Eternal Forest: Savage Rising Read Free Page B

all that grew in this spot and left a deep crater in its wake. The soil had been upended and the plant life lay scattered about in a furious frenzy, but that wasn’t the only thing lying on the ground with deathly stillness.
                  Even before Zehlyr hopped down from the fallen trees and into the pit, he had seen the bodies. They were human in shape, but each was completely covered in a large, red cloak hiding all of their features. The carcasses were sprawled out in a large circle around the outskirts of the pit, just ahead of where the fallen trees touched the ground. The way the cloaks clung to the bodies cast an impression of how each had fallen. Many were on their back. Some were on their side with heads turned away. One was flat on its back, but a thick mound of uprooted shrubbery lay next to its face, hiding its features. In all, he counted roughly fifteen bodies in the clearing wreckage.
                  Zehlyr held his makeshift spear out in front of him. His steps were slow and deliberate, each making a deep indentation in the soft, disturbed soil. He didn’t know what to expect when he reached the center of the center of the blast, but it certainly wasn’t this. He had no idea who these people were, or whether or not they were actually people. They certainly weren’t dwarves, elves, or centaurs; that much he could tell. He figured they must be human, but they seemed much larger than most humans did.
                  Cautiously, he approached the nearest body. His spear slowly lowered, the tip pointing towards the corpse as if it might suddenly return to life and attack him. There was no movement from beneath the dirt-covered red cloak, no signs of stirring or even breathing. Instinct told him to run away, but he’d come too far not to get the answers he craved. His trembling hand lowered down towards the corpse and gripped it by the shoulder. Its back was turned to him and it was curled up in the fetal position. Zehlyr took a deep breath and tugged, causing the body to roll onto its back and the hood to fall away from its face.
                  Zehlyr stumbled backward, landing on his behind with an uncomfortable thud. He dropped his spear, freeing his hands to let him scurry away from the body as fast as he could. It was a balisekt. He’d never seen one in person, but the features were unmistakable from the stories he’d heard all his life. It was human in shape, but significantly larger. Its body was covered in small, green scales. It had an elongated snout and large, reptilian eyes. Rows of long and narrow teeth filled its mouth and a forked tongue lay motionless between them. Its hands sported long, bony fingers, each with a claw as long as a small knife.
                  Zehlyr scrambled back to his feet, but his legs shook nearly too hard to hold him up. His breaths were fast and heavy and a cold sweat ran down his brow. What were the balisekts doing here? Why were they all wearing strange, red robes? The balisekts were a savage tribe that survived by scavenging and killing. They lived crudely in the Savage Lands with no clothing or possessions to speak of unless they were stolen from the Lands of Order.
                  The arrangement of these bodies, coupled with the fine—though now greatly soiled—robes suggested these creatures had been taking part in some strange manner of ritual. None of this made any sense. What had they been doing? Had it brought about the terrible force that destroyed more than a square mile of forest? The elves and the faeries had priests and priestesses that claimed to have magical powers, bestowed upon them by the Great Lady of the Forest. His fellow humans had even begun to delve into practices of Lady Worship ever since the Great Blight, but this was something far greater than anything he’d heard of before.
                  Zehlyr’s eyes scanned the fallen trees as he moved