WizardandGalaxy

“Are these… instructions for fireworks?” “Oh yeah, those! I can’t believe they didn’t get tossed out in the move.” “When did you need to make fireworks? And how the heck did Edith let you?” “It was a Guild thing. There was a celebration for… an ambassador, I think? Something like that. We had to help with the festivities.” “And Edith was just okay with that? Like, ‘Oh, it’s an assignment involving a bunch of explosions, but the Guild told us to, so I guess it’s fine’.” “Eh, I think it was more like, ‘I will do whatever you want, just please stop begging me about it’. I was a very stubborn child.” “You say that like something’s changed.” “Shut up.” “Did your fireworks end up in the celebration?” “Maybe? We submitted our blueprints, but so did every other Researchers team. It ended up being a whole bunch of lights and explosions, no real coherency. The only thing I really remember about it was hating how loud it was.” “Dang.” “Yeah. And in the test firings, I got it

There are many unknowns within the forest. Those so small and short-lived that our eyes can never bear witness. Those who spend their lives slipping between shadows and background noise, observing all and remaining unseen. Those who stand stock still in the sunlight and refuse to become beholden to it, ignoring its pleas to make themselves visible. Those too fast to process in detail. Those too slow to catch the eye. And of course, those which can be found, if one dares to look, but present themselves so far beyond the scope of our brains that anyone who tries to know even a fraction of them will soon forget everything else. But that is not what we are concerned with today. Not what is hidden, or invisible, or incomprehensible. No. Today, we are concerned with a different sort of unknown thing. Something so ancient and ingrained with the world around it that we have failed to recognize it as anything else. Until now. For we haven’t been very kind to the forests, now have

Atop a mountain peak caught in a stranglehold of ice, snow, and bitter, bitter cold, at the end of a snaking, whip-thin trail, sits the remains of an ancient fortress. The halls are barren. The wooden furniture is closer to dust than to trees. The structure itself is beginning to crumble, if only just. The only sound is the agonized shriek of the wind. Well. Almost the only sound. For snoring upon the fortress’s tallest roof, irreverent to the deathgrip of the blizzard, is a beast of razored teeth and claws. A primal thing, a seeker of death and domination, a thing which every creature residing in the hills and plains and forests below have learned to fear. And it will not slumber for long.