Beware the Frigid Frost of Wounded Woods!

My name is Felicity Strange, born of Beyond Brook, I am a traveller of the many dimensions, and this is a written collection of my terrific and terrible tales.

Allow me to tell you the tale of: “Fairy Glen’s Fine Things''. This shall be part 1 of the exciting story. But first let me issue a stern warning to any fellow travellers: Beware the Frigid Frost of Wounded Woods!

I will always remember the day that I met Fairy Glen, unbeknownst to me at the time - he was also a famed traveller from across the many dimensions. Together we shared secrets of passageways, recipes and languages alike, but before those niceties I visited his little shop in “Wounded Woods”.

Tremulous terrors of a time untold
To forfeit folly at the behest of old
Unguilded, ungodly, unguided and sold
Mayhem with mischief, as common as the fervent cold

I had just crossed “Pain Plaines” to retrieve the buried treasure of Tangy when I finally reached the woods. The tall and dark trees being a most welcomed sight after having gone mad from eleven months of nothing but flatlands, only to then find a trap within the treasure. Anyway, that story is for another time.

The providence of the waking moon kept me alive out there, and I followed it all of the way to the edge of the forest. Teasing raptures nipped at the heels of my warbling steed, they had given us chase for three moons straight, only quickening in the pale ivory glow of the lunar light. Glipper was hurt and tired. They hadn’t been tested like this since the battle of Beyond Brook.

The teasing raptures are horrible creatures - and as mythical as they are evil. They appear only in the Pain Plaines, and only after your mind has fully succumbed to the desperate and empty effects of the land. After six months of nothing, not even so much as a bush or a hill, or a cloud in the sky - we started seeing them.

The raptures are like shadows that have taken form, they would be impossible to notice anywhere else, but in a place as barren as this they are all too easy to see. We made sure to keep on the move, always trying to remain ahead of them, for they are slow moving at first, and follow their prey until it eventually tires (as I had previously learned from ancient texts).

By the eleventh month, Glipper and I were no longer stopping for rest. The raptures were at a full sprint behind us, testing the famed abilities of a pure born Limbostler in Glipper. Unfortunately we misjudged the amount of distance between us and the raptures, for in the night previous, Glipper was attacked and bled heavily from their back foot. We rushed away immediately, as I was awoken by that piercing hell scream of my friend in danger… The Limbostler’s are unmatched in their speed and coordination, but with Glipper’s injury, and the amount of momentum gathered by the raptures, we were most certainly in trouble. Their shadows as sharp as ever, we entrusted the moon as our guide, and it delivered us to Wounded Woods as we passed beyond our mortal physical limits.

It had been so long since we’d seen anything other than flat ground and smokey creatures of the void, now finally being out of reach from those teasing raptures, both Glipper and I collapsed under a great Gloam tree. The sight of those tall trees made me feel sick, almost like a phobia or vertigo. We essentially went from a two dimensional plane - into a three dimensional world. Average people have been known to remain ill for life after such a visceral transition. Holding in the small amount of food still sitting in my stomach, I hadn’t failed to immediately notice the unmistakable species of this wonderful, obsidian-barked tree. I dragged myself back up and crafted a recovery potion out of its blood red sap. I won’t be noting the highly sought after recipe here, but I will add that all it takes for a full restoration of body and mind is a nickel sized dab of it behind the left ear.

Now, already healthy and healed, Glipper and I made for the centre of Wounded Woods. Not being known for its safety, but ultimately, these trees would be a much preferred option to the desolate plaines behind us. I had heard stories of a frigid frost that moves through the woods like a ghostly blizzard, freezing entire areas of the forest in an instant and without warning. A most dangerous scenario indeed, because making a warm fire without supplies is not so simple out here, as a scout might assume. The trees of Wounded Woods are generally too large to catch flame, and peculiarly they neither shed; bark, leaves, nor branches. Needless to say - Glipper and I were on the lookout for shelter, or at least some shrubbery short enough to burn.

After over an hour of wandering, now with dawn finally cracking across the horizon, we spotted a chimney along the treeline, with welcoming purple smoke plumes falling plumply from it. This was Fairy Glen’s den. Not that I knew that at the time, I didn’t even know who Fairy Glen was at all. But I was indeed glad to see a toasty looking cabin, and finally being so near to the possibility of safety after fleeing for so long.

We cautiously approached the cabin, as I thought to myself: “What kind of a mad minded, winter warrior would build a home out here in the frost of Wounded Woods?”. That was when I began to feel a sharp chill against my back…

I spun around to look behind us - the trees started to crack loudly like the spine of a giant, all of them freezing over, and turning a clear white, colourless shade.

Even now, mere seconds away from safety, we were once again sprinting for our lives.

I slammed against the cabin door with enough force to knock down a triangular oven, but somehow I bounced right back off of it with a frightening recoil. Luckily Glipper must have sensed something because they stood at the ready, close enough behind me to save me from falling back into the approaching frost. At that moment of impact Glipper let out a most violent shriek…

Thinking that I had bounced into them too hard, I turned around to make eye contact and assess their injury, but before I could do so Glipper immediately ran for the door of the cabin like a bolt of lightning being shot out of Zeus’ quiver.

In a fraction of a second of hesitation, I suddenly felt what had made Glipper cry so scarily…

The frost had caught up to us…

As my body reacted to the threat, moving with the pure instinct to propel myself forwards, I could feel the backs of my legs stiffening, snap frozen like freezer vegetables. Even the hairs of my head - slightly wet from perspiration - froze in the middle of the air, hanging behind me as I ran, as if by telekinesis… I felt it because I had only managed a single step before I was pulled back by my own hair. It felt as if the frost had grabbed hold of me. The very particles of the air itself were becoming thicker and chilling over…

In those final milliseconds as my entire body began to freeze, and my heart slowed, I saw Glipper make it to the cabin safely, the door had somehow opened on its own.

That thought made me happy, at least it would be I who died, and not another…

Then I finally closed my eyes and darkness overcame me.

I felt relieved. In a way.

No. This is not how the life of Felicity Strange would end. It is not fitting. Too timely. I simply couldn’t accept it.

I forced my left arm to move, tensing with the tenacity to start an inferno. My core body temperature started rising, so I tensed my entire body and mind. Individually activating each and every muscle and tendon. Suddenly I was controlling my blood, and I could feel myself; physically and mentally stopping my red blood cells from forming into icy crystals. This was an example of the accumulation of power and knowledge that I had gained from many years of perfecting meditation, finally achieving a harmonious connection with the singular, corporeal soul.

Here is where I’ll make note of another use for the tree sap recipe that I made mention to earlier: it is a perfect repellent of almost all substances, acting like a shield to whatever surface that it has been bound to. It is perhaps why the trees here thrive, aiding their core from the frigid frost, acting from the inside to preserve the outside, almost like my own blood was in that moment.

With my left hand I pulled off the dab of it behind my left ear, peeling it back like a dried scab. My legs were slowly warming, but for now they remained numb and unable to move. In the middle of my action, a barefoot, little old man appeared from the entrance of the cabin. That is when I slipped the nickel sized sap over my left eye and slightly under my eyelid.

I cannot explain why I thought this would work. Call it the intuition that is acquired after a lifetime’s worth of adventures. I don’t know. But this sap-eye invention allowed me to see the frost for what it truly was. The sap bonded with the moisture of my eye instantly, but on a purely surface level, much like how your vision is bonded with a contact lens upon the point of perfect contact with your eye.

I scanned my immediate surroundings as I started to gain the ability to bend my knees a little…

There it was.

The shape of the frigid frost.

I didn’t see it at first because of how large the creature was. But as I slowly turned to face it, willing my body to twist, I saw that it held my hair with two fingers. Its figure was made out of towering, raw, clear gemstones of ice. It noticed me acknowledging its existence, these deep, frightening, yellow eyes, in the sky, peered down at me like two spotlights. The beast, clearly surprised by my ability to see it, finally let go of me and stepped backwards, like an elephant afraid of a little mouse.

In one perfect motion I crouched into a spring and leapt towards the cabin.

The little man caught my arm, pulling me inside and back to Glipper, into a warm, cosy shop of some kind…