He trudged through layer after layer of snow, every step sinking into the ice and the earth. The cold, the everlasting cold, surrounded him with the biting grasp of winter. A day’s catch, drawn from the stream only yonder; But yet, this forest held no recollection to the path he’d taken that dawn, like so many daybreaks before. Perhaps it was the harrow of the pelting blizzard, or the gathered ice of the riverbed, or some other force that had drawn him off course. Whichever cause, he was thoroughly lost. His family waited for his return, him to set dinner upon the table and warmth into the hearth. He must keep on.
Yet, the tall trees began to progress thicker and deeper, their limbs bending and twining above into serpentine knots like things from mystic tale. The snowdrifts rose ever taller, his steps rising with them like wading out on a shore. To the knee, the waist, the chest; Ever taller, ever deeper. Warm and comfort had been left with his tracks, buried with the snowfall.
He dropped to the ground suddenly, numb from cold. He must keep on, press through the wood; Except, his limbs had fallen unresponsive, as if turned to ice. He sat there for a time, awaiting the return of his strength or the passage of the wind and raining ice. Neither.
And then came the howling. Distant, but so long and eerie it felt only as if it originated from directly beside him. Even without ever hearing it before, he could feel what it was, some innate, primal knowledge awakened inside of him. It was the cry of the Wendigo. As he lay, prone to the elements around, the forest grew dark with night and colder, ever colder. In the darkness, he could yet hear the shouts and moans of the beings of the winter, ever closer, ever more prominent. And then, lights, lights in the trees; Glowing yellow eyes, burning through the shadowed night wood like cracks of dead sunlight. The Wendigos approached.
The ground beneath him began to soften, and his limp body sank into the snow. Shaded white flakes coated his face, his mortified features, and he sank. The frozen ground turned to slush, letting him press between its earthen grips. He began plunging through the earth, dropping ever lower, ever deeper through level and level of rock and dirt and melting ice. He attempted to call out in shock, but could not manage against the filling of the ground around him.
He emerged into a chamber, gray of light and filled with sickening mist, like the very essence of a ghostly crypt brought into the seeing world. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all cast of black earth, ashen and veined with roots twisted like the trees of the lost forest above.
A figure approached from the darkness forth. The being was clad in rag fur, tattered and bloodied against protruding black bones. Its wicked face, not of any human form, bled into a bone maw of lupine nature, rimmed with red teeth decayed with years of rot and shadowed with the yellow light of its eyes. As the figure stepped, each leg’s lanky length split the death-fog, sending it recoiling to the dark. As the shroud cleared, depth fell behind it; Chambers in the earth, like those of a dungeon or tomb, showed, their faces fronted with bars clad of broken iron and wrought with rusted voids. Inside lay piles of bones; Their lifeless bodies showed human, but their heads were replaced with ones likened more to that of a stag or wolf, just like the being stood before him now.
The Wendigo lifted an arm, like the limb of a fallen tree, its blackened bones ribbed with tendons and residual muscle. In its claw, it held a hunk of dripping meat, red with fresh life and ravaged with new death. The beast held it forth. Offering it.
He plunged into the earth, struggling against its immortal weight. The ill fog of the chamber was all but disappeared, replaced now with suffocating mounds of ground and grime and ancient things buried since the beginning of time. He could feel the temptation of living and living no more, the calling of the power of the Wendigo below; But more, his flickering mind filled, as his mouth filled with dirt and ice, of his family, awaiting dinner and his return.
He burst from the ground, fresh winter air filling his lungs instead of the bitter, fungal must of the things buried in the depths.
When they found him, he lay in the snowbank in a grove of trees, entwining trees that sheltered him from the snow above. His body was cold, very cold, but not a grain of dirt or sand touched his body, only white snow from above. And his catch, as if drawn only from the hearth a moment before, was still warm.
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