The Deformed and the Dizziness

Two days after departing Olomouc Castle, a caravan of wagons once again arrived in the town of Kroměříž.

Noren and her companions swiftly departed after acquiring a few provisions from a farm located just outside the town.

Yet, even this brief stop did not go unnoticed, stirring the mayor who resided in the grand wooden fort at the town’s heart.

“Mayor, we have located that caravan,” Reken, the Skinner, reported, kneeling on one knee before Mayor Kunar.

“Do not engage them,” Kunar commanded, twisting the jeweled gold ring on his index finger before tapping the armrest of his lacquered wooden chair. “These individuals are formidable in combat. I will not send our guards to a pointless death.”

“Sir, are we to abandon the treasure, then?” Reken, the Skinner, pressed, a hint of reluctance in his voice.

“You may withdraw. I have my own stratagems.”

Reken, the Skinner, wished to counsel the mayor against forsaking such a golden opportunity, but upon raising his gaze, he was met with a pair of vicious, python-like brown eyes. His heart quickened a beat. He lowered his head, rose, and exited the chamber.

Once Reken had gone, Mayor Kunar moved to the window. He placed his index finger to his lips and blew a piercing whistle. From the distance, a grayish-brown shadow streaked toward them. After a flurry of beating wings, a goshawk, its body over a foot long, settled onto a crossbar suspended beneath the room’s vaulted ceiling.

Kunar withdrew a quill from his inkwell and inscribed a series of Latin words onto a small strip of parchment. Rolling the parchment into a tight scroll, he then inserted it into a tiny tube fastened to the goshawk’s talons.

“Good fellow, come, let me scratch you,” Kunar murmured, gently stroking the goshawk’s neck. The hawk obligingly ruffled the feathers around its throat, closing its eyes in blissful enjoyment.

“Deliver this message to those two deformed bastards. Go!” Kunar flung the goshawk out the window, and the magnificent bird unfurled its wings, soaring into the distant sky.

****

Deep within the dense northern forest of Osbrück, a peculiar community made their home. They were said to be creatures of raw instinct, twisted and distorted, cursed by demons in the eyes of others.

In truth, this was not the case; they were merely deformed progeny, meticulously bred by witches.

A piercing eagle’s cry resounded above the forest canopy. Following a rustling of leaves, a grayish-brown goshawk landed on a branch of a birch tree, its trunk as thick as a bowl.

“Crack!”

An enormous, unsightly hand abruptly shot out, snapping the branch. The foot-long goshawk was ensnared within its grasp like a tiny sparrow, held in an unyielding grip.

“Aargh!” The goshawk shrieked in agony, its bones threatening to shatter under the immense pressure of the giant hand’s fingers.

“Brrr, Brrr~” An eight-foot-tall giant bounded over to a gaunt man who was intently whittling a stick with a dagger.

The giant splayed his hand, revealing the lifeless bird in his palm to the gaunt man.

“Oh, my foolish little brother! Look what you’ve done this time? Hoho!” The gaunt man plucked one of the hawk’s talons and swung the large bird. “This is Mayor Kunar’s cherished pet, ho! If you’ve killed it, won’t he come for us?” The gaunt man tossed the dead bird aside, clutching his chest and feigning terror.

“Brrr?” Bru tilted his neck, which was as thick as his head, and scratched his bald, festering scalp. He simply could not comprehend his brother’s words.

The gaunt man suddenly found himself bored. He plunged the dagger violently into the dead bird, hoisted it high, and declared, “Today, we feast on roasted great bird!”

“Brrr, Brrr~” Bru understood.

Bru’s understanding was limited to simple commands and concepts: “Go,” “Eat,” “Drink,” “Sleep,” “Stand,” “Sit down,” “Don’t pee,” “Don’t poop,” and “Kill them quickly!”

As he lifted the large bird, the gaunt man noticed the small wooden tube affixed to its leg.

He opened the tube, extracted the message, cast aside the bird, and deftly unfurled the tiny parchment scroll.

“Abba abba abba abba abba!” The gaunt man’s eyes crossed in a comical squint as he meticulously deciphered the Latin script on the parchment, muttering incessantly as he read.

“Can’t make sense of it,” he finally declared after a long, fruitless attempt to understand its contents. He crumpled the parchment into a small ball. “We’ll take it home for those two little brothers to examine. They should be able to decipher what nonsense Kunar has penned.”

“Let’s go, Bru.”

“Brrr~”

****

“Whoa~~~”

The young woman astride the grey mare tightened her reins. The horse arched its neck, shook its head twice, and finally halted.

Noren and her party had reached the boundary between the dense forest and the expansive wilderness.

Twilight had cast its pall over the wilderness, darkening the sky considerably. Yet, even in this dim light, the interior of the forest appeared even blacker than the open ground where they stood.

Massive oak trees stood sentinel at the forest’s entrance, cleaving the wilderness and the dense woods into two disparate realms. The outside world felt like a human domain; venturing inward seemed like treading a path to hell itself.

Noren gazed into the depths of the impenetrable forest.

The woods were silent and shrouded in gloom. From their vantage point, nothing within could be clearly discerned, only the vague, distorted outlines of trees against an absolute blackness.

Those twisted arboreal silhouettes seemed to beckon travelers to explore their mysteries: ‘Come~ Come~ Sweet and delicious traveler~ Hasten into my embrace~’

As Noren fixed her gaze upon the shadowy forms, a profound sensation welled within her: ‘There seems to be something inside attracting me…’

The next instant, a sudden wave of dizziness assailed her, causing her body to sway precariously. She plummeted straight from her horse!

Instead of the soft embrace of grass she anticipated, she landed in a warm, muscular embrace. It was hard, hot, and intensely uncomfortable; she would have preferred to simply hit the ground.

“Noren, are you alright?”

Noren blinked her eyes open to find a golden, fluffy mass speaking words of profound concern. As the dizziness slowly receded, the luminous halo around the large mass gradually resolved into the figure of a blonde youth.

“Tolke… help me up…” Noren murmured weakly. Countless electrical currents surged through her brain, radiating from her trigeminal nerve, delivering intermittent, lightning-like jolts of pain.

She cradled her constantly twitching left cheek with one hand, while gently massaging her temple with the other. The pain ebbed and flowed, but her self-massage offered little relief.

“Tolke, could you massage me?”

A pair of warm hands settled on either side of her forehead, their heat penetrating her skin, accompanied by a soothing, moderately firm pressure.

“Mmm~~~” The blonde girl let out a comfortable, almost suppressed moan.

‘I want to sew my mouth shut.’

She bit her lower lip, and a blush bloomed across her fair cheeks. Tolke’s hands seemed imbued with a magical quality; with each gentle press, her headache and dizziness diminished a fraction.

After a hundred or so strokes, the headache and dizziness completely dissipated.

She knew she should have immediately told Tolke to stop, but her body’s lingering pleasure kept her from uttering the words.

“What are you two doing?” Hafdan inquired, his eyebrow arched, as he leaned closer.

Like young lovers caught in the act by a parent, the blonde girl sprang from the youth’s embrace like a startled kitten. She nervously smoothed her hair, feigning innocence. “N-nothing at all.”

Tolke, ever truthful, reported, “Noren fainted just now. I was tending to her.”

“Is that so?” Hafdan’s eyebrows were a curious mix of furrowed and raised. His scrutinizing gaze flickered between the two of them. He had a persistent feeling that Noren and Tolke had been acting strangely ever since they left the castle. ‘They haven’t been possessed by demons, have they?’

“Cough—” Noren cleared her throat, breaking the awkward silence. She pointed to the dense forest, then to a flat expanse about a hundred yards distant. “It’s growing late. We won’t venture into the forest. We’ll set up camp for the night in that clearing.”

Hafdan nodded in agreement. He, too, harbored no desire to spend the night in the eerie, unsettling forest. He would rather face a pack of wolves in the open wilderness than endure an entire night under the unseen gaze of the forest’s hidden eyes.

“Let’s go.”

The group proceeded toward the nearby clearing. Before long, a bonfire blazed, its thick smoke curling skyward.

Meanwhile, in the shadows of a small, unnoticed bush, a pair of eyes stealthily observed their every move.