The Revel of the Unblessed Court
Your headlights cut through the dense fog. The beams shine golden-yellow against the thick mist, like sunlight cutting through cloud on a spring day. You squint, pushing yourself up in the seat, trying to see the road in front of you. Theres no centerline now, almost certainly confirming your suspicions that you may have taken a wrong turn.
Hesitantly, you pull to the left, rubber wheels scraping against the loose gravel as you run off the road. You pull out your phone, but it glitches, similarly to static on a TV.
"Dammit," you mutter under your breath. Groaning, you opt to continue on the road until you see civilization. Its been two hours since you thought you lost your way, so it makes sense not to go back there. Especially considering it was about an hour before that since you last saw civilization; a lonely gas station, standing out like a candy wrapper in a swimming pool. It was nestled about as comfortably as a blister against a shoe, surrounded by evergreen trees and an eerie mist, mountains looming in the distance.
Pulling back onto the road and wincing at the sound of rubber against gravel as you accelerate, you try to remember what the last sign you saw said.
You flinch as your wheels suddenly go over a bump you weren't expecting. It's getting even harder to see, the unearthly mist that seemingly rises from the ground continues to thicken. Peering over the dashboard, you notice you're travelling over a bridge, presumably wooden, judging by the bumps. As you reach the end of the bridge, you notice a sign posted to the railing.
"'Trespassers beware'?" You say, reading the sign aloud and cocking your head. "That means there must be a private property, which means people I can ask directions from."
Hopeful, you continue down the road, which is no longer compact, but loose gravel which you bump along. The road begins to twist, which is even more trippy with low visibility. You find yourself turning when only mere inches away from hitting a ditch or a line of trees. The road gets progressively bumpier too, potholes make you jump out of your seat, nearly hitting yourself against the window and roof.
Suddenly, your spedometer glitches, and your fuel gauge drops to empty. Slowly but surely, your engine rumbles to a stop.
"Dammit," you curse out loud, slamming your palm into the steering wheel. You try to work your phone again, but once more the screen is static when you try to switch it on. Your radio glitches, and you jump, wondering how this is possible when the car is dead. Curious, you turn up the volume and play around with the channels, until you can hear music, clear as day. It's eerie and strangely beautiful. Ominous chants in ranging pitches, mostly a capella but broken by sudden onslaughts of instrumentals unlike anything you've ever heard before.
You are taken by a sudden and powerful compulsion to dance. The music brings out emotions in you; which you had never thought a simple song could do. Your heart bubbles with lust, inspiration, anger; emotions you feel can only be expressed by movement.
Slowly, you open the door to your vehicle, climbing out and stumbling onto the loose gravel road. The air outside is cool, and your breath condenses, joining the thick mist. Your eyes are drawn upward, to the silvery, ethereal light of the full moon, peeking out from behind layers of cloud. By some compulsion, you are drawn among the trees, sneakers snapping twigs and crunching leaves as you wander.
The urge to run finally takes you, as if the otherworldly spell that brought you here is broken. You scream, your throat stinging with the intensity of it. Fear finally fills your bones as you stop and look around, seeing only forest and fog in all directions. Dark, barely-living trees stand like skeletons above you. Eyes seem to peer from their knots. There are faces carved into their bark. Moss patterns these faces which are all twisted; malignant and sadistic. You back away, frightened, even knowing these trees cannot hurt you.
However, as you back into something soild and feel branches snaking and tightening around your wrists... you know they can.
You hear laughing, which seems to come from the trees themselves. It gets louder, you see their carved jaws laughing, gaping mouths open up to black holes. They grow larger and larger, as the deep, mocking laughter gets louder. Your ears begin to ring, as the laughter reaches its peak and clusters of darkness begin to spill from the wide, open mouths of these trees. The darkness intergrates with the mist, before condensing and steadily materialising into beings. These beings form faces, then limbs, all dripping with darkness, all their mouths moving with the same unearthly laughter.
They're beautiful, terrible, other.
One stands out among the rest, less animalistic but far more terrifying. Easily seven feet tall, their hair is chestnut and curled, long but not long enough to tumble down their shoulders. It frames a face of stark, striking, hollow features and inhuman, slit-pupiled eyes that shine a luminescent green, flashing like jadite fire in the darkness. Their laughter is prominent among the chorus, somehow darker and more inhuman. Dark, bat-like wings spread out from their back, seemingly unattached but most certainly under their control. Pointed and stark white teeth flash as their features become for focused.
You have to look away from the other horrifying creatures, because this one is far more jaw-droppingly terrible.
You writhe against your bonds, desperately trying to break free, but the trees only seem to grip you tighter. The terrifying creature begins to walk towards you, tendrils of darkness flitting in it's wake. You notice movement from the corner of your eye, mushrooms of blood red and spotted with white bloom readily from the ground around the darkness, where strange, short goblin-creatures with long noses and drooping elf-ears that drag along the ground sprinkle glittering spores to the earth.
When you look back up, the creature has reached you. A twisted grin spreads across their face, dimpled and fangy. While a clawed, black hand passes across your face, enveloping you in darkness.
Its grin is the last thing you see.
When you wake up, the sun is shining high in the sky. Your face is pressed against the loose gravel of the road. You sit up, brushing the stones from your cheek and unfurling your clenched fist. Inside it, is a silver pendant studded with blood red rubies along with several large, antique coins, carved with a seven pointed star. These are so finely wrought they must be worth hundreds, maybe thousands. Dazed and confused, you look to see your car, in the middle of the road where it broke down. The door is still wide open where you had stumbled out. You climb inside and sit down, closing the door and taking a moment to breathe. Placing the coins and pendant on the passengers seat, you try your phone. This time, it flickers to life as it should. You turn on google maps and find your destination is only five minutes away. You had never taken a wrong turn at all. You try the engine again and your car rumbles to life, the fuel gauge indicating a near full tank. You shake your head in both wonder and confusion, before heading in the direction of your destination.
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