Submission (#3671) Approved

Wordcount: 350 again on the dot!
Region: Kyendi
Feature: Sure why not.
Comments: Genuinely no idea what this is. I just started writing about trees and somehow this happened. Considering I'm questing for Hallowed Gaze rn, this seems pretty appropriate.

The forest hums and the forest sings and the forest is alive and the forest is old and the forest, ah, the forest is not going to die anytime soon. The region to the northeast saps at the forest’s byways and estuaries, reaches closer and slams its magic up against the rocky mountains that hold the forest’s first line of defense against the darkness and the suffering. The forest notes this and only pushes the mountains higher, rockier, more unforgiving. When the region to the northeast forces more magic towards it, tries to find caves and cracks and canyons that it can slip through, the forest steals the magic and purifies it instead.

The forest purifies the dark magic bit by bit by bit, atom by atom, forcing it to lighten to mist until its energy shines, and how it shines as it uplifts everything around it, as it lets go of the suffering at last. From the mist it will turn to the sun and lift the land. From the magic the forest steals back from the region to the northeast, the trees grow and the islands begin to fly and the forest can offer another sanctuary from the darkness of the world.

The forest knows what the other regions don’t, for it is the oldest and the greatest and the most powerful: the magics of suffering that the region to the northeast creates can be purified. It has the ruins and the feyfolk and the wandering Nobles who carve out pathways and heal the tainted miasma. The tide tries to draw into the fog every winter. And every summer, the forest beats it back, steals what it can and shifts it back towards the light.

The forest is as tainted as the rest, rotten to the core and forever hiding its secrets in the dark and dusk and eternal twilight of the woods. The battle is not – cannot be – futile. Kyendi remembers the time before the darkness took over, what it was like to be bathed in light. And the forest it has become, ah… The forest remembers.