Physirus

the darkness hummed

• Page 1 | Information ⚫ Page 2 | Story
• The woods are lovely, dark and deep
  
  But I have promises to keep
  
  And miles to go before I sleep
  
  
  ℳ𝒾𝓁ℯ𝓈 𝓉ℴ ℊℴ 𝒷ℯ𝒻ℴ𝓇ℯ ℐ 𝓈𝓁ℯℯ𝓅...
• 
• The forest isn't a friend to runners. To flee'ers. It might be too critical, or unfaithful sounding of him, to say that the forest favoured the hunter. The chaser. It is so much harder to be quiet in the undergrowth when you are afraid. The predator has the advantage of not having to look over his shoulder. If the predator snaps a twig underfoot, he looses his dinner- if the prey makes such a sound, if he gives himself away, he looses his life.
  
  So it was that the child was at a disadvantage. He ran until his lungs burned, his eyes watered, and his feet bled. Back then, he didn't have magic nor the favour of the woodland to save him. He only had the blessed attribute of all lucky prey-
  
  speed.
  
  Nightfall was fast approaching. As he ran, the boy caught glimpses of people in the treeline. Their voices echoed in the gloom. They flitted through the mist, through the shadows, dancing betwixt the wildflowers until they were swallowed up by the dark earth. When the boy could run no longer, when he stopped and wailed and heaved painful breaths between sobs, he realised there was no other sound to be heard. He was alone in the crushing expanse of night. The endless panorama of grey branches offered no inclination of escape. In the wake of fire, very little grew in that forest. Tiny lives scurried through the ash. The skewered trees were bound to wooden pickets with rope- a splint, an accessory of the last years hope; but this place had laid its achievements bare long ago. The forest wasn't thick with foliage, but there was something else in the air- something that hummed through the cinder, through the fog. Like bugs, but foreboding. It was the first sound he'd heard in a few minutes. The wind picked up, but the air was choking- it seemed heavy with the shell-shock of light and blistering heat, a phantom of the fire that had wracked this place.
  
  A sound in the brush caused the boy to jolt forward with fright. He'd only taken a few strides when his boot caught in the remnants of a snare. Down he fell, aware only of that ghostly presence in the treeline before his small head was dashed against a stone. Something warm soaked into his hair. A stranger stepped up to him as his vision faded. He would recall the silhouette raising a hand to summon its companions. He would recall a freezing dread, the fear that only prey animals know, and very little beyond that.
  
  
  

  
• The cultists of that sleepy, abandoned village were more than a little distrusting of outsiders. The village had been abandoned so long before they'd arrived, that nature had almost entirely reclaimed the hamlet. They'd whittled what small life they could out of the remnants. They'd etched stories of their deities- who had led them there- into the brickwork, and written their legacy in soot on the floors of houses that bloomed in the spring. Most of them were old and tired. The cultists had spent decades in search of a safe refuge in the forest, outside of a region where they'd be considered poachers, and even further from a society that feared them to the point of aggression. The village offered a place of worship as well as an opportunity for the craftsmen in the clan. Carpenters revitalised the buildings enough to live in, and trappers kept the sheltered families fed. Every single one of these people carried the same secret, however. It was a secret that had become a burden over the years. These people, beyond their daily vocations, were each and every one of them, a sorcerer.
  
  No one was particularly happy about the child. He had amnesia, their leader reassured them, so he wouldn't remember the way to their home- more importantly, he wouldn't remember anyone to tell about it. How could they doubt their wise guardian? How could they tell him to reject the child and leave him to die in the wilderness? They made uneasy peace. In the ensuing days, they would be peering into the hut and watching the sleeping child with fear in their eyes. The fear that only prey animals know.
  
• By the time he was almost an adult, the boy was sick of being shunned. Any excuse to keep him out of the village. He was sent to collect sticks for the fire every day, check the traps in the surrounding woods, gather herbs and other resources for those who hadn't ever stooped to treat him when he'd been sick. Even though the cultists had raised him, the boy couldn't help but notice the looks of apprehension whenever he was around. They couldn't wait to be rid of him. He was aware that he was the only 'mundane' member of the village, even if he was scarcely considered a member. A few days short of his finally being expatriated from the hamlet, the leader would begin testing him with magic. There was potential. That was all. He wasn't really ready to face the dangers of the forest, but if he could make it to the nearest settlement then he would do better with his 'own kind'- or so the head cultist reckoned.
  
  Eventually, his magic would prosper. Whether it was in that gap in his memory, some strange occurrence in the forest, or growing up around sorcerers, that granted him such abilities- he wasn't sure. There was no doubt that his 'potential' had manifested into something a lot more potent. By the time he was an adult, the boy clung to the treeline and stayed under the cover of the canopy as much as possible, as he travelled from town to town. He discovered why the cultists had avoided those that were so different from themselves. Suddenly being shunned wasn't such a bad thing. He became a recluse. In the solstice of the forest, the sorcerer made a name for himself- quite literally. Physirus granted himself the comfort that no other ever had, and found all the companionship he needed in animals that were suddenly drawn to his magical potency. He named himself in lieu of forgetting whatever he'd been called before, and the cultists never caring to call him anything other than 'boy'.
  
  Despite the reputation of magic-users, Physirus was relatively harmless.
  
  Was.
  
  
  
  

  
• It began with the voice. Although to say this was a beginning might be misleading, as the whole ordeal had already begun from the moment he'd lost his memory. Physirus preferred to think of the first time he encountered the beast as a new chapter. The sorcerer had been washing himself on the riverbank, when the pained cries of an animal ushered him deeper into the woods. What he found was unexpected- black cadaver with a pelt so mottled and dirty, the bone so exposed, it looked as if it had been rotting there for days. What disturbed Physirus most of all was not that the face of the creature had been removed, but that as he examined the corpse, a voice stirred in his ears. Beyond the nonsense that it spouted, he was able to decipher the name of the spectre. It took him several days. Several days of groaning in a corner, his knees tucked up against his chest. The voice had become near unbearable, but as soon as Physirus heard the name, it vanished altogether. The sorcerer never heard that voice again, save from his own mouth the next time he'd meet with Ts'u Suhr. This new addition to his repertoire of magical capabilities was shocking, to say the least. Physirus would plant his feet, which were not entirely his own, firmly onto familiar ground- and yet, he was now able to experience his forest home all over again, from a strikingly different perspective. Magic had a way of finding him, there was no doubt. If magic hadn't found him when he was just a child, abandoned in the woods, he would be dead. Even wearing Ts'u Suhr's skin for the first time, Physirus wasn't about to throw gratitude to the wind.
  
  Magic found him yet again, in the heat of a summer that threatened to spark a fire like the one before. Physirus experienced his own sense of frightening nostalgia as he sped through the undergrowth. Although his human form was ageing, Ts'u Suhr offered an extension of his youth and wilful spirit, and he certainly didn't suffer from a loss of swiftness as he fled from his ghastly pursuer. Physirus had assumed that Ts'u Suhr was the only one of whatever he was. Then he met the bat. She was closing in on him, and the thought of those fangs bearing down on him, those claws taking hold in his flesh- it was his unbecoming. Just as before, Physirus tripped. He'd been thinking about being torn to pieces, and it filled him with such dread that the witch had already earned his undivided attention, even before she alighted on his stomach. As Physirus had fallen, Ts'u Suhr had escaped him. He lay pinned beneath the giant bat. She gazed into those impossible eyes, and that gaze fell to where the shadows pooled in the angles of his face- binding to his fearful expression like a splenetic lover. Was she to be invited into that love? Could she take his hand, take his heart, before she took the air from his lungs and the light from his eyes? She felt that the sorcerer wore the shadows so nicely, she might leave that handsome face until last. The witch reached out with human hands as the bat fell away, as if it'd been draped across her shoulders. In place of fur there was a silken robe, there was silver hair drawn into a loose bun. Her eyes remained the same. Those eyes were deep, dark brown, old and narrow- but alive with a passion that had pulled Physirus into its throes. Indeed, a fire had been sparked. Unlike the one before, it would continue to burn, on and on and on. The witch lay on Physirus, straddling his midriff between her thighs. Her bosom was pressed against his own, and she ran frail fingers like dogwood branches through his hair. As she kissed him in the encroaching moonlight, she decided to let him live.
  
  
  

  
• She eventually grew bored of him. He didn't fear her like he had that first evening. He'd grown comfortable around her, deluded by the love she'd so brazenly displayed. The witch wanted to see him struggle again, choking on his own spit as she forced his bones through his skin, into the dirt, burying him alive without ever losing sight of his beauty. She didn't want to kill him, for a while, but she was beginning to think that might have changed. She watched him undress with her back to the window. It was already pitch black, but his pallidness stood out from their surroundings. Physirus wasn't stupid. She had played him for a fool, and expected to get away with it. He tore though the serenity of the gloom, shattering the silence as he pushed her body through the glass. As they collided with the ground below, the sorcerer cried out as three, freezing spikes pushed their way through his torso. The tendrils extended from his lover's ribs, and she made sure he knew exactly how powerful she was as she squirmed inside him. This was as close to killing him as she could come. Neither of them would survive, now, their shared blood pooling in the stout grass. She thought it was romantic. Physirus sobbed. She grabbed hold of his arms, holding him to her as she kissed him one last time, keeping him from un-impaling himself. She would get bored of him again, but she wasn't ready to depart from this realm. She wasn't ready to leave his beauty behind- even if she'd fallen out of love with the sorcerer.
  
  Physirus awoke in a pool of blood and glass fragments. He coughed, choking on the blood that had dried in his throat. Just as before, he didn't remember anything. A voice in his head would remind him that he tried to kill his lover, and that notion would torture him, an agonising fire burning inside of him. The witch would get bored of him. She would eventually let him go, but for now, they shared a power unlike anything in nature. Before she fell entirely out of love with him, she would teach him a lesson. She would scratch at his ego and burn his mind away before leaving only his looks to the world. Physirus was a vestige of ritual, he only needed his breath and a single memory in the back of his mind, an echo of a kiss. Beyond that, his body, his beauty, all that he was, belonged to the forest.
  
  
  
  

  Ａｎ ａｗｆｕｌ ｎｏｉｓｅ ｆｉｌｌｅｄ ｔｈｅ ａｉｒ，
  Ｉ ｈｅａｒｄ ａ ｓｃｒｅａｍ
  
  Ｉｎ ｔｈｅ ｗｏｏｄｓ ｓｏｍｅｗｈｅｒｅ