The Arkanist

The World

The moon blazed red like a sickle cloaked in blood. Its curved edge was sharp as a knife, rimmed with a vibrant black. It sat against a shadowy canvas, the glittering stars marching overhead and the grey ashy clouds veiling the blade. Visir blinked, and the moon changed. Swollen and bloated it adorned the sky, white as milk with an eerie opalescence. Its pale, ghostly radiance fell through the shelves of darkness and filtered like water through a small hole in the earth. Visir watched from inside the hole, the light flooding down on his pallid skin so that it gleamed bright and clear. Shimmering, his body illuminated the underground cavern like a torch of white flame. The ray of moonlight faded as an ashy hand blocked its gaze, but Visir still glowed.

            He descended into the murky depths of the cavern, the rock walls slick with moisture and clad in a skin of dirty moss. The path was tight and winding, with tiny stairs wrought out of the great roots of an oak tree that grew strong and tall from above. Its roots burrowed deep, with skin of a pale almond, streaked with dirt and grim and armored in scales of lichen. The smell was wholesome and hearty, with the ripe scent of wet wood and the cool crisp fragrance of the earth. Visir’s body lit the way down and down, the roots growing larger and larger until they began to slither up the walls like thick snakes and arc over the rocky roof, draped in brown hair.

            He followed the roots until he came to an opening under the ground. It was a wide hall built under the earth with a high ceiling and rounded walls. The entire place was running with the gnarled roots of trees, entwining like thread and knobby like an old man’s hands. The walls raced with writhing wooden serpents, with sliver-thin slits running across the wood. The slits glowed with an iridescent green tint, showering the hall in an emerald illumination, with Visir’s pale figure fading.

            In the heart of the hall, the roots all met to form a throne of wood. The gnarled limbs laced together like twine and rose from the ground and arced at the armrests. It reached higher at the headboard with a green heart that seemed fixed into the wood of the ancient throne. The limbs were white and pallid like a sickly child’s face with veins of green running like streaks of liquid through the wood. The veins spilled out at the contorted feet in a sappy pool, the liquid still as glass with a metallic gleam. Two torches of emerald flame shivered upon either side of the throne, wrought from the wood as it curled off the headboard, the light dancing against the glassy green substance below.

            Resting in the pale wooden throne, there was a figure. It was no man or women, no human even, or animal. The figure looked to be completely wrought of curving and curling and twirling and arcing wood, but brown, rather than pale. Two legs it had, great curving elms and two arms, with talons for fingers. Its head was cloaked in shadow as a great black mantle draped over its face. All Visir could see were three wicked green eyes, all looking at him. The creature of wood glowed with a feeble green light from inside, peeking through the gaps in his skin and oozing out like pus does a wound. The light pulsed at where the creature’s heart should be, thumping in giant beats that shook the entire hall.

            The figure tilted its shaded head at Visir. “Do you wish to kill me as so many of your fellow people have tried?”

            Visir tried to speak, but a sort of film bound his throat. Nothing came out.

            “My brothers and sisters have all died,” the creature went on to say, its voice weak and pained, talking in the creaks of wood. “Perished because of you.”

            The wooden lord’s body brightened, then faded. “The Lords of the Earth cannot protect those who wish to destroy them. Without us, your race will fall. It will crumble from beneath your very feet. All that you have made, all that you have ever achieved will be nothing once I am destroyed.” The creature straightened its knobby spine. “It is me who keeps this world alive. It was me who was born from this earth, this very ground, just like all my siblings. We were created to rule and protect this world, wrought by the Creator of All. This world cannot stand such abuse as it does now. Your race has plagued it, drove the life out of it. It is dying, and when it does, every thing will go down with it.”