Emberwood

The lost soul shot up with a gasp. He was back on the beach: its vastness stretching out beyond both horizons, left and right. A frantic self-check of his body revealed no marks or injury where the giant tree beast had cooked him alive just moments ago. It felt like moments, but it could have been any length of time. 

The obvious only became apparent then. He was alive... again. By some twisted force, he had awoken from his nightmare twice. Only he knew it was no bad dream. The memories he had of the leaf woven maiden and the tree fiends and the giant, rotting, fire-spitting oak were as vivid as the ageing waves that caressed his toes. 

Somehow, he was being reborn, or time was setting itself back. But the lost soul, with his ever-growing self-awareness, didn't believe that the latter was the case. If it were, he would have met the leaf-woven maiden again, and ripper wouldn't have appeared beside him the first time he resurrected. 

As he unwound but a single strand of the mystery he had found himself in, the sea brushed past him once more, gentle and soothing. 

Ripper lay by his legs: the sword's blade reflecting light from the dull sun above. The glint caught his eye as he looked down. He took the sword by its hilt, rose to his feet and began his journey for a third time. He didn't know why he had to; he only knew he did. It was a deep-seated compulsion that guided his body and mind. 

He crossed the expanse where sand met sea, to the inland horizon that flushed a mix of yellow and greens. And then through the forest itself. Like both times before, the forest closed behind him, sand and sea swallowed by the surrounding foliage. He didn't even bother trying to see it happen this time. The forest had already made it clear that it didn't want to be watched while it worked its magic. 

Not long after, the tree fiends stirred, and with swift, calm strikes, the lost soul dispatched each of them easily: Ripper seeping confidence into him with every cut and decapitation. A rain of sappy ichor lightly coated his body and loin cloth as the last fiend fell to the forest floor in two vertical pieces. 

The appearance of more fiends and the lack of the dead ones he had killed in his previous life confused him. His theory of being sent back in time made more sense in some cases but made less in others. He shook the thought. With the current tree fiends dealt with, he needed his mind free for his next challenge. 

Unlike before, he knew what to expect. The ground shook beneath him and several trees unearthed themselves. The giant tree beast emerged from its hibernation and pulled itself out of the pit with spiky limbs covered in branches: a mix of leafy and dead.

A seam a metre across opened vertically at the tree beast's central trunk, and its sharp, spiralling maw spat embers from deep within. Fear no longer froze him, and as the beast spat a torrent of flames in his direction, the lost soul rolled nimbly to his right into a crouch. He pushed off his back foot and charged at the giant foe with a deep, primal roar. The beast retaliated by charging back at him: slowly, due to its size, but with destructive force as it toppled the skeletal masts of its still brothers on the way. 

A swing of its right arm flew over the soul's head as he ducked: without stopping or losing momentum. When the giant wooden arm passed overhead, Ripper swung in an upward arc, severing branches and roots from the beast's trunk-arm. 

Sappy Ichor and dirt battered the soyl's body, but he persevered and found himself beneath the monster. A hefty swing at its central trunk only irritated the beast, and the sword cut barely an inch into the thick, wooden carapace. 

It inhaled with a loud, drawn-out gushing sound followed by a brief silence. The lost soul heaved Ripper from the trunk and dashed under his foe's legs when a torrent of searing flames gushed outwards. 

He sliced at thick, bark-laden legs, again, with no affect. A back swing of the tree-beasts arm almost caught him, but he dropped to a prone position faster than he thought his body could move. Then he was up again. 

As he danced and rolled and ducked, slashing fruitlessly at the monster's wooden armour, he began to notice the soft, rotting areas of its bark. When he struck them, Ripper rend through almost effortlessly, spraying sap and ichor into the air around the wounds. 

Each time he cut into the rotting areas the beast roared more akin to pain than fury, not that there was any lack of the latter; though the damage was insubstantial. All it ended up doing was anger the giant more so than it already was. 

After a quick sidestep to avoid an overhead swing of a trunk-arm, the lost soul dashed in close. He noticed a patch of rotting wood that sat below the razor-spiralling maw. 

He swung quickly and powerfully, creating a diagonal slit in the rotting wood-flesh. The beast shrieked and staggered backwards, clutching at the wound with its right arm, branches acting as long, boney fingers. 

The shriek pierced the lost soul's ears like shards of jagged glass jammed into his canals, causing him to clasp his hands over each side of his head and contort his face in pain, Ripper still in hand. Along with the concussion inducing cry, came a frantic thrashing of the giant's limbs: stomping and striking at the ground indiscriminately. 

In his stunned and disorientated state, the lost soul failed to notice a low sweeping attack coming from his left. A wave of foliage, earth and small rocks tumbled with it as the trunk-arm charged towards him. 

If he hadn't been gradually chipping away at the branches and twigs with his swings, they might have torn his body to shreds as he just about managed to vault over the sweeping attack: but not without scratching his already scarred body on the sharp stumps of severed branches. 

It wasn't a good thing that the tree-beast's other hand was already moving to snatch him up. It caught him as he landed: knocking Ripper out of his grip. His head whipped forward, disorientating him further as the giant brought the lost soul to what amounted to its face.

His right arm was crushed and broken, and his lungs, along with the rest of his organs, were being squeezed and rearranged under the force of the monster's strength, meaning that any attempt to cry out in pain came out in a weakened, ghoulish gasp. With his left arm free, he desperately clawed and pushed and yanked at the roots of the tree-beast's branches that coiled around him. 

The monster seemed to smile. A sinister, dooming smirk stretched vertically along the spiralling set of sharp, chipped teeth that was its mouth.

A vacuum of air began to draw inside. The lost soul's hair, almost shoulder length, flowed gently in the maw's direction, and the faint embers inside stirred with malice: popping, crackling, and cackling as if it found amusement in the lost souls coming end. 

His skin began to prickle from the conjuring heat within the maw, and just before the embers turned to flames, a glow from within the slit in the beast's rotting wood-flesh below its mouth caught the lost soul's attention. Without thinking, he dove his free arm into the wound that ripper had created. 

A hard, pointed, but smooth faced rock found itself within his grip, and with little to no retard, he yanked the rock free of the beast's chest. The lost soul felt the strain on his body ease instantly as the beast loosned an agonising shriek, releasing its prey and allowing him to flop to the floor, crippled. It clutched its chest as the flames within its maw spread throughout its body.

Wood slowly turned to black and white dust as the tree wailed and cried, flailing its limbs in desperation. Puss and ichor bubbled on the ground around the swiftly decaying giant of oak, and as quickly as the fire started, only charcoal remained amidst a smouldering heap of hot ash. 

The lost soul was ruined. Aside from his head and his left arm, the poor man's body was twisted and broken, but not to the point of death, though given time, his injuries would surely kill him. Blackish blood flew from his mouth and dribbled across his cheek as he coughed laying on his back, his left arm outstretched and still clutching the rock.

It was a peculiar thing, the rock. It seemed to sense his lifeforce, or lack therof, as rays of red light pierced through the gaps between his fingers; only now that it was visible, it appeared to not be a rock at all. It was a gemstone the size of a fist and in the rough shape of two tall, acute triangles stuck together at their bases. Its edges were pointy, but its surfaces were smooth, and it glowed a soothing, deep red. 

As he lay there, too exhausted to even pull a pained expression, the gem grew warm in his grasp. It grew warmer and warmer, but never hot. Its warmth was like an intimate embrace, enveloping his hand in the purest of comforts. The feeling began to flow into his skin and down through the lost soul's arm. 

A faint memory filled his mind then. No visions, only words. "Fire can be dangerous," said a deep, fatherly voice. Commanding and righteous, but kind and guiding. "It can be deadly. It maims and it cripples. But fire can also be warm. It can be inviting. Flame nurtures and protects. It can be a guiding light for lost souls when they cannot find their way." 

As the warm, nurturing feeling filled every inch of his being, his pain subsided: replaced with euphoria and ecstasy. Joints snapped back into place, and bones reformed from their shattered remains. 

His body was healing and at a rapid pace. 

When the last parts of his broken body were fixing themselves into their correct alignments, the lost soul drifted off into a peaceful slumber.