The island of Narmokan lay dormant in the tomb of winter, midway between the solstice and the approach of Spring. The Darker Forest slept the deepest, untouched by the faintest feeling of sunlight, save for a bare three hours when the sun loomed directly overhead. One would scarcely argue that the dead, ice-covered moss trees among the caverns constituted a forest at all, had the name not been forever ingrained in the languages of humankind as the coldest point in the Inusilan West, and one of the coldest points outside of the Northern continent.

The ice collected most thickly in what was referred to as ‘the Glen,’ a spacious room that the hunter Karone stormed through with a fervor that could thaw the arctic, to say nothing of the Darker Forest, had he not channeled it so wholly into his appointed prey. This fervor, he told himself, was the only thing keeping him alive. He could not die until the debt was repaid, and the last drop of blood was drained from the body of he who owed him. He who Karone knew, as surely as the passion burned a hole in his heart, would be waiting for him at the peak. Waiting, defenseless...

Karone emerged into a narrow crevice, where the forest met the sky. Arrayed in the eerie mist that descended on the surface as the moon went down, the mystical Xail appeared even less solid than before. Solid or not, however, Karone’s charge was the same. Before the first light, Xail would fall beneath his blade, and despite his failed attempts that marked his past, this time the demon would not rise again.

Xail’s face contorted in the shape of both shock and contempt as his eyes met Karone’s. He immediately disappeared into the mist, but Karone was not disheartened. The mist cleared and he proceeded towards the place where he knew they would meet in the flesh. Xail anticipated this reunion as much as he did, he knew. The running and hiding was simply a childish game that Xail had been playing for many more years than Karone cared to remember, to put forth the illusion that he still had some faint trace of power over him. But tonight, all ties were severed. Tonight, every tear, every drop of blood, and every limb that fell would fall at his command and his command only.

The mist began to clear as the walk became a climb. The darkness was receding and Xail was within reach. By the power of Karone’s wrath, the damnable fiend would not live past the final moments of night. He nursed his rage until he felt the strength to make the final stride to the top of the mountain, where the thrill of the hunt would be captured with one stroke of his sword across that terrible, frozen heart.

The moment came too soon. The hatred merged with terror, and the strength of his passion left him all but paralyzed, able only to touch the sword in his hilt.

“Far be it from you, to draw that sword.” The voice of Xail fell upon Karone’s ears like the chill wind fell upon every inch of his skin: with apathy, frigidity, and a dull knowledge that it had touched, and proceeded to chafe, something very primal to Karone–the need for warmth, which had long been dormant in Xail. “Only a fool would try to kill something that’s already dead.”

Deep was his fear to draw the sword on what was once a kindred soul. Deeper still was the fear of losing the hunt, the fear which must prevail. To avenge himself, he hunted. For the sake of the hunt, he hunted. The great hunt, the truest hunt, the only hunt–the words, the images, the memories–he let it all wash over him. Like waves on a lake of fire, fueling his hate, burning his compassion for this monster to ashes, then burning the ashes...until they are drowned in the depths of my hell, the hell that is my heart...

For once, his efforts met with success. He no longer thought, he no longer felt the hilt. The sword seemed to slide upward and into his hand by its own volition, and carried him at a hazardous speed into the breast of Xail, yet Xail was supple and not easily taken in by one moved only by blind hatred and so far removed from the fight, as Karone was. For a moment Karone was not going around Xail, nor had Xail entirely dodged the assault. Karone had gone through Xail, across his blade and through a heart that had long stopped beating.

“I will never die. I cannot die.” He stood mere inches from Karone, obviously unmoved by the knowledge that Karone’s next strike would be more carefully orchestrated. “Nor would you want me to.”

“Liar!” He held the sword weakly in front of him. Feeling began to return, and with it came cowardice and the knowledge that he was severely wounded, perhaps in danger of death, and therefore the ultimate defeat. To Karone, that realization seemed almost to draw the spilt blood back into his veins, if only for a moment. “I would suffer even your damnation to be rid of you!”

“Then strike me.” Xail laughed. The illusion of joy might have brought them both back to humanity, but the way he laughed was far too hollow to stir any nostalgia in Karone. “Do it. You did it once before. Why do you now hesitate?”

The final strike was simple. A mere caress of the sword, from the throat to the heart, yet it contained everything–the sweetness of love, the bitterness of betrayal which can only come from such sweetness, and the insipidity that they finally culminated in–and Xail fell dead against him.

Sixteen nights. Sixteen nights, and the dream remained the same, down to the slightest detail. The texture of the ice, the gash between Karone’s eyes, and the heart–the heart that did not beat–it was all there, like a painting in the gallery of dreams; one could pass by it many times and know that it would be the same image they had seen the last time they viewed it. Ravin Belsough roamed through that gallery every night. He once believed himself to be an artist, if not a master of the art, who could take even the most spoiled canvas and breathe life and meaning into it. To leave the occurrences of the night to fate...that would be a dark moon over a darker forest. The Darker Forest was his nocturnal refuge. By day he was forbidden to cast a shadow on its threshold, but at night, the magic and mystery came alive. Moonlight shone upon it–even sunlight, if he so desired. And this dream, this wayward canvas that would not even meet his brush before vomiting the paint in his face, was beginning to jeopardize the comforting notion that he was the god of his dreams.

Scattered across his desk in a careless fashion was a plentiful supply of vellum paper, a suitable canvas for a great work which he had postponed for far too long. Once he had gained considerable influence over his dreams, he had ceased to keep records of them, until his good friend and fellow acolyte, Aexyl, from whom the vellum was a gift, persuaded him quite forcibly. All great masters should keep records of their work, he had said. An artist would not discard a masterpiece upon finishing it, and neither should Ravin discard his. Lazily crawling out of his bed, he forced himself to full consciousness and began writing hurriedly. His hand was steady so as not to greatly compromise his penmanship, but he maintained the speed that was necessary to properly and accurately capture the events of the night before his waking mind could realize and then seize the opportunity to censor them. Such a pace was not as necessary today, however, for after sixteen nights it was scarcely possible not to remember everything. That motionless heart haunted him, as did the fervor of Karone and the lust of his blade. He would fill in the details when he had the dream again. He would have the dream again.

Rather than simply another dry, impersonal account, which riddled the dream journals he kept as a child (every minor detail, thought, or feeling that he had passed through in the night, until finally the papers had become unmanageable and he had to purge many of them; some to the academy to be used for reference, others, regrettably, to the temple furnace), he opted instead for a much different style. He was most fond of the formal style, for he had been trained quite intensely in it, and at the age of seventeen he was already gaining some recognition as a skilled writer. Today, however, he was writing for his own sake. The story of Karone was far too meaningful to be transcribed by someone else. There was too much passion, passion that could not be captured in a synopsis, or even an entire textbook. It demanded the finest ink, the sturdiest paper, and the words that can only flow from a mind unfettered by society. In truth, it demanded what Ravin simply did not possess.

Karone was a hunter, yes. But, Ravin insisted, he had scarcely made a catch since his younger days. His instincts were dulled, and his muscles dwindled, as is evidenced by his difficulty in the last leg of the journey, which surely he had made many times before. Even his blade was beginning to rust. The Darker Forest was a place he had long since put behind him, and yet there was something that called him back there with a voice so firm he could not defy it, and so rousing that he did not want to. It was the hunt for Xail, and it was enough to make the ice melt and the trees part to clear his path.

But who was Xail? Ravin was getting quite used to encountering the deceased in his dreams, but Xail was an unfamiliar spirit. Yet Karone was quite familiar with him, and the sting of betrayal which gnawed so relentlessly led Ravin to believe that they may have once been lovers. But what kind of betrayal would lead one to kill someone who was, as Xail claimed to be, already dead, and seemingly by the same hand by which he had now fallen once more? These questions not only confused Ravin, but discouraged him from continuing the narrative. He felt he must dream again, and perhaps this time, the moon would not be so dark, the forest so perilous, so far beyond his control. Maybe the next time would be different than the sixteenth, or the fifteenth, or the fourteenth...

He shook his head to clear his thoughts, realizing that he had begun to doze off. If he could maintain a steady trance, he could reenter the dream for long enough to reanimate the physical details, but it would not be enough. He needed to understand, and the more he wracked his brain, the more confusing it all became. A long walk through the woods would be better for him. A bit of sunlight, the warmth of summer, and he would be feeling better. For a moment he believed that it really was winter, before realizing that was another symbol of Xail’s betrayal. The earth was, in fact, midway between the summer solstice, and the approach of autumn. But he knew he had felt every winter breeze, and had even slipped on the ice. It was as real as the sunlight streaming through the crack in the window.

Ravin collected the vellum in a tidy stack, rolled it gently and bound it with yarn. He was growing increasingly paranoid about people reading his journal, in part because of some odd behavior recently attributed to the heresy examiners, of which Ravin had heard rumors of varying degrees of severity, and in part because of the journal itself. He had never ventured past the boundaries of orthodoxy, and had scarcely even approached them, but things were different now. There was something in the dreams that had planted a seed deep within, and with each passing night those seeds were being nurtured. It was more than a seed of doubt; he knew such developments quite well, and knew how to nip them in the bud, perhaps even before they seized the opportunity to bud. This was the seed of heresy, and his journal was a fertile plot where many such seeds would soon grow to maturation. He was losing faith in the church, and he had grown weary of denying it. Instead of repressing his intuition, he wanted to follow this path for once, and see where it led him.

After hiding the roll of paper securely under the pile of straw cushions that was his bed, Ravin allowed his mind to wander from the dream and onto more earthly, human matters. The trees were remarkably green today–or else he simply appreciated them for the first time today–except for the unsightly ring of drap around the temple annex. Drap moss was imported from the North and grew especially thick in the Darker Forest, or so he heard. In truth, he had never actually been there. Too dangerous for an acolyte. Too dangerous even with supervision. You might see things you are too young to see, they told him. Taking one of the elders along with him wouldn’t prevent that. Sivora of the Lupine, or so they called her, had never come back from the Darker Forest, after going in there alone one night. She was an old friend of Ravin’s from the academy, and an able interpreter of dreams, whose interest in the Darker Forest made the elders mad with fear. Ravin was fond of her and had not erased her from his memory, though most of the village seemed only to miss her unique aptitude in the nocturnal arts. And once again, it was that mysterious forest, that somehow held secrets of the dream world. . .

Ravin cursed his wandering mind. It was impossible, he knew, not to think about it. For the last two weeks, it was all that mattered to him. And now his thoughts moved inevitably to Sivora. He wondered what happened to her, why she had not come back. Due to his lack of first-hand experience he was left to trust the morbid tales told by students at the academy; that there were people of dark magic who dwelt in the forest, and were holding her energy to fuel their spells. By now, she would be little more than a skeleton with a layer of crusty, peeling skin. No, eyes, for surely they had taken those first. No ears, and her mouth was too dry to utter the weakest cry of resistance. But still, she lived, for they would not let her die until their spell was full. Still, she suffered.

Ravin shook his head again, vigorously this time. He much preferred the more plausible explanation that she had frozen to death, or the explanation that the clergy would not address: that she was choosing to stay there. It was no wonder the clergy stifled every implication of it, for it added to the mystical appeal of the forbidden, and to the growing dissatisfaction with temple life. In truth, though, he preferred not to speculate at all. Sivora was dead, the Darker Forest was impassable, and Ravin was a devoted acolyte who could not afford to betray his duty to gratify some childish whim. And today, the trees were very green.

Aexyl was seated on a bale of hay by the fire pit, poking at sluggish embers from the previous night. Ravin approached him, although he was scarcely in the mood for conversation with any of the temple dwellers, or anyone else who he could not be entirely honest with. If Sivora were there, he would tell her everything. He would give her his journal and she would give him hers. They would discuss, speculate, and all sorts of other things that the clergy would find suspect. If she hadn’t been killed in the Darker Forest, the clergy would likely have done the job themselves.

Aexyl was different. He was a tame, pious young man, once a potential suitor for Sivora but one who she would not have stood for, unless she first broke through the many layers of indoctrination and conditioning to a fertile mind, where she could plant the seeds that were now beginning to sprout in Ravin. Not to say he wasn’t charming, for he was just what Sivora had once called him: a kind face. . .with a near empty skull behind it.

“Good morning, Ravin.” Aexyl wasted no time. “You had the dream again.”

“You’ve noticed the pattern as well?” I underestimate you. “Well, today I did just what you’ve always told me to do. I wrote it down. Now, maybe I’ll stop having it!” He laughed far more lustily than his jest had merited. In truth, he was a bit uncomfortable that he had revealed even the existence of the document. It contained far more than simply the events of the night.

Aexyl poked the fire again. The embers were dying, and the weather was too mellow to justify wasting another log. “I had a dream once.”

“Once? That’s all?” Ravin laughed again, this time a bit more dryly so as not to sound more abrasive than necessary. In truth, Aexyl had done nothing to deserve Ravin’s contempt, and Ravin knew it. Still, it was difficult to hide his frustration, for some days, it seemed that in Aexyl, all of the village’s ignorance was embodied. The man did not think. He simply channeled whatever information was currently in favor with the village, and on the rare occasion that he attempted to do more, the result was so hollow that it hurt Ravin too much to listen. He hesitated to even ask what the dream was, but the curiosity was too much. “Well then, my friend. Tell me of it.”

Aexyl was silent for a moment. Perhaps it was going to be something good. “It. . .was about...” Or perhaps it hurt to think, Ravin pondered. But what he said quickly crushed that speculation, though he said it with an indifference that clearly revealed how little it really meant to him. “It was about Sivora.”

Ravin was surprised, and impressed, that such an unpopular thought was capable of entering a mind so straight. Perhaps it had found an entrance wide enough for more to follow. “What about Sivora?”

“She was in the temple, I believe.” It made sense. The Sivora of Aexyl’s dreams was a safe, straight-thinking Sivora. Not the arcane Sivora that Ravin had known, if only for a season. “She spoke of going to the Darker Forest. I tried to persuade her not to go, but then she told me that she was already there. A great part of her. Most of her, even. She told me it was not possible to come back to us.”

Surprise turned into an eerie realization. Ravin had seldom mentioned Sivora to Aexyl at all, and probably had not dropped the name since those few solemn weeks after her disappearance. It was unlikely that he influenced Aexyl’s dream. “When was this?”

“I don’t know.” He muttered the words sluggishly. He either didn’t think anything of the dream, or he thought much of it, and did not want to share his thoughts with Ravin. “A year or two ago, perhaps.”

“I, too, have dreamt of Sivora.” Unwittingly, Ravin blurted out the thought that quickly followed. “I believe she lives.”

“She was young. She wouldn’t have made it for long.” He rose from the hay bale and looked away from Ravin onto the distant shoreline, a feeble attempt to hide the fact that their exchange of ideas was making him uncomfortable. “Let’s keep her where we left her three years ago.”

It would have been wrong to press him further. Still, the curiosity would have driven him right into that forbidden wood, had it not been so heavily guarded. Guarded...“It was never as simple as walking into the forest. I mean...one could not simply end up there, without a firm intention? I hear it is guarded.”

“Indeed.” Aexyl’s voice was weak and distant, crushed by a thought. “There are more of us in the forest than in the temple.”

It was that thought that Ravin knew he must hear. “What do you know about it?”

“What do I know?”

“Yes. Tell me everything.”

“Well...” Aexyl sat back down on the hay bale. Ravin joined him on the other. “It was...it was the house of the Sead.”

“Who are the Sead?” Ravin had heard the term before. He had even dropped it in the presence of the clergy many times, and each time it was disregarded. It was not to be found in the libraries; he had searched and searched, and he still looked for it on occasion. The best answer he could give himself was that they were philosophers, perhaps magi, who had simply forgotten to write down their works. “I have heard of them, on rare occasions.”

“I heard they were people of dark magic. I think they...I have never understood them. But I think they spoke with the dead. And they wrote books. So many books.”

Ravin’s eyes lit up. Could these be the ‘people of dark magic’ who his fellow students spoke of, who were rumored to be holding Sivora? Were the stories true? “What class of magic?”

“They spoke with the dead, and the dead spoke back. I think that’s where all the books came from.” Aexyl shrugged. “I also heard they still have a library somewhere on the island. I wonder what the church would do if they ever found it?”

“What is the point in wondering? We know what they would do with it.”

Aexyl laughed. What he was about to say did not amuse Ravin. “They would quickly rid of it.”

“They would do more than rid of it. They would make it never have existed.”

“Alright then,” Aexyl said plainly. “They would do more than rid of it.”

“What I am saying,” Ravin replied firmly, “is that they would erase from the memory of humankind.” There was a pause as Aexyl pondered, and then Ravin blurted out, “I’m going to the Darker Forest.”

Finally, Aexyl smiled. It was not a smile of amusement as much as another sign that he was not enjoying their meeting. “You are? No, you are not.”

“I am going, Aexyl. I am going soon. As soon as it becomes passable.”

The smile faded. Perhaps the man was finally understanding the magnitude of Ravin’s words. Or, more likely, he simply did not care about the Darker Forest. The fact that he shared his minuscule knowledge on the subject implied that his fear did not match that of the other acolytes. “The festival of the dead. It will be passable then.”

The festival of the dead, or Tyral Cinth, was so sacred to the Narmokan people that even the guards at Forest’s Gate were required to leave their post for a bare few minutes. Ravin knew those minutes, and a passage into the Darker Forest would be easy, if the charge of Xail were not so urgent. “That is not for two more weeks. I have waited two already, and I do not wish to test the patience of an unfamiliar spirit.”

“Then get a sword from the armory, go to Forest’s Gate, and tell them how you feel.” Aexyl was beginning to walk back towards the temple as he lost interest in talking. “Or wait until it would be safer to do something already so reckless.”

“Perhaps I will.” Of course, he would do the best he could to keep this plot unnoticed. Tyral Cinth was indeed nigh. If he waited until that crucial moment that the gate was left unbarred to the world, nothing could go wrong. Nothing, that was, except the two weeks with the unfamiliar that would surely drive him to the edge of sanity. But that was a place much like home to him.