The man walked through the dark, his figure tall and bright.
As he strained his eyes, his ears absorbing the silence, he tried to remind himself that he'd seen darker days.
His left hand gripped loosely around his scabbard, fingering the dew that lay there. The man's left boot was deep with damp, the sole tugging ever more at the seams.
The rain had fallen hard in the morning, only for the sun to burn it all away, and the wind to blow it back into the sky.
Leaves under foot told him there was great unrest in the woods – the spirits were worried at the ever-changing weather and the harm it would do to their guarded kin.
One such spirit nuzzled his arm as he walked by, making a short rustle with its fingers. This caused the man to turn in alarm, only for him to catch its young brown eyes, making him lower his guard. He bowed low to the spirit, seeing its skin become part of the tree where it rested, leaving the woods silent once more.
Again the man began walking through the woods, his eyes peeping up at the stars dampened by the grey clouds.
He questioned the sky, wondering why the moon no longer shone its light on the tall branches.
He walked on, trying to hear the sounds of the singing oaks, but they remained silent.
A barrier had once guarded the wood, with the older spirits entwining their branches to prevent access to anyone not of the forest, but since it's placement in ancient times the wood had began to rot, and evil had made its way in with fire.
A curse now lay in the ground, its poison soaking into the bodies of the forest folk, the sun, rain, and air at the control of an unseen enemy.
The man ducked his head at an archway of roses, their buds long since dead.
As he passed under its weak tendrils, its sighs caught in the air, and he felt a thorn tug at one of his ears.
Immediately the wood took breath as the man's blood smell caught in the wind.
He perked his head up like an animal sensing danger, scattering the damp from his scabbard as an arrow shot past his side.
He held his sword with both hands, feeling his feet scrape on the dry earth.
"He comes..." whispered a nearby tree, its fingers skimming the man's back. "He smells you within our bounds. Go..."
The man pushed forward with his right leg, tossing leaves in to the air.
Instead of running away from where the arrow had flown from he ran towards it, noting the smell of his own blood and the blood of a tree spirit in the arrow bark.
As he ran he saw some of the spirits twist in the trees, their bodies warning him to turn back.
"Leave..."
"No man is safe in these woods..."
He ignored their pleas and warnings, caring not of the value of his own life. Instead he was fuelled by anger at the one who had done this. The one who had poisoned the woods: his home.
As he felt the smell of evil grew stronger in his nose and in his breath he was sure the spirits around him were growing mad with malice.
"The boy, he is no man..."
"He abandoned us..."
The poison had spread further into the forest, its pace quickened by the presence of evil. The man ran fast into the dark, the moon ignoring the world below.
At last he reached an open black gate. An ancient oak stood beside it, its bark slashed, dribbling sap onto the floor. It was the colour of human blood.
"Forgive me oh hero... I am too old to fight his power... When you return you must burn this part of the forest so the poison does not spread further across this land..."
Link nodded to the tree and ran through the gate.