Synopsis
The Alcucuan Shadow Forest.
The Forest of Dark Legends.
Satire had learned from a very tender age to respect the Shadow forest for it will respond in kind and in her nine years of life she had never wandered past the Arsix boundary and ventured into the forbidden territory, until now. Her heartbeat spiked to a furious rhythm, thudding in her ears as strongly as the wails of her depleting courage.
How had she found herself here? Why did she allow her feet to carry her to this dark landscape of lush vegetation and clumps of trees with branches that grasp the skies? She constantly had to remind herself to keep going, even as her gut protested against it. Growls and snarls of dangerous beasts filled her ears the deeper got into the forest. She knew the beasts by name, she knew of the legends and even men thrice as her would be terrified enough by that knowledge to never place themselves in the forest even by imagination.
The Alcucuan Shadow Forest had a fearsome reputation. It was no place for a nine year old to be in the dead of the night. Witch princess or not. Satire would have never dared to be as brave, but her innocent concern for her parents' well-being had propelled her to these forbidden grounds. A mighty beast of the sky had flown away with her parents in its belly sack and she had been the only one to witness it seize them.
Mincing through treacherous grounds laid with stones and dry twigs, a musty yet ashy scent caught her nose and she heard the reverberate growls of the beast. She tilted her head up and observed its movements. From the spaces between the trees, she could make out the silhouette of a retracted wing nearly the height of a small royal cottage. The beast blended well with the darkness, Satire feared it could be much nearer than it appears. Chary, she took a few quiet steps back and brought her hand to a hard, grainy balk.
She hid behind one of the thick, hardened trees, and from that secured spot, she trained her eyes on the three figures in front of her, her ears as sharp as ever as she picked up even the lulling purl of the gentle wind breezing through the terrain.
The pale moon peaking from a blanket of clouds seemed to darken as the hulking man she knew to be her estranged uncle circled her incapacitated, groveling parents. Satire watched in escalating fear and dread as her wrathful uncle snarled at her parents and her mother begged for him to calm down.
"The forest will know, Bale and so will The Order." Those were her mother's last words.
Everything happened so quickly after that. In a desperate attempt, her mother tried to summon raging wind but she was too weak, weakened by a magical weapon her uncle possessed in his hand. She could not tell what it was, but it drained the life from her parents and left them feeble and incapacitated. Then they suffered a sword to their necks. In one vicious swipe, her uncle slit their throats and Satire felt her heart drop to her stomach. She trembled as her parent's murderer wore mechanical claws and he lunged into her father's body and ripped into his chest with the claws.
That's when Satire screamed and his eyes were instantly upon her fragile form. He stared directly into her eyes and charged. Satire took off running, running the fastest she has ever ran her entire life, but the monster she was trying to evade was just as fast and as agile as her. She yelled out for help as she ran past trees and dormant entities until her foot got caught by a snarled tree root and she fell-
"Ahhhhh!" Satire awoke with a scream that immediately demanded her sisters in her bed chamber.
Saccharine, Crest and Surmise barged into the room with an irate, impassioned chorus,
"Father stop!" They were surprised to find Satire by herself. Saccharine immediately rushed to her side and comforted her with a warm embrace.
"Are you alright?" Surmise asked, concerned. "We heard you screaming."
"Was father giving you the whip again?" Saccharine's soft features hardened as she frowned angrily upon the thought.
Satire gave her hand a gentle squeeze and shook her head, "No and I'm glad for it, I don't think I'd bear the sight of him right now. Not after the nightmare I just had."
"Nightmare?" Crest finally spoke, settling towards the edge of the old bed and it's ancient springs cried out in protest. "Father is a nightmare himself, it is not surprising-"
"We are sorry." Saccharine interjected, genuinely exasperated by her father's very existence. "Would you like to talk about it?"
"It had to do with my parents." Satire began, still visibly shaken. She then narrated her experience in the sacred forest with as much detail as possible and she and her sister mused on it.
Unaware that the walls had ears. Pointy, yet small and cavey ears dressed in fine fairy pearls. Once Mistress Snare had collected enough of the "gossip", she immediately rushed to the king's war room and presented herself before him without first requesting entry to his sacred space.
