He disappeared into the trees the instant that he stepped far enough inside.
And Brill didn't break stride holding that worn, short, rusting blade in his hand; its familiar heft requiring no conscious thought at all. The hilt worn to a comfortable curve from years of use before it had even reached him.
The blade belonged to his father, it was his fathers first blade given to HIS own father as well. Unremarkable in any aesthetic sense and not of the sort to be paraded; but it was clearly obvious that it had cut and severed matters of import, and for Brill, that was all that mattered to him, especially as a gift.
He wound through the trees at a pace that would have sent most people tumbling headlong within steps, feet landing, not landing so much as planting and pushing, before the ground had properly adjusted to his presence; shoulders ducking under branches before they could snag his tunic, the learned motion so ingrained into his being that his mind barely had to inform his body where it was or where it needed to go.
He knew the path through here, a certain path to be exact. He did not, however, know the path from having strayed from some intended course to stumble across it, to find it and make of it a known quantity. He knew it from countless, ceaseless journeys along its every inch, his father's voice at his back: correct him when his foot landed incorrectly, make him step back and retrace, discipline him until every placed foot was placed with a purpose, every sway of balance calculated, every forward movement of his body preordained by a careful assessment of the space it was about to occupy.
And then his mother. Her style was different, more straightforward and less concerned with correction and more with consequences, but the result was the same.
He learned to fight from his mother, and learned to survive by his father. It would have been peculiar otherwise, after all; the two Knight Captains wouldn't have let their offspring stumble blindly through the world unable to account for himself.
Branches whipped at his side as he cut through the undergrowth, his legs finding firm footing on roots and rocks where other people would have stumbled or been thrown from their path.
The forest was pretty loud too, the sounds of its myriad inhabitants were present, a rustle of leaves, a distant cry, the scrabble of some creature over damp earth.
A lithe animal, its fur a curious patchwork of dark brown and light green, shot across his path, disappearing into the earth beneath the trees of foliage the instant it reached it, its eyes alone betrayed its position until it burrowed into a rotting stump.
Up ahead, another beast of that peculiar land, a stout animal of heavy fur and tusks like those on a wild hog, gouged at the ground with all the intensity of a tireless miner, dirt flying in clods over its broad back as it pursued whatever sustenance or tasty looking prey it sought below the soil.
'I'm important! I'm special!' Brill thought.
The thought carried with him, like a small but steady echo against the cacophony of the woods. He envisioned himself following his father along the same path, stepping on the same stones, pushing aside the same branches, expecting without looking to see Brill immediately following, perfectly paced.
He embraced that vision and let himself be pulled by it, vaulted onto a low lying branch with a soft thud, using it as leverage to propel himself forward into a smooth landing.
He had done this before, so many times before the woods, however, showed no mercy to those who forgot.
Bones were scattered where the ground had scooped inward, sun bleached and aged, among fragments of cloth long ago stripped of their color but dark in places where some blood, the nature of which he did not care to ponder, had dried and been impossible to wash away.
The torn hem of a sleeve snagged at his eye level on a sharp twig; it was stiff and crusted to a degree not naturally achieved by mere time.
This was no child's play; that was known. Brill's father had said that so many times it got annoying.
King Camelot the Sixteenth, Of the Kingdom of Velkrund, had decreed only recently, an amendment forced through by his closest advisors after several too many Knight-Captain level expeditions had set off into this section of Grudlen never to return; too many conflicting reports, too many baffling incidents, too many lives lost to be easily dismissed as reckless adventure.
Adventurers still ventured out, they always would for a couple of gold or silver. The kingdom permitting them to, under the auspices of obtaining a bounty permit for what it considered a justifiable, albeit dangerous venture, those willing to gamble the health and lives of themselves, and often others, for riches or reputation (or whatever fleeting reason they held to justify such an undertaking) did.
They carried an Adventurers Mark on their skin to prove it.
Then, Brill heard voices, so he began slowing down, these voices definitely seemed like they were on the same path as his route. He dropped lightly from the root he'd just bounded upon, landing with minimal sound behind a massive, gnarled oak before craning his neck around its trunk.
Three figures.
Brigands, or the nearest approximation; they held themselves too carelessly, too sloppily for any true Adventurer who knew the rules of this place, rules you were forced to accept if you intended to play.
One of them sported a thick beard unkempt since god knows when, patchy and uneven like he'd given up halfway through his last attempt at trimming; his armor was a motley collection of worn leather and bits of mismatched plating, the short sword at his hip looked a little shiny, but the detail was dull and bland as hell.
Perched precariously on his shoulder was a tiny bird, a small Divine Beast. its plumage shifting constantly from blue to green to a surprising almost golden hue, never resting on a single color for more than a moment. It pecked idly at his ear, its eyes flicking nervously about.
Beside him walked the second man; he was wiry and anxious, his hand hovering unnervingly close to the weapon strapped at his hip.
The third...
A Reptila, humanoid reptiles in this world.
His dark green scales were scratched and worn where armor and time had combined to erode their natural smoothness, his head was long with his jaw extending forward, eyes thin to slits and looking straight ahead. Shabby leather was integrated into a network of worn metal plating that comprised his torso and arms, pieced together with the crude practicality of someone who prioritized function over form. A spear rested within easy reach on his back, bound with sturdy leather straps but it tinged with magic.
None of them seemed to feel entirely out of place here. Because, to some extent, they were.
"F-fuck, I can't believe we had to shell out cash for an Adventurers Brand just to get in this far. This…this place…it feels… wrong…and we're just here to take things from other people-from people who just took it, and took it, and took it from others before-but it's better…I don't know, it just feels safer...I'm used to sticking up weak bastards and silencing them right after, makes the job easier…"
The thin man's voice wavered, carried by its nervousness through the dense trees. On his wrist, revealed as his sleeve shifted, sat a red mark just above the bone, a crudely drawn symbol resembling a tangled knot.
The Adventurers Mark.
It bound itself to the very skin of its bearer, glowing as it crossed the line into a prohibited zone, detailing entry and exit, a digital record only visible to those authorized by the guild hall, or more specifically, to the Royal Inspectors. Permission and restriction in one, binding them, clearly marking them as those who knew what they were doing and those who knew the stakes.
"You wanted to come though, didn't you? It's only natural to be curious, isn't it? Besides, think about it. All the poor slobs who ventured into this God-forsaken place and never made it out...all their belongings just waiting to be taken and fenced off. Can't pass that up." The bearded man grinned, a wide, toothy affair that was more unsettling than anything else, his eyes alight with an eager greed. He was considered the leader to them.
The Reptila emitted a strange clicking sound when he talked. "Getting out alive is the only goal here. However, if one plans their actions and route accordingly, survival can be quite a simple endeavor." The consonants of his voice were drawn out just slightly, and he possessed a peculiar timbre that set him apart from his companions, even though his meaning was quite clear.
Brill dropped down from a low rise on which he'd been hidden, landing with the lightest sound possible, the rusty blade still in hand and not yet raised.
The men froze, all three of them, their heads pinching towards the newcomer.
Brill blinked, staring up at them. "Can you guys please move out of the way? I have to get through."
The bearded man blinked, then his grin split wider. "Well well…lookie here. Is this that boy? That stain face? The son of former Knight Captains Idemay and Torren? Out here all alone! HA! I knew our luck would only get better!"
Stain face? That was new, but Brill wasn't amused.
The Reptila leaned closer, his eyes raking over Brill with unnerving intensity. "Indeed, and from so rich a lineage, such wealth a noble family possesses… this one has to be worth quite a bit. Perhaps we can discuss terms with Captain Idemay?"
The bearded man needed no further instruction. "Definitely. Let's grab the kid."
Their stance changed, enough to be obvious in Brill's focused eyes.
The bearded man charged without the slightest hesitation, his hand already out, fingers splayed as if to pluck a sack of grain from a merchant's hand rather than that of a small boy.
He didn't see a fight or even work within the boy, to him, Brill was just a snotty little noble brat who'd wandered too far from his ridiculously fancy home, someone whose name was practically sewn onto his clothes in threads of gold, someone whose mother would give a king's ransom to see him brought back unharmed.
He could already picture it all! The negotiations, the fear, the way people like that always broke when you grabbed something precious from them.
They had struck gold, literally, without even having to mine it.
Brill instinctively stumbled back, shoulders hunching in, his blade lowering just enough to seem utterly lost in his hands.
"Please…I-I'm just a kid…" Brill said innocently.
The man's smile got bigger, and he leaned in, stooping down to get a better look at the stark terror reflected in Brill's eyes.
"Yeah, I can see that-"
He was close enough now, and that was his mistake.
The look on Brill's face changed, and there was hesitance, but one second it was there, and the next it was gone, replaced by something that had no right on the face of an eight year old boy, something cold and impossibly focused, something that made the air feel suffocating.
Malice.
Malice in Brill's eyes, switching from the fear and innocent look to straight malice.
Brill exclaimed, "RAGGHHH!"
And he rammed his blade up that was obscured and stabbed into the man's throat; the blade lodged, then tore through.
A wet, choked sound was the first noise, followed by the hot spray of blood across Brill's face and shirt, the man's grinning mouth contorting into something broken and gasping as his hands fumbled up, grabbing at Brill's arm, at the blade, at anything they could possibly do to negate what had just happened.
But that blade didn't budge at all, like it was stuck.
The blade remained wedged in his throat, angled in a way that forced his head to crane around his own body, struggling to inhale and failing, jerking and flailing as his lungs refused to fill.
Brill held fast, gripping the handle; and noticing how he couldn't rip it out easily, he began forcing the blade down, dragging the man's head with him as the weight shifted, and drove his knee into the mana face with all the strength he possessed.
"AGHHHH!" He yelled again.
A brittle crack echoed deep within the man's neck. There was a sickening lurch, his head snapping back fast, and his body going limp as his eyes dulled over. A high and alarming screech erupted from the tiny bird Divine Beast perched on his shoulder.
Its feathers immediately went dark, colors leaching away, turning to a sickly warped shade of purple shadows as an unnaturally dark ooze began to spread over its body like a stain.
It launched itself into the air, and It ripped through branches, tearing through everything it saw in its path, moving so fast it was barely a streak, the air screaming and crackling around it as it shot through the trees, its screech growing more and more distorted, less like grief and more like a shattering from the inside.
This was what Divine Beasts did. Not always though, but only under certain circumstances.
When a contract ended because the human host died, the bond left behind an imprint, a residual connection. If the bond between beast and man had been balanced, even, stable, then the beast could sever ties with that imprint without losing itself, moving on, perhaps even searching for a new partner.
But if that bond had been abused, neglected, or molded into something it was not, the bond tore, and what was left was unstable.
The beast could not process it. It could not come to rest. And since it had nowhere else for the vestiges of the bond to go, it unleashed it on whatever it encountered, its own being degrading over time due to the lack of a stable connection. It would rage and burn out until it died.
The bird shot towards Brill, and then stopped. It hovered, wings thrashing furiously, head bobbing as it looked at Brill, then at the corpse at his feet. Brill still had his hands on him, still gripping his head. The angle of the neck, the way it dangled, the reek of blood clinging to Brill's face, the bird seemed to be unable to decide exactly what it was looking at, as if the lingering residue of its connection still coated the dead man's corpse.
Behind him, the other two yelled.
"Shit!"
"He killed Brantt!!!"
The bird shot forward again, but this time through the other two bandit Adventurers.
In a flash of purple black energy it ripped across the space separating them, their bodies failing to even properly scream as they tore apart, bits and pieces scattering across the ground, the trees, and Brill's clothes.
It continued on, slamming into trunks, shredding through leaves, ripping a path through the forest as it continued its spiraling rampage, its screech a torn-up piece of sound.
"SCREEEEEEEEEE!!!!!" The Divine Beast bird yelled.
Brill stood there, breathing hard, still clinging to the corpse.
He knew he had to keep holding onto this corpse if he didn't wanna be attacked by the Divine Beast. Then he dragged it, and the weight resisted, the dirt catching on limbs, but he pulled anyway, his jaw locked and eyes forward.
"I have to keep going…! I need to find the monster… I'll show them all what I'm made of, and they won't ever leave me! No one!"
He kept going, pulling the body behind him as he walked away from the scene of destruction, away from the cracking and splitting of wood echoing somewhere off to the side, away from the dark purple energy that continued to rend the forest.