That night I dreamed.

Except for the one time Sam had me see memories, I was in his office. This night was no different. I was standing facing the wall. I wasn’t sure what was going on as all I could see was the wooden paneling, but I could feel something on my legs. It was almost like the spiders had been, but this wasn’t the same. It was a feeling that I had felt before, almost a crawling on my legs but so light if I could move, I might not have felt it.

Then it happened all at once. Up and down my legs, I felt the unmistakable feeling of dozens or hundreds of fire ants biting at once. I wanted to brush them off and scream, but I couldn’t. The pain road through my legs, and then I felt it going higher.

As the ants moved up my body biting over and over again, I was thrust into my own memories of a fight I had after school when I was in the fifth grade. I was at my second school that year trying to make friends. I would lift candy from my fosters before going to school and offer it to people. One day walking home, I didn’t have any for a couple of the middle schoolers that walked the same way I did.

I learned that day the hard way that fire ants weren’t a joke. After they beat me up for not having candy, they knocked me to the ground and held my head in the fire ant bed. I had bites all over my face and head. As I was feeling the bites moving up my legs in Sam’s office, I could feel the bits on my face from being a kid.

That day taught me a lot. First, if you got friends by giving them things, then they weren’t your friends. Second, fire ants were evil, and to avoid them all the time. The third thing I learned was that I was no good at talking my way out of problems. People just sucked.

As I was having my brain overridden from the pain of the ant bites, I could still hear around me. Ants didn’t make noise, and I couldn’t scream in this place. It hadn’t been a week since I had been in this place, and he was telling me about quests. Yet this time, it seemed different. He had been melancholy when talking about the quest givers as he was drinking and reliving part of what appeared to be his past. Tonight was different.

Sure, in the past, he did things to me that messed with all of my sleep and even waking moments. Right now, I could all but feel the ticking of the clock in my blood. No, this was the worst or one of the worst things that he had done to me. It triggered all my fears at once. That I would be rejected by those that I thought of as friends and that I would be hurt by them. Also, fire ants themselves were a fear. I went out of my way to avoid them unless I was burning them.

While I couldn’t see Sam, I could hear his quill moving back and forth. It wasn’t his slow, careful strokes that I was used to hearing. No, tonight sounded like he was trying to tear the paper with each stroke. Then when only a few minutes had passed, he pounded on his desk.

Then I heard his chair push out and his heavy footfalls on his way over to me. I felt his hands grab my shoulders, and he spun my body away from the wall. This was the first night that he moved me so that I could see more of his office.

“You are a pain in all things you know that?” He said and then stepped back. “Per the rules of what I was to teach you I need to answer the question that you asked. However, you cost me so that I could answer your question. I had to make a trade just to find out where you were so that I could answer your question.”

He stepped back and sagged into his chair. A morose cloud fell over Sam’s face then he sighed. “I thought I knew which forest you were talking about even before the trade but once I knew for sure I was torn about how to answer.”

Sam closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “If the rules didn’t include me telling you things that were common knowledge I wouldn’t be able to tell you this. As it stands however I am happy to give you this information.”

He smiled a little and then got up and moved a little stand in front of me. On the frame was a velvet cloth that covered something round that was almost the size of a pumpkin. As he was moving the stand, I was feeling the ants moving up my body, biting. They had made it up my thighs and were now spreading both ways around me.

Once he got the stand in place, he turned back to me and smiled. “This is Brunt, a historian who is best suited to tell you about the forest you are in.”

With that, he pulled the cloth off the round object. I wasn’t sure what to expect but to be face to face with a head with a crown on it wasn’t what I had been expecting. The eyes of the head were twitching back and forth, and the tongue even moved to lick its lips like they were dry, and it wanted to speak.

Nope, this skull was messed up. His nose even flared like he was breathing even though there was no body to breathe. Sam taped the head three times. With each tap, he said some word that I couldn’t understand, and then the head made a sound like he was clearing his throat.

Sam held up a finger in front of the head. “Brunt, the story you are telling tonight is of the Wretched Wood. He has asked and so you get to tell him it’s history as you know it. Say no more no less.”

Then the head started to speak. It wasn’t that the voice was hollow per-say, but rather it sounded like there wasn’t enough air passing through the lips. Almost a loud whisper of a thirty-year 4-pack-a-day smoker. I could understand the voice, but seeing the gurgle out the bottom of the head when it acted like it was breathing would be something that stayed with me for a while.

With each breath it took, a red air bubble formed. It slowly expanded, and then he said a few words, and the bubble would move back in. It was appalling to watch as it used a blood bubble as its lung so that it could wheeze out its story.

“Sam before I tell that story I have been instructed to speak to you.” The head gasped.

Sam spun back around to look at it, “Don’t!”

The dead face slowly smiled, “Oh, but I must for my mistress has told me I must.”

“Not one word, my deal was that you would tell him the history!”

Brunt coughed, “Yes, and I will. I will. But first a message to you. My mistress Stephine the goddess of poetry and unrequited love, loves you deeply and hopes that you will return that love to her today.”

The head cackled and rolled its eyes as Sam walked over and poured himself a drink. “I told you not to say that….” Sam turned back and looked at Brunt, “Tell him the story so that he may go, and you can tell your Mistress what you did.”

The head locked its eyes on me. “Let me tell you a story of the woods you find yourself in. It is one that I know well as it is my story!”

As he wheezed out his shout, I felt all the ants bite at once again. This was going to be a long night, I could tell. I wish that I knew more about what was going on with Sam and why he would get someone to give me an honest answer, but there was only so much I could care about at once, and between the Fire ants and Brunt, I didn’t have much to think about.

The head kept on with this story. “Years ago, more than I know I had been a gallant warrior and a dashing ladies man. I had returned from battle for the King. He was a great man one that I loved to serve. That being said he was also jealous and at times would jump to conclusions. In my cast he got the right of it but for the wrong reasons.”

The head sucked in air and did a little hiccup, and then the bubble came out of his nose. “I had been chasing down raiders from our northern border. I returned with four dozen other horsemen victorious; we had found and smashed the raiders. So our King threw us a party. What no one told me was that while we were gone, he went and got married.”

Brunt laughed and laughed, then he slowly pulled himself together and went back to his wheezing story. “It had been a year since I had been in court a year with only the company of men as we did our service to the King. I saw so many pretty ladies that night and as the drink ran I figured they were there for us. So I did as I always did and worked my charms and before long there were five fewer ladies at the ball and we were nowhere to be found.”

He sighed, which somehow drew the air through the bubble in his nose and pushed it out the hole where his neck should have been. “The next morning, I was found with all five, which I was very proud about. They had all been happy, and so was I. The King however, wasn’t it turned out that one of them was his wife. She didn’t say a thing for me as he had my head removed. Now, one of the other four Priscilla a pretty little thing with reddish black hair and the most beautify smile you had ever seen she spoke up for me.”

Sam chucked dryly, “of course she did.”

Brunt spun himself around on the stand somehow, “don’t interrupt Sam, it isn’t wise.” Then he turned back to face me.

“At any rate Priscilla ask for me to be spared as it was the best night she ever had. The others I could tell agreed even the queen but the King wouldn’t have it. So I was killed but because Priscilla loved me so she made off with my head and here I am now.”

Sam clapped slowly, “Now tell him what you were suppose to and not your made up story of how you got your head removed.”

The head rolled his eyes, “The Wretched Wood is where my body was dropped on the northern side of the kingdom. Priscilla it turned out was a rather skilled necromancer who loved the words I said with my silver tongue enough she tried to raise me from the dead. She managed to get my head most of the way before she made a few deals to get it the rest of the way. The problem that she had was that as I was dieing I uttered a curse upon the King that a demigod felt like honoring.”

He gave a grim smile, “I cursed him that the dead wouldn’t rest until I saw him put in the ground and spit on his grave. Well the demigod wasn’t as great as he thought he was when it came to necromancy and the graveyard that I was dropped in all rose up. The demigod created a natural formation that caused all the dead to rise. Since Priscilla ran off with my head I was never able to see him put in the ground and while I can spit I don’t know where is grave is.”

He wheezed out a laugh, “now where the great kingdom of Skyreach was stands the largest spread of undead. Every necromancer who looks for minions march there and the demigod who helped me well he is now” The Brunt’s mouth snapped shut as he tried to speak but couldn’t. He rolled his eyes and slowly closed them.

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