Our online bookstore is now closed for the holidays. Click on any book to find it at your local bookstore or library.

Felix shook him away and jumped back, falling onto rough ground of the caverns behind him. The man with the loud voice stumbled after him but fell in a heap under the weight of his wounds. When Felix could stand once more, he ran into the depths of the caverns — no matter how far he went, the glowing eye of the man with the loud voice would always find him.

Finally, when he was out of breath, Felix had left the man with the loud voice behind in the caverns and bought him-self some more time.

It was silent. The faint dripping of water and the breath of the mists sounded in the distance. Felix walked about the depths, trying in vain to find a path to the surface. He scratched his head considering how to climb back to the forest and return to the plains. He hoped that if he could find an entrance to the surface, even some distance from his original direction, he might find an unorthodox path to the forest. The great trouble was that he couldn’t remember where he had been going above. When he tried to remember, all that came to mind was the image of the beast’s horrible face and then a sudden flash of the horrors he had fled from in the town — of Cuthbert lying lifeless in the blood-stained streets.

Felix jumped back, having imagined that the ground had been shifting under his feet. Dismissing this notion, Felix kept walking only to jump back again as the ground shifted— sustaining its movement this time. He fell on his backside and watched the rocks creep into a long snake of stone that stood before him. The snake slithered near him, waving from side to side as she looked down and began to speak.

“What is this but some long-lost drifter trapped beneath the husk of the earth?” the snake asked as she looked over Felix’s terrified expression. “What a pitiful thing these soils have brought me on this day. Such a broken, sad man you are.”

Felix looked up at the great snake of stone. No eyes looked back on the rock face that hovered above him. He looked first to the floor and then to the snake, gathering his words as he struggled to speak.

“Please,” he said, “I am only lost. I have found refuge, but I have lost my path. I meant no trespass. I was only fleeing from that horrible thing above. There’s also a man — he’s chasing me too. He tried to side with that horrible monster, and the monster pushed him down anyway — it carelessly tossed him into the pit where I fell. It was as though it didn’t care if he lived or died.”

“The blond beast,” the snake said, nearly cutting Felix off. “A new, loathsome fixture along with the woods that wrought him. I can’t tell you anything about that strange man following you — but I am too familiar with the blond beast.

“Once, he was a man like any other. Before he was the blond beast, his name was Albert Gould — an ordinary name for an ordinary man. He lived in a farmhouse and worked hard until his father failed to pay his debts. When his father was chased from the town, Albert moved in. There, he adopted their ways until he couldn’t exist beside people anymore. As the days went by, Albert Gould died. A disease burrowed itself into his head and killed him, leaving only the base desires the town had breathed into his core. He lured seven men and eight women to their deaths so he could sell their organs. At his trial, he said that he was merely making a living. Then, the Republic removed him and planted some trees to contain what he had become. Shortly afterward, he lost the ability to speak at all. The Republic, of course, hid his true nature and spins pitiful tales that paint him as an elevated genius. They lie about his father and his acts — those fifteen people he killed have been effectively erased. Legend from beyond the woods says that he wanders the perimeter of the forest to find a messenger post so he can sell the organs of his victims to the highest bidders of the Republic once more.”

Felix’s thoughts turned to Doufsanctville & Avaramck as he listened, thankful that he didn’t join the monster in the forest. It wasn’t hard to see how a man like Albert Gould might emerge from such actions.

“More and more people from surrounding towns are starting to act like him — like animals mindlessly hunting for the meaningless spoils of pyrrhic victories. They dispose of their dead, their sick, and their injured in the woods —and they call themselves and that rapacious beast noble and magnificent for doing these terrible things. The poor fools— they can’t see that their beloved beast will kill them too if it gets the chance. They don’t understand that there was no danger here before they brought him into the world.They tell stories about Albert Gould being a hero, but Albert Gould has been dead for a very long time.” ■