A whistling wind howled throughout the Winterwoods like a siren's wail. The wind swirled around Li, attending to him like a servant, carrying away his clothing of human flesh and bone and blood, baring forth a divinity of life and death. It was a metamorphosis of both morbidity and beauty, the life of limbs carved from bark and leaf stretching out from the deadened scraps of mortal human remains.

Was it right for him to use this form? This true form of his?

Li knew that though it represented the strongest pulses of life, it also echoed the cruelest whispers of death. Unlike Morrigan who appeared to be a guardian that nourished and loved, his form was one of neutrality, of life and death both wrapped together. 

Would these humans be able to handle his appearance? His presence? Li knew that fluxing his full strength would cause harm to mortals, and so he suppressed himself as much as he could, as in the midst of a forest, he could use the fact that he was a spectral being to its fullest extent by stifling his presence. 

It was part of the same set of passives that let him phase through objects while he was in a forest, and if he applied more effort into it, he could conceal his magical energy and obscure his form in ethereal fog. This would be necessary to prevent these mortals from bleeding from every fault in their shoddily made bodies. 

And yet, would merely obscuring himself calm them enough? Let them accept him? Should he create a powerful, more pleasing summon such as a [Elderwood Fairy] and assign it the duties of a deity?

Li thrust his arms out to his sides, as if ready to announce the grandest of declarations, and as he did so, the winds around him surged outwards, bending back the blades of grass carpeting the forest floor. 

No.

Li would show his true form, for at the end of it all, this was who he was at heart, and sooner or later, he would have to fully discard his human costume. When that happened, he could not hide behind one of his mere summons.

All he did now, he would do with his own will and self. 

==================

A cold wind rushed through the grove, whooshing past the crowd of farmers and beastwomen within. The farmers shivered as they felt the chill of the wind sink deep into their bodies, leeching into their very bones, making them almost numb. The beastwomen stiffened up, their bodies used to cold but their minds alert at the sudden shift in the environment.

A murmur spread among the farmers as they noticed that the forest around them was…dancing?

The deadened trees of the winterwoods, their spiny forms lining the outskirts of the clearing, began waving, their branches gently wafting up and down despite the absence of a wind. Instead of wind, there instead bubbled up a certain pressure. It descended upon all of them lightly at first, pressing at their skin, making their breaths ever the more harder to draw.

But as that pressure intensified, it became very apparent that the trees were not dancing. No, their branches were swaying down – they were bowing. 

From the thick of the woods sprawled out a billowing pillar of fog. It seemed to wrap around a vaguely humanoid silhouette, but as it approached, seemingly phasing through tree after tree, there was no mistake that this was no human. 

The silhouette breached into the clearing, standing far taller than any human mortal had any right to. Its figure was lanky like that of a tree trunk's, its fingers like protruding and curled up branches. The only part of the being that protruded from the fog was its head – an imposing cervid skull with a great set of horns that stretched out like branching bolts of lightning, alight with energy that glowed with life.

This time, it was not Ivo that led a kneeling procession – every single farmer joined in of their own accord and in perfect unison, bidden to fall to the earth not by a leader, but by their most primal and barest of instincts.

Before them, they saw their deaths embodied in that skull, in the deepest depths of those empty, fleshless sockets that seemed like voids, like the eternal darkness that death must be like to any being of mortal lifespan. 

And yet as they witnessed death in those eyes, they could also bare witness to those horns that promised life. Around those antlers was the comforting pulse of the forest, of the bounty of the earth and soil, the very kind of gentle growth that flowered the most beautiful of spring blooms, the kind of cherishing warmth left in the timeless and sacred bond between parent and child. 

As Li took position at the head of the prostrating crowd, he recognized that they knelt differently. One knee to the ground and both palms laid flat on the soil.

From Ivo, Li knew that this was the position of reverence they had performed for Morrigan – a show of both respect to a guardian and of appreciation and closeness to the dirt. 

Li was satisfied. Though he could sense fear, it was very slight. The farmers were hardened warriors, after all. He took note of the others present. 

At the edge of the clearing, Azhar held up Jeanne and Sylvie on each arm, helping them to resist the urge to collapse. They had their hands on their weapons not out of malice, but out of unconscious reaction. A testament to their training that when they felt death draw near, they were willing to fight rather than flee.

But Azhar calmed them, keeping them close to him as he looked at the approaching divinity with a small smile.

Iona had also knelt, her head down as she clasped her hands together in meditative form. 

Li stopped as he sensed Tia approaching him from the outside of the clearing. She had evidently been incredibly wary of his true form, but after observing for a few seconds, she could see that it was still him and was about to happily leap over the crowd of kneeling farmers, happy that she could finally rest on his much larger shoulders with comfort.

Li thrust out a hand, his sign to tell her to stay and be patient, and she accepted the command, lightly growling as she returned back to the end of the clearing. The farmers, however, thought this was a gesture directed at them to get their attentions, and so Li prepared to speak. 

A piercing set of howls echoed throughout the forest to interrupt him. 

It was the Lupi beastwomen. They had all gathered together to howl, and Li understood this as a sign of reverent respect, a call they made in front of high spirits or divinity. One usually made in honor to the lunar form of the Moonwolf, but they knew by feral instinct that a being equally as worthy of respect stood in front of them. 

The Serpi gathered together in fear, wrapping their tails around each other for warmth and comfort. The Feli sat on the grass with eyes dilated wide, as if mesmerized. The harpies hung from branches, blinking rapidly in nervous anticipation as they decided whether to stay or flee. 

When the howls subsided, Li began to speak. 

"All of you that have gathered below me," said Li. His voice projected in echoing peals with a strange, unearthly rattle under toning them. "You have heard and seen my Seer. You know well that to you, I am a symbol of hope. I am a sign that your ways have not abandoned you, that you may instead abandon yourselves once more to the blessings of the forest."

Li spread his arms as if in wide embrace. 

"I welcome your faith, your hope, your wills. In return, I promise you a garden free from strife, from the persecution that brought you low. From the suffering of conflict that has thinned your numbers through hellfire and bloodshed. 

I promise unto you a wondrous garden of green and splendor where you may abandon yourselves to the blessings of the forest without worry. One where you may cultivate and commune with the land to your heart's content. 

One that cannot be touched by the petty politics and conflicts of man. One that none will dare to disturb-,"

Li reached to the protruding rows of branches around his collarbone. Dangling from them were shrunken skulls which he took off. The skulls of many creatures mystical and divine and demonic. They were cosmetic items in the game, but now, they stood as a testament to his words.

"Whether they be the eldest of dragons, the mightiest of Burning Ones, or the most divine of gods."

Li scattered the three skulls in front of him, one elongated and reptilian, another fanged and lined with demonic horns, and another golden and glimmering with radiant energy. 

They hit the forest floor unceremoniously, and as the mortals nervously glanced at them, they could tell that once, there had been unimaginable power flowing from those skulls, shining from those eyes, and now, they had been reduced to deadened bone and fleshless sockets. 

"For all of this, I will not ask of you impossible labors nor even the fieriest of faiths, for I may not always be there for you as I am no granter of wishes. 

With your wills, I simply ask of you to become my stewards to this garden that I offer. Caretakers of a world green and blue and beautiful. To know that what you possess now, what you stand upon and breath in, is precious beyond measure. 

Cherish it and safeguard it such that all those that come before you may also have the chance to revel in it."

"We will," said the farmers in unison, almost like a chant.

"And in my garden," said Li as he turned to the beastwomen. He had been talking in Allspeak this whole time, and so he knew all the beastwomen understood what was happening. "There will be no division made between fur and skin, claw and hand, fang and tooth. All of you that are without purpose, without homes and family to return to, you are also free to rest upon this garden of mine so long as you respect and tend to it.

But those of you that must leave, you may. These Winterwoods lead out to both the Western Hinterlands and the northern mountain ranges, and I can at the least guarantee that no harm shall come upon you from the forest's hand."