don't know why you wanted to come here so bad."

"It was a sign," I responded, "there must be something important here."

"Well what d'you think it is?" Matt asked.

"I don't know," I said, "but it could be that there's someone here we're supposed to meet. There was a hanging body there, and there was a head on a pike outside the path. It might've been put there to signify the entrance to the path, and this is some kind of... long, long path to someone's hiding place out here."

"Maybe that's why there was a sign, too. It's advertisin' the place. Maybe it's a deathtrap?" Matt wondered.

"It'd have to be. What kind of person would decorate the path to their home like this?" Sefgh said, shuddering.

"You can go back if it's too much, but I'm going to keep on ahead. I don't really want to, but I think I might have to." I said.

"No, I'll keep going. Whoever did this... well, if I'm going to kill someone for the first time, I wouldn't mind it being them. How about you, Matt?"

"Yeah, I'll keep goin'. Think I remember somethin' like this in Alzeki's plan."

We resumed walking. It was a ways before anything else notable happened, and as we walked I glanced around myself at the trees and noticed some of them had scratch marks. There was some variety in these - some looked like the marks of claws, others looked like tallies, and still others were actual lettering scrawled in the bark. The bark of the trees was a very dark brown, and the marks were a dim light brown. The text was hard to make out in the dark light, but here's some of what I remember:

It wasn't very promising. Whoever wrote these was the same one to have carved out this path in the first place, I guessed. It seemed to be the personal space of a very strange person, stranger than usual, at least. The tallies seemed to hint at a dark backstory of their own, but the claw marks were outright confusing. Were there animals here? It had taken almost a while day to find just a handful of wild animals while Zsuius was training us, and since then they had been conspicuously absent. It was an absence that always sat at the back of my mind here. This place felt very different from the rest of the forest, though, and indeed animals began to show up again - more flies, buzzing between trees, though thankfully in much smaller numbers.

The path began to move downwards. It only occurred to me here that, for the most part, the forest had been almost entirely level, but now we were moving downhill. Our progress became even slower as we carefully walked downwards. Very gradually, things began to darken even further, and at times we had to feel our way slowly with our feet to avoid tripping on roots, until finally we were in pitch blackness. It seemed like this might force us to turn back until, as if accomodating for us, light came from the ground. Mushrooms growing in the dirt between trees illuminated, all at once, in a bright red. If it had seemed like dusk before, and then night, now it seemed like a darkness after night, a time alien to this world where the sun never rose back up. With this new light, we saw bloodstains on the trees and bones hanging from ropes, skulls peeking at us dangling from the ends of branches, and a steepening decline downwards. It was now that all of us, myself included, got a deep and horrible fear in our stomachs. I doubted myself. Why was I here? Why did I even want to come here so bad? It was a sign, yes, but that can only be half the explanation - why did I follow the sign at all? Why did I not try and fight back against it, against fate, to try and take agency? The thoughts were easily dismissed - fighting fate wasn't in my wheelhouse. Life and death would take me where they may, and there was little I could do but take it in stride. Still, I felt panicked, and Sefgh, I don't know how, was the one to take charge, placing a hand on my shoulder when I stopped moving and stood in place, silently comforting me and pressing me to go further. Our downwards crawl continued. We came to a gate, an arch of stone, built what must've been miles deep in this unbroken density. There was no lettering on the stone to indicate ownership, but another calling card - two hanging bodies, dangling from each side of the arch, with a skull crowning its top. The path continued downwards, far past what should have been reasonable. We were miles deep.

The trees began to lose their leaves, falling right then and there. They became barren and gnarled, with more and more branches sticking into the path, which seemed to become more and more narrow. Pillars of white stone stuck out from the ground on either side, ranging from being only as tall as our knees to towering above our heads, looking like giant teeth. It was like we were being slowly consumed by the forest's jaws. It had been several more minutes and we still had not come across any shelter, or any major structure at all save the arch, for that matter. There were no paths shooting off to the side, no gaps in the trees and teeth. The lighting was blood-red and the sky was utterly dark. The downwards incline showed no sign of stopping, or even of tapering off. We were terrified, and in the quiet I noticed our chattering teeth.

It was then when we heard the voice.

It was quiet at first, but grew in volume quickly. It sounded like the voice of a young man. It wasn't saying anything, just muttering, but it got us on edge, and we glanced all around us, then in unison looked back, wondering if it wasn't too late to turn back, though of course it was. How would we turn back now without seeing it through, when we'd been walking for what felt like hours? We went back to walking, now at a faster pace, brushing aside branches with stressed, sudden movements, as the voice continued to grow in volume. It was something we were all just trying to ignore, along with the bloodstains, the teeth, and the stench of death. I had almost tuned it out when-

"Help me."

The voice spoke coherently, and repeated the phrase, over and over. Help me, help me, help me. It wasn't a loop, it was saying it over and over again, help me, help me, help me. The voice cracked, and began to grow more frantic, and in turn we began to grow more frantic. We were hurrying down the path, whipping aside branches, ignoring everything around us, and broke into a run. The hill was so steep that once we began to run, we weren't able to stop, the momentum carrying us faster and faster as the voice grew louder and more panicked, our eyes twitching and sweat dripping from our foreheads as we ran towards the voice, towards the end of the path. Our feet were tripping on roots and we could barely maintain balance now, Sefgh tripping and being caught and brought back up by Matt so fast we barely split apart, and in a second they were back running right behind me, and everything was a dark blur of rushing blood and pounding terror as the voice began to scream, HELP ME, HELP ME, and flies swarmed out again from behind the trees and maggots rose up from the ground and hanging bodies began to appear again swinging from branches far above us, and the moon appeared in the sky as a vicious glaring eye only to vanish again just as quickly as a thick inky blackness passed over and through us, blinding us, and when we looked again the hill had become even more steep, so steep that we were no longer running but slipping and falling, and the voice's screams started to lose coherence. We slipped and fell and the path went vertical, the path constricting even further, sharp branches and teeth of stone tearing at our skin and countless flies spiralling around us, skulls peeking out from every hollow and pitiless eyes of crows staring down at us, and the path became a sheer wall and was swallowed wholly by the dark, and the trees were swallowed by the dark, and the teeth were swallowed by the dark, and the flies and maggots and crows were swallowed by the dark, and the skulls and blood and hanging bodies were swallowed by the dark, and as the screaming voice reached a crescendo of agony the dark lit up into a massive screaming face of red haze, bigger than anything in the entire world, big enough to swallow the entire world, and it swallowed us.

The world went dark, and then became nothing. There was no dark, and no light, and no absence of dark, and no absence of light. I was acutely aware of my nonexistence until, abruptly, the world went dark again, and then slowly, very slowly, lit up. We were in a clearing at the end of the path, back in the forest's natural gray light, encircled by a tight ring of trees. In the center of the clearing was something difficult to describe.

There was a large square pit, maybe seven feet across both ways and seven feet deep. It was tidy, looking like a perfect cube had been taking out of the earth. That wasn't the difficult-to-describe bit. At the bottom of the pit was what looked like a headless body, splayed out belly-up and lovingly preserved, with no insects from what I could tell and no stench. This wasn't difficult-to-describe either.

What was difficult to describe was what it actually looked like. On digital displays, when images are taking their time to load, they often look blurry and distorted, like you're looking at them through a thick pane of glass, or in a dream. This is how the body looked. It was almost impossible to make out any detail. My vision swam, and the longer I looked, the less I could make anything out. The air was still and silent, and when I turned my head, Matt and Sefgh were speechlessly staring with me. There was a strange intimacy to the scene, and it was as if whoever had set it up had decided it wasn't for our viewing. My mind was vacant, and I stared vacantly at the secret before me. As I sat staring, the vulture came down from the sky, flapping its wings, and landed on the other side of the pit. We looked into each other's eyes, and I passed out.