Moonspear the twelve labours

✴       Where usually the slopes were dangerous and the trees grew in an angular fashion to compensate, the section of foreign forest that Revui had discovered was somewhat different. The slope had petered out. The landscape flattened and straightened, and while he could not feel the stoneworks underfoot, Revui had come upon an enclosed plateau upon which the trees stood tall. They were immense as a byproduct of their location; rather than reaching along the slopes or being blocked out by older forest, these trees had found succor in the rich soil and had formed a nearly impenetrable fortress of thick oak, pine and elm, enough so that scrub could not survive in the thick darkness beneath the boughs. The smallest gaps became home to bugs—notably spider nests which left tangled heaps of floss criss-crossing between the stands in the lot.

Revui happened to cross through a plethora of these wild tangles as he bludgeoned his way along the path. He only stopped when he had to, and found himself faced with the immense wall of forest that bordered every other route. As he lurched to a stop he heard a skittering from behind himself—so he wheeled about, and caught sight of his bright-eyed brother trying to keep up. He would have otherwise been irritated to have his attempt at pure independence flouted, but he was at his core quite pleased to see Arcturus. He snorted softly as his brother came close, scooped his nose through the fur of his scruff, and then pulled away to investigate.

To say the landscape was black as pitch was, of course, wrong. There was a graying light throughout this strange hollow, and when there came an occasional updraft of summer air, the glimmering of the sun did filter down among them. Revui was periodically cast with dappled gold light. Such moments lent enough illumination for Revui to gather his wits. He could see that the expanse of almost-darkness was about ten feet across or thereabouts, but beyond that it was difficult to tell where the terrain ebbed or where branches might've obscured things. It was enough to know he could move around but, the question remained—was there anything here to explore? Had they merely found a hollow on the mountain that held nothing of note?

Revui stepped away from his brother as he pondered, his head down-cast and nose roaming across the ridges in the dirt, and he could've sworn he smelled something—it was musky, and it brought to mind the moment he had found an exposed cache and Jarilo had stopped him from ruining it. It was a similar deep, earthy, animal scent. He lifted his head after following the trail towards a pit of blackness on the fringe of his vision, and looked over to Arcturus, as if to say "What is that?"