[Read the story here with full formatting and illustrations: https://nicklstories.wordpress.com/burn-and-slay-part-7/]
As Raksha walked away, the forest's song began again inside Aisa. This time, it was stronger, and to her horror, it had words. She hadn't been able to hear them before, but now, they streamed clearly from the open mouths of those who'd come for her singing, borne into the night air on the notes of the forest's song.
They weren't human words, and they weren't sung by human tongues. Behind the flames, she saw a sea of eyes shift in hue from brown or black to dirty yellow, warp in shape from mundane oval to bestial slits. Fur sprouted from cheeks worn with toil and exposure, and ears tapered into unnatural lengths. Horns sprouted from scalps.
Before long, where a host of serfs had been now stood a horde of the beast-men that had haunted her dreams. They sang, echoing the song that now threatened to burst from within Aisa. She fought it, clamping her hands over her mouth, but then the first note crept from her lips, clearer and more resonant than anything she'd ever heard before.
The priest heard it, too. He spun on his heel, his tattooed features twisted and grotesque in the dancing firelight, and began advancing on her.
"Raksha! Help me!" she managed to choke out, before the next note of the forest's song forced itself from her throat.
The martial scientist turned, but a dozen hands seized him and held him in place. Singing beast-men threw themselves on him, and within a heartbeat, his massive form was lost beneath a writhing pile of fur and stained work clothes.
"You have been corrupted beyond redemption, child," the priest said. He stood before her, sword raised. "Go forth to eternal damnation, as all who stray from God's light should."
Aisa wanted to speak, to ask for mercy, for help, for anything, but all that she could give voice to was the forest's song. The next verse poured through her lips, now carrying the same words that rang through the air.
They spoke of a time long past, when mankind still dwelled amidst the trees and offered their blood and souls to the forest's children, dark, mysterious things that in its depths, when they fed their flesh and their children to beasts of spite and shadow. The forest had been happy, then, for it received its rightful tribute from mankind, who'd worshipped it, who, in their need to understand it, had given it many names.
The Green Man. Pahn. Cernunnos. The Stag Lord.
But then, after countless eons, came the God of Metal, Fire, and Death. The Green Man's soul was rent asunder and its pieces used to assuage the infinite hunger of the One True God. Steel axes felled vast swathes of thousand-year-old trees. Bereft of shadows in which to hide, the forest's children were dragged out into firelight and hacked to pieces by shining swords.
Mankind turned to toil, industry, and endless war. Only a sliver of the forest was left behind, its soul devoured and its corpse violated.
But it had planted a seed in the souls of those who'd once worshipped it. When toil brought numbness, men would seek solace in leisure. When war and death filled hearts with despair, they would drown themselves in pleasure.
Song. Dance. Food. Drink. Copulation. These nourished the forest's seed, and as it sank its roots within the souls of all it could reach with its message of joy and merriment, it also poisoned them with rage at their place in the Hegemony, God's material domain.
The farmer. The miller. The smith. The Hegemony took the fruits of their toil from them and rewarded them only with endless servitude.
And so, as they danced and sang, they moved with murderous intent, and their song was ablaze with resentment and hatred, nourishing the seeds the forest had planted within their souls.
Aisa found herself singing fully, now, even as the priest cut down at her. His blade never found its mark. Instead, it tumbled from the priest's grasp and fell into the dirt with a soft thump.
Aisa blinked. An arrow was jutting from his wrist, but the priest did not scream, even as his blood flowed freely. Instead, he cast his hate-filled gaze beyond Aisa, over her shoulder. She followed his regard and saw a man with a furred face and bestial eyes, standing just within the circle of flames. He wore hunting leathers and held a strange bow in his hands.
"Greetings, sweet one," he said. "I would have introduced myself earlier, just after your magnificent performance this evening, but you'd run off to carouse with a certain brutish oaf before I could do so."
Raksha. Aisa turned to where she'd seen him last, but all she could make out amidst the flickering flames was a sea of writhing limbs. She wanted to call to him, to bring him to her, but her voice was no longer hers. All it could do was give life to the forest's song.
"Heretic! Mutant!" the priest shrieked. "I abjure you! Your mere existence is an affront! You and your kind are fit only for fire in this realm and hellfire in the next!"
"Yes, yes, I've heard it all before," the man said. His hands flashed.
Aisa felt a slight breeze across her cheek. The priest grunted. He had an arrow sprouting from his chest. Blood streamed from the corners of his mouth.
"I will… kill you all," he gasped.
Another puff of air, this time over her ear, and then there was another arrow in the priest's torso. He fell on his back.
A hand, lined with fur, caught her jaw and turned her gaze away from the priest, toward the man with the bow.
"I know you can't speak, sweet one, perhaps you never will again, but just so you know, my name is Herne," he said. "I hope that somehow, against all odds, you will remember it."
Aisa sobbed and tried to shake her head, but Herne's grasp on her jaw, though gentle, was firm and unmovable.
"Come now," Herne cooed. "You've got a show to put on and a very, very eager and appreciative audience. You wouldn't want to disappoint them, would you?"
He took her by the elbow and began leading her to the tree stump. With every step they took, the forest's song grew louder, until it became the only thing she could hear. She could now feel the seed it had planted within her soul blooming into something dark and terrible, something that wanted to drag humanity back into shadows and madness.
But then a voice cut through the song. It was loud and clear, the sweetest thing she'd ever heard.
"Aisa!" Raksha cried.
Looking over her shoulder, she saw him striding back through the flames once more. He was covered in blood. Burning beast-men clung to him, singing even as they died. He sliced them off of him with his sword.
"Well, if I'm going to be honest, that's not surprising at all," Herne muttered. "He's proven to be much more formidable and difficult to kill than I'd expected."
Aisa wanted to run to him, but Herne caught her by the elbow. They were standing in the middle of the tree stump. He made a strange gesture with the fingers of his free hand, and sickly green roots sprouted from the dead, ancient wood at her feet. They wound themselves across her ankles and calves.
"Let her go!" Raksha roared, raising his blade and charging.
Herne grinned and pulled out an arrow from somewhere. Unlike the ones that he'd killed the priest with, this arrow shone bone-white amidst the clashing moonlight and firelight.
"Ah, here we go again," he said.