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The unrelenting rain pelted the quieting battlefield that was littered with the still bodies of Fomors and humans alike. Some of them had spent their last breaths writhing in excruciating pain as their bodies gave out from the strain while others had received a mercifully quick death, but all the same was that the stench of death and sickness permeated everywhere, choking what life was left out of those who were unfortunate to still be alive.
From his sprawled position on the muddy ground, Lann took in a deep breath of cool air that stung his heaving lungs as he looked upwards into the darkened sky above. Breathing was getting much harder, and it didn't help that his shattered ribcage was practically crushed under the weight of his broken armor, the warm blood pooling out of every possible wound and orifice before coalescing into a rapidly expanding puddle underneath him. He felt numb to the bone, but Lann could feel the warmth seeping out from the wounds in his body. Dying is a strange feeling.
A sharp cry of one of his struggling teammates made him flop his heavy head over to the side. He watched, in a muted sense of shock, as a bloodied Fiona took down the last Fomor with kick before crumpling to the ground a meter away. The Fomor, in its last breath, had jabbed a barbed arrow into one of the cracks of her armor and straight into her heart.
Lann watched as Fiona died quickly and with a fierce expression on her face, but the look of her blank eyes seared itself into his memory.
A weak groan coming from his right made Lann turn his head, it was getting harder to do move, over to look through bleary eyes as Evie shifted slightly from her collapsed position a yard away. Her hand was outstretched towards him, but at a closer look the film of blankness quickly took over her expressive eyes before he could even begin to think to move his useless arms towards her.
Evie had died in that moment as her injuries were more severe than the ones he sustained. The pool of coagulated blood pointed to the fact that she had been lying there for quite a while without being able to heal herself, her arms broken and her mana depleted. She had died in agonizing pain, and Lann had just watched her as the last wisp of her vibrant light slipped away.
Behind Evie, Lann could barely see the back of Karok's hulking frame through the pouring rain. The giant was unusually still, but it obvious he had been dead for a while; a giant claw from a nameless Fomor had punched itself through his midsection attested to that. He was awkwardly hanging from the stiff limb of the dead Fomor, making it seem like he was still standing. Lann thought that was a fitting way for his burly friend to die on his feet, rather than on his back.
Totally numb, Lann could not feel any pain as he painstakingly dragged himself onto his stomach. Exhausted with that simple movement, the dual-wielder rested the side of his head against the puddle of his blood. It was unusual, he should definitely be dead by now but it felt like he had the strength to move. Something was wrong, but the answer eluded his foggy mind as he pulled his body an inch upwards without the help of his legs.
They both were broken and mangled from the counter-ballistae attack, after all.
Another inch forwards and it took what seemed like centuries to even move a foot, but Lann eventually reached the last member of his team that was lying on his front in a puddle of blood even larger than his own already sticky and cold to the touch. A bloodied spear stood proudly up from the middle of the archer; Kai had tortuously slid down every last inch of the spear before finally breathing his last in this utterly gruesome way of dying. The empty look in his usually sharp and angry eyes showed that even he, too, was dead.
The battlefield was silent now, save for the crackles of the fires that licked at the wooden debris. Ashes mixed with the rain as the gloomy skies poured down even harder. Colhen had burned, Rocheste had burned, and now even the best of the best were dead and burning too.
This realization tore through Lann's fogged mind with the force of a speeding bullet. He was dying in a pool of his blood mixed with those of his dead comrades. The struggling Crimson Blades mercenaries had long been decimated by the seemingly never-ending legion of Fomors, and the remants Royal Army had burned along with the now-abandoned ruins of Rocheste.
But, the one good thing was that the Fomors was— are eradicated and no more.
Every single one of them followed the orders of Morrighan, their Goddess, to the letter but what good was a Paradise when there was nobody around to see it?
With his dying breath, Lann laughed through a mouthful of his blood as the rain washed away his tears.
Lann startled awake as the sun shined into his eyes and the first thing he saw was that the sky was a beautiful blue with puffy clouds drifting lazily across. For a split moment, Lann thought he was in Paradise. There was no more pain in his body, no Fomors, no more screaming, but—
He could still smell the stench of rotting death.
Pushing himself up into a sitting position, Lann looked around and a tall field of sickly yellow-red grass blocked his vision as it swayed with the breeze. Getting to his feet, he could see thick vines of vegetation eating its way across the blood-stained rubble and ruins of what used to be the grave-site of hundreds upon thousands of his fellow soldiers.
Lann didn't need to look around to know that the bodies of his comrades had rotted just enough so that new life could begin to grow. He could smell it, the cloying scent that still choked his lungs and lingered at the back of his throat.
He was not in Paradise. Whatever this place now was, it is not Paradise. Far from it.
He had somehow lived and emerged unscathed whereas all the others had died with their features twisted into eternal agony.
Everybody he knew, from Fiona to Captain Aodhan to Ceara and Gwynn and— Oh Goddess, even Tieve, was dead. They were unmistakably dead and buried in the ashes and ruins of this unfamiliar world that looked so beautiful but they were all still dead and now he was alone.
Collapsing to his knees, Lann couldn't help feel the cold fingers of dread and grief and panic gripping his heart until it felt like it could burst. He is alone in this strange new after-world.
Lann didn't want to be alone. He wanted to be with his comrades and friends and family in their Paradise. Why wasn't he dead and half-rotted along with them? Why was he whole and healthy and still alive, God damn it!
Taking a hold of one of his rusted swords that had faithfully followed him even into his false-deathbed, Lann thrust it into his chest, easily breaking through the rusted metal and rotted cloth that was his upper armor.
Death was swift and carried him in its wings into the light.
Lann woke up again, but this time it was dark. The sword that he had remembered plunging into his body was still there, but it felt strange to have your organs shift over slightly to the side to accommodate the intrusion.
The dual-wielder didn't waste time as he ripped out the sword before aiming at his head this time.
After the fifth time he tried to kill himself with his swords, Lann hysterically thought that Morrighan was playing a terrible joke on him. He couldn't die, he was immortal of all things, and he was the last of the last and terrifyingly alone. What did she want from him?
Screaming into the bright blue heavens, he was starting to hate the color of the not-sky, didn't help as his voice cracked and echoed and a few crows that flew over cawed back at him unhelpfully. There was no answer, but he didn't expect one. Only the Oracle could speak with the Goddess, but then again, Tieve was dead as well.
Finally tearing himself from the ruins and grave of his comrades, the dual-wielder retreated back to whatever was left of Colhen. There might be somebody, anybody, left.
His hopes were in vain. The entire outpost was buried under old ashes and new vegetation growth and not a single soul was in sight.
He tried Rocheste next, but the feeling in his guts told him that there was nothing there as well, and his gut was right. The ruins of the stone-walled fortress reeked of destruction and death. Not one single soldier was alive, but at a closer look all there were no civilian casualties. That meant that the townsfolk had been safely evacuated before leaving the soldiers to do their jobs, but where were they evacuated? There wasn't another town or city for a hundred miles on this barren side of the world.
By the time Lann finished digging through the debris, it was nightfall. The lone man departed the ruins, but instead of going back to Colhen or the battlefield, he made his way to the remnants of the weathered bell tower. The structure was half-finished and was most likely never going to be, but it provided ample shelter and bordered the wild expanse of a forest that was rarely traveled through.
It was time to put his swords to use other than killing himself. He was hungry, after all, and his swords needed a good cleaning if he was going to survive in a place without a blacksmith or a cook.
The seasons came and went, just like the years that blurred together as the dual-wielder lived without contact with other people.
Lann easily lost track of time as what usually felt like a few days was more than likely a month to the real world, but he couldn't bring himself to care. He lived off the forest and resigned himself to solitude. The ache in his heart faded within time while his soul remained tired, but if Morrighan was so adamant in that he should not die there was no point in attempting suicide. Again. After the last twenty times.
Lann had long accepted his lonely path of unwanted immortality. He was still in peak condition, having not aged at all since on the day of his first death, but it seemed like time just stopped for him. He didn't grow any more muscle despite training against the diverse wildlife, but he didn't lose anything like that time he starved himself to death to see what would happen. His body just stopped growing, but he still got hungry which was bizarre, but if he was wounded he would just have to sleep for a while and everything would be like as if he pressed a reset button. He was still able to get scars if he wasn't careful though.
At some point in time, Lann saw that small trickles of people had passed by and settled by the ruins of Rocheste. It wasn't known as Rocheste to the people, but they made it their home anyways. Others had continued on and reached what used to be Colhen before colonizing that as well.
They were ignorant of what had happened to the people that previously lived there, but curiosity gripped Lann for the first time in what felt like a millenia as a certain group of people that settled right next to the forest felt much different than any normal civilian or traveler.
In a sense, they felt familiar.
The four people, two remarkably young men and women each, almost gave out the same kind of feelings that Evie had. Something about the sparkling magic that emitted from their wooden sticks drew him to watch from the shadows in the trees as the group sometimes dueled with them, flinging sparks and whips of colorful light around. It looked like the magic could do ordinary things as well, such as lighting campfires or making objects move.
It was mesmerizing to watch, so Lann didn't bother them as they mostly respected the nature and didn't go too deep into the forest and reach his territory. After a while of watching Lann felt like he was intruding on something obviously private for the group as they were so far away from the rest of the civilization in not-Rocheste, so in return he slaughtered all of the braver wildlife that tried to feast upon the four in the dead of night before quietly depositing the corpse on top of their campfire. He didn't need the giant spider meat, anyways.
If the group caught onto his 'gifts,' they gave no inclination of awareness, which was just how Lann liked it. He had grown used to his solitude, and the intrusion of others was not welcome even if he had grown a little fond of the group of not-witches. Magic users. Whatever they called themselves these days.
One fine night with the moons shining brightly above, from his perch on a tree limb Lann saw some bandits on the road close to the forest. He trailed them silently from above, his slip dashes now as quiet as the wind blowing through the treetops, and he eavesdropped on their hushed conversations. From what he could gather, they were planning to ambush the group of strange magic-users that had wormed their way into his good graces.
Lann moved ahead of them quickly without more than a whisper of a breeze that showed that he had been there at all. Not that the bandits would have noticed anyways, with the cold wind that seemed to blow in every direction.
Once he reached the small group, he frowned as he saw that all of them were sound asleep. How could it be that not one person was on watch? He could hear the rustles from the bandit scouts behind him were coming closer, and there was no time to think as he slipped off the branch and aimed his swords at the bandit.
He could feel the warmth of the blood splashing against his bare chest and arms as he neatly cleaved both arms off from his body. The man barely had time to scream as one of his swords went through his neck. Leaving the corpse where it wobbled before toppling over, Lann dashed at the second scout that had appeared a few seconds later.
Surprising the bandit, Lann sliced a leg off at the hip before silencing the man in mid-shout by thrusting his second sword into the middle of his mouth. The wet gurgles stopped as he removed his sword from the gaping hole. The bandit was dead before he crumpled like a twig to the ground.
Lann managed to climb back up into the trees in time to see the rest of the bandits come rushing to see why their friend had screamed. They saw the corpses and were beginning to high-tail back to wherever they had come from, but Lann wasn't done with them yet.
The bloodlust was still in his veins.
By the time Lann had sliced the last bandit's chest into ribbons before silencing him, his arms were covered in the blood of the bandits, which was still warm. He flicked off the blood from his swords and sheathed them. His job was done, and now it was time to pile the mangled limbs and bodies into a pit and bury them. The corpses would provide enough nutrients for the soil for the trees, after all.
But first, he knelt down and rummaged through their pockets. In total, he found some gold in pouches and glassy stones, but he had no use for them. Perhaps the four magicians would like them?
A rustling behind Lann nearly made him reach for his swords, but from the footsteps he knew it had to be one of the young men from the camp of magicians. He was right, and it was the dark-haired one. The one with the short temper.
"Why did you kill these people?" His voice was angry, but hushed. He was warily pointing his magic stick at him as well.
"They were... bandits." His voice was cracked and deep from having been unused for years. The man's eyes darted to the corpses and his swords, a spark of recognition in his stare.
"Are you the one who has been dropping corpses in our campfire?" It seemed like he was a quick thinker. Almost as quick Fiona had been, but not that close. An unwanted smirk tugged at Lann's lips at the memory of his long gone friend, but it was quickly dropped. He didn't want to the ugly feeling of the pain to come back after so long of ignoring it.
The man was waiting for his answer, but he looked like he already figured it out.
Lann tilted his head before dashing up the tree with the pouch of gold and stones still clutched in one hand. In his boredom, he had trained his slip dash to the point where it almost rivaled Evie's blink, but it wasn't a true teleport. However, it was just enough to make the young man curse and spin around look for him, but Lann was far away by the time the man decided to give up and go back to his camp.
The next day, when he heard the screams from one of the women in the group about bloodied diamonds or something all the way from his napping corner in a high tree, he sheepishly thought that he probably should have washed them in the river before giving them away.
The young man with dark hair turned to look into the trees with a frown on his pale face, completely ignoring his insufferable colleagues. Although he couldn't see anything past the thick green foliage, the back of his neck was prickling with the sensation of that he was being watched.
Last night had been no joke. That forest-man was dangerous, but apparently not towards them if he kept on dumping large and admittedly terrifying animal corpses on their campfire. And this time, the money and jewels from the slain bandits.
"Oi, Slytherin! What are you staring at?" The young man, Salazar Slytherin, turned to look at the brash ginger-haired young man that had called his name. Godric Gryffindor was smirking as Helga Hufflepuff happily served him some of breakfast that she had made earlier that morning. Her mood had improved greatly once she had gotten over the fact that somebody had dropped blood-covered diamonds and some money next to her bedspread in the middle of the night.
"Nothing, Gryffindor." He sneered back and walked towards the campfire. He sat down next to Rowena Ravenclaw, who looked at him with a thin eyebrow raised. She knew that something was off with his sudden distracted state, but couldn't exactly put a finger on it.
"There's strange something in the forest." Rowena wasn't one to beat around the bush and she nailed it right on the head on her first try as usual. Salazar didn't even twitch as he replied evenly,
"Someone, and it is a man. The same man dropping corpses into our campfire like they are gifts." Rowena's eyes widened almost imperceptibly at this new information. He continued as he accepted his breakfast from Helga, "He also gave Helga the diamonds as well, but for what reason I cannot fathom."
"Hmm. Does he have a motive?" Rowena was interested now. Great. She'd probably drag Godric, or heaven forbid all of them, into the forest to go find the strange man who was being nice to them.
"Not that I know of, no." Rowena was about to ask another question but Godric interrupted,
"Hey, what are you two talking about? There's nobody in the forest! I should know, because I checked." Godric puffed up his chest. Apparently being the bravest meant that he was also the most stupid.
Salazar must have said that last part out loud as Helga slapped him upside the head and tutted about being nice.
Later, as Salazar led the rest of the group through the forest to where he had met the forest-man last night, he sighed and wondered if he had kept his mouth shut the strange man wouldn't pop out of nowhere and kill him.
Stopping at the little puddles of dried blood, Salazar had to admit that he was a little impressed at how fast the corpses had been moved. Behind him, Rowena frowned and knelt closer to the ground to get a closer look. Helga shifted around, clearly uncomfortable with the spooky feeling that the forest gave her, and stood closer to Godric. The ginger-haired young man was quiet for once, probably because he hadn't seen this amount of blood splattered on the ground since... ever.
"These splatters... they look like they were made from something really sharp and long. Whoever did this must be very fast, judging from how the blood is flung from here," Rowena pointed to the stain in front of her and then to another stain a few feet away, "to here. See these streaks in the middle?"
Rowena was correct, but it didn't make the whole situation any more comfortable for Salazar. Especially since he faced the down the dangerous man in the darkness last night. It was too dark to get a good look at the man, but he did see two leather sheaths at his side.
"Swords." The word popped out of his mouth and dark-haired woman looked just as surprised as he did. She turned to examine the blood splatters closer and nodded her agreement.
"In that case, there must have been two swords. This set of stains are nearly identical to the ones next to it a few yards away over there. Also, from the looks of it, —" The wind rustled the leaves around them heavily and Helga sneezed violently. Godric patted her on her back, clearly worried. It wasn't like the brunette to suddenly get a sneezing fit out of nowhere.
"Ah, sorry, sorry! Maybe something in the flowers are making me sneeze this hard..." At that moment, about of handful of leaves floated down in front of them almost lazily. Salazar's eyes narrowed. The wind wasn't blowing that hard, was it?
Then a tiny rock pelted the back of his head. With a hand around his wand, Salazar spun around and saw nothing, but when he chanced to look up he saw the strange forest-man that he had met last night. In this morning light, it was easier to see what he looked like from his not-so-high perch on a tree branch.
For the most part, he was downright terrifying even if he was perching in a fashion similar to a tiny bird 1/20 of his size on a tree branch. He was half-clothed in leather pants and boots, and his wild mane of dark hair was pulled back somewhat to reveal a stony face with amber-colored eyes that glared at nothing in particular. He was very tan and covered all over in scars, and the defined muscles in his chest and arms made him look more ferocious than the shadowy creature he had seen last night.
However, the set of swords that hung from a belt at his hips were bloodcurdling to even look at now that the leather sheaths were removed to reveal the twin swords in all of their spiked and gleaming metal bone-colored glory.
In short, he looked nothing like their pale and scrawny selves, but rather like a fierce warrior out of a fantasy tale that muggles would often tell around campfires.
Salazar didn't blame Helga for fainting. He would've done so himself were it not for the fact that he had to bodily stop Godric from pulling out his wand and stunning the man. In his distraction with his rival, Salazar failed to notice Rowena walking as close as she could to the man in the branches high above her head.
Through the chaos between Salazar and Godric, she had spoken softly, "So, you are the one who gave Helga the jewels." The man tilted his head. Okay, so he could understand but he didn't reply, so she Rowena tried again,
"Do you have a name? I am Rowena." The man stilled for a moment, as if was thinking if he should answer. Then, he opened his mouth to reply,
"I am... Lann." Rowena noted that his voice was cracked and rough, most likely from disuse.
Salazar and Godric froze while Rowena smiled slightly. Before she could ask another question, the man, surprisingly, spoke, "Do you... know what year it is?"
Rowena blinked and answered slowly, as if she was speaking to a child. "It is the year 962. The 10th century."
The man's eyebrows furrowed, clearly counting under his breath. During this moment, Godric shrugged off Salazar's hold and moved Helga so that she rested against a tree trunk. She was still unconscious, but close to coming to.
Rowena waited for the man to finish counting before asking, "Are you the guardian of this forest?"
Something flashed in the man's eyes as he turned his head to the side. He stared off into the distance as he, strangely hesitant, answered, "... Yes."
With that, he suddenly disappeared from Rowena's sight with nary a sound as a heavy wind blew cold wind and loose leaves everywhere and whipped her long hair into her face.
It wasn't until two decades later that Rowena was able to meet the person who Godric had dubbed the 'man of the forest,' Lann, again. She had recently finished overseeing the last preparation stages of the castle of a magic school, Hogwarts, that had been built on the old ruins of the ancient fortress that stood long before her all-knowing grandfather had been born. The original name of the place had been lost to time and was most likely never to be found again.
The forest now seemed more ancient and overgrown than the last time Rowena had ventured into it, but at the same time it felt darker, edgier, and more dangerous as she went deeper between the tall trees, seeking the elusive man who she had met so many years ago.
It was strange enough to think about, but Rowena needed his help and she hoped desperately that he would agree to her request. It had taken years of deliberation between her friends and many sleepless nights, but he was her last resort.
It didn't take long before she found him, or rather he found her. He was perched on a tree branch above her head and looked just as menacing as he did decades ago when they had first met. Even his clothes and swords were the same, whereas she had grown older and gained a few pounds and streaks of gray in her hair from the stress of taking care of her school plans and her young daughter.
"Lann." The man tilted his head in acknowledgment. Rowena didn't waste her words as she said, "I need your help. It concerns your forest."
"Continue." It seemed like Lann wasn't one to waste time, either. Maybe it was the urgent note in her voice that made him blunt in his speech.
"You are the guardian of this forest. There is a school for children to learn magic being built not even a mile away, and I want your word that the creatures in your forest will not actively seek to harm the children. In return, we will not harm your forest or territory." Rowena noticed that at the mention of children, Lann's eyes softened just a little as if he was relieving an old memory.
"I will ensure that the children will come to no harm." Rowena nodded and continued,
"I would also like it if the headmaster of the school requests your aid in providing security for the safety of the children, you would accept. Under negotiable terms, of course, and we will not hesitate to aid you in a similar situation."
The man mulled over her most important request. It was vital to the future generations of Hogwarts that he accept this. Rowena would do about anything to make him see her way.
"Under negotiable terms, I accept."
"Good, now I need some of your blood." At his hard stare, Rowena clarified and held out the roll of parchment and quill, "For the contract."
The man nodded and within a blink had appeared in front of her. Rowena startled and dropped the roll of parchment, but the caught it and unrolled it. His eyes quickly scanned over the text before he held out a calloused hand for the quill.
Rowena watched in a morbid sense of amazement as the man didn't even blink as he signed his name with bold and heavy letters, each thick line biting a deep scratch into the back of his hand. His signature was barely unreadable despite this and full of ornately decorative lines, but when she looked up from the contract with an eyebrow raised he had disappeared without a trace.
Sighing, Rowena started the long journey back to Hogwarts and hoped that she made it back before nightfall. Whatever Helga had gleaned from her brief Divination practices must be life-changing and very important if she wanted to get a blood contract from the man who scared Godric Gryffindor, the bravest of them all, into silence.
Lann watched over the forest and the school for magic children over several centuries, but not once was he called into aid. He kept his part of the contract of course and made sure that the creatures of the forest feared his wrath should they ever touch the children.
He felt a slight pang of pain on his hand when he felt each of the four magicians, now ancient and wizened beyond recognition, slowly waste away peacefully on their deathbeds. The headmasters of the school changed along with the flow of time, but the whispered legends of the original four founders reached even his ears from within the deepest depths of the dark forest.
However, not even the name, that had somehow attached, the Forbidden Forest could keep the annoyingly insistent youngsters out of the outskirts of the danger zone, where the more brave creatures would often try to cause havoc within his domain.
It reminded Lann that, once upon a time so many years ago, he was once the same as them. Foolhardy and confident and all around foolish.
But time is not kind to those that do not live forever, and neither does it let those who don't escape from its grasp.
It started in what seemed to be around the years of the 1990s.
The first mutterings of Tom Riddle and Lord Voldemort reached his ears as the current headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, was speaking with the hairy half-giant that lived at the edge of his forest, Hagrid. They were conversing at the giant's house, but it was close enough so that if Lann headed to the bare edges of his territory he could get a few snatches of conversation.
Something about a prophecy, and a child who was destined to defeat an evil.
Lann would have laughed at the image of a child defeating an evil and powerful wizard on their own with a magic stick, but it didn't take long for the niggling thought of that he too had once been a young child, barely a man, destined to defeat an evil so great that even the mightiest trembled in their shoes.
At least he had friends who had stuck with him until the very end. The poor child that has been chosen by destiny seemed lonely, and not by his or her own choice either.
Lann fled back into the deep recesses of the forest as the conversation between the half-giant and the headmaster closed up. He had no desire to be discovered before his contract began.
A fleeting thought crossed his mind as that the other side of his contract might actually be activated for once after almost a millenia.