Once long ago my brother and I had sought to rid the land of evil mages, as you will remember. We had chased the mages all the way to their camp in the Wasted Wood and done battle there. The mages were terrible men. Not even really quite men, but shadows of men, as you said, Quinn. They had turned the wood into a foul place.
When Hunter and I had met the mages there in battle, we saw . . .
The wood was full of terrible things.
I’d all but forgotten, but now I remembered. Their dark magic had driven all the animals rabid so that the creatures had gored the trees with tooth and claw, and the stench of rotting wood was thick in the air. The wood nymphs stalked us like we were quarry and slavered for our blood, and we only eluded them by cutting down trolls and tossing them the carcasses. The putrid sap that covered all claimed our boots and cloaks. But at last we drove the mages from their dark hiding places and defeated them with the silver scepter’s magic.
Afterward, Hunter and I could barely crawl away. We made camp outside its boundaries, where I discovered that a fell creature no bigger than my hand had latched on to my pack. It was completely black but for a cluster of milky eyes, and covered all over in sharp bristles. We had lost our swords in the wood, and we could find nothing sharp enough to pierce its bristled hide to kill it.
The sage I spoke of earlier had his warren nearby and, seeing our fire, came to find out what we were doing in those parts where few ventured anymore. We showed him the little Bristle Beast and he told us what we must do: Return it to the Wasted Wood, where it would feed on the dark magic there until the wood was cleansed of it and the beast died of starvation.
No worse instructions could he have given to us. We dreaded returning to the wood, even with the mages banished, because of the terrible things that still lurked there. But we knew the task must be done and so we started off, our steps heavy.
On the way, more trouble befell us: The Bristle Beast pierced my arm with one of its bristles. I was so overcome with horror that Hunter promised he would finish our task on his own. I returned to our camp to nurse my wound, but the quill had sunk so deep into my flesh that I could not remove it. When Hunter returned the following night, I told him I had removed the quill. I could not bear for him to know that something fell still lay inside of me. We never spoke of it or the wood again.
Now, years later, I knew I must travel back to the Wasted Wood. I left Hunter and the queen at the palace and went to find out whether all of the dark magic had drained away, or if some vestige remained and managed to putrefy the whole land. I had only to come to the very outskirts of the wood to find my answer.
The wood was as infected as it had been years ago; no dark magic had drained at all.
This knowledge so sickened me that I lay in camp for days before going back to the palace. Even when I left the wood, I felt that some curse followed me, that I was tainted by dark magic.
I told Hunter about the Wasted Wood and he revealed the truth. He had meant to take the Bristle Beast to the Wasted Wood that day years ago, but as he had gotten closer to the wood, he had been so overcome with dread that he had dropped the beast into a deep cavern, where he left it to starve.
The source of the realm’s sickness was now revealed.
We couldn’t find the cavern, so we assumed the earth had since closed over it. But it was clear what must have happened to the beast. It had fed not on the dark magic of the distant wood, but on the good magic of the land. The beast was growing so large on this diet that its black bristles had pierced the earth: The spikes reported by farmers and hunters were really the prickled brow of the beast jutting up from the soil. The black island in the poisoned bay was rumored to be the heel of the beast, pushing out from the soft silt of the bank.
I realized that to kill the beast would be to collapse the whole of the Other Place. To let it live would be to watch it grow large enough to break free and in doing so, destroy all.
I called for the sage, who gave an answer to my dilemma. A very old and almost-forgotten type of magic must be used to petrify the beast. Turned to stone, it would no longer be able to feed on the magic of the land, nor would the beast collapse or decay underneath the land. Slowly, the magic would leak out of the petrified beast, back into the land, and all would be saved.