Chapter 151: The Forest

The pair of ravens winged toward me in the steady quiet of the forest when I emerged in that place, my brother and my bodyguard in tow. I inhaled the deep scent of endless trees and moss, nose tickling with the need to sneeze a moment as ancient mildew and the scent of nature turning over its life into death filled my senses. The weight of moisture in the air pushed down on my shoulders, added pressure to my chest as I breathed in that unique scent of the old forest slowly devouring itself to create life anew. The soft drip in the distance from an evergreen into a large pool of water gave tempo to time that seemed to move slowly here, without need for any other means to track it. I looked up, unbidden, shivering in the oddly suspended feeling of this place, the little bit of the sky I could see through the crowded treetops showing a pale gray sky, the gloom under the canopy growing more oppressive the longer I stood there.