As he approached the village, all he could feel was that something was off. Be it the eerie silence or the thick stench of blood and bile, or even the fact that some of the homes looked to have been ripped open, there was more than enough evidence to convince him and his fellows that something had happened. The jungle had been growing ever more hostile as of late, but not even the creatures that lived in the deeper recesses of the greenery would do something like this.

The first thing that sprang to mind for them was to check and see if their family had somehow managed to escape or survive what had occurred. Each house that was searched caused more fear and pain to build up, with bloodstains and scattered gore being all that remained of so many innocent people. Then, as if his prayers had been heard and answered, he heard someone softly sobbing under a pile of blankets.

He slowly approached, half expecting that this was some trick or bait. Well, he was half right on that account, but he didn’t know it yet. Regardless, he pulled the sheets off of the source of the sobbing and found someone dear to his heart.

“Kaylessia!”

The source of the sobbing looked up at him, her little eyes red with tears that must have been going for nearly a whole day. Her face was covered in the stains where those salty droplets had run down them endlessly, and the poor child looked to be utterly exhausted. But, above all, she looked to be.. horrified?

“Kaylessia! It’s me, Tariean! Your uncle! Poor child, what happened here? No, no. Not yet; not here. Don’t speak, I’ll take you from here and to safety. Whatever did this may still be around, s we must move quickly. Here, take my hand.”

He held out his hand, but the child simply pushed herself back further into the corner that she had hidden herself in while under the discarded bedsheets.

“Kaylessia, please. Whatever did this could still be nearby. It could be-.”

“C̵̥̦̺̍̔̍̚͜L̸͍̱̈͂O̴̙͚͛S̸̪̓̽̕Ȩ̷̠̗͊̑̎Ṟ̸̠̳̋͝ ̸̨̪̣̽̎͠T̷͕͋̀͠Ȟ̴̫̺̫̯Ȧ̸̩̯̻̿͑͒Ǹ̴͕̣ͅ ̴̯̲̆̎͌̄Y̷̞͌̋O̷̱̔̀̊̚Ŭ̵̧̦͉ͅ'̶̡͎̘̎̑͐Ḍ̴̜͆̿́ ̵̡̟̪̚T̵͇̟̝͕́̀͘͠H̴̳̫̥͒̇̚I̵̼̲͙̐̆͝N̶̛̮̟̥͜K̶̤̼͈̔̂͑!̷̛̗̦̯̽̈́̓”

He twisted his body in surprise as he reached for and unsheathed his knife, slashing wildly at whatever it was that had whispered those twisted words into his ear. He missed, of course, because by the time his hand had reached the handle of his knife the thing that had spoken into his ear was already gone. He now knew what had caused his niece to be so terrified, and also what had likely caused all the damage that he had seen up till now.

He still didn’t know what this creature looked like, though, but he did now know that it was at the very least able to communicate in the Common language. Whether it was actually sentient or if it merely was able to regurgitate what words it had heard before with no context for their meaning remained to be seen, however, and he honestly did not want to stick around long enough to find out. With this…. thing running around, he no longer had the luxury of being able to calmly cajole his niece into leaving her former hiding spot.

He grabbed her by her arm and yanked her into his embrace. He would have to be quick and hope that his fellow traders would be able to hold off whatever it was that had caused so much suffering long enough for him to escape. If his hunch was right, then his niece was the sole survivor of that thing’s attack, which meant that she was exactly what he had first feared she would be. He and his fellows had been lured into this place, and he had bitten the bait provided to him like a total newbie.

He cursed at himself in his head for making such a rookie mistake; he should have checked above and around himself before trying to see what was cowering beneath the covers… Still, though, he had a familial obligation to protect the last remains of his sister’s line, and he would do so to the best of his abilities. He managed to get a foot out the door before a sudden sense of imminent doom caused him to duck and roll through the doorway instead of stepping through it normally.

He was wise to have done so, because a broken, near-lifeless body had been flung his way and had ended up decapitating itself on the doorframe as it soared over him. The shower of blood sprayed him, and his niece began to scream as the memories of the previous night began to flood into her conscious mind once again. He could not bring himself to discard her despite the noise that she was making and the attention that she was attracting, and he instead held her close as he bolted for the line of trees that marked the place where the village’s limits ended.

He could hear screams and the sounds of bodies being rent asunder as he ran, pushing his legs as fast as he could get them to move. Whether it was pure adrenaline, pure love, or pure terror that was powering him was something he could not say, and he wasn’t sure if he even wanted to know. Eventually, though, he made it to the edge and passed the threshold into the greenery. He hoped that this would keep the monster, whatever it was, from coming after him, but this was proven to be a false hope.

Another sense of doom caused him to drop to the ground, huddling over his niece as a wave of pressure swept just above his back. When he looked up, the entire area around him had been cleared as if a massive blade had just swung through the area at merely a few feet above the surface. He didn’t care to try and look back, and he tried to run for the next bit of foliage to get away, but as he got to his feet he was immediately knocked off of them.

Tumbling through the air, he lost his grip on his niece and as he landed he saw a massive, clawed hand grab the girl from mid-air and then crush her like a grape before tossing her broken, lifeless body away like it was just some minor trash. This act blinded him to the reality of the situation that he was in, and he was overcome with grief and rage. He once again pulled out his hunting knife, this time occupying his left hand while his right now held a slightly curved single-edged sword.

He got to his feet and tried to rush at the monster that had robbed him of his last blood connections.

Only to stop and look at the creature in utter horror, his weapons falling from limp hands as the sheer grotesqueness of the thing overwhelmed him alongside the unmatched level of insane, unguided malice coming from it. In that brief moment where he saw it clearly, his mind almost broke, and the formerly vengeance-driven man who had lost the last bit of his family was reduced to a mewling child that had nothing in his mind but the overriding desire to run as far as he could from this unknowable horror and to do so as fast as he possibly could.

He was not the only one to be this way by the end of the night, and the tragedy that happened here would soon be followed by other villages with no discernable pattern of where the unknown monster would strike next. As the tales spread, so too did the fear, and with each new village to vanish in a single, blood-soaked night, more cracks began to form in the delusions that the servants of the Great Tree kept trying to peddle.