Chapter 09: The Dance Forest Shudders
Chapter 09: The Dance Forest Shudders
The Dance Forest exhaled as Jack crossed its threshold—a slow, shuddering breath that made the leaves tremble. Three days had passed since the ritual, since he had torn Daruga from his soul and remade himself in the Abyss's image, only to sever its chains. His footsteps left smoldering prints in the moss, tendrils of darkness licking at the vegetation like a slow-spreading stain. The trees leaned away from him now, their bark splitting faintly where his shadow touched them.
*How things change.*
The last time he had entered this accursed woodland, it had been as prey—a ragged survivor fleeing villagers with torches and hatred. Now? Now the forest held its breath as *he* walked its paths.
But Jack knew better than to underestimate Domu.
A crow burst from his sleeve, its feathers swallowing the sunlight as it soared into the canopy. Another followed, then another, until a murder of shadowed sentinels perched among the branches. Their glassy eyes saw what human vision couldn't: the pulsing veins beneath the bark, the roots coiling like sleeping serpents six feet under.
"Little thief." The whisper came from everywhere—the creak of branches, the rustle of ferns. "You wear another's skin."
Jack flexed his left hand. The darkness within him writhed in response, eager. "I wear my own skin now."
The forest *laughed*, a sound like snapping twigs.
Then the earth erupted.
---
Barbed roots shot upward, aiming to impale. Jack twisted, but one grazed his thigh, drawing black blood that smoked where it dripped. Before he could react, the ground softened beneath his boots—quicksand made of hungry soil.
"Corrode."
Darkness vomited from his palms, thick and gluttonous. Where it touched, roots blackened and curled like burning parchment. The stench of rotting vegetation filled the air as the forest shrieked—a sound that wasn't sound but rather a *pressure*, like a thousand trees splitting simultaneously.
The crows attacked.
They dove into the writhing roots, beaks tearing at the demon's essence. Where they pecked, inky decay spread. Jack wrenched free, rolling as a whip-like branch shattered the stone where his head had been.
*It's learning.*
Domu wasn't just lashing out mindlessly. The roots now avoided his corrosive touch, attacking from angles that forced him to overextend. A vine snaked around his ankle—
*Crack.*
Jack's shadow *moved* without him. A blade of darkness severed the vine before it could pull. The severed end writhed, spraying sap that burned like acid where it struck his forearm.
*First blood to the forest.*
Then the fog came.
---
It rolled in like a living thing, swallowing light and sound. Within three breaths, Jack couldn't see his own hands. The crows' frantic wingbeats grew muffled, then silent.
*Hallucinations next.*
He'd expected this. Solomon's memories had shown him Domu's favorite tactics: isolate, disorient, terrify. The demon would now dredge up his worst—
A child's laughter rang out.
Jack spun.
Through the mist, a small figure skipped between the trees. Tattered yellow sundress. Bare feet kicking up leaves. *Lily.* His baby sister, dead ten years—burned alive with his parents the night Daruga came.
"Jackie!" she giggled, holding up a rotting doll. "Come play!"
His throat tightened. *Not real. Can't be real.*
Then the smell hit him—charred flesh and lavender soap. Lily's signature scent. The illusion was perfect.
A root speared toward his kidney.
Jack barely dodged, the barb tearing his shirt. The hallucination wasn't just psychological warfare; it was camouflage for Domu's real attacks.
The fog thickened, and suddenly, he wasn't in the forest anymore.
He was back in Emag Village.
Bodies littered the streets, their faces frozen in terror. The houses burned, their flames casting monstrous shadows that *moved* without source. And at the center of it all—
*Himself.*
A twisted version of Jack, his skin peeled back to reveal writhing darkness beneath, stood over a pile of corpses. His doppelgänger turned, grinning with too many teeth.
"This is what you are," it hissed.
Jack's breath came in ragged gasps. 'No. No, no, no—'
A root wrapped around his throat.
---
Jack didn't resist. Let it think it had him. His probing darkness had found something—a concentration of power thirty yards northwest. The great oak from Solomon's memories.
"Got you."
The choking root yanked him off his feet. As his vision tunneled, Jack's lips curled.
"Rot."
The word wasn't spoken but *vomited*—a guttural syllable that made the fog recoil. The darkness he'd seeded in the forest *detonated.*
Trees exploded outward as corrosive energy raced through their roots. The vine at his throat withered. Lily's scream became the forest's shriek as the illusion shattered.
Jack hit the ground running.
Ahead loomed Domu's heart—an oak wider than a house, its trunk carved with screaming faces. The ground before it heaved, birthing a nightmare: a fifteen-foot-tall giant woven from thorns and corpses. Villagers. The ones Jack had...
'No. Focus.'
The avatar swung a fist of knotted bone.
Jack crossed his arms. "Wall."
Darkness congealed into a shield inches before impact. The force still sent him skidding back, boots gouging furrows in the soil. Before the avatar could strike again, his crows attacked—plunging into its hollow eyes, tearing at the roots binding its form.
The avatar roared, and the corpses *moved.*
Villagers—or what was left of them—rose from the earth, their bodies stitched together by roots. Their mouths opened in silent screams as they lurched toward him.
Jack snarled. "Feast."
His shadow *split* into tendrils, each one spearing through a reanimated corpse. They burst like overripe fruit, their remains dissolving into the hungry dark.
The avatar lunged, its thorned fingers closing around Jack's torso.
*Crunch.*
Ribs snapped. Blood filled his mouth.
But Jack grinned.
His right hand plunged into the avatar's chest. "Consume."
The darkness *feasted.*
Roots blackened as Jack's power surged through them, a reverse poison racing toward the oak. The avatar thrashed, its form unraveling. The great oak trembled, its leaves turning brittle.
Domu's voice boomed: "The Abyss will reclaim you, thief!"
Jack grinned, blood dripping from his teeth. "I'm not its hound anymore."
---
He reached the oak and pressed both hands against its screaming faces. "Die."
The darkness went supernova.
Bark exploded outward as the rot spread upward through branches, downward through roots. The canopy withered. Birds fell mid-flight, desiccated. For miles around, trees collapsed like puppets with cut strings.
The power rushed into him, and Jack *screamed.*
His veins turned black beneath his skin, bulging like roots. His bones cracked, reshaping. Memories that weren't his flooded his mind—centuries of Domu's existence, the taste of lost travelers, the slow spread of its roots through the earth.
And then—
*Control.*
He could *feel* the forest. Every leaf, every insect, every drop of sap. It was his now.
Silence.
Then—a single, intact root slithered from the wreckage. Domu's essence, trying to flee.
" The Void said, Let there be hunger: and there was feasting." After saying so ,Jack's shadow lashed out, impaling it.
"Mine," he growled.
The darkness consumed the root, its power flooding Jack's veins. New knowledge erupted in his mind—how to bend wood, summon fog, make forests *obey.*
As the last of Domu faded, a whisper came:
"You think you're free... but the Abyss always collects its debts."
Jack spat black bile. "Let it try."
He turned westward, where the forest's edge now lay visible. The crows settled on his shoulders as he walked, their eyes gleaming with stolen intelligence.
Behind him, the Dance Forest crumbled into ash.