The sun laid low upon the evening sky, a cascade of colors flowed throughout, the sky looked more beautiful than any canvas ever painted.

Well, that was what looked like everywhere else inside of the Kingdom of Mordian, yet as one stepped closer to a small border village, south-east of the capital; inexplicably, the sky's color faded with each inch gained.

Violet, turquoise, indigo, it all slowly faded into a muddy grey. 

It was a nameless village, one of many that dotted the region, yet one of the few where farming was the primary source of their livelihood.

It was rich in grass and fields, which was a blessing given the area and it was just large enough in population that the woodland beast hesitated in hunting the village's livestock. 

'Gods, I need a drink.' A young-cloaked man thought.

He was walking towards the village from a barely visible path at the edge of the forest, coming from opposite the main road.

The cloak he wore was caked in thick layers of mud and foliage, small branches stuck out everywhere, stuck in the mud that occupied the young-man's body and wardrobe.

Also having leafs, blades of grass, and whatever other foliage that he had run into during his grueling trip attached.

He looked like some kind of strange shrub-like creature at a glance.

"Whatever you are, screw you!" He spat, turning back towards the woods and cursing at the wind.

If one gazed upon the man in that moment they'd think he'd gone insane.

He'd been on the small unkempt path for four days; it was a dreadful trip as it was, but he had been pursued the entire time from some unknown and hidden entity. 

At first it was simply a few fleeting noises, yet as the trip continued, he saw shifting shadows, heard strange sounds.

Occasionally he could even tell he was being actively pursued, hearing heavy feet slamming against the forest floor at break-neck speed at his back.

Yet every time he had turned around, even if the sound was right on his heels, somehow whatever was pursuing him would simply vanish from existence.

Only until his nerves settled, then the pursuit picked right back up.

He'd been forced to run during the day and hide during the night, not getting an ounce of sleep.

The nights were the worst, he could hear strange sounds echoing throughout the forest in whatever hole he'd managed to find before nightfall.

It was pitch black, he swore he'd even heard human-like whispering; no matter how hard he tried to sleep he simply couldn't.

What made matters worse was that minutes within the first day of his journey, when he initially heard the cracks of branches against his back; he somehow managed to drop his bag that had all of his rations in it.

Being sleepless and starving his mind bordered on insanity.

Cursing one more time for good measure, he walked into the clearing, which felt like liberation to him; it was the first time in days he stood upon flat ground, he'd unfortunately grown accustomed to tripping in the uneven forest floor.

He didn't even realize he was mumbling to himself as he walked.

He should have been ecstatic to make it before nightfall, yet his mind wondered, was he actually being pursued or had he gone insane.

There was even a small portion of his brain that saw the village in front of him as some kind of mirage, perhaps his brain playing some kind of sick trick.

However, he pushed the thought down.

In front of him was a long wooden fence, small wire strung amongst large-wooden pillars that seemed to stretch endlessly to both his left and right.

It wasn't such a long trip around but as his mind accepted his journey to the village finally over, his body began to quickly deteriorate, finally giving him a glimpse at how truly exhausted he was.

It seemed like the largest field the small village had, every inch was used for the pasturing animals, he saw small herds of cows were eating or sleeping, staying in tight knit groups that were spread throughout.

Several were currently gazing upon the crazed looking man, he felt he could see silent judgement in their gazes.

"I'll buy and eat you before I leave." The man said, pointing to a dark-brown cow that seemed to have the most judgement in its eyes.

The cow somehow seemed to understand, if only in the young man's imagination; it quickly ran to another spot on the field.

After a few moments of deliberation, he'd chosen to hop the fence and pass through the pasture, his journey had been long and even moments felt like they mattered in getting rest or some food.

'What will these stupid cattle do anyways.' He thought, using his foot to push down on the tightly spun wire, pulling himself up carefully onto a post so as not to catch himself on some of the small-sharp metal wire that decorated the upper fence.

As he carefully got one of his legs over, wary of the potential danger to his groin, he suddenly heard something charging towards him with haste.

Instinctively he shot his head towards the woods, thinking that whatever creature that had been pursuing him had decided to finally act with him now in such a precarious position. 

However, when he saw nothing, his head went to the other side; what he saw had him scrambling back over the fence so quickly that several pieces of his clothes were caught and torn.

It led to him falling backwards, landing squarely onto his bottom.

"Get away! Get away!" He shouted, backpedaling as quickly as he could.

The creature that had pursued him simply stared down at him at the fence line.

It had the body of a cow, yet the head was a mixture of both a cow and a spider, with large mandibles underneath a wet and square nose.

The creature further had ten eyes, two seemed to mimic a normal bovine, yet eight more were planted both above and to the sides of its head; with eight long legs that sprawled out, supporting and sifting under the strange creature's weight.

Instead of the clean looking hide that the other cows possessed, it instead had thin-spiky hair that jutted out from both its body and appendages.

'Spider cow.' Was the only thing the young man could think, as an abnormally long tongue stretched out, wiping over the creatures face and various eyes,

It was several times larger than the rest of the cattle, with legs extended, it seemed most of the other bovine could walk underneath its belly comfortably.

"I take back what I said about that judgementa-, I mean that beautiful cow!" He spat out, continuing backwards until his backside slammed into a tree.

For whatever reason, the creature simply stood at the edge of the fence, looking down at the young man; even though it was simply a step to be on the other side and another to be on top of him.

It was like the fence was some kind of impenetrable barrier, its eyes glared at the man on the ground with anger, yet its body didn't allow it to move.

After a few moments, it suddenly lost interest, it gave out a shrill 'moo' before it put its head down to graze; instead of chewing the grass like the other cattle, its long and dexterous tongue wrapped around a patch of grass before binding it and bringing it into its mouth.

It swallowed the bundle of grass whole.

In Mordian, any animal could evolve given the country's abundance of natural mana and each animal's natural affinity to absorb it; the young man knew this was one such case.

Simply breathing and living long enough would sometimes turn a house cat into a leopard-like beast, it was rare but not rare enough that it was specifically shocking to see.

Well usually, evolutions could sometimes be guessed, a dog turning into some kind of wolf-like creature was common; yet the number of variability seemed endless so there was no telling what macabre horror would be summoned during an evolution.

"I was lucky it was a cow originally." He whispered between his heavy breaths.

Cattle would remain just that, cattle, if it was a creature with any kind of prey drive he would have likely died before managing to do anything in response.

It wasn't uncommon to keep these creatures after their evolution, especially cattle or any other domesticated animal.

He tilted his head back against the tree, rubbing his now throbbing back and cursing his seemingly endless bad luck.

Slowly he moved to his feet, looking even more disheveled than he had previously, before deciding that he would take the scenic route around the pasture this time.

Deciding to stay as far away as he could from the abomination of a cow as he walked.

***

'Strange flesh-pup.' A bear-like ebony beast thought to itself.

It was taking bites out of a deer-like creature that sported three crystal antlers, each antler shimmering with energy and varying in color.

Breaking a piece of antler off the creature, it sat back against a large tree to rest, using the antler like a tooth-pick.

The tree swayed unnaturally given her immense size.

Her name was Melissa and she had been following the flesh-pup ever since he had made his way into her forest.

'I even ended up helping the miserable brat.' She sighed, if not for her he would have met his fate at least one-hundred times.

Unknown to the man, it was not one creature aiming to kill him but various creatures.

Every shadow was a creature, every snap of a twig another, the forest housed hundreds of different evolved creatures.

Melissa had done her best to save the flesh-pup from its own stupidity, everytime something got too close she would quickly take care of it.

She'd not done it for any particular reason, he just had a strange scent to him and it piqued her interest mildly after years of being terribly bored.

Upon closer inspection, she noticed the young flesh-pup stored a massive amount of mana, it basically oozed from his pores; however, no matter how much danger there was, he hadn't used magic even once.

'Heck, he could have flown across in minutes instead of tripping and prancing around like a yearling fawn.' She thought, ripping all three of the fully formed antlers off her prey; she bit down and began chewing on them as she reflected. 'Or, tooken the main road.'

The forest was not safe, it was known to be a place even adventures avoided, it made no sense to the beast.

The flesh-pup was an anomaly, one that annoyed Melissa to no end. 

She had hoped to see it use its immense mana, yet it hadn't so much as conjured a few drops of water to wash itself; it began to stink after the first day.

The only good thing that came from it is the abundance of prey Melissa had caught, she had hidden and preserved every creature she had killed as she followed the anomaly.

She was now back-tracking, taking her time to eat each and every beast she had slain; she hated waste.

'Well it would have been interesting but he was just a human at the end of the day, still weak.' She shrugged her shoulders before standing up on two feet, flicking a small piece of antler to the side.

The antler moved with enough force to create a large hole in the tree that was unfortunate enough to be in its trajectory.

She blew, it wasn't time for thinking of the flesh-pup any longer, she wanted to eat now. 

***

The young man had walked the seemingly long trek to the end of the fence-line.

It was far more long than it was wide, yet he still had what felt to him a considerable distance to cover still.

He'd gone left, one reason being that the pasture was separated into several sectors and left had the most barriers between him and the strange cow beast.

Or spider beast, he didn't really know how to classify the animal.

Secondly, he had seen a well that seemed to be out of the way, one where he could hopefully get some water to wash himself with.

He needed to be as discreet as possible within the village, not catching any more stray looks than what was required.

Not sure exactly what he looked like, he had an idea, it was possible he'd be attacked on sight; the villagers thinking of him as some evil spirit or strange ent-like being.

It was possible he may even get driven off because of his horrible stench.

Finally making it in front of the well, it was much better constructed than he imagined.

The stones were perfectly stacked, the rope clean, the bucket non-rusty, and the small wooden wellhead was perfectly made.

The eyesight from the well to the village was mostly obscured by a small hill, yet looking over at what he could, it seemed the parts of the buildings that he could see were pretty well constructed compared to what he had imagined.

Yet to him, he hadn't been exposed to these kinds of settlements often, so he'd honestly expected poorly constructed shacks that swayed against the wind.

'It makes sense.' He thought.

With the amount of cattle he'd counted in the pasture, which was only one of the pastures that the village had; he imagined the village being quite well off.

At least for a place so far from the central kingdom.

He grabbed the bucket that had been placed next to the well, for some reason the rope wasn't attached so he quickly tied a knot and began slowly descending it down the well.

Eventually he could feel the bucket hit the water, a small sloshing sound echoed throughout the walls of the well, once he felt it was likely filled enough he began pulling it up.

Usually it would not be an issue for the young man, even as obscure as he was given his attire, one could tell he had a nicer than average build; heads taller than the average man and his shoulders broad.

Yet it felt to him as if he was pulling a heavy bag of grain from the well, he had to plant his feet firmly and pull as hard as he could muster the entire time.

He began to wheeze the moment he'd gotten the water up and onto the ground.

Glancing over at the cows that had come to investigate the young man, they all looked to find the situation humorous.

However, he pushed his pride down, he didn't dare say anything else.

Worrying that perhaps another provocation and the strange pasturing beast he'd ran from would finally finish him off.

Also their smug expressions were likely conjured from his over-tired mind, the cattle likely had no such emotions, he knew that but it still stung.

'Damned bovine.' He thought, cupping water within his hands to wash with.

It felt wonderful over his face, he could feel the caked mud soften and gradually come off.

The moment the cold water touched his lips as well, he realized he was rather parched.

He had kept a hold of a small waterskin, it was made of goat skin and allowed one to store a small amount of water.

Yet it had been nearly a day without any, before that he'd only taken in a little every day.

There hadn't been much time to plan for his departure, so he'd taken far less than he actually needed, he realized in that moment how lucky he was to have survived at all.

Not only was he poorly prepared, he'd heard of plenty of stories of how dangerous the forest was.

'I should have taken the main road.' He sighed.

Realizing in the moment how lucky he was to have been alive.

Yet he would likely be worse than dead if he'd been caught on the main road.

'There are worse fates than dying to a beast in this forsaken kingdom.' He grimaced at the thought.

Resigning himself both to his luck and his decision.

However, now every fiber of his being wanted to stick his head into the small wooden bucket and gulp every last drop of the refreshing water down, yet he didn't know if he'd be strong enough to get another bucket.

And a trick of the mind or not, he didn't want to feel the cattles obnoxious gazes again either.

He took the bucket and drank just a little, then he rubbed water on his clothes and the rest of his skin.

Not even caring that the water was a little cloudy from the mud on his hands. 

It wasn't like he looked much better.

Nor did his clothes shine.

Or the smell completely disappear.

Yet it was enough to upgrade him from strange woodland creature to homeless beggar.

After being satisfied that he cleaned himself well enough, he snuck upon the small hill, crouching down as to hopefully not be seen right away.

Before he felt he was too far for someone to notice him properly, yet internally he thought it was kind of silly that he'd not thought to hide the entire time.

It was to be expected though, his brain wasn't operating as efficiently as he'd like.

He could only hope someone hadn't spotted him.

Once he was inside the village it would be fine, there were no guards watching the main road, so no one could properly say that he'd not just wandered in.

Yet coming from the woods was another story.

It would raise far too many questions.

Scanning ahead he couldn't immediately spot anyone, he could only see the backs and fronts of a few of the villagers' homes; in front of him was a kind of bend.

They were all pretty similar, single story and made from planks of some kind of dark-wood.

Built better than he expected, yet they were still far from significant, perhaps better than other villages this far out but he didn't really have a gauge of what it was like out in the boonies to begin with.

He started to move forward but a group of small children suddenly walked past one of the houses in his blind spot, causing him to stumble back, rolling down the small hill.

'I hate my life.' He thought emotionlessly as he laid on his back.

Getting up again he crawled up the hill once more.

'I really didn't wanna have to do this.' He thought, a bit of discomfort showing on his face, yet he felt he had no other option in the moment.

He didn't wanna risk any kind of further discomfort, having to try to explain why he'd showed up in the back of the village.

Even if he'd moved around now, he'd have to pass far too many homes, it's why he hadn't just moved through and popped up on the other side once he cleared the wood line. 

He'd have to move through the forest again to completely go around without being spotted but he'd rather die in the moment than be put back in that hellscape.

Waiting for night was an option but he just really wanted a proper bed as soon as he could get one.

He knew basically no one used the forest to travel and he certainly looked like no adventurer in his current attire.

A quick sigh escaped his lips.

He closed his eyes, stress lines forming on his face, then shot them open.

While he had emerald-like eyes by birth, the entirety of both now had a light layer of light-green energy upon them that rotated like a vortex.

It was a simple spell, one even the youngest of children of the kingdom could cast.

Aptly named 'life vision', it did exactly what one would expect, it allowed one to view living life forms as masses of green energy.

It wasn't perfect silhouettes but it allowed one to see the forms of living things.

Even allowing one to peer through inanimate objects.

He moved his eyes back and forward quickly, scanning the area ahead of him.

To his left he saw something he wished he hadn't, he couldn't see it well but the details he could make out made it obvious that two of the villagers were engaging in some risque behavior in their home.

To the right he hadn't seen anything of note, other than a building with a ton of life forms, he imagined it was the inn.

Which helped him a lot, he didn't want to wander very much if he could help it.

Yet he hadn't seen anymore people on the road, just the backs of the few children that had passed, they now were several houses down.

He should have been happy but he was not, he could already feel that he was losing control of his spell.

The thin layer of mana that originally circulated around his eyes, steady and calm.

Now it raged like a storm, energy leaking from his eyes like small bolts of lightning, cracking and striking the air around his head.

He grabbed at his eyes, his head feeling like it was splitting apart.

Yet the energy didn't stop raging, it only intensified.

It looked like green flames were raging from in-between his fingers.

If he hadn't been behind the hill he'd look like some kind of beacon.

'Damn this curse!' He thought, in so much pain that it felt impossible even to speak.

It was worse than he imagined it would be.

Likely it was because of his many sleepless nights and grumbling belly. 

It was the reason that he'd not used any major inside of the forest, even with a lesser reactiom, as it normally was.

It would have led to him being vulnerable and dead.

The energy suddenly began to implode onto itself, if the energy looked like before it was escaping the young man's body.

Now it seemed like it wanted to go back inside of him.

A loud popping sound occured when all the energy seemed to collide into a small point that glowed between his hands.

His head snapped back with such quickness and force that his hands had stayed stationary in the air.

It was like he was hit with a large club, his splitting headache only a memory given the immense pain he was now in.

Not only his head but his entire body felt like it was circulating lava.

He quickly regained composure though, if only to get to the village as quickly as he could.

No matter how bad it was, it was something he'd grown accustomed to and he only had a small window where he felt the coast would be clear.

Anyone could now suddenly leave their homes for a midnight stroll and he no longer had life vision aiding him.

He took off like a madman, throwing his lead-like legs one over the other, trying desperately to get within the village before anyone noticed.

When he did get inside the villages bounds he nearly collapsed onto the side of the home he'd ran up upon.

Luckily he saw no one around who had seen him.

'I wish I could use higher forms of magic.' He thought between panting breathes, trying to regain his composure as quickly as he could.

There were at least fifteen spells he could think of off the top of his head that would have allowed him to avoid being detected and made entry as easy as breathing. 

Even more that would have made his four day trip turn into mere moments by comparison.

Or at least made the journey less brutal.

Yet anything more than a spell made for a child turned him crippled for random amounts of time.

The recoil varying in both type and intensity seemingly at random.

He'd only ever tried conjuring high magic once, which had left him in a coma for two months.

While the pain of his spell was more intense than he expected, luckily that was all that the spell had done.

He'd not gone blind or his skull fractured.

While he wasn't feeling in the best shape, everything has stabilized enough to at least allow him to act like a normally functioning human being once more. 

He pushed himself off the house he'd been supporting himself on and made haste towards the building he suspected was the inn.

It was just getting dark, so various torches were seemingly catching on fire before his eyes as he made his way through the village.

Everyone could use magic, even toddlers would sometimes accidently levitate spoons or something similar.

So while it looked cool and a bit foreboding, it wasn't anything special.

The village seemed pretty well constructed as he suspected earlier, the porches of all the homes level and made from good materials. 

They had un-rusted door handles, the wood looked like you could touch it comfortably without gaining splinters, it was all rather nice.

All of the homes were uniform in design, only varying in the small details.

He'd not been in such areas often but one such village he had visited in his youth made this place look like heaven in comparison.

They really were lucky they'd had so much land to develop.

The forest had few bald spots, most of it was heavily wooded.

It wasn't easy to cut into the forest to make more room either, you could only do it if you had mass amounts of protection.

Protection these small groups couldn't afford.

As by cutting only one tree you'd invoke the wrath of the beast that occupied the forest. 

They were very territorial, so space was limited heavily for these border villages.

He imagined this place being one of the few with much of anything in terms of space or wealth.

Yet soon his thoughts were cut off, he was standing in front of the building he'd saw with life vision.

It was two stories, one of the only two story buildings in the area.

As he had gotten closer he could hear what sounded like drunk patrons having the time of their lives.

The sound seeping through the walls.

'It is finally done, for now.' He thought.

It was both a euphoric feeling and a dreadful one at once.

He could eat at the inn and sleep, yet only for the night; then he'd have to move along once more.

The trip that he still had still yet to make could be much worse.

Making the four days he spent in that hellish forest seem like a paradise in comparison.

Yet for entirely different reasons.

'That damned brother and this damned curse.' He thought, anger flaring upon his face.

However, only for a moment, his face contouring into something more akin to longing or sadness quickly.

He let out another sigh before dejectedly opening the door and making his way inside.