Preface

Midnight had come early. Even at it’s deepest and darkest, the forest wasn’t usually this dark at midday. Something had vacuumed away what little light the massive trees let in. The forest floor was pitch black, erasing any signs of the small trail that ran along and in between the rocks and outcrops. There was only black.

“My aching back,” whispered the darkness in a deep rough brogue.

“Hush,” whispered back a different patch of nothing.

Silence came again. The only way you’d know it was even a forest is if you were standing in it before the light went away, or if someone told you.

“Think the donkey is ok?” whispered the second spot.

“You JUST shushed me,” came back. “The mule is fine. You froze it so it’s standing on a branch, so stiff it could crack. Just like my back.”

“We’ll be down soon enough-” the second spot started to clap back but stopped itself.

In the distance, a small ball of light poked through.

A man-sized bonfire walked up the path.

The blazing crackling fire stood on two feet and pulsated with roiling fire. It was a beacon of light but even it’s light didn’t get far in the fake night. The fire’s light licked the trees at the edges of the path, going the briefest outline to it’s immediate surroundings. but didn’t illuminate passed that the way a fire should.

“Why blanket the forest but send a hothead?” asked the darkness high above the trail.

“I already said hush!” shouted the second voice in a whisper.

The bonfire stopped right underneath the voices. Heat rose up and ruffed the leaves. Loose embers flew up but vanished early.

A massive monster stepped close to the fire. Just the outline of it’s size and, what might have been a pigs nose, caught the glint go the inferno in front of it. It gave a grunt of impatience, or disgust, or annoyance, at the heat and the bonfire jumped before stating to walk again. As soon as it took two steps, the darkness erased the giant.

The fire walked down the path and around a rocky crag, which might have been huge, then disappeared itself.

“A three person team,” said the second spot, not as softly this time. “A faun to blanket the forest, a fuegoman to draw your attention, and a monster to swat you.”

“I don’t know what’s worse,” said the first voice, “sweating from the heat, or the stench of the pogre.”

“Come on, and help me down,” said the second voice.

“As if my back didn’t hurt enough.”

“Har,” said the second voice, “har. We have to move quickly to get the donkey down before the light comes back. If it sees the ground from way up here, they’ll be able to hear it for miles.”

“And I could go for some tea.”

“Well, yes. Of course.”

Character Bio: The Brue

Character Bios:

The Brue

The big bad. The one who holds your dreams. He who unslumbers the dead and controls the magic of the mud they slept in. Harbinger of the end of Life. Remover of the spark. Thief of land and hope  

The Empire was not fairing well. The English, some Sardinians, and the godforsaken French were outmanned but winning - helping the Ottoman’s hold their line. Sevastopol had fallen after a year of bitter starvation. Balaclava was a crushing disaster for both sides though Russia lost men and land. Food is scarce. Thousands of dead lay in the muck, foul and rotting. Horses torn apart by machine gun fire, men exploded by incoming shells, both just meat for the war. The devastation only people can bring. A new type of war with the same type of end: death. 

So much death. Crimea was reduced to rubble. The soldiers reduced to less.

A soldier, his beard riddled with lice, climbs through the trenches, moving lumber while looking for food. His cheeks are sunken and his eyes dull. This world has taken everything from him. When a shell lands near him, he doesn't hear the whiz as it moves the air in front of it, only the thud of it landing. It takes two breathes for him to realize it didn't detonate. His only thoughts are to survive, to live through another night. His eyes don't open and he starts counting in his head. He gets to three before it explodes. Dirt and rock hit him as a thousand punches made one as he's knocked back. 

But, when he opens his eyes, he doesn't see a bombed out landscape. The Black Sea isn't sitting darkly below him. There is no rolling desolation.

There is a forest.

A forest so green that it's black in places. Lush with the life that was drained from around him. Vibrant. Alive. Safe. Without a thought, he picks up his shashka and walks into the deep smell of the forest. The last thing he hears from our world is the whiz of another mortar shell and then, he is gone.

Character Bio: Audrey

Character Intro:

Audrey

Hundreds of years ago, two massively powerful wizards had a crazy powerful and impressively majestic magical battle over a mountain range in the North. It was so intense it inverted the colors of the world for miles and miles. Blue skies and white puffy clouds turned black and yellow. It was one of the most amazing and beautiful things in the history of all the worlds.

But that's not what we're going to dwell on.

Down below, where the wizards landed, extinguished by fantastic exertion, just below a thin layer of earth was a huge crop of some of the finest limestone you've ever seen. As the wizard's body decomposed the vast stores of magic leeched into the ground like toxic runoff. Portions and years of accumulated power flowed out. And was sucked into that very limestone.

Years (and years) later, a quarry was carved into the mountainside to extract the limestone. It was not opened long. Workers reported it haunted and only a few slabs were ever extracted. The quarry was abandoned and the forest too it back.

Of the slabs that were cut, one made it to a small village a few days travel along the Great Road. The village had not heard of the haunted stone from the doomed quarry so the townspeople pitched in to by a slab for a local sculptor.

He carved a statue of Rogidon, a hunter god that hardly anyone prays to anymore. And it was a beautiful statue. Strong and lithe. His chin was chiseled true and square. His biceps taut and strong. His mustache straight and true. 

Audrey was not amused.

Character Bio: Roy

Character Intro:

Roy of the Black Axe

He's not a River Dwarf or one of those fancy be-suited dwarfs you might see in Morpork, no, Roy is an Axe Dwarf (with an 'e,' which in his language means the same thing as in ours). Axe Dwarves are given axes when they are small and hairless. Which, you'd think, would lead to more digit-less dwarves but, no, even when they use them to teethe, the baby dwarves make it to teen-hood with all their fingers and most of their toes. 

The axes are so sharp dwarves, both male and female, could shave their faces with them.

If they ever shaved.

Most dwarves have beards so big they end at the eyebrows. The River dwarves wrap braids with seaweed. Desert dwarves, for dwarves are a very adaptable species - as long as there's dirt, the will dig into it - Desert Dwarves comb their beards straight out to the sides to capture any extra water. Unfortunately, there aren't any Desert Dwarves in A Door in the Woods as the author just thought of them. How they eat without snacking on their mustache is a well guarded secret.

 He likes to think he's the leader, and his experience fighting The Brue means be could be. But, under all that hair, his skin is too thin and it's easy to needle him into getting him exasperated. Sometimes Marian and Audrey do it just for fun.