The Fall of the Mountain

Shadowdeep. Can you hear its groaning? Can you feel its agony? Shadowdeep. A land once wreathed in a great magic, now reduced to a wasteland marked by war. Shadowdeep. Merely a name of myth in the realm of Man.

Commander Addus Dex stared ahead, his face molded into a pensive frown. Ahead laid Mount Frith and the ancient forest of the same name. This was the place where the old “Shadowdeep” legends had been formed, a land supposed to be filled with giant beasts and magic. But the soldier saw nothing but dying trees and overgrown thickets.

The Deep Valley and the mountain, more of a sharp ridge, really, looked no different from the surrounding landscape: old, worn, tired, just like the country and people it belonged to. It was the wars that had caused this, Man’s folly and Man’s ruin.

For many years, the valley and the mountain had held out against the war, but those days were gone now. Shadowdeep had been found and at last sentenced to an unworthy death. The Milhan scouts had come and made their decision: Mount Frith was the only way to get across the real mountains, but only if it was taken down. And so the soldiers and their machines had come.

Commander Dex, Chief Engineer of the Milhan army, was at the forefront of the single-sided battle against the forest. He had laid out the plans, marked the trees to be cut down, and brought in the machines to tear the rock apart to make a road. He was going to make sure that the old place finally died. No more magic, no more tales of magic. Just dried trees to cut down and a war to fight.

He was a good man, Commander Dex. His men looked up to him, his country praised him. Courageous, strong, a born leader, the people said. It was only natural that he would be chosen to lead the Foot and Artillery companies across the Rishai Mountains and make the road that would take them there. But he never stopped to consider the Shadowdeep. After all, it was just folklore, old wives’ tales, things never meant to be taken seriously.

But the Shadowdeep stirred and heard and felt. And it wept.

It had been a long time since the trees had woken up. And now, as their bark covered eyelids lifted, they met the sight of a hundred roaring machines, a hundred metal saws that cut and shredded a thousand hard eyed men intent to deliver the final killing blows. The Great Trees groaned under the roar of the heavy machinery, they flinched under the heavy chop of the axes. Where is the old magic they once held? Gone, waxed away with the ages. The forest had been rendered powerless by the same forces that had made it great. It had become hollow and defenseless like the other trees. Yet it could still feel.

Commander Dex stood and watched as his men set to work tearing down the trees. The first of the giant trees went down with an awful crack and a…scream? The man shook his head. Trees don’t scream. It had to be the machinery or the wind. The horses whickered in the background as the mechanical saws and claws whirred at the trees ahead. The sun rose higher, hotter, as the day progressed.

One by one, the ancient trees fell. In the realm of Man, they had no place here. Their magic was gone and with each tree left the memories of a thousand years. The Shadowdeep was no longer. It had aged with time, from a spreading paradise to a desolate wasteland marked with war. Its name had been imprinted in mortal memory, yet its meaning had been lost. Man had forgotten the ancient and true magics, and thus, had forgotten the Shadowdeep.

To Commander Dex and every other man present, the place that had once been the very node of all life was just another victim of their road on progression. Just another forest to be cut down and burnt on their path to death, life, and glory.

The Shadowdeep groaned and ached with every blade that was thrust into its belly. Every memory stirred and writhed within the souls of the trees as one by one, with a tormented scream, they fell. The memories of the Great Wolves, the giants, and the Magic that was and is vanished, becoming nothing but dust in the wind.

And so the great mountain fell, and all life with it.